-The Swiss Alps: Davos
March 26th, 2008The city and resort of Davos has proved to be the best stop along our Swiss Alps tour. Writing this entry from St. Moritz (our stop after Davos), I can look back and reflect in the best manner possible to Davos and the Parsenn mountain resort.
Davos was a wide awakening from the quite little towns at Lenzerheide and Valbella. There was enough traffic to film a great time-lapse, 5 massive mountains with unsurpassed lift access, and the best nightlife of the trip. Needless to say, we highly recommend Davos.
As Davos, as well as many resorts here close the week after Easter, things are winding down from full speed. Which is a cloaked blessing; this place would be a mad house at full steam. We would make our way down the narrow two-way streets, hop a bus, and hop a cog railroad that gains about 2,000 vert feet, to the top of the Parsenn mountain resort. Much to our surprise, there was a big mountain freeride comp, taking place off of the peak. The level of competition is certainly not what we are used to traveling on IFSA events. As a result of not entering this comp on a whim, Tyson now realizes that it was an 8,000 Euro mistake.
But its not all bad, the day turned out to be Tyson’s most productive day in front of the lens all season (which is saying a lot). Over 10 first track line descents were laid in place that day, and one in particular (picture 18), shot better than mini faces all season, thus earning the name “mini AKâ€.
Meeting back up with the Liberty boys of Lesh and Applegate, we took them to many of the same goods from the day before. Stepping up to bigger lines, and fluid mid-face drops was David Lesh; who as many of you know comes from an all jib/park background. The talent surely stands out in this kid. We could put him on top of just about anything, and he would charge into it with full confidence. Often popping over a cornice just to set some rhythm to his run. Lesh is certainly going to be a huge asset for the Liberty Skis team with 2 highly diversified film segments for us this year.
Applegate was also more than holding his own, charging lines at full speed, we could still hear him giggling to him self the whole way down. The stoke level is sky high with this kid! Still charging equally as hard, was our editorial staff of Tom Winter and Derek Taylor (watch for their cameo appearances in the web update). The line of the day had to go to Tyson, with a ski racing background, comprised with several years on the big mountain world tour with countless podiums; this was his stomping ground.
Returning to the same face from the day before, the wind had filled all tracks and the face delivered a compete rebate to us. First lining up a similar line just skiers left, T charged a line with no remorse, and stomping a 40 foot exit air to straight-line out. Only to one up himself by returning to throw down a 800 ft. vert. straight-line of the entire face. Oh yea, without poles and a HD camera in hand for a full-rez POV shot.
To celebrate the best week ever, we took back out the streets of Davos where everything is open until 6am, basically when the crew back home is just getting out. We met up with some really welcoming natives on spring break from Zurich, who lined up as our tour guides around the city of Davos. Leading us to the most core scene I’ve yet seen in Europe; a local twenty-five room core snowboard hotel and nightclub. They were certainly not shy to accommodate a few pro skiers from the states, and introduced us to a top Swiss-German rapper, and his duo team of younger brothers that brought the house down at the turntables.
Running ourselves out of the scene far earlier than close due to an extremely strong US dollar; it was costing about $27 US for a Colorado style Go Fast and Vodka. Therefore the local pilsner seemed to be the consensus. Arising to an early morning to pack and get some last laps in at Parsenn, we again stuffed the Touraeg, and set off for St. Moritz…
Pic 18, “mini-AK”
Apres, Apres
Tyson atop Davos’s Parsenn resort
