Americans and the French do not mix well.  Us stupid, hamburger-eating, English-speaking, pickup-truck charging freedom lovers usually don’t take kindly to lots of wine, back to back vowells we can’t understand, and all that jour de vive, if that’s even correct.  But considering our Congress is dumping freedom left and right and the French president recently stated they should be more like Germans, it looks like we’re all loosening up a bit.  So maybe it’s time to take another look.  On that note, the very French-sounding “Simply Beauty Production” recently put out this clip called “Waiting for Winter.”  We know only a few of you know how to ski powder so it’s probably good to educate yourself more on that end.  Or you could just fast forward to 6:00 and see the most insane speed-flying landing EVER.  Let me just take my parachute with cette skis and do a fancy loop 20 metre above a snowless field and vouila!  Une landing parfois! Where is my baguette?

BONUS: Poor Boyz Productions’ timeless Propaganda is illegally up on Vimeo!!  Enjoy an early Eric Pollard segment, Mike Nick’s liu kangs, and JF Cusson’s best segment ever.

Many moons ago, when edits were 1,000 times fewer and farther between, a crew of weird Quebecois released Team Pizza. It was a big deal. Pro skiers just didn’t screw around with creative flatland tricks, they were too busy with “progression” on Superpark-type stuff.

We asked JP to provide a little background for one of our favorite edits ever. This is what he had to say:

In February 2005, Julien Regnier, Sven Kueenle, Elina Sirparanta and I headed off to Austria to compete in a contest called “Red Bull Shape The Nature.” The concept of the contest was that four teams of three, armed with video cameras, venture out to the slack-country to stake their claims or features with their team flags. Once a team places its flag on a feature, it is off limits to all other teams. Each crew puts their footage together and the videos are judged by the other teams…blah blah blaahh.

The reason we went to the comp in the first place was that we thought a video competition was a two birds, one stone situation. Bird number 1: participating in a comp, and bird 2: getting shots for our segments while we’re at it– the second one being the main priority. (We were filming for WAR then). Then came the storm, and crazy winds didn’t stop for three days. On a typical film trip, which, as far as we were concerned, we were on, we would have simply waited for the storm to be over or simply moved on to a different location. But we were staying at a lift access lodge up on the hill. We were stuck. The organizers decided not to cancel the comp which we thought was insane. So the other three teams headed out into the storm with their respective guides and snowmobiles.

One of the primary rules of building a video part is: Don’t waste your energy chasing B-grade shots. Because of the bad weather, we knew there was no way any of our efforts would turn into “A” shots for the movie. We wanted to stay inside; we figured the best thing to do was to take advantage of the storm to get some rest and to save energy for filming once the storm passed. But the guide who got assigned to our team was pretty antsy to get after it and besides, staying in bed all day was kind of bumming out the event organizers. We finally gave in and headed out.

At first, our guide was a bit disappointed that we didn’t venture any farther than the doorstep of the chalet, but he eventually embraced it.

We got last place.

JP

The product of JP Auclair, Julien Regnier, and Anthony Boronowski, UP1 (Untitled Project #1) seemed, at first viewing, to be just a random bonus movie. Initially it wasn’t that promising, with party footage and what seemed like just B-shots of tricks you might have seen in X. But as it got going, and they mixed in obscure/random lifestyle shots with skiing, really creative editing, and original music selections, it all seemed to make more sense. For the first time you were getting the glimpse of the ski world through the eyes of current skiers, not filmmakers and editors living vicariously.

There has never been a shortage of lifestyle footage in ski movies, but these guys put a different spin on it; self-deprecating scenes were not off limits and they showed how ridiculous their partying lifestyles were, the industry bickering, and the laziness of skiers. The best examples include scenes of the Armada crew awkwardly listening to a heated Tanner Hall ask Chris O’Connell if he got the shots from earlier in the day, and JP Auclair and Philou Poirier vomiting after an Oakley mandated fitness test, both of which were surprisingly entertaining.

Even with all the lifestyle shots, the movie flowed really well with segments for each skier and brilliantly edited transitional sections. The segment featuring Kenna’s “Freetime” draws you in at just the right moment with the visuals and music. JP’s segment, featuring the Pixies “Where Is My Mind”, and Anthony Boronowski’s music were revelations to me that indie music and strange editing could work in a movie. A sprinkling of indie-rock songs may not seem earth-shattering now, but they broke with the status quo in skiing by using indie bands, French music, metal, or even Aaron Carter in later movies.

