The first official PowderAlert has past. On local places 5 meters of fresh snow has fallen, the winter thoughts won’t go away and the preparations for the next season are on.
Ten pairs of skis are standing in my hallway waiting to be waxed and sharpened, I need to buy a new backpack, my ABS needs a refill, a lot of stuff in Austria has to be organized etc… and when everything is done, there are loads of new ski- and snowboard edits on the web I want to watch.
A short introduction
Hi, my name is Alex Hooftman, born and raised in The Netherlands, with the upcoming season closing in I still need to arrange a lot of stuff because I’ll spending my season in Austria as a “ski bum”. This will be my second season in the snow, but this time I won’t be teaching a lot but I’ll competing in the Freeride World Qualifiers. I made a deal with myself that this season is all or nothing; if I get good results I’ll keep doing what I love the most; go for another ski season next year. If however I’m not pleased with my results I’ll probably start a study next year. The results aren’t only aimed at getting good results at the competitions, if I have the luck to meet the people that want to support me I will continue doing what I love the most: skiing.
Why competitions?
I have been driving up and down from The Netherlands and the Alps to compete in the FWQ’s last season. Everybody has their own reasons to compete; some want to push their own limits, others just want to have fun, but most riders want to become famous. I did it for the experience, the good mood between the riders, to meet new people and I wanted to know how I would perform against the bigger boys who are freeriding more than 1 year.
Results?
At the end of the season I didn’t get as much results as I hoped; 4 of the 6 competitions were rescheduled to another date due to bad weather and snow conditions, bad luck. But in the two competitions that were not cancelled I learned a lot, pushed myself and met loads of new awesome people. Especially the Dutch Freeride Championship was an awesome competition, I got good results, met loads of new people and had an awesome week.
Upcoming season
Like I said I’ve put the bar quite high, and I’ll do my best to get the results I want; this season won’t be all about party and drinking, it will be a lot of training as well. But it is training in the best way there is; riding powder and pushing limits with friends! I can’t think of a better training ground. And naturally, besides training, beers will be consumed.
With upcoming season closing in and past season still fresh in the mind I decided to show you a small edit of Zermatt.