Baw Baw night shoot photo's.

Jason sent me an e-mail with the photo's from the Baw Baw shoot a few weekends ago in it. The photo's turned out really well. Brendan started his photography life as a fashion guy and is trying to make the switch to snowboard. I must say he is a very talented behind the camera.
He was very picky about getting the shot and Charlie ended up doing about 20 gap back lips on the double kink rail just for Brendan to be happy with himself.
Once again it was a very fun weekend and thanks everyone who joined in.


Gap back lip. Charlie


I dont even know what this is but turned out to be a dope shot. Chris


Back One over the rail. Me

SM

Friday Film.

On Friday i went up the mountain with Andrew again and this time I took my camera. I was just planning on taking pictures but we ended up searching everywhere for some cool stuff we could film which I would turn into a little video for here.
The blog has been a bit boring lately so i thought i should make a little movie to spics things up.
I know this is no Mack Dawg Production but it's kinda cool and I had fun making it...
So here goes.

Thirty Second Friday.. from COMRADES on Vimeo.

Thanks for watching.

SM

Avalanche?

I must say that today was probably the most fun i have had riding in a long time... I rode with my sister's boyfriend Andrew and some of his friends. We got up around 9:30 and went pretty much straight over to Interceptor quad chair. Then we hiked out over the top to North Perisher T-bar. We found some pretty sweet lines over there and did some more laps on the t-bar. After we shredded that for a bit we hiked over the top again and Andrew dropped in to the right and i went to the left to hit this little rock line. After I landed I heard Andrew yelling and looked over and saw that he had set off a little avi. So that was one of the small highlights of the day.



Such a fun day shredding!

Tomorrow we are heading up again hopefully its just as fun as today was...

SM

Tripping to Baw Baw

On Friday afternoon Charlie and i Ventured our way down to Victoria for the Forum Battle At Baw Baw. We stopped at most of the little tourist destination's along the way to waste some time.



And even stopped in at Super Cheap to buy some flood lights.


The Competition was on Saturday morning so we stayed at Jason Maxfield's place in Mansfield, woke up the next morning at 5:30 to continue down the road to Baw Baw which none of us really knew the location of, so it was a bit of an adventure. The drive there wasn't exactly cruisy... after the long stretches it was a solid hour of narrow windy.



We arrived at about 9:30 and sorted out our lift passes and parks pass for "The Hulk" (my car). After that stuff was all sorted we pretty much got straight into practice for the rail comp. Now as some of you may know I'm not the best rail rider so i needed some practice for sure.
The rail comp didn't finish till and 2:30 with Robbie Walker taking out the open's and Andrew Roth taking out the juniors. Once this was over we got some food to eat and decided we wanted to do a night shoot on the stair case rail the competition was held on.



The view from the top of the mountain was pretty cool, it looked way down into the valley and all the plains below.



Sunday was a super bad weather day so we had a meeting the with producer of the Ride productions movie and spoke about her ideas and our ideas and really brainstormed and asked alot of questions. We also got given our contracts so this is pretty legit now. Just waiting to get a bunch of filming done.

On the way home as we where going through Wodonga i copped a speeding fine. Not very fun at all, $243 and three demerit points for going 99 in an 80 zone. I didn't even mean to be speeding, there where cars both in front and behind me. I must have just vagued.

I was super excited for this trip on Thursday and Friday and it more than exceeded my expectations! Was super fun hanging out with Jason again.

Sorry for such a long post but... Thanks for reading!

SM

Transfer blog post.

Just after i got back from Mammoth i was speaking with Russel Holt the editor of Transfer snowboarding magazine and he asked me to write up a blog post for his "Pro-Blogs" section of the Transfer website.
It seems that he likes what i wrote and posted it up on his website. there are some cool photo's on there and a little video that has been featured on here too.

Click HERE to have a look or jump on over to transfersnowboarding.com and navigate yourself to the pro-blogs section.

Hope you like it.

SM

Flagged.

Just as we got to perisher this morning to go riding we where walking across the bridge towards front valley. Then Jarryd yell's out "oohhh ssaammbboosss" i was a little puzzled at first then i looked back and saw him pointing at one of the flag's up ahead. It seems one of the photo's from a shoot with Ryan Willmott last year ended up getting used by perisher. Super stoked!



This was a good way to start out the day which turned out to be super fun just shredding around the mountain.
Perisher is still yet to get up a decent jump. When they get some more features up i'm sure a few posts will come with this.

SM

Sunday.

Sorry for this late post I've just been waiting on the photo's from Shirvo.