UP1 was the first ski movie that gave me hope for the direction skiing was heading. It broke the usual ski movie format and showed me that skiing should be fun and creative. I couldn’t take another movie that was one individual segment after another. They laid the groundwork for Nimbus to make their documentary style movies, Traveling Circus to create edits that are full of creative tricks (see Team Pizza), Chug Life to beat each other up, and the rest of the ski community to just have fun skiing.

After UP1 they followed it up with UP1.2 and then UP1.2.1, both bonus movies that accompanied WAR and Ski Porn. To this day, I still believe that if given an budget, JP, Julien, and Ant could make the greatest ski movie of all time. Take the UP1 series, put some money behind it, grab the most interesting skiers today and have those three document it. UP1.3 When!?!?

Editor’s note: A huge thanks goes to JP and Anthony for allowing us to put their creations on the internet. There are many more gems from the UP1 series, and we’ll be releasing new ones weekly. Stay tuned!

Brobomb: You had an interesting set of skis back when you lived in Alta. Tell me about your Ostness Dragons. Why did you feel the need to customize them?

Bernie: When I first moved from southern Vermont to Alta in 1999, I was riding on a pair of 9.22 Atomics. They were like 75 or 80mm underfoot. I struggled to keep up on those skis for most of my first year there. Sometime during that first winter I was able to talk Line into helping me out with a cheap pair of Ostness Dragons. They were a huge improvement over the Atomics but were still a little hard to charge on the deepest days. Sometime during my second winter in Alta, the 00-01 year, I heard about this guy, Jack, that would take 3 or 4 of the same skis and attach them to make you any fat ski you wanted. He used small titanium rods, drilled through the core to hold the two skis together. The first pair I saw that he had built kinda blew me away. They were huge! After a long night of drinking and partying in the Peruvian Fort I decided that I had to get my hands on a pair of super fat Dragons. The next day I called Jason at Line and tried to describe to him why he should give me a really good deal on two pairs of brand new skis so I could cut them in half. He mailed me out two brand new pairs of the black Dragons and I gave them to Jack right away. We discussed briefly how big of a ski I wanted. I think that I was more concerned with getting the two Line logos on the tips to line up nicely than the actual size. I just knew that they were gonna be a lot bigger than anything else.

-Where’d you get the inspiration to do this? Did you realize that you may have been the only person in the country skiing on super fat twins? (140mm underfoot)

They were super fats but not quite that big. The specs are 140-118-128 in a 193. I knew that I had the only pair of super fat twin tip skis in the country or maybe even the world. That was kinda the point. There were other super fat skis that Jack had built, but none of them were twin tips. I wanted to make something that no one else had yet. There were a lot of people at Alta back then that wanted bigger skis. It was just that no one was building them yet. The biggest skis out were the Pocket Rockets (not sure of the year), the AK Launchers and the Rossi XXX. [They were all] not even 100mm underfoot. There was nothing that could float on those super deep days.

-You sent your pics to Line. Were they in part responsible for the Prophet to your knowledge?

I did send Line some shots of my skis but nothing ever came of it. The Prophet had absolutely nothing to do with my skis. That was all Pollard’s influence I believe.

-Do you remember your first day on them? If so, what was it like? Any haters? Were people in awe?

I will always remember my first time seeing those skis. I was working at the GMD in the cafeteria after getting fired from the P Dog. Jack stopped by and dropped them off in the middle of the day while I was working. They were built so well, they looked like a production ski. It took a moment when you looked at them to realize what they were. There were a lot of people that thought they were way too big and that it was stupid to have a ski like that. But there were a lot of folks there who were real interested and couldn’t wait to see them in action. I took them to DPH to get mounted that night and the guys there were real stoked. I don’t think I slept much that night. They got finished just in time for a classic 3 foot Alta storm. My first day skiing on the Double Dragons was unreal. It only took a few turns to be totally in love with the ski. They went so fast! I remember going out to rocky point to send a few drops and just landing so easy. Everything about skiing powder from that day on was so much better. The DD’s always turned heads in lift line. Everyone had something to say about them back then. “You got two snowboards on!” “What’s the tip doing on the tail?”, “Your skis are broken in the middle!” Actually, things haven’t changed too much since then. These days it’s always, “I didn’t know Lib Tech made skis!” “Do they have those squiggly edges?”, “How fat are those?” Yea, not much has changed when it comes to lift line conversations. It was real funny in NZ this summer. People at Mt Ruapehu don’t get to see fat skis too often. Most of the people there were on consumer race skis. They were so confused by my Lib NAS Pow boards.

-What was it like on your first day on production quality fat skis? Especially considering the last time you were on fat skis you had to cut a pair in half and shimmy a ski inside them just to get that width underfoot.

