Switzerland in spring is hard to beat. Insane terrain, slushy snow, and warm weather down in the valleys. That’s where Remco Kayser and Anttu Oikonnen found themselves towards the end of last season, alongside Nick Meilleur and Corey Grant on the media side. They were shooting for Board The Captis Train, a stunning new piece from Black Crows that makes skiing look exactly how it should… fun as fuck. Check it out here and then read on for the story behind the cut:

https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/1057067/Captis-final

The film came to life thanks to Remco, Anttu and slayer turned Black Crows’ office supremo Flo Bastian (yes, of Gpsy Feelin’ fame). The plan was to have Anttu and Remco show off both the new Captis with their unique brand of skiing. Nick was along for the ride to document it all and Corey shot these stills.

For the crew sustainability was at the forefront of planning. Train life is second nature for Remco, and so doing the whole trip that way was kind of a no-brainer. “The goal was simply to make a video to promote the ski and to show you can easily have an insane ski trip only using public transport” he explains. “I'm very used to doing everything by train but the other boys weren’t. We had a lot of bags, a lot of skis, a lot of camera gear. Always jumping on and off trains. We did like one or two days per resort, so we were always moving, running for trains. We’d take the train, ski for one or two days, then take the train again that night. It was pretty hectic, but mad fun”.

The crew hit up some of Switzerland's big ticket resorts, like Crans Montana and Laax, but lots of the highlights are from Les Marecottes and Le Crosets, lesser-known gems that you should definitely check out if you’re in the area. The snake run from the cut is in Les Marecottes and the ridiculous side hit (where Remco does the rodeo 7) is in Le Crosets.

The video comes together seamlessly, impressive given that Remco and Anttu had never met before the trip, only knowing each other from their respective video parts. “I always liked Anttu’s parts in Keesh,” Remco tells me. “But it was sick, we clicked really well. We enjoyed our time together and have a pretty similar skiing style. We like the freestyle aspect but we like just skiing as well. I think we're going to do some more together in the future.”

The two certainly have a lot im common, including having struggled to find sponsors before joining Black Crows. Anttu has been there a while now but tells me how stoked he has been to “see the team grow, to include more skiers with a similar background. It’s sick to have guys like Remco and Mae join the program. It’s nice to share a vision so we can link up and do team videos like this one”

Remco agrees and discusses his struggles with finding a sponsor. “I was always getting offers but the money never came with them. If you're my age and want to keep skiing, you kind of need that. Black Crows took us in and it really is a family, there’s a lot of respect. Me and Anttu are different skiers from most of the team but we feel at home and feel respected. And we get to be part of sick projects like this one. We have a great relationship with Flo too, he has that freestyle background from Gpsy Feelin so he really gets what we want to bring to the brand”.

The trips are probably the best bit of being a pro skier, and the boys did this one in style. A big off-snow highlight was a first-class ride on the Glacier Express, one of the most beautiful train rides on the planet. “We were in the super classy train carriage,” Remco explains. “They serve up a three-course meal and we were surrounded by all these super people and we were just four ski bums right in the middle of it all, making a movie, it was pretty funny.

And on skis… well you can see the result in the video but the boys managed to bring their own unique flavor to each resort they hit. Maybe the most ridiculous moment, though, was in Leysin. “We both bootpacked up a pretty long slope. For sure it was 500m or something. There was this sick wind lip and fresh snow, just the right amount for the Captis. So we walked up, it took half an hour or something. When we were like 20 meters from the top, a snowcat came past, the driver said, hi. We said hi too and didn’t think much of it. But as we were gearing up, the cat just started breaking up the wind lip. We dropped and basically went freeriding with a snowcat but the snow was kinda fucked and it was super absurd. They had to clear the snow because of the avalanche risk, so we totally got it. It was just a ridiculous situation, we walked for nothing”.

I personally love edits like this one and always have. Thinking back to Banks Gilberti’s Adventures In Transition and others, resort freestyle edits are always among my favorites to watch because they speak to me. And they’re becoming more common. Remco sees it as part of a movement, he calls it “post-park skiing”.

”I feel like this is where the sport is actually going outside of the competition scene”, he explains. “Doing tricks but all over the resort. More directional skiing but with a freestyle background. The new Captis is kind of aimed for that kind of skiing actually. It’s more poppy and playful than the old one but still a kinda directional ski. The nose is softer, which is good for doing nosebutters, but it’s got a nice stable tail for landings. I really enjoyed my time on them shooting for the film and I skied them as my park ski for the rest of the season. It’s probably the closest to a park ski in the Black Crows line but it still skis super well outside the park any day it isn’t deep.”

It’s fun hearing the boys talk about the skis, and it’s clear they both genuinely came to enjoy them. They both have strong feelings about mounting them too. “Okay so fuck true center”, Anttu says with unusual fervor. “I use Captis in the park and I mount them -3.5cm from true center, so pretty much the middle of the sliding surface. I prefer long skis too” he adds “the longer length means more support in the tail and less chance of tomahawking”.

Remco, is a little further forward “around -2.5 or so” he says, but agrees about center mounting. “I never mount skis exactly in the middle because you don't need that. It's some kind of myth. It was around we were young and we really wanted to be freestyle so we’d center mount everything. But, you know, I'm grown-up now, I actually want to ski so I try not to fuck up my skis mounting too far forward.”

For them, skis like the Captis are the future. All-mountain freestyle tools, even in the narrower widths. “It comes back to this post-park era.’ Remco explains. “We see more and more directional skis with freestyle attitude. And it’s important because more people are going to use these kind of skis. Let's be real, how many people buy typical slopestyle skis, pure park skis, especially in Europe? Probably just a few hundred. But these versatile skis, yeah anyone can use them and they’re so much fun”.

To round off the trip, Anttu joined Remco at home in Geneva for a weekend that he describes as one of the highlights of the whole thing. “It was fun to the end of the trip”, Remco tells me. “I was actually working for one of the nights but Anttu came to the club I was working at and he just partied alone. He came by to say hi a couple of times and then we caught up after I was done. The Saturday we both went hard though.”

Captis By Train may ultimately be an ad, but it certainly made me want to go and ski more than most things that cross my inbox these days. Nick Meilleur deserves a lot of credit for that. His work behind the lens and in the editing booth is a huge part of what makes this special. He blends the artsy shots and bangers effortlessly and everything about it comes together as one great piece of content. From both the edit and chatting with the boys afterward, it seems like Anttu and Remco could be the new duo to watch out for in the (post) freeski game. They feed off each other and clearly have complementary styles of skiing. I certainly hope so, because that would mean we get more edits like this one.