The Peak Performance Freeski Camp 2009 in Disentis was a great success. 16 skifanatics from all over Europe had come together for one of the best freeskiing events of the year organized and coached by pro skier Seb Garhammer. With guidance from our local guide Paul Degonda we had a spectacular week in the little skiresort of Disentis with lots of great runs, spectacular tours, great scenary and awesome vibes from everyone who was there. The week started out with fresh snow and cold wheather and we got some great powderruns all over the mountain. As the week followed, spring turned into the Alps. The second half of the week we skied perfect firnsnow in the mornings and slushsnow in the afternoon. There was practically no one on the mountain skiing except us and it felt like we had rented the whole place for ourselves. When the first people turned up on the weekend, Paul our guide made sure we got to the places where no one else was skiing. The group got to train on their skiing skills in all kinds of conditions, improving their mountainskills and avalanche knowledge as well as learning and improving their jumpigskills on both kickers and cliffs. We enjoyed the afterski in the sun down in the Nagijaala Bar and had great delighful dinners in the Hotel Montana in the evenings. In all everyone had a great time and we are all looking forward for next years Peak - Garhammer happening with great excitement!

Sleds are great as long as they work.

The swiss boys Bimba and Stefan just arrived and they will be the ones that I will be splitting the heli with. Both of them are really strong snowboarders out of Engelberg. The sky was still blue and the heli had finally reached Haines. I was ready to go. Unfortunatilly our cameraman Mark went to Whitehourse to get his sled fixed. He had counted on bad wheather, but as I mentioned earlier you can never count on the wheather reports in Haines. It turned out we missed two perfect bluebird days while Mark and Stephen where in Whitehorse . The MSP crew - Abma, Petit and Hjorleifsson where up flying and they apparently got some really nice stuff. Good for them! Well anyhow we kept on sledding on the nearby mountain and that was still awesome. Still it was pretty anoying knowing the conditions where perfect and we couldn’t go up with the heli. To quote Seth Morisson ”its not blue bird every day you know ”.

Finally up in the bird.

So after missing out on 5 bluebird days of shooting, we finally where ready to go up with the heli. Mark was back and everything was all set. We went up at 5.30 pm cause we wanted to get the morning light. Once we where up in the air we started searching for a good zone to get started in. Appaerantly alot of stuff was pretty boney/rocky this year due to some warm storms earlier on. The snow wasn´t sticking as good as usual. I still think everything looked great though. We found a zone that looked perfect for a warm up run. I skied a nice looking ridge with some great light on it ending up with a drop in the end. The feeling was great and the snow felt really stabile. Bimba and Stefan got two nice lines to.

A stolen heli for a couple of beers

Once we got down, our guide Tim informed us that the MSP dudes had just borrowed our heli for a short while. They wanted to shoot their other heli in the air. No budgetproblems there I guess. We didn’t mind since we thought it would just be a short wile. We had a look on another line in the same bowl that looked really nice and got ready for the pick up… 2 and a ½ hours later we where still waiting for the heli. We could see the light slowly move out of our lines. MSP had fu__ed us over, bastards! We got the pickup, found another zone and then the clouds moved in on us killing the light. The day was over. We met the MSP dudes on the cafe at 33mile just by the heliport. They luckily where really apologetic and Steve Winter promised us a couple of rounds in the bar later on to make up for loss of the heli. I’ve got a soft spot for beers so it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. In the end there where no hard feelings and I was still stoked getting one line in on the first day in the bird.

Finally it looks like we have a storm coming in, which is good since the more serious lines need another dump or two.

Text and photo: seb garhammer

First ride on the new sled.

Morningsun on the yard.

Snowplow madness.

Nice trees

stoked

On top of the run

enjoying the view

Happy after a day on the sled

Swiss Stefan ready to get in to the bird

Finally in the air.

The warm up run. Photo www.oskarenander.com

Nice view from the top of our helirun

The runs we never got to do because of the missing heli.

WWW.GARHAMMERFREESKICAMPS.COM

The trip over.

Leaving my two kids and girlfriend in Åre is always a hard thing and is hardly something that I ever get used to. I started out at 6 a clock in the morning leaving Åre/Östersund headig for Haines with 4 transfer flights on the way. Landing in Juneau the capital of Alaska at 10 pm after a 18 hours travel I got a motel just by the airport to get a few hours of sleep before leaving to Haines thye next morning. I got up early and got to the Juneau airport and boarded a small propeller aircraft. The flight into Haines takes about 40 minutes and is probably one of the most beutiful routes you can fly with a plane. White yawdropping mountains sourrounding me left and righ and the ocean right under me all the way to the little fishingtown of Haines. Oskar Enander picked me up with a big smile and we went into town to fix some damaged sleds before driving up to the backhouse of the Funny Farm Lodge where we will stay fo the next five weeks. The vibes are definitelly good arriving in Haines and im really amped and ready to get up on the mountain as soon as possible. The snow looks amazing and the whather looks realy stabile today. We will see what happends tomorrow. In Haines you there is one thing you can be sure of, that is that you can never be sure of the wheater.

Check out the update in a couple of days.

Leaving Sweden.