My first production fat skis were the original 89 Seth’s. I think I won those skis in a rail jam series at Mammoth my first year because everyone that could kick my ass went to the US Open and missed the last comp. By that point the DD’s were really beat to shit so I was just stoked to have a fresh pair of powder skis to ride. The Seth’s were still way smaller than the Dragons, something like 95 underfoot. These days the first Seths look more like a park ski than a big powder board. They were the sickest skis when I got them though. I rode on Seth’s everywhere for about 5 years. I was getting skis from K2 on the warranty program. Every time I sent back a pair, they would just send me out some new ones. Not really a real sponsorship, but still free skis.

-In 2001/2002 you got three full-page pictures in Freeskier Magazine all rocking the Ostness Dragon. How were you able to get full-page pics in Freeskier without a sponsor, and before the world of Newschoolers and online edits? Were you able to obtain a sponsorship from Line considering you seemed to fit their mold of a skier and you were producing?

I had two shots published in Freeskier that year. The first was a single page shot of the hip at the bottom of Alta, in the Shane McConkey issue. Kris Ostness is standing under me looking up. The other was a two-page spread of the China Wall QP. We did some crazy light painting so I was standing on the lip of the QP watching myself jump. I was in the shot twice. I was shooting a lot of pictures back then with Brent Benson, Chris Brewster, and Chris Goodyear. I think the two shots that made it into Freeskier were Benson shots. Nothing ever happened with Line as a result of those shots. When I moved to Mammoth the next year I stopped trying to get skis from Line. I thought that those shots would help me out a lot more with sponsors but they really didn’t. Mammoth was going off when I moved here so it was real hard to get noticed. The park was filled with all of the best riders in the country back then. Everyone would be riding in Mammoth for early season and spring.

Obligatory final shout outs?

I’d like to thank everyone who has helped me and believed in me.  Oakley, and Lib for all the gear I could not afford to buy.  My parents for always being happy and supportive that I’m living my dream.  And the Montage crew for dealing with all of my shit over the years.  Go to Montage Inc to checkout edits from our season.  Check out  my season edit from last year.

In a recent ESPN interview, Ahmet Dadali was questioned about the debate between “film segment vs. competition results.” He said, “people seem to remember a good ski segment, but will forget a competition standing.” When I think back to my freshman year of college in 2001/2002, I don’t remember who won the X-Games, U.S. Open, or even the Olympics, but I do remember watching Propaganda over and over and over again! I especially remember segments from JF Cusson, JP Auclair, Julien Regnier, and Eric Pollard/Mike Nick.

Let this be a warning, ten years from now we’ll be posting Ahmet’s segment from Eye Trip in message boards while we forget who won the 2011 Dew Tour.

Intro

JF Cusson

JP Auclair

Julien Regnier

If you were lucky enough to get into skiing between 1997 and 2005, you were able to witness Skiing’s Revolution on the pages of FREEZE magazine.  During this period, FREEZE captured skiing’s culture from the big mountains of Valdez, Alaska to the terrain parks in New England, something new to ski magazines at the time. Skiing and Ski magazines seemed to be concerned with selling vacation packages and equipment to yuppie skiers, while Powder seemed reluctant to consistently cover the newschool movement outside of their Superpark issue. Freeskier came on the scene in ‘99, but they were, well, you know…Freeskier.

During those years, FREEZE carried the media torch for the newschool movement without much of a website, daily edits, endless ski companies to buy ad space, overblown ski tests, or the Newschoolers hype train. They relied on great photography, real movie reviews, fun stories, diverse skiers, and a sense of humor.  They ignored some rules and naturally flowed with the progression of skiing.

FREEZE’s move into the changing skiing landscape began by giving much deserved attention to Shane McConkey, Dean Cummings, Kent Kreitler, Seth Morrison, and many other big mountain skiers who were pushing the boundaries of skiing.  Then they were on hand to document the birth of terrain park skiing through the New Canadian Air Force’s Mike Douglas, Shane Szocs, JP Auclair, JF Cusson, and Vincent Dorian. This revolutionary group gave rise to a seemingly endless crop of young park skiers who would grace the pages of FREEZE like Tanner Hall, Jon Olsson, CR Johnson, Pep Fujas, Eric Pollard, and east coast kids Dave Crichton, Simon Dumont, and Boyd Easley. FREEZE was the closest thing to an equal opportunity magazine, and their coverage brought in regions and athletes that had never gotten exposure before.

