just in time for the acrobatic hanggliding competition season, the australian company AIRBORNE took me on board of their flying team. airborne produces some of the finest gliders in the world, with the famous C4 beeing their flagship. airborne germany, owned by max wiener, imports the gliders to europe, with the zillertal based company seedwings as their austrian dealer. also owned by max, PLUSMAX ist supporting me with sunglasse for flying. with all the new gear on board, i am off to spain tonight for 2 weeks of acro-training in organya, a little village northwest of barcelona. then it`s time for the acrovertigo, the biggest acrobatic competition for hanggliders and paragliders at the lake of geneva, directly followed by the nissan outdoor games in interlaken the first week of july, where we will for the first time represent as team austria. news and pics from on the road will follow!
yesterday i did a great jump at the drachenwand near st. wolfgang. some great INTERACTIVE pics were done with the amazing new photo technique of stuart knowles...
may has come and winter is finally over! time to get the hangglider out and flyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. but also time to show friends how great is it to feel like a bird. one of my best buddies andi walli and jan joined forces for a weekend, learning to fly. it`s easyier than you think...
for the new vaude-image dvd we went shooting in the pitztal valley. the guys from the filmcrew "alpsolut" were really cool and set up a cran and a rope camera, which got us insane angles. check it out on http://www.alpsolut.com/?p=106
the legandary WEISSE RAUSCH is a downhill race with 500 competitors in three groups, starting at the same time at the highest spot of the ski area (the valluga) and riding down 1.500 vertical meters right into the village. since the race takes place at 6 pm in the afternoon, the piste is super bumpy and there is even an uphill part whree you have to run for a few minutes. i have hardly ever felt so exhausted as i have at the finish line! i was beaten by pauli schwarzacher, who was on a hard boots and a race board which was unbeatable in the flat part. but my 2 m tanker made sure i was fast enough to finish second.
kaprun, at the bottom of the kitzsteinorn glacier, is one of my favourite mountain villages within the alps. nice people, good riding and a chilled out vibe makes you wanna come back there again and again. not to mention the local girls (-; reasion enough for matthias haunholder, the tyrolean freeskier who won the rookies tour 2008 and will join us on the freeride world tour 2009, and aussie mate joe draxl to go for a late season powder and party weekend. we ended up staying for a week rather than a wekend and had fresh powder everyday- not bad for mid april!!!!
one-week hike through the impressive silvretta alps
with oli, frank, chrissie and jethro we spent a week hiking through the beautiful silvretta alps. we slept at different mountain huts and even climbed the famous piz buin. with very windy conditions and the heavy backpacks the hiking as well as the riding were not easy, but everyone did great! here are some impression...
after aig ight out in innsbruck, my flatmate and best buddy flo and me took out our 10 year old raceboards and went carving. the only thing that pissed us of was the fact that there was actually great pow on either side of the piste. but still it was good fun!
early april i joined stefan häusl and björn heregger on a film session around st. anton. conditions were sick and our kiwi filmer simon temple got a lot of good footage.
GE: die freeride world tour 2008 ist geschichte und zur feier des tages gibts diesen text heute zweisprachig! EN: the freerideworld tour 2008 is history and on this occasion this text comes in english AND german!
on the way home from tignes i found a way to get rid of my frustration after not doing well at the comp: matthias haunholder and me interrupted the 9 hour drive with a stopover in magland west of chamonix for a basejump. magland is a nice site with a solidly overhanging wall, around 400 m til you gotta pull. nobody else was there and we had a good session.
only 3 seconds after the start of my run at the 4th stop of the freeride world tour in tignes i jumped a supersmall 2 m high rock and..... crashed. i did two cartwheels over solid exposure of a 50 meter+ cliffband, got back on my board without problems but knew already at that moment that the run was f...ed, because a fall over exposure means you loose all your points. maybe too much much focused on the lower part of my run where i had planed some big moves? i don`t know. anyway, still second in the tour and only 4 out of 5 results count for the final ranking, but disappointment is big right now since i gave away a big chance. but if you crash like that you do not deserve it anyway (-; so we are all on standby for the big final in verbier scheduled for this weekend. contest waiting period is until sunday 23rd. i am at home in insbruck right now to recharge my batteries once again, for to give it all i have in verbier. take care and keep your fingers crossed for verbier, which will be shown live on www.freecaster.tv below are pics from tignes............. flo (still smiling)
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