citizensofshred: Zermatt Opening Weekend

Well this post has been a week coming but due to starting a new job, having not worked in 5 months plus crazy Swiss hours I havent found the energy to do it till now.

On the 9th and 10th of July Zermatt Openned its doors for yet another summer. Having never been to Zermatt and only summer riding once I was really excited to see what all the fuss is about.
The first thing i noticed when I arrived was how nice everything is.... It truely makes sence why Zermatt is regarded as one of the must see spots in Switzerland. The houses sometimes seem as though they were stuck in a time warp and the mountains have to be seen to be belived.
On the way up for the first day of shredding the anticipation was so thick you could carve it but I knew having rode in Whistler last summer and knowing it had reached 30 degrees in the valley the day befor, not to set my expectations too high.
When I got out of the gondola and took a first glance at the park i was plesently suprised. The park looked even better then I had hoped. Upon riding it I relised it was even better then it looked.
It has every feature you hope for in a snow park. Wide variety of rails, halfpipe, extra large kicker and a medium to warm up on all perfectly service by a T Bar only used by people riding the park(even though it was classed as busy when I was there the longest I had to wait to get back on the T Bar was about a minute allowing you to do 30+ laps a day). But what set this park apart from any park Ive rode is that any where there is normally ruff boldery snow eg sides of landings, back of halfpipe ete they have got out the pipe dragon and cut perfectly shaped quater pipes out. It truly makes the park flow. I would rate Zermatts summer park up there with any of the best winter parks Ive rode. There is the obvious downers that come from any summer park, the main one being that by about 11 the snow is almost too slushy even to get the speed into the kickers but by that time you will be having so much fun on those quaters that hitting the kickers wont even cross your mind.

I had planned to have a good ride on the first day and film all the second day but due to a missed placed SD card I was unable to. It sucks that i didnt get any where near the amount of footage I was hoping for but the laps I had with Reto, Rino and the rest of the Kidnap guys on that second day hitting all the quaters was one of the funnest days Ive ever had strapped into a snowboard.
So here are some of the few photos I took of the weekend (mainly scenic im sorry) plus a short video on board with Kaspar. I hope you enjoy and i hope i can make it back out to Zermatt this summer for some more riding and a proper video. If you ever get the chance to go to Zermatt, do it. Its one of the funnest places there is to snowboard.

Big shout outs too Reto Kestenholz and to Rino at the Kidnap Crew Facebook Website for hooking me up with a pass for the weekend and too Kaspar for letting me sleep on his floor. Thanks for the rad weekend too everyone involved.