Unfortunately, in 2005 FREEZE’s parent company, Transworld, decided that “the freeskiing niche was too small and showed too little promise for growth to warrant maintaining the considerable expense involved in publishing six issues a year” (Freeze January 2005). I would wager that five years later Transworld has felt some regret over this decision as they watch skiing dramatically snatch up snowboarding’s youth market share. There was some serious rage among the freeskiing faithful when FREEZE got shut down, and I’m sure there’s still some bitterness left.

I could reminisce about FREEZE forever, but in reality all I wanted to do was post as many covers as I had. If you Googled “FREEZE” before today, you’d pretty much come up empty and that seems really unfair. So here at BroBomb, we’d like to begin an online resurrection of FREEZE. Browse through the covers, get nostalgic, post some favorite memories of the magazine, and remind Transworld that five years later skiing has shown more than a “little promise for growth.”

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If you have any of the covers we’re missing please email me at matt@brobomb.com, because we’d love to add more. I know there are some missing from the first year or two.

BroBomb: Who are the members of Toss Your Sauce?

Ben: Our team of extreme saucer enthusiasts includes Jo Constantino, Tom Lenehan, Eddy Stilson, Matt Harmer, and myself. We’re all seniors at Lehigh University and lived in the same hall freshmen year. Matt’s my older brother, we lived in the same house all the other years.

What inspired you to make the saucer? I’m curious how the light bulb went off?

- Shane McConkey was the sole inspiration to build the saucer. I think he said it best “Just ski down there and jump off of somethin’ for cryin’ out loud,” so we listened, and it was the funnest time I’ve ever had in my life.

How did Red Bull respond when they first heard about your idea of using McConkey, a Red Bull athlete, as inspiration?

- Red Bull was really pumped about our Saucerboy tribute, they loved it! They gave us a lot of freedom with design. All I knew from the beginning was that it should look like a Saucer and stir up words like EPIC, RAD, and AWESOME.

How long was the building process and was it difficult to take the sketch to a physically built craft?

- It took about 2 and a half months to build. We worked on it every day, all day, and we had a lot of design challenges. Most of our time was spent thinking things through. We wanted to do things that would make Shane proud. Luckily, our team member Eddy is a Mechanical Engineer, so we were able to execute our lofty plans with some EPIC equations to back it up.

How did you get it down to Philly?

- We used a 17 foot U-Haul truck to get it there. The whole thing dissembled into 10 pieces so it fit really well, but it was nerve racking. PA isn’t exactly known for its smooth roads.

I got to actually experience the Philly Flugtag first hand. The crowd was pretty unrully and 75 percent seemed to be intoxicated. What did you think of the crowd that showed up?

- Once we got it there, all of the other Flugtag teams were SUPER RAD, it was a great atmosphere. We didn’t get much of a chance to mingle with the crowd until after the flight, but it seemed pretty wild.

We ran into a bunch of older ladies with Toss Your Sauce shirts and an entire tailgating party. Who were these people that came to watch?

- Yeah, our friends had a huge tailgate party for the team. They flew our t-shirt on a 30 foot flagpole and got on Fox News, so sick! I’m not sure who those old ladies would have been, did you get their numbers?

It was really windy that day, did that make the event a lot more sketchy?

- Wind was a big concern for the event, they almost called it off. Red Bull did a great job of making sure things would be safe so none of us were nervous. The night before fly day, Hurricane Earl actually took our saucer for a spin of his own. The next morning all I could say was, hey where’s the saucer? Aw shit.

You had to take two approaches to take off, what happened?

- Yeah, we had to do a double take. Up until the point of fail (our initial alignment was off center), things were going a little too smoothly for a Saucerboy. I think it just made the performance more authentic.

So the actual take off/flight, what was that like? Were you having second thoughts mid-flight?

- The flight was sooo RAD! I was all jacked up on Red Bull and adrenaline so nerves weren’t an issue. All I saw was the inside of the Saucer, jam packed with signatures from Shane’s friends and all the fans. Flying was so fun, it did some mini turns on the way down and when the water showed up, it was… intense. I stayed in till the end and tackled through some aluminum and fiberglass panels. No serious injuries, just a damn good time.

Did you get any free red bull? Because we didn’t and we’re really bitter about it.

- For the hydration limitation, that’s lame, my apologies. They gave us caddies (cute girls) assigned to deliver us Red Bull whenever we wanted. Doubt that will ever happen again.

Is it true that Red Bull Flugtag may become a reality show? If so will you guys be on it?

- Yeah, Flugtag has a 5 part reality series on Fox Sports Network. We might make a quick appearance in the last episode. One of the teams was being filmed and walked by our sauce, said it was going to sink, so I followed them and bombed the shit out of their segment with strange stink faces. Maybe it’ll make the cut.

