Jon Olsson Super Sessions Day 7

Words & photos by Jeff Schmuck

The first week of the Jon Olsson Super Sessions is complete and culminated with last night's Sweet Rumble Bir Air. Our seventh and final day in Trysil, Norway saw much milder weather than the previous day, but it was still not swell enough for the guys to take another shot at the hip up top, making day three's session the only attempt on it sadly.

As a result, the crew again spent the better part of the day mulling about the hotel, signing autographs for the legions of kids that were in town for the weekend and for some, covertly scoring a few last second shots on top secret features each team had seemed to find around town over the course of the week.

At 5pm, the boys made their way back up to the Trick Buster for one last session and the Sweet Rumble Big Air in front of a massive crowd that Luke Van Valin got all jacked up with his smooth and unparalleled brand of announcing.

Wallisch & Henrik

Jacob & Jon

Jossi Wells

TJ Schiller

Simon Dumont

John Symms

On top of the 14 athletes competing in JOSS, a diverse list of fantastic riders (including Bobby Brown, Peter Olenick, Oscar Scherlin, Benedict Mayr, Kim Boberg, Thomas Doplands, Wiley Miller, Finn Anderson, along with Norway's own Anders Backe and a host of his fellow ridiculously talented countrymen) had made the trek to Trysil for the event.

Oscar Scherlin

Kim Boberg

Due to the perfection of Jon's jump and the high caliber of riding that had already taken place on it over the course of the last week, things got pretty wild pretty quick. Right off the bat Andreas Håtveit and Henrik Harlaut were throwing switch 14's, while Russ Henshaw was afterbanging switch double 10's with a double tip grab, and double cork 12's were being tossed as often as twisters at a mogul comp, most notably from PK Hunder, who was killing it all night from his first jump to his last.

Andreas Håtveit

Russ Henshaw

PK Hunder

Each of the competitors had two runs with the best run counting before it was narrowed down to an eight-skier head-to-head final. PK Hunder, Russ Henshaw, Jon Olsson, Jacob Wester, Andreas Hatveit, Henrik Harlaut, Thomas Doplands and Ian Cosco all made it through and then were put into pairs to square off against eachother sudden-death style for one jump each with the better of the two moving onto the four-man superfinals.

Ian Cosco

Jacob Wester

In the end PK, Russ, Jon and Jacob prevailed, and it was on. PK squared off against Jon first, and although Jon was throwing his double cork 12 with a safety to japan grab, it wasn't enough to knock off PK's perfect dub 12, which he was taking damn near to the bottom of the landing. Russ then polished off Jacob with a switch double 10 vs Jacob's double 12 in what the judges later told me was the closest and most difficult decision of the night.

Russ

PK

It then came down to PK vs Russ, at which point the format turned into best two out of three jumps and the guys had to throw a different trick on each hit than their last for the sake of mixing things up. After two stunning jumps that saw PK take the first round with a double 12 and Russ take the second with a double 12 of his own, the third and final jump to decide the winner sent the crowd and other competitors into a frenzy of anticipation and excitement.

PK

PK & Russ await the results...

Russ dropped in but appeared to dump a bit of speed on the in-run throwing a much smaller switch 10 then he wanted so PK took advantage with a huge double cork 10 that was so large and in charge he damn near landed on the crowd. It was over.

PK happily claimed victory on his home turf and scored himself a winner take all cheque for $100,000 Krona (roughly $18,000 USD) along with a pimped-out championship belt. As the crowd mobbed their fellow Norwegian for pictures, autographs and gear the rest of the crew made their way up to a large tent that the boys from Sweet Protection had set up in the middle of the woods for a dinner and party.

Being that the athletes considered the event to be one of the best big air contests ever put on and that it was our last night in Norway before heading to Sweden, the stoke factor was pretty high, so to no one's surprise, things got fairly out of hand real quick.

Drew Lederer

LVV reppin that tall tee

The floor of the tent was covered in wood chips and with a river of free booze flowing, you can imagine what happened.

Tyler Hamlet

Even Sigstad

When the river did eventually run dry PK proceeded to honor the 10% rule before an afterparty of epic proportions ensued where literally everyone from the bar made their way to the $2 million luxury suite that the good folks at Trysil had hooked up for myself, Shay from Freeskier and Andreas from Fri Flyt to stay in for the weekend.

big thanks to the good people at Trysil for my pimp suite

Luckily we made it out of there damage-free, thanks in part to Simon Dumont and Peter Olenick who played bouncer for the evening.

Peter performing some reverse bouncing...keeping chicks from leaving the party.

After a few hours of sleep (or in Olenick and I's case none at all), we got back on the bus to make our way to heaven on earth, Åre, Sweden, where we'll be spending the next week sessioning three more massive features (which we'll have details on soon) and taking in the finer points of Sweden's unsurpassed nightlife.

Stay tuned for more from the second week of JOSS, and as always, be sure to check out www.josupersessions.com, www.jon-olsson.com and www.jacobwester.com for the latest and greatest videoblogs from the event, along with our own offerings right here on NS with NSTV...