Back in 2009 I attempted to begin cataloguing these spots in a piece called Kickers That Changed Snowboarding. This was around the time that backcountry freestyle was at its peak, and getting maximum airtime off giant wedges that often took days to build was the name of the game. Since then, the sport has evolved and split in multiple directions; pros these days are more likely to prioritise a quick viral clip on the side of a random piste – or a human-powered mission to splitboard a huge line – than they are to hone their double corks on a massive powder jump.

“Amongst the myriad of natural features on La Zone was its most infamous kicker spot, the Camel Gap, which played host to an epic session with JP Solberg and Romain de Marchi”

But the ghosts of Chad’s Gap or David Benedek’s early step-over designs live on in the insane level of riding we see today, and from time to time it’s worth reminding ourselves of the places that made it all possible. That’s the goal of a new film by Swiss director Julien Roserens, La Zone. Along with Jones rider Mat Schaer, it revisits a small corner of the Alps that – for a few golden years – helped put European snowboarding on the map.

“Its proper name is the Col de Cou,” explains Mat over a video call. “It’s a backcountry area near Champery Les Crosets, right at the border between France and Switzerland, in the Portes du Soleil.”

Amongst the myriad of natural features on La Zone was its most infamous kicker spot, the Camel Gap, which played host to an epic session with JP Solberg and Romain de Marchi. So mental was the scale of this jump that the crew saw fit to charter a heli to film it from the air in that dramatic pre-drone Absinthe style.

“At a time when snowboarding’s centre of gravity was firmly in North America, the Zone also opened people’s eyes to the potential that lay on our own Alpine doorstep”

“It’s one of the biggest ever kickers,” says Mat. “There’s Chad’s Gap in the US, and then there was this Camel Gap – named because it has a double hump. It represents the [highpoint] of the Absinthe era, when they were the number one movie producer. I remember me and my friends buying those DVDs and watching them on repeat.”

Those incredible clips started to attract more riders to the area, and by 2010 La Zone had become a hotspot for competing movie crews – both local and international. “Sometimes you could see 15 jumps in the same area, and it got a bit tense,” Mat recalls. “There was a rush to be the first one, or you were making phone calls like, ‘Hey, I heard you wanna go there but we’ve already shotgunned this kicker.’ It was kinda funny, there was really something going on around this place.”

So what made it so special? “It’s north east facing so the snow stays good,” he explains. “It’s not easy terrain but there’s a lot of rollers and landings everywhere. The sun is often just above the pass in the background, so it has super nice back lighting which is perfect for photos and videos, with really beautiful shadows.”

At a time when snowboarding’s centre of gravity was firmly in North America, the Zone also opened people’s eyes to the potential that lay on our own Alpine doorstep. “As Vlad says in the movie, the local filmers were a bit jealous. They felt like everything was happening in the US and they knew they could do the same here. They had a lot of European riders: Romain, Gigi, Wolle, JP etc. Some of the top backcountry riders were from Europe, but they always had to go to the US to film backcountry segments. It was weird because you knew that if you had the right conditions you could do the same jumps over here. There’s the same potential, it’s just a bit harder because you don’t have snowmobiles. Vlad wanted to be able to shoot in his local valley and show the world that you can get that banger footage that everybody in the industry sees.”

Today, admits Mat, “the era of snowboard movies is kinda over; it’s more about social media clips or documentaries. There are less backcountry freestyle focused riders, and not many want to spend a whole day building one cheese wedge.” Against that backdrop, and with climate change reducing the number of good powder days in La Zone (which sits at under 2000m) its hallowed slopes no longer attract an annual invasion of star names.

“The documentary is being shown in film festivals to people who love the mountains but don’t know anything about core backcountry freestyle”

Nonetheless, Mat regularly makes the pilgrimage himself – these days on a splitboard, which dramatically speeds up the ascent and has changed his whole approach to the terrain. “When I look back on those days building jumps, it really looked like a job, you know? It’s work. You wake up, you hike up, you shape, and at the end you barely rode. You did maybe 10 tries, just riding 50 metres and hitting the jump. With a splitboard, you actually ride. I can do five or six runs in a day – and with all those windlips and small features you don’t even need to build a jump.”

The new film was a chance to document that shift, but also to doff the cap at past glories.

“For me, this place is special,” he explains. “The footage from that time really had an impact on me as a teenager. It made me dream. And after I started to film there with my friends – and later with Vlad – I became part of that history. So the idea of the movie was to pay tribute to an area that was special to me, and to the film director Julien Roserens who’s also from there. But it’s also a tribute to this whole era in snowboarding, when the history of backcountry freestyle in Europe was written.”

If all that sounds a little cliquey, fear not. Mat and Julien’s film has been made with a broad audience in mind. “We realised that even where we live, people that aren’t snowboard geeks never really knew what was going on there,” admits Mat. “So we wanted to give a window into that world. The documentary is being shown in film festivals to people who love the mountains but don’t know anything about core backcountry freestyle. We can show them that this was a big thing, that it was our job to go there and build jumps and do 10 runs and only land one trick, and go home super happy because we have a sick shot. You know, this is something that even my parents didn’t really understand. There was some magic around this place, and the goal of the film is to show it.”