We got up the hill pretty early on Sunday. Did a few laps of the park while we waited for the Filmer Kris. Once he got there Charlie and i went over to finish off what we had semi set up the day before.
Charlie and I rock paper scissored to see who would hit it first. It came down to the last draw and unfortunately i had the pulled the short straw and was up first. I was a little bit scared but thought that it was pretty make able so i just sucked it up. We waited a bit more for Shirvo our photographer to get there and set up. Then i did some run-ins to see for the speed, and hit it straight away.
Stomped it first try but needless to say it defiantly wasn't the most stylish thing i have ever done...
Second try didn't stomp. went tumbling straight over the top into a tree further down the landing which we all thought would be the worst case scenario of this hit. Glad to get that out of the way early.
Charlie had a few goes. first try not quite enough speed and he hit the rock... pretty scary.

We kept sessioning it for a bit longer until Shirvo had to go back to the burton demo tent to finish up the day.

Although the light was super flat and Shirvo couldn't get his flashes working we still ended up getting some good shots.

Here are a few from the days work.

Spare Change...

So tomorrow will be the first day of filming for the Wet Socks production Spare Change. I've been told not to give out too much info on the whole project but you now know that i shall be in a movie this year.

Today we spent most of the day building stuff for tomorrow so we can try and get a few things done.

We have found about three or four possible things to do. So it should be a fun day.

Here is a little sneak peak at what we have planned for tomorrow.



So we are going to be taking off from where I'm standing at the top and landing in the bottom right of the frame. well... That's the plan anyway.

I'll put up another post with some more photo's after tomorrow.

SM

Shooting Guthuga

Friday afternoon i got a message from Photographer Mike Cooper asking if i wanted to do some photo's the next day. Of course i wanted to get shreding but i wouldn't pass up a chance to get some good photo's.
So saturday morning, myself, Charlie Steinbacher and Matty Gillings all met up in Nuggets at 9 and discused what we where going to do. We all decided to head along the road to Guthuga and try to find something along there somewhere that would look cool.
We found something pretty quickly, it was a tree tap type deal.
We started to build the jump right away so we could session it. The speed for the jump was super fast and it didn't put you up very high so our approach changed a bit and we decided to start jumping through the tree we where tapping and another tree that was only about 1 or 2 metres away to the left.


Here are a few photo's from the day.

Issue two of snowboarder magazine.

The second issue of Aust & NZ Snowboarder magazine has hit the shelves and i seem to have managed to score myself a nice little photo. Super stoked on this as it's my first real published photo.
The photo was from one of the days that Mike Cooper charlie and i went out to Charlottes and worked hard to get shots. Well all that hard work seems to have paid off and we both got shots from those days. Charlie's photo is the big one, mine is on the right.
anyways here is a snapshot of the page for you to have a look at. Also stayed tuned for my checkout coming in issue three.

First shred at the new perisher not so blue.

I had to go and get my pass from the ticket office this morning which i couldn;t get without my letter from NSWIS. So after signing about 10 pages of forms i got my letter and then went and got my pass!
By now it was around noon so Andrew, Grace and I headed up the mountain for a bit of a shred. There was a lot more snow at perisher than i expected which got me stoked to go riding.
There where heaps of little hits around front valley and off to the sides. It was quick laps on the V8 back to the top. They have some little boxes up there which where fun to session.
For only one lift being open it was a very fun day.



SM

Home

After 30+ hours of travel I'm finally at home in Jindabyne!
So i'm not allowed back at school for another week because of Swine Flu and what not, which i guess is kind of good because i can catch up on some of my school work.

It's pretty cold here at the moment and it's been raining alot too. Hopefully this rain turns into some snow so we can get up the mountain soon enough. The resort officially opens this weekend but aparently they are only going to have a rope-tow up on front valley.

Anyways i'll put up another post when i get to go riding or when Perisher gets some jumps up.

SM

Coming Home Early.

Seeing as it's been raining for pretty much 3 days straight and it's getting even hotter we have made our decision to head home early as it is becoming near impossible to get good training sessions out of the pipe and there is no park.
On top of all this the pipe cutter is broken.
So we are leaving tomorrow morning to Reno at 7 in the morning then get some stuff done in Reno then fly from Reno to San Fran, the to Sydney i believe then I'm not sure if i go from Sydney to Canberra but I'm hoping i do.

My time in Mammoth has been super fun seeing as most of the time it's sunny in the morning then the clouds come over in the afternoon and let out a bit of rain. which isn't bad because we are usually off the hill by about eleven or twelve o'clock.
In the afternoon we usually go to the gym and have some fun on the tennis courts and do a bit of a workout.


Here are some photo's of where we where staying.


Jason, Myself, Charlie and Pat hanging out at the bottom of the pipe.



These two are our place. The second is where the pool is and where we can kick a footy and what not.


This Bird would come to our window ever afternoon.

So yea spring in Mammoth has been super fun now it's back home for our winter! I'm really looking forward to this season hopefully it will be just as much fun as the last.

