Archive

Apr 13

Jockfest Rests For A Weekend: Orage Masters

By Jon Hartley5 Comments

orage masters

It’s been a long season of competitions, and let me tell you—ignoring them all is really hard work. We can all sing a happy song now that the Dumont Cup is over, and that ego-fest out in Sweden will be wrapping up in the next couple months. I’ll keep praying that those two budgets get rolled into one massive Jon/Simon strokefest DVD, making them easier to ignore, but in the meantime we can all bask in the pink glory that is the Orage Masters.

Orage masters teams matt phillipi

Skiing’s only no-trampoline-required competition is almost upon us. It’s a sad state of affairs that we only have one anti-comp style event, but for this weekend it beats the shit out of pretending to care about who is lipsliding Jon’s cannon box. This is the sentence where I’d like to say that I’m hopping on a plane for Whistler tomorrow and I’ll be live streaming the event using some technology I don’t know about. However, until the iPad reinvents the internet and makes me a millionaire, the BroBomb travel budget is tapped for this winter. I hear user-generated content is the new thing, so feel free to film the event for us. We’d love that.

For the uninitiated, this thing goes down in a team format and the following will be represented: Amplid, Armada, Line, Volkl, K2, Surface, and Salomon. Each team has provided some hints towards their themes, and Twitter tells me that Surface will be rocking it Dead Head style. For those still unsure what to do for a theme, let me help:

tiger costumeThe topical theme always wins at Halloween parties, and the Masters is no different. So what you do is go with the all-too-obvious Tiger Woods theme. You’ll need one fuzzy tiger outfit, one angry-blonde wife with a golf club, and a gaggle of backup bimbos. It’s cheap, easy, and even Canadians are likely to get it.

Telluride Tuesdays with Garrett usually runs in this spot, so we’ll end it with a quote from our favorite person who is banned from Canada:

“I don’t really have the connections, but Pat Bridges hooks me up and I can go ride any snowboard superpark, but yet I don’t get invited to any ski shit, you know? I don’t get it. I would love to see what would happen if I got invited to something like the Orage Masters. I think Jay (Levinthal) and those guys are like, ‘No, no Garret you don’t compete, we don’t want you to.’ But on the inside I’m like, ‘I want to show what I can do.’”

So Canada, stop being so lame and let bygones be bygones. LINE, you need to find a way to get Garrett to the Masters, skiing needs this.

Apr 07

Telluride Wednesday? Still Garrett

By Jon Hartley2 Comments

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Wednesdays are good too. Our weekly discussion with Master Garrett continues with a discussion of skis, the ancient arts, and summertime fun.

Goals?

It feels like I’ve jumped away from the scene of the ski industry, but I feel like I’m actually building a different level for my skiing career. That’s the backup plan. I don’t know if I’ll ever become pro, and I don’t want to be pro. I don’t even like that word, it’s just a label. I want to be a master of it, a full-on ninja. I want to totally figure it out so I can do it forever, as long as I can ski.

You could be skiing’s first ninja.

My name means “warrior” and I’m out there battling the mountain, you know? It could easily take my life.

What skis are you on now that the Anthem and Elizabeth are gone?

I’m on the Mastermind now. The first couple runs I was just like, “Whoaah, edges!” I could have died, but then I just found a file and took all the edge off. Then it was fun, but just doing a noseblock felt different. They’re a little bit skinnier and it took me a second to find out where my balance point was on ‘em. Then they just felt like a regular ski, but I haven’t ridden on a ski that narrow in a long time.

I’ve got a pair of EP Pros too, I’ll mount those up as soon as I get some more bindings. Those things are like my broadsword. I’ve got my katana, and then those are my broadsword.

I love this ninja analogy, you’ve really thought it through.

I don’t know man. I love Japan, I love that culture, and it’s fun. Ninjas are dope, and they did exist.

Did you study any martial arts?

No. I got kicked out, I think. I kicked a kid. I was young and I never did very well in karate classes or anything like that. I wasn’t much of a person to follow authority. I couldn’t do teamwork either; I did terrible in soccer. I’ve never been able to do anything team oriented—basketball and baseball, I did not fit in at all.

I was kind of an outcast in middle school and high school and just found sanctuary in the mountains.

How about the summers?

Most people surf or do something like that for their escape. I like to fly fish, because it’s not extreme. You can just hang out by the river and learn the ways like Siddhartha.

