Sölden in Austria is well known as one of the biggest, most family friendly glacial resorts in a country that seems to have mountains specifically designed to be exactly that, but what you might not have known before is that every spring, season after season, it becomes the temporary home of one of the biggest park jumps in Europe.
If you hadn’t clocked it before, in the past crews like Isenseven and Pirates have both used it in the past for their big air hammer shots, but even though they’ve moved on this season the park crew have still come up with the goods for this absolute beast of a booter.
Simplicity and precision is the key here, this year they’ve cut from the snow something that wouldn’t look out of place in an Ikea catalogue, or even on a coffee table. If your coffee table was fucking enormous that is, because this thing is just that.
At least 25 metres to the sweet spot if it’s an inch, plus that take off looks to be the perfect Austrian balance between speed and pop, sending the riders up high without the whippyness of an X Games booter. If park jumps had one of those crap ‘Evolution of Man’ style t-shirts, this would be the last frame.
Joe Cavanagh, our man on the ground in Austria, had this to say on the shoot:
It was a challenging shoot, the weather wasn’t playing ball with winds that would made Marilyn Monroe’s skirt end up in the stratosphere. The jump was the definition of gnarly, but the riders stepped up to give it a beasting. Big probs has to go to 17 year old Austrian rookie Ali Lindmoser who threw it down harder than a Lonely Island song. That boy has an all time method!
See exactly what he means by that method here:
The full edit from the session will be dropping in the autumn apparently, so this should give just enough excitement for it for now.