What’s the deal with the pre-flight back flip?

- A big question from the beginning was, how would I actually get into the Saucer? All we knew was that the base needs to be sturdy. So we get to Philly the day before and put everything together. Then we thought, should we test our entry for the first time? I hadn’t slept in 50 hours but my vote was yeah, might as well. So my brother grabs my left foot, and throws me into a back-flip, full rotation, perfect center sauce landing… uhhh, what broke? The Saucer design completely relied on a portion of a keg we cut out under the base, and it popped right off. The keg allowed us to stabilize our spin, be pushed, pretty much everything. So we spent hours late into the night fixing it, and finally brought the sauce back to a rolling boil. It was an EPIC repair.

Where do you guys ski?

- Blue Mountain in PA is where I’ll be pretty much every day this season, likely with a Saucer and snowlerblades every once in a while. I’ll also definitely be at Mount Snow VT on Gaper Day, funnest day ever!

Shout outs?

- Shout outs gotta start with Red Bull, they gave us the wings, and definitely need to thank all my friends at Lehigh for filling the think tank that made this possible. Oh yeah, and can’t forget to thank NASA for paying for everything, right on! I’d also like to award a shit-ton of Karma points to Jeff Schmuck from NewSchoolers, a Winter X Medal for AWESOMENESS to Uncle E, and a double goat salute to Patrick Brennan, James Clifford and Miles Daisher. Also, ‘The Way I See It,’ this project couldn’t have been done without the guiding input of Scott Gaffney and Cody Townsend, all you guys at MSP Films are awesome! Most importantly, the friends and family of Shane are so dearly appreciated, our kindest thoughts and wishes will always be with you guys.

Any skateboarder worth his Mark Gonzalez knows that their favorite skater’s favorite video is Plan B’s Questionable. Featuring skateboard lifers like Matt Hensley, Rodney Mullen, Pat Duffy, and Mike Carroll. Every skater cool enough not to wear a helmet at the skatepark has seen it.

I was stunned when I found out that my twenty-something co-worker at SASS had seen the light and decided to “become a freeskier” without having seen 13. That’s like me seeing the light and deciding to become a freeskier without having seen State of Mind. I remember watching 13 on the last day of the season when I was in middle school; it was my first time seeing a twin-tip ski, and by the time I’d seen CR (RIP) nearly stick a cork 1260, I was out in the yard trying to slide a shovel handle on my mogul skis.

Any little ninja who can grab blunt has seen a Jiberish edit or downloaded Refresh when they finally put their damn movie on iTunes, but it takes a true OG to know how to work the tracking on a VHS player well enough to watch the classics.

So go on young’en, find a tape deck on Ebay, harass the film companies for their backstock, and get yourself learned so the next time you ask JP Auclair for an autograph you’ll know what obscure trick from his long career to compliment him on in exchange for him writing “You da man!” on your stupid poster.

13

The word: Johnny’s last pre-16 mm film and my all-time favorite.  Now three different race skis with raised tails exist, but plenty of people are still in the pipe with straight Harts.  There’s also one guy who never wears a shirt and looks like he spends a lot of time waiting outside of high schools with binoculars (Josh Loubek).

The why: Mike D. doing misty flips to a Metallica song about raping mothers and killing babies.  Candide’s film debut and still his best trick ever (flat 7 mute over the High North quarterpipe).  Philou Poirer’s massive switch backflips in the Whistler park, in sunglasses, after pounding six plates of home fries.  JF Cusson’s bio 9, switch misty 7 in the backcountry, and straight backflips to switch 15 feet out of a halfpipe with walls that barely reached above his chest.  Trennon Paynter’s alley-oop double flip in a quarter pipe on Harts.  Hammers that stand the test of time.

Balance

The word: The infant East Coast park scene in complete ska-rock disarray. The beginning of Scott Hibbert’s long career of killing himself, including an attempted 1260 in a melting Killington halfpipe with six-foot walls that nearly decapitates Josh Berman. Eric Hjorliefson ripping cork 9’s on the Whistler glacier with spikes coming out of his A-frames, and a host of other pros who probably didn’t realize Berman was filming them at COC.  Terrible, terrible music.

The why: Suffering through Level 1’s first offering will grant you true OG status: Balance is a headache-inducing exercise in repeat shots, split-screen mirrored tricks, and a too-typically early millennium soundtrack of angsty ska that will leave you disoriented and seeing stars.  Lord knows what Berman’s boatshoe-sporting classmates at Ye Olde Dartmouthe must have thought.  That’s not to undermine a few bright spots of talent in Garrett Brittain (flat 3 mutes), Josh Novotny, Rory Tuscany, and one of my favorites, Rory Will. Rory spends the movie DESTROYING the pipe before anyone knew how to do that, with eighteen foot alley-oops out of the old Sunday River halfpipe, in a visor.  And who can’t appreciate the Schrab brothers throwing double misty 1440s off the windlip behind the Horstman Glacier with no shirts on?  Take that, Bobby Brown.