Mar 30

Telluride Tuesday: Just the Tip

By Jon Hartley4 Comments

vista garrett russell telluride ninja

With a serious lack of creative jam competitions like this one, there’s very little room for quirky non-doublecorkers in skiing. Garrett Russell stands out as a member of a small club that has rejected the jock norm and carved out a separate space. We talked to him about being a badass ninja renegade, and what it’s like to do such weird tricks.

It seems like snowboarding has room for a bunch of guys who are never going to hit the big jump or do tricks you’d see in competition. What would you say has kept skiing in this mindset of correct, or better, tricks to be done on a particular rail/jump?

Its background. Coming from racing the seed is planted in there and it’s really hard to get away from it. Skiing came from racing, so you have to ski with ski poles and you have to do this or that. Growing up we were, or for me, I was watching Shane McConkey and Scot Schmidt and those guys were extreme and they stepped outside the boundary.

I think, just recently snowboarding has started that where it’s kind of like skateboarding. Like the Think Thank crew, they’re just crazy creative. I think skiing will catch on to different kinds of variations. I think Traveling Circus is a type of variation. Will we ever see Andy Parry do a doublecork? I don’t know, but maybe we’ll build a backcountry jump and he’ll try it. It will be pretty funny, but that’s just for shits and giggles.

As someone with some perspective on the industry, would you say there’s starting to be room for people who are doing it differently?

I think it’s slowly growing into that. Remember back in FREEZE, it was the same five people over and over again. I was pretty excited during this X Games because there were a whole bunch of new cats, new people. That’s pretty cool.

I think there will be room for it because at some point people are just going to want something that’s different and appeals to a different public. I read that only 3% of the US population skis. It’s so crazy and it’s such a gift that we get to live this life. Some people just don’t see it; they come from money, they ski, and they expect everybody to know who they are. You can tell there are a lot of professional skiers who came from a background of money and racing. I didn’t come from that, and I know that if I didn’t have sponsors there’s no way I’d be able to afford to ski like this. So I’m super appreciative of those guys who have helped me, and I just want to get the public stoked on skiing. That’s what will keep the sport alive.

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Mar 23

Telluride Tuesday: Garrett on Style

By Jon Hartley1 Comment

garrett ninja

Since Garrett moved to Telluride, Nimbus probably won’t let him into their chamber of monologues to pontificate on the finer points of style and friendship. This would obviously be a massive loss, so we’ve cleared some space on the internet for Garrett’s ideas on aesthetics, fun, tricks, and style.

I think kids want to know about your approach to selection of terrain. Actually, terrain isn’t the right word, but when watching a Garrett Russell edit it would be hard not to know its you. We all have access to a hundred edits a day, and there’s a lot of sameness, but there’s usually something different about yours. How would you explain your approach that makes it so different?

First of all, thanks man, that’s a great compliment. You’ve got originality and style, and what is style, it’s hard to even explain. I feel that my style of skiing is just creativity and trying to have fun; you know? That’s what it all comes down to, because if you’re not having fun then what’s the point? I used to do a bunch of competitions, but it was just frustrating so I kind of turned my attention away from it and let style create itself and become what it is today.

I’m completely inspired by snowboarding, skateboarding, music, and art. Bruce Lee said, “style is a crystallization.” If you have one style you can’t grow, so I’m constantly trying to intertwine my style with the feelings of the day, the terrain, or the park and just trying to make the best out of it. Life is too short to be salty.

You also do a lot of stuff that requires crazy control of your tips and tails like butters and noseblocks and stuff like that. You still don’t see a ton of guys doing that stuff.

Yeah man, tech mob. In Mammoth, I lived there for six years, and it was sweet because I would watch guys like Pat Bridges, the editor of Snowboard Magazine. I’d be watching him cruise around, and everyone is acting like you have to hit the big jump to work on spins and stuff, but there’d be certain days where I’d just want to do what Pat’s doing. So I’d just fuck around and do noseblocks, and just have fun. Knuckle tricks are really fun, and I just learned a lot by just messing around. The entire tip and tail thing is definitely different now, you can do so much with it and I hope to create new tricks. There’s no names for them, I find ‘em and try them out.

I’m trying to express that you don’t have to do doublecorks and extreme stuff. You can just cruise around and…I don’t know, creativity is hard.

This is going to be a ridiculous question, but what would you say the difference is between what you see when you look at a park and the what the average pro skier sees?

When I look at a park, what do I see? I try to look for stuff that is not there. I try to create something out of what is not there and that’s hard to even explain. I see a jump and I think, “Well, can I do something off that knuckle over to this tranny?” It’s a lot of tranny finding and looking outside the box.

Otherwise…rainbows?