Northern Hemi Season Trip Report thingy - Sälen, Sweden
did you film any run throus on that park? hard to tell how big it is.
can you do an update on snow depth and condition?
Oz…cuttie is just a turn on surfboard when you spray, so same thing in powder on a snowboard
Loving this thread 
Cords, I think you assume that we are all awesome pros or something!!!! From the photos you are posting, you will hold your own riding with any of the Boardworld crew 
You are ripping, no doubt about it. By the end of this season you will be riding unbelievably well, keep at it
Oz…cuttie is just a turn on surfboard when you spray, so same thing in powder on a snowboard
Thanks LOL
And Azz yes I agree. Enough with the self deprecating remarks Cords its unbecoming 
You’re killing it Cords! Keep it coming!
agreed - your riding looks super-good to me, cords. Keep it coming!
did you film any run throus on that park? hard to tell how big it is.
can you do an update on snow depth and condition?
Didn’t film any run-throughs. We didn’t take the go-pro as we didn’t know anything about the place and definitely couldn’t be bothered riding around with a pole all day, or riding with a backpack just for the sake of it when we didn’t know where we were going, or if there was anywhere that we could leave it. Will take it next time though. Erik said we could get a season pass for Trysil as well for 2000kr (under $300). Pretty tempting as it was so sick there, but petrol is so damn expensive and the 50kms each-way trips would cost us a bomb. We’re considering being here again next season, but living in Trysil instead maybe? No idea yet.
I have no idea how big anything really is either, except that there is plenty of jumps in Trysil from green all the way up to black. The green and blue park have 4 or 5 jumps each in them. There are about 8 red jumps and 3 black jumps. The biggest black jump is enormous….bigger than the biggest in pink park.
Film and footage came from our HD point and shoot. I got a couple of vids of freddy on some of the jumps, but they need a bit of editing and also converting which will have to wait, as it takes too much time. I’m also in two minds about putting up riding footage now that I may want to use later for my season edit.
Snow depth - no idea. Skistar website says 80cm in Sälen and 90cm in Trysil, 77cm in Åre but who knows?
Snow condition - good again now. It went plus around new years and rained and we lost heaps of snow and then everything was pretty icy for a few weeks. Now we got some decent new snow, everything is pretty soft again & not rock solid.
Thanks everyone. Its just that I know too many really good riders…and I know what good riding looks like and I would hate for the descriptions I write to make anyone think that I’m actually any good…because I know that I’m not! I’m not saying I think I’m the worst snowboarder ever, it is just that I don’t want there to be any chance that I come across as thinking I am better than I am.
Anyone remember the giant stuffed bear I found in the petrol station in Sälen?
Well I found this in the supermarket in Trysil.
What the??
hey cords this could be a stupid question or maybe you already answered it and i didn’t see it…
how did u decide to do this trip eg leaving everything Australia eg house job etc ?
There is two answers Lanox, the philosophical answer and the practical answer.
I knew that in 2012 I was going to be doing a year of study (my masters at uni) and also knew that if I didn’t have anything to look forward to at the end of it, that it wasn’t going to be worth doing & that I probably wouldn’t pass because I would be doing nothing fun for a whole year and I would get depressed pretty quickly.
It had been 3.5yrs since Freddy had been home to sweden, so we needed to go anyway. Why not stay a while?
For a couple our age, we don’t have kids and we don’t own much & that is how we like it. The only possessions we have that are worth anything are our surf gear, our plasma TV and our car, none of which is that difficult to leave behind.
Jobs are jobs. We are both experienced enough in our respective career paths (if you can call it that) that we are never going to be too hard up for getting some kind of work. Also, we know how to live on the cheap,so that isn’t any kind of stress.
So why not? Some people might baulk at cleaning toilets to earn their crust, but I seriously couldn’t give a damn. Having taught in high pressure teaching environments, the lack of responsibility doing a cleaning job still makes it feel like a holiday. Poo and pee feels like a dream compared to trying to teach maths (or anything else for that matter) to thirty odd 16 year old boys last period on a friday afternoon!
We work 3 days a week and we work pretty hard for those 3 days. Now with Declan here, our rent, elec and water total is $63 per week each….and we get to snowboard all the other days.
I love my life!
I’ve been a bit absent here, sorry. Had visitors (dork’s sister and her boyfriend), got another POW day/night and with declan here we’re changing from sharing one 3G internet dongle to a 4G wireless router, so we haven’t had internet for a few days. Should be up and running again on Monday I think!
I’ve been so impressed with dork’s riding! Did some POW runs with us, hit some green jumps and even a blue jump! All with less than ten days all up on a snowboard. He is killing it!
Had a crazy busy last week or so. I’m having the BEST time this season. I am totally loving my life!
Highlights this week was staff activities/party that was organised by our cool boss for Tuesday. I’m well underway with making an edit of the day, which I’ll post up in the next day or two when I get around to finishing it.
The boss organised free ski/snowboard hire and then I was involved in helping to run a beginner snowboard lesson for about 15 newbies who’d all had little to no experience on a board. Good fun with activities like a relay one-foot push race etc. After that, we grilled korv and then those who could already ride went to pink park to ride for a bit, and also help some people who were keen to try their first park stuff.