Continuum

The word: In the spring of 1995, the Jones brothers, along with Dirk Collins and Corey Gavitt eat mushrooms and go to a yard sale in Jackson, and wake up the next day with a baby crib full of old toasters and a beat-up 16 mm Bolex camera.  After letting their pony tails grow all summer, the crew decides to take the camera around Jackson and burn or overexpose thousands of dollars in film.  As the season develops, the “designated filmer” idea comes along, where after drawing straws, the one with the small straw is left only a small amount of ganj for the day, ensuring he holds the camera right-side up with the subject in focus.  They manage to put together enough footage to make a movie (All completely unverified and likely untrue, but nobody at TGR would get back to us).

The why: TGR’s first offering with some of big-mountain skiing’s best talents before they were very sponsored.  Doug Coombs opens it up to a scratchy live version of “Trenchtown Rock” while skiing an impossibly steep Teton line.  Every single person in the film wears Steeptech in yellow, the flagship color of 90’s skiing.  All the Jones brothers were sending it before they figured out who was better at filming and who could only manage to ski.  The world is introduced to endless monologues about dropping everything and moving to ski towns, the purity of skiing powder, etc. etc.  Shot way before Jackson dropped their ropes, Continuum features lots of entertaining shots of Micah Black and the crew ducking ropes at full speed, airing the cliff right next to the lift, and straight-lining it out before ski patrol can get their Super Force 9’s down there as the filmer remains hidden the woods.

Blizzard of Aahhh’s

The word: Mike Hattrup, Scott Schmidt, and Glen Plake ripping in 1988; enough said.  No one wore hats skiing, or even knew what a helmet was.  Glen Plake, introduced as a “Mohican terrorist,” had just gotten out of prison, was lightyears away from hosting RSN. Hell, he had only recently given up stealing cars to rappel down chutes in Chamonix with a mohawk and a necklace made of wristwatches.  No one made a ski shorter than a 215 or wider than 70 in the waist.  Frankie Goes to Hollywood features prominently in the soundtrack, and moustaches are worn without irony.

The why: There’s a reason used copies are going for a hundred dollars on Amazon; this is one of the most ground-breaking films in ski history and has inspired legions of otherwise career-minded individuals to drop out of school, give their parents the finger, and move to a filthy ski town.  Schmidt ripping hop turns down the backside of the Aguille du Midi where no one had ever skied before.  Plake and Hattrup sending it off cliffs in pastel one-pieces, or following each other down couloirs with a ten-pound camera drilled to the side of a motorcycle helmet.  Bump lines in Cham, Telluride, and Squaw.  Quite simply a film that could not have been made at any other time with any other group of skiers.  This shit is true OG.

In the early evolutionary years of newschool skiing, there was one beast of an event that brought together the leaders and young guns of skiing. In some sort of Darwinian process, the likes of Tanner Hall, David Crichton, Pep Fujas and Simon Dumont made names for themselves while the brick layers of skiing, like the Three Phils, JF Cusson and Vinnie Dorion, continued to push the sport forward. This hallowed event’s scientific name is: Parkasaurus.

Mercon gaps a dinosaur  p: Freeze.com (extinct)

Each year, from 2000 to 2003, Parkasaurus would appear at Snow Summit CA. Organized by FREEZE magazine (RIP), it was an event that brought together top skiers, filmers, and photographers to evolve skiing without competition. It was said in the historical pages of FREEZE, “Events like the U.S. Open and X Games establish the best athletes in a competitive environment, but Parkasaurus is a place where creativity oozes like spaghetti sauce from everyone’s pores.” It was a time before edits, so the creative beast could only be seen when films were released and photos were published. Many important milestones were reached at Parkasaurus events, like Tanner landing the first disaster switch 450 on 270 off, CR sliding the first 50-50, Jon McMurray backflip disaster, JF Cusson and Philou slaying the first rainbow and battleship rails, Crichton’s massive halfpipe airs, and the infamous transfer gap over an inflatable dinosaur.