02.Landing in seattle

Halfway through allready tired

My motel in Juneau, what a great bedsheet

Wish ou where here!

morningview in Juneau

Nice stash duuude!

Juneau airport

airborn

thats what im talking about, hell yeah!

The fjord of haines

My private pilot, as hard as they come.

Haines airport

Oskars pickup

Got a coffe for the road

“The Backhouse” home sweet home at least for the next 5 weeks.

Photographer Richard Walsh gave me a call and asked me if I want to come to Iceland for a week to shoot for the ISPO catalogue (the biggest sport-convention in Europe) some old friends of mine Christian Stadler and Sven Kueenle where coming to and I never had been to Iceland so I said sure, lets go.

Once on the Island and Reykjavik we met up with our guide Oli (Olafur) who was a real local and seemed to be really popular around the Island, he got a sick van that we where to spend a lot of hours in during the week. We drove about three ours to our hotel, the whether was really bad it was raining sideways the hole way their, but the blinks that you could see of the landscape was spectacular, black lava rocks everywhere kinda looked like the moon (not that I’ve been to the moon) and where there was grass it had the most amazing green color.

The whether was all right the rest of the week, and we went forth and back on the south east side of the Island and especially spent a lot of time around the glacier Myrdals Jökul and the biggest glacier in Europe Vattnajökul, we went from hot springs, to water falls, glacier caves, iceberg spots, lava rocks and mysterious black beaches, it was truly the most spectacular nature that I have ever seen. The mountains truly surprised me they where far much better then I expected, although it was a little bit late for good snow, but this place definitely has a lot of potential for mountaineering and lines.

We did our ski pictures up on the Myrdals jökul where Oli hooked us up with snowsleds/ skooters that we could cruise around on the glacier. We found some nice cliffs and jibs that we shredded and we got some sweet photos with the most amazing backdrops. Norwegian Snowboarder Per Löken and former snowboarder now make-up artist Kristel Thorenssen where also with us on the trip and we had a lot of fun together.

After a busy week and at least 5 hours of driving each day, we arrived back in Reykjavik the last day; we ate great seafood at one of the funkiest restaurants I’ve been to. Per and me took the most expensive course that we could find, shark for starters and Lobster for main course, and of course we had a few drinks on top of that (the production paid.)
The party in Reykjavik was as good as people had told us; we got hammered and went to a house club and later on to a rock bar (cant really remember the names.) I danced the night away and came back to the hotel 5 minutes before the taxi was leaving around 5.30. I slept the whole flight back home.

Well I’ve been home most of January recovering from my injury, my children have been sick most of the time so I have been taking care of them, and after almost a years work and carpeting we finally moved in to our house which was such a great feeling!

In the end of January I had a visit from the peak performance team video cinematographers home in Åre, they stayed for a couple of days to shoot with me Jon and Henrik since we all live in the same village and ski almost every day together when we are at home! We got some smaller ski stuff, but mostly filmed funny stuff, interviews and hanging out together..

The 6th of February I head down to Arlberg together with photographer Mattias Fredriksson and Henrik Windstedt to meet up with the rest of the peak team on location in Zug am Arlberg.
We where going to shoot for the peak performance catalogue for next year and also film some for the peak team video.
The conditions weren’t great to begin with, but we got some fresh snow after some days and got a lot of great skiing, we skied in the trees during the snowfall days and got some great photos, and once the sun showed up we skied some sweet lines and hucked some cliffs. The photographer and filmers where happy and so where we!
I was super stoked my body and mind was in shape after the one month break after my injury and I could perform my best without holding back. Except from just skiing we where surrounded by supermodels, fashion photographers and stylists, as always on the peak performance catalogue shoots the contrast between them and us is pretty big and can definitely cause a lot of laughs from both sides I guess.
I’m writing this on the last day of our stay in Arlberg and tomorrow I’m going to Munich to get some new Völkl skies and to rest for a day, after that I will hook up with Fred A Wergeland (cinematographer) and Jacobo (mountain guide) in Courmayeur to film some more for the peak video. So check back soon for some updates and photos from that trip!

After Klein Walser tal we wanted to do a story for Transition magazine, but once again the snow conditions sucked so we had to cancel it. Instead I went to Arlberg St.Anton to shoot for a German TV-station, we shot mainly lifestyle shots and interviews because of the lack of snow and they are going to use footage from last year. Anyways another friend of ours came down and we went to Garmish Partenkirschen where we where going to prepare for my next freeskicamp we went up in the ski area but the snow was really bad, no powder at all, so we skied some park, the park was sick and after a few jumps I wanted to go for a seven, since this was my first day in the park this year it was maybe a bad idea to try it in the biggest kicker, I came out a bit wrong over rotating a bit and landed on my back, I new something broke inside me so I got to fly helicopter to the hospital since the doctor thought I could have fucked my back up. It turned out I had broken a rib and strained my chest some how. Simon had to take my place for coaching the camp and emanuel all ready had signed up for coaching so no worries on that matter. I was in the hospital for three days, and the doctors told me that I had to take it easy for another 3-4 weeks so I went to the Ispo in Munich for one day and then headed home for the Alpine world championships in Åre. Well at home I have been working on my website and planning the rest of the season and last but not least finishing the last parts on our house.