I feel lucky to have an association with the Freeride World Tour. This season has been my third year working alongside the team, with a number of great relationships being formed along the way. Over the past year my workload has switched over to the junior Freeride Tour which runs parallel to the main event. Don’t be fooled by the name though. Despite them being classed as juniors, some of the skiing i’ve witnessed by them simply blows my mind.Verbier is the final showdown on the tour and like almost every event this season it was disrupted due to the weather. The juniors event went off without a hitch just over a week ago, freeing up my schedule for the main event that was postponed until this Saturday. I’d received an interesting commission from ESPN to shoot finish line portraits, keeping my back firmly turned to the action that was unrolling. With some of the riders crashing out and others elated with their results, there was a mixed bag of emotions shown in the above images.This marks the start of the end in terms of the 2013/2014 winter. Maybe it will be remembered as the winter of discontent by many. Sure it was a challenging one but productive nonetheless. With the changing of the clocks and the lengthening days i really can’t wait now for summer.
Tag: Skiing
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Freeride World Tour Portraits
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Getting Prepared
I’ve been running around this week trying to fit all of the little pieces together before i head off home for the Christmas break. Getting prepared included giving my camera bag a much needed spring clean of sorts, with me adding a Canon EOS 1D Mark IV to my lineup along with a Canon 1.4x Extender II to get a little additional reach from my lenses. The Mark IV version of the 1D has since been replaced by a newer flagship model (Canon EOS 1DX), but with finances to consider I opted for the “cheap” older edition. I can’t wait to get out in the mountains and put this camera to work.Speaking of mountains, the snow has finally arrived (again). Since skiing some early season lines back in November there has been no snow, literally nothing. An extremely cold and dry period fell around the Alps with December not seeing any precipitation, until now that is. Yesterday saw the tides changing and winter seems like it’s ready to begin. A word of caution has to go out at this stage. Despite everyones eagerness to get out there and catch up on the lack of early season opportunities, this unusual weather is about to cause havoc to the avalanche risk here in Europe. The recent conditions have been likened to the 2005/2006 season which saw a record 57 avalanche deaths in France alone. This excerpt taken from Piestehors.com sums it up,
Avalanche expert Alain Duclos cautions,
“we’ve not seen these kind of conditions for a number of years across the Savoies and Hautes-Alpes. The warm temperatures at altitude are unable to refreeze the snow on shaded slopes and this is coupled with a strong temperature gradient. Anything that falls on top of this layer will be particularly unstable.”
Just last week I was sat down for dinner with French photographer [lobo_button url=”http://domdaherblog.tumblr.com” bgcolor=”#fff85f” color=”#000000″ target=”_blank” label=”Dom Daher”] and we briefly touched upon the number of friends that have been lost to the mountains. “Too many” were the words that were mentioned. Lets make sure we all try to have a safe start to this season.
As for the start of mine, after a ski over in Chamonix tomorrow i’ll be heading back to the UK for some festive cheer, along with a couple of running races. Then it’s right back to the thick of things with the Swatch Skiers Cup over in Zermatt as my first port of call. Watch this space for updates along the way.