Species: Tanner Hall  p: Freeze.com (extinct)

As we get nostalgic and unearth Parkasaurus, there is much to discover from evidence left behind in issues of Freeze and early Poor Boyz films like The Game, Propaganda, Happy Days, and Sterotype. First of all, we need to refocus on unifying park shoots again. By necessity, skiing park shoots brought every crew together in the early years.  Now, we have little niches and film crews shooting on their own, but nothing brings about more creativity than putting together an entire ski community. Yes, we have JOSS and a ton of park shoots for each film company, but none that brings all of them together without competition.

The next artifact we need to dust off and learn from is Parkasaurus photography. We have edits, interactive websites, and real time ski media, but all at the expense of good old photography. It’s amazing that you can watch events live, but nothing beats some high quality photographs. Parkasaurus helped produce some of the most iconic images in skiing history that ignited tons of careers. Now we just wait for the next dub variation in an edit and can’t appreciate the stopping of time, composition, and body position. I’m sure all the print mags that are dying would welcome an emphasis on photography again. Skiing needs memorable images for this generation to look back on, and in recent years I can’t remember many.  Lastly, we need to start jumping over more inflatable animals. Park shoots need to have a sense of humor. Without some fun it just turns into a huge ego trip and we’ve all seen what happens next.

Rinfret. USA! USA!  p: Freeze.com RIP

Parkasaurus went extinct during the final years of Freeze; but I have hope that the likes of Powder, Freeskier and Newschoolers can make a miracle happen and bring back this Jurrasic Park. Skiing needs to come together and put on a huge unifying park shoot that doesn’t have every little kid arguing for a month about who had a better edit; instead it stokes the shit out of all skiers to the point that there is no room for debate.

 

Jason Levinthal is the founder and mad scientist behind LINE skis. I had the privilege of skiing with him at Stowe.  Before we met up, I put together fifteen questions and we got through about four of them. When J Lev speaks, you listen. What follows is Jason’s response to my first question; I passed him my iPhone and let him talk because what was flowing was essential for knowing your roots. I’ve transcribed the interview for the readers among us, but I’ve also included the raw audio for your listening pleasure.

Who and what influenced your skiing the most back in 1995 when you started Line?

Back in ’95 skiing, you gotta remember and it’s hard for people to realize, there were signs at the top of the Stratton Terrain Park, and most terrain parks, that said no skiers allowed. You know, that’s just a fact. And then, the other fact is it wasn’t even called terrain parks, it was called snowboard parks. If you can imagine that, then that’s only the tip of the iceberg of what skiing really was, and it’s such a short time ago, but it’s so easy to forget.

The only ski you could buy was like a 203 length, you know, if you’re 5’10”, 150 lbs, you’re gonna ride a 203 length ski that was like 65 in the waist, so stiff you couldn’t even flex it if you put it between two saw horses and jumped on it. It had no side cut, so you really weren’t even carving unless you were going 80mph down a downhill race course in the Olympics, which only 5 people can do. That’s what all the skis were built on. So, your options for skiing was basically this product that really inhibited you from progressing, and then you had no imagery other than Scott Schmidt and Glen Plake which, hats off to those guys for at least taking that product and pushing it as far as they possibly could. I mean, they’re throwing like 720’s off cornices and they’re doing like everything possible but it was still so far behind snowboarding, and snowboarding was behind skating, and you know, that’s ultimately what influenced me was the fact that all these other action sports existed and were so far ahead of the curve of skiing.

Skiing was one of the oldest of all those sports, and it was like the last one to ever evolve or change. I mean you’re talking 30-40yrs of just the same thing:  skis built for world-cup downhill skiers, of which 99.9% of people that go to the mountain can’t ride like, don’t train enough to be able to bend a 200-length ski at an 80mph course of ice. They just wanna go have fun, and they’re really fighting the design of the ski. So, for me, design-minded, kinda inventor-minded, mechanically minded, I saw snowboarding, I skateboarded, I wakeboarded when that came about. I inline skated when that came about. Mountain biked. BMX. All these products were old products. I mean cycling evolved to BMX, evolved to mountain biking. Skateboards became twin tip. Wakeboards came from water skiing. Rollerblades came from roller skates. Snowboarding really came from a problem with skiing not being able to evolve.

So, what I did seeing that, it just bothered me for like a long time, probably, 10 years leading up to that. So, I started snowboarding in like ’88 or something. So that was when I was going to Stratton on the weekends and I was visiting the Burton factory, and I was seeing what Burton was doing for snowboarding. You know, from just an idea into a finished thing. So, I saw what Burton was doing with snowboarding and how they were doing it and then, eventually, when I had my second or third board, my first board was a Sims Switchblade, anyone that knows snowboarding knows how old that was. That was one of the first boards with edges, you know, a few years after edges were put on snowboards.  Eventually, I got a Burton Air, it was a completely symmetrical board, or pretty damn close, it was the first board that was like that. I got on, took one run at Stratton, and it was like the light bulb went on:  “I’m mounting my skis centered.”