Jason has done his shoulder again!!

Yesterday on about the 4th run of the day Jass was doing some front sevens working upto nine's. when he fell into the bottom and dragged is hand behind him popping out his shoulder. I was the first to his rescue and went off to called ski patrol once Benny came down. He was sledded down to the bottom of the mountain where Coach was waiting with the car and we whizzed him off to hospital. After a little over an hour his shoulder was put back into place at the hospital.



Jason counts this as the seventh time his shoulder has come out and the second time since his last surgery. This could mean he needs another surgery and could be out for the Australian season which isn't a good thing for my COMRADE and team mate Jason.

SM

Parks Closed?

So here in Mammoth it's been raining a fair bit lately which contrary to what you might think is kind of a good thing... It means that the wall of the pipe that is usually super icy is getting pretty soft now, which is good for trying new stuff.
But because of all the rain the parks are closed!



The parks being closed isn't such a bad thing because it goves us more time to focus on the pipe and there are still 2 small jumps just below the pipe.

On the way home from the pipe yesterday i hit a rock and got a major core shot pretty much the length of my board which was a bit of a bummer but Benny A hooked it up with one of his old friends from here and got it fixed up quick smart. which i was pretty stoked about!



Anyways, sorry i haven't been updating much lately we don't have internet at our house.

SM

Mountain bikes...

So today we had a day off, it stared out pretty slow, waking up late and going for a swim in the pool. The plan was always to go mountain biking but we where a bit skeptical because the weather looked like it was coming over. Luckily the weather held out and we went up at about 12. We packed all the bikes into the back of the van and headed for the top of the hill. We did about four runs down to the bottom complete with a few spills and some close calls with people coming in the other direction up the hill.
After the mountain biking, we got some lunch at Pita Pit which was pretty amazing. Then hit up the gym for some tennis for about two hours.
Once we got home we where pretty flogged but i had to goto the supermarket to grab some supplies for breakfast.

Here are a few photo's from the biking.




Can you see that guy in the blue shirt all the way down that little trail? haha thats me...

Little Session on the big jump.

The other day Nate and I decided to take a stab at the 70 footer in the middle of unbound park. When i first saw it i was intimidated by it for sure but once i got up close it wasn't as big as i had thought and nothing compared to the 100 feet of the Stylewars jump from last season. So Nate naturally hit it first boom straight air perfect speed maybe a little slow. Second hit back 7 like butter. By this time i was following behind him to work out my speed so next run i could hit it. Nate's third hit front five, now it was my turn i was pretty scared because it's the biggest jump I've hit in a little while. First hit everything was sweet, perfect speed maybe a little big. I decided to do another straight air just to dial the speed in perfect. Nate didn't hit her this time because the sun was behind the clouds and it's a big jump to hit in the dark. Next run Nate hit it up first, Switch backside seven attempt he got smoked... toe edge just after landing, gnarliest crash he's had in a while. This time i decided to just straight air her again because Jason was following me so i could show him the speed. I took a straight line than last time and it was clear that the snow had slowed down alot under the sun and i ate the knuckle and bounced but still rode away. After that scare for both of us we called it a day and headed home.
In one of my previous posts there is a nice photo of how big the jump really is or.
For a little video click
HERE for the comrades blog. For some reason Coach recorded over half of the jump footage thats why there is none of me and only two shots of Nate... kinda lame yea?

First day riding.

After a little sleep walking scare during the night we woke up at about 7 to leave at 8 and sort out our passes up at the hill. Honestly I was a little disappointed at the amount of snow. But once we took our first run down from the top right to the bottom my mind was quickly changed… it was probably the funnest run I’ve taken all season.



The Pipe here in Mammoth is a 22-footer which takes two chairs to get to and if you want to lap it back through the park it’s the same two chairs to get back up to the pipe. The pipe was moved up the top of the mountain because of the lack of snow down the bottom. Today the pipe was done by about midday which from what I’ve heard is pretty much how it is everyday.


The park is pretty much done now. The jumps onto all the rails are washed away and the snow is real slow. But most of the jumps have held up pretty well considering… they are still a lot of fun.

Welcome to Mammoth!

Monday the 18th Charlie and I flew out from Canberra to Sydney where we met up with Nate, Pat and Holly for our departure to San-Fran then onto Reno for our 3 weeks in Mammoth for some spring riding.
Once we got to Reno it was hot! Hotter than I had expected which got me even more excited for this trip.
After some waiting around in Reno for Benny A and Ben W to pick us up we packed the car to the brim and headed out on our trip up the valley to Mammoth Lakes.


This is “The red rocket” our ride whenever we come to America.

