Words by Jeff Schmuck

Photos by Dan Brown & Jeff Schmuck

Welcome to the second week of the Jon Olsson Super Sessions from beautiful Åre, Sweden.

After a week of sessioning in Trysil, Norway, it was time to saddle up and hit the dusty trail after a week of good times and great skiing was had by all. Special thanks are in order to everyone in Trysil who made our stay that much more memorable, especially to Jon, Olivia and their hard-working team, and the staff at the gorgeous Radisson SAS hotel.

After a long night of partying on our last night in Trysil (that we showcased in our last update), we packed up the bus at 9am and began heading north on our journey towards Åre that was supposed to take five hours. I say supposed to because roughly two hours outside of our final destination something went wrong with the brakes and/or air suspension in our pimped-out bus, and it broke.

uh-oh

We ended up hanging out in a town who's name no one would tell us for some strange (or smart, for the locals' sake) reason for a total of nine hours, before the in-town mechanic discovered that it would take much longer than originally anticipated to fix the problem, at which point another bus was dispatched to pick us up and take us to Åre.

Team Canada's Darren Rayner in the town with no name

Team America's Nate Abbott takes the opportunity to admire the imagery on the outside of the bus

Josh and Crill from http://www.jon-olsson.com and http://www.josupersessions.com caught all the drama and boredom and have made some fun videoblogs on our cross-Scandinavia adventure, so be sure to head on over to the sites to check them out.

unloading one bus and reloading the other...

...and unloading in Åre.

Once settled in Åre we headed to bed for some much-needed shut eye before getting all geared up in the morning and heading up the hill to check out the first of three features the teams will be getting to work on this week.

the City Hip

The three features here are the City Hip, which has a nice quarterpipe-steep take off with a gap to stepdown landing right by some local train tracks. The second is the Semi Floater, which is a step down who's length we're sill unsure of as Jon's team of accomplished jump builders are just putting the finishing touches on it as we speak, and the Reverse Transfer Gap, which is what the guys started getting warmed up on this afternoon.

Jacob on the Reverse Transfer Gap

The Reverse Transfer Gap (which was arguably the most anticipated feature here by the athletes) contains two ominous-looking tombstones on the left and right side of a narrow singular landing that boasts a perfect angle.

Watching the guys gently touch down on the landing was a thing of a beauty and just like on last year's JOI-style jump which was situated nearby, many a hoots and hollas were heard by the boys as they took their first few hits.

Jon sends it while Johnny gets the shot from the heli

All of the athletes from all of the teams tested it out for roughly half an hour in an effort to get their bearings on the beast while their filmers and photographers scouted out all the various angles. Some even scored some early shots that may very well end up in the videos, including Jon and Jacob, who had Johnny D doing fly-by's in the heli while Jacob called it one of the coolest jumps he's ever hit.

Berman and Decesare draw straws for heli time

But just as things were getting going a nasty cluster of clouds unfortunately rolled in forcing us to wait it out for a bit as Jon spotted a patch of sunlight in the distance heading towards us. As the teams mulled about the filmers drew straws for heli time over the course of the next week while some friendly wrestling between the boys and smooth words between Nate Abbott and the on-site Red Bull girls ensued before the patch of sun sadly passed us by just a bit too much to the east, prompting to Jon make the decision to call it off in favor of a sunset session on the City Hip.

Wallisch & Dumont watch the sun pass us by

The aptly named City Hip sits just above the village square and although the weather again called the shoot into question, just prior to our arrival at the feature the snow and clouds cleared, making for a gorgeous sunset, much to the photographers and filmers' delight.

Team USA: John Symms (above) & Colby West (below)

Most of the guys started warming up and getting a feel for the feature however due to the fact that the sun was on the opposite side of the jump the landing was quite hard, and as a result everyone seemed a tad hesitant to attempt anything other than a straight air (although Jon did bust out one flatspin and Laurent went for an alley-oop).

Jon Olsson

As the shoot progressed the wind began to pick up which gave a few of the boys some problems, but the beautiful sunset more than made up for it and most certainly helped the seven talented photographers produce some epic shots.

Team America: Tom Wallisch (above) & Simon Dumont (below)

After it was all said and done, the majority of the crew headed to Max Burger to grab some Jon Olsson Super Sessions value meals followed by some down time before tonight's first of many wild parties here in Sweden.

Jon and his meal

The weather tomorrow seems to be up in the air according to Jon so it remains to be seen what will happen, so be sure to stay tuned to NS for the latest and greatest from JOSS...because the best is most certainly yet to come.