So I didn’t mount my skis center, I was just on this snowboard, and I said, “this is crazy dude, like what I can do on this snowboard is unbelievable and this is what I need to be able to do on my skis.” And I was literally snowboarding half the day and skiing half the day. I’d bring a snowboard and skis to the mountain every time I went. Half the day I’d snowboard, then I’d jump on my skis the other half, because I love skiing because the forward facing, just like that was me; but snowboarding, I got a feeling from snowboarding carving, riding switch, doing tricks, the maneuverability, the playfulness, the fun, the agility, all is what I really also loved. I wanted to be able to do that on my skis, but couldn’t, so I just had to do both to satisfy my craving.

At one point I snowboarded half the day, I switched to my skis, I was on like 203 Rossi’s, those green ones, and then I, without thinking, just did a 180, cause like that’s what I had been doing all morning on my snowboard. This was like before college, I was in high school. Then like 5 years went by and I was in college and we had to do a project and I was like, “I’m gonna make a ski like a snowboard.” This was in ’95, so I took all the dimensions of a snowboard, cut in half—length, width, everything. That’s how I came to a skiboard. There was no more thought beyond than that.

So, I wasn’t about to take a ski and redesign it. I was going to take a snowboard, and evolve it into a ski, you know, start all the way from one extreme.  That’s why it was short, that’s why it was wide, that’s why it was twin tip, symmetric, and had side cut, and it had a soft flex. All those aspects of that ski at that time, which people want to call a “skiboard”, was closer to the modern day ski that you’re on today. You’re riding on longer skiboards, or more realistically, back then, you’re riding on shorter skis that were fucking 10-15yrs ahead of their time. People call them skiboard for the same reason they call terrain parks snowboard parks. They couldn’t get over the fact that that could be a ski.

What should the term be then?

They’re just skis, dude, they’re skis. Everything’s a ski. If you’re standing on two boards sliding down a hill you’re on skis. Cross-country skis are skis. Downhill skis are skis. I’ve always been over the fact of people calling it “twin tip ski,” I mean that’s like calling a snowboard a twin tip snowboard. Like, “where’s your twin tip snowboards?” Dude, we got snowboards. They all have tails. Some have symmetric geometry and yeah you can call that twin tip, that’s a true twin tip. Like a true twin tip means it’s symmetric. But twin tip today is used to refer to a ski with a tail, and that’s just wrong. Like a tail is just like saying, “those are skis with edges…those are steel edge skis.” They all got fucking edges dude! Like get over it!

Like back in the day when they first came up with edges, I sure someone was like, “Oh, those are steel edge skis!” Or, “those are fiber glass skis!” And now they’re saying, “those are twin tip skis!” It’s like, “what do you do on those? Freeski?” Like, “no dude, I ski.” I’m a skier. That’s why I made the shirt, “I am a skier.” You know, I like saw…I can’t take total credit for that shirt…I saw KRS-1 concert and he had a shirt that said, “I am Hip-hop.” I just thought like, dude, that makes sense. Like, I am a skier, like forget about being a freeskier, a park skier, a newschooler. You’re a skier. And some day when you can proudly say, “I am a skier,” and people understand, and they have the vision of the style of ski you do without you describing, “I twin tip ski…I ride in the park…I freestyle… you ever see the x-games,” like, you shouldn’t have to say all that, but that’s gonna take time. Just like back in the day they had to call it a skiboard because they were like, “well it’s not skiing, you see! You can go backwards! You can, like, carve! It’s fun! It’s like…it’s agile. You could spin. You could, like, do all the things on a snowboard. Oh, ok! It’s a skiboard!” Ok, fine sure. It’s a skiboard.

If that’s what you need in order to open your mind to a new realm, a new perspective of what skiing is and can be, then call it a skiboard. You know, great! Call it a twin tip ski, fine. But you know, at the end of the day we’re all skiers and it’s just a ski, you know. And there are gonna be different skis for different styles of riding. It’s just a style. Just like surfing, there’s different styles of surfing and everything else. So that’s the deal! That’s what inspired me to build the skiboard, as people like to call it, and I called it cause I needed a word to differentiate it at the time from skiing and especially then. There might’ve been a tail on some ski back in the day, for sure, but it wasn’t understood.

I mean…I could talk for an hour and a half right now. You want me to do it?

I would close this one, and then we’ll…

Let’s fucking session then!

Let’s do it!