Focused on Freestyle

It was all about freestyle fun and technical trickery last week, with our freestyle camp. A full chalet brought together a great bunch of people who were all focused on pushing their park and pipe riding.

Avoriaz has a great selection of facilities for us to use and on day one, after the usual assessment and tweaking of everyone's riding in the morning we headed off to the Nano park (officially called 'The Parkway') and the baby stash to get the first air time of the week. With Quiksilver rider Ollie Jackson in tow, we were given some example of what can be done on the little beginner boxes if you've got a few tricks in your bag. The day ended with a quick celebration in Robbos, dinner and a chilled night.

The week progressed with much a similar format to the days, though stepping up to include sessions on the air bag which helped hugely to build confidence in the air and got everyone progressing well onto the bigger kickers though confidence wasn't enough to take backflips further than the airbag.

The pipe in Avoriaz was in great shape all week, despite being a bit daunting at first, but Dave n Dave from Mint got everybody at least riding the walls and getting that floating feeling, with a few getting to the lip and tickling the space beyond, which is no mean feat for a first time in a 16ft icy pipe.

By the end of the week though there were tricks in abundance being thrown down all over and although the levels ranged through shifties on the green jumps, spins on the blues, straight airs on the reds, spins on to and off the boxes, everyone had achieved their goals and was riding with a big smile on.

Unfortunately not everyone came through unscathed; Kathryn being proof that although an airbag can let you land on your head without the usual repercussions it is not a full proof safety net. On the final day we had Damien our photographer with us and Kodak courage definitely got everyone to step it up and find the boundaries of what they are capable of, some maybe going a bit beyond. Even found some powder, had a walk a little bit but considering there had been no new snow for 4 weeks.