Next and probably the highlight was the boss had booked out the flowrider in the big rec centre in Lindvallen for 2 hours for all of us for free.
Then we sat around in the pool/spa/sauna relax area and had a beer or two and plans for the night began to be formed. Unfortunately, Freddy’s knees are pretty much buggered now. He’s constantly in pain, so despite being super keen, he only managed to have one turn on the flowrider & he wasn’t in the least bit keen for going out to party. He ended up dropping me and Dork off at the boss’s house where we had a delicious dinner and drank some of their roughly 50 beers they had on hand and had fun time sitting around and talking, drinking and listening to music. At about midnight we made the short walk to Harry’s which is pretty much the only going out place around where we met up with most of the others from work for a couple of hours of dancing like dorks. We had a great time and Freddy was kind enough to pick up the phone at 2.15am and drive the 15kms to come and collect us.
Overall it was such a fun day and night and I’m really enjoying getting to know everyone and making new friends that I connect with. The first season I did, I didn’t really make many new friends of my own, so I’m really loving it at the moment.
Today was also epic! It started off in a very average fashion with working the early shift at work (4.45am alarm) but after a little bit of a chill out and feed when we got home from work, I organised for me and dec to meet up with one of the new friends (his name is Arvid) for a shred just down the road in Tandådalen. The weather wasn’t that great, so I wasn’t thinking we’d be out for too long, just for a few hours and some laps of the Junior Park. On arrival, we saw that the Big Air Bag was in action and to my great delight, it all looked very makeable.
My previous experience of Airbags has always been of ones with gaps between the kicker and the bag that are far too big for me to even consider having a go. There was kids on skis who were about 6 years old who were doing this one though, so I was frothing!
We headed to the junior park first anyway and did quite a few laps of the fun line of blue jumps there, but after a while the visibility was getting terrible and the conditions deteriorating. Dork gets special mention for doing 3 of the 4 blue jumps and starting to push off and looking comfortable in the air. They’ve also put a fun hip/corner feature in at the bottom which I really enjoying just playing around on. We called it quits though and went to the other side of the mountain to properly scope out the air bag.
This is the only photo I got…I was too busy having way too much fun the rest of the time!
It was sick! Even though I knew there wasn’t much that could go wrong, I was still a bit nervous on the first go, as Arvid was also nervous and adamant that I should go first. We ummed and ahhed about what we might try while we waited and watched the people in front of us in line (mostly kids and the occasional gung-ho dad on ancient equipment and the odd cork-throwing ripper).
I was still undecided until far too late down the in-run but ended up just trying a method. The kick was absolutely perfect….big (but not too big), long and smooth. Its been a dream of mine for a while to have a go on one of these air bags and now it was coming true! We were over the moon to find out that the bag will be there for the rest of the season, too! I swear that Dork has no idea how lucky he is with everything going right for his first ever season. He was just straight-airing but I swear it is a great experience for him to get the feeling of riding a kick like that and just being in the air that long on a snowboard.
Arvid and I hiked up a few times more cos we were so amped and we were both trying backside 3s with varying success. I’ve landed a few off very small jumps before, but I’d like to up the ante with them soon if I can, and also get comfortable enough with the rotation that I might be able to start throwing a grab in there as well. I was tempted to try a backflip, but didn’t as I thought I’d save it for another day. There will be plenty more days of this in the next couple of months!
To top off the day that I was already frothing on, checking the letterbox on the way home revealed a note to say our snowboards had finally arrived from the states! Yeeeewwww!!
Freddy’s DC Ply 150.5 on the left and my Arbor Draft 150 on the right:
Now we just have to wait until monday til we can use them! Although Freddy is actually unlikely to, cos the next two days of work will wreak havoc with his poor knees….he has an appointment for the physio next thursday to get them investigated (again)
I’ll finish with a couple of photos from last week when Dork/Crackers’ sister and her boyfriend were here for a visit.
Evie and Jwow scoping out pow runs in our backyard, before we got real pow runs the next day!
Backyard bbq with the slopes of Tandådalen in the background.
i effing love that DC board, tempted to steal Dyldo’s actually…
Just some quick pics from the last few days:
Our new boards all set up and ready to go. I have to say, I LOVE my new Draft…and I’m a total convert to magnetraction or as Arbor calls it ‘Grip tech’. Having ridden in some fairly icy conditions lately on my old board without it, and then switching to the new board with it, I could really feel the extra bite, and I wasn’t really expecting to.
Had a few more goes on the airbag the last few days. We’ve had some cracking weather! I even thought that maybe I should have sunscreen on today, and had to open the vents on my jacket.
Here is Dork taking flight on his 10th day riding here and about 15th day ever on a snowboard:
Two framies from me trying some stuff today. Freddy’s knees are stuffed so he was happy to sit on a deck chair in the sun and take some footage with our point-and-shoot. He’s off to the physio tomorrow to try and further investigate the knee problems.
Back 1 indy grab attempt:
Method attempt:
Freddy also got footage of some random guy who could hardly ride his snowboard attempting a backflip. Here is a 4 frame sequence of how it panned out:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3: Spotting the landing??
Part 4: Impact - landing on his face