It was dark once we got to Mammoth so we checked into our apartments and got some breakfast for in the morning. Tomorrow we are going riding to check out what the mountain is like since it is very late spring and then I should be able to upload this post along with another one, so it will be kind of a double of today and first day riding.

Here are some photos from just around the airport while i was bored and waiting.

The money shot's...

So after some e-mail troubles i got the photo's from Mike, i thought the two days turned out pretty well. It made me realize how hard it is to shoot photo's like this, these where from two days remember!


This one was the first feature we hit. It took us a long time to get this shot right.


First hit over the river gap.


Indy over the river gap.

This is the tree gap that we built. The Jump took so long to build, but it was worth it to get the shot.


I would have to say this is the best shot from the two days, Charlie over the tree gap. The landing is in the very bottom right of the frame. I was stoked for charlie when he stomped this.


The Crew... was defiantly a fun few days.

Thanks again boys...

SM

Shooting photo's with Mike Cooper

On the 5th and 6th of May, Charlie Steinbacher and I went on a photoshoot with photographer Michael Cooper for a possible article in Aus/NZ Snowboarder Magazine. On Tuesday the 5th we arrived to our secret location at about eleven to scope out some tree rails that charlie and I had built earlier in the year. We spent about two hours contemplating and then decided to build a feature which turned out to be alot of fun. Towards the late afternoon we went up to Charlottes Pass to look out for some tree's and whatnot to jump over. We got a few shots, but had to call it a day as the sun was beginning to fade.



Wednesday was an early start, leaving around eight in the morning, journeying up to Charlottes Pass. A cluster of trees caught our eye from the road, looking like a good possibility for building something that could make a nice shot.
As we trekked out to the trees we came across a river that would make the perfect shot and also looked extremely fun. Building this feature took quite some time as the snow was very sugary, making it hard to build with.
Charlie hit it straight up and the jump collapsed which meant more rebuilding and fixing up the run-in for some more speed. However the hours endured building seemed well worth it as we sessioned this for a good 2 hours.
After we finished sessioning, we continued walking towards the the trees that we spotted from the road earlier on. when we finally got there, to our disappointment we came to realize that it wasn't as good as we'd hoped. The landing was flat and there was little to no run-in.





We then got back in the cars and went to the top of Charlottes to in search of another tree to jump over. We found the perfect tree from the road but unfortunately it was getting late and we weren't sure if we had enough time to build it.
We decided to give it a go and wow, it was alot bigger than we first thought. Building started quickly and once we had it finished, I was very tired and my shoulder was hurting from the early session so i decided to sit out this one and let charlie get the shot, and wow was it a good shot...





Here are a few photo's that we took during the day. Once I get some photo's from Mike i'll post them up right away for you guys to have a look at. So stay tuned for some proper photo's!!

SM

Colorado Video

It's definatly been a long time since i got back from America. I've been flat out with school and what not but here is the video that i promised from Colorado.
It was all filmed in about a day or two, it was still good fun filming a little bit.

Anyways here it is... feel free to contact me about anything at murphy.sam@hotmail.com


CO Video from COMRADES on Vimeo.

SM

Copper

It's coming towards the end of my trip so I thought i would give everyone a little look at what the facilities here at copper are like.
Usually the weather is pretty overcast but it never usually dumps snow (I met a guy that explained this to me the other day it has something to do with the weather systems not being able to make it over the pass "full" so by the time they squeeze over they are empty and we just get the clouds but not very much snow). This isn't such a bad thing as it keeps everything in good shape.
So here is a photo of one of the higher lifts on a bad veerryyyy cold day i think around -20.



Then there is the pipe that's built by Frank Wells and his team from Snowpark. It's Always in pristine shape which is really good as a training facility, having a reliable pipe
This is how the pipe looks on most days when it hasn't snowed at all.




Anyways I'll be back home in Australia in not too long. I think it's about a week. And i might even have a little video to post up on here for everyone to see.

SM

Revolution Tour Copper Mountain

A few days ago i competed in the Copper Mountain leg of the Revolution tour which was a pretty stacked event. It was the kind of event you compete in to get a grasp of what is going on in the youthful American snowboard scene. Some of the tricks being thrown down where combination's of back to back 900's and 720 i even saw some 1080's in the mix. I couldn't manage to hold down a run all day which was getting frustrating but i still did what i could. My run wasn't enough to make it into the finals which was hotly contested.

Here is a photo from the competition:



SM

Welcome to my blog...

I thought it was about time i should get my act together and make something on the web to keep everyone updated with whats going on with my snowboarding and travels. I'm going to try and keep it updated on a fortnightly basis. So check back every once in a while or you can subscribe with one of the Gadgets to the right.
If you would like some more info don't hesitate to e-mail me at murphy.sam@hotmail.com about anything.

SM