Story, photos and video by Ryan Denehy

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The Siver Sessions Tour of Death rolled down to Stratton Mountain last Wednesday, February 18. The guys had set up a military-style Siver tent, complete with a grenade box full of stickers. To the right was the Line tent, and to the left was the Scott USA tent. All of next year’s Line skis were on display and the Siver guys were rockin’ next year’s outerwear.

Everything looked really good, and in theory the day should have been epic. Blue skies, warm temperatures, and no wind gave promise to a sick session; however, there were a few things that got in the way. First, Stratton decided that this season they would require riders to sign a waiver and watch a video in order to ride the “Power Park� (ala Whistler). Of course it’s a good idea, but making the likes of Mike Nick, Iannick B., and photographer Jeff Winterton go through the whole routine really seemed unnecessary and put things on hold for a while. Ironically, Skogen Sprang also had to sit through the instructional video, which he appears in. Go figure.

With all that aside, the park had one good table which everyone sessioned. Lofty 3’s and 5’s were thrown most of the day.

Iannick tossed an impromptu tailslide on the battleship rail, and a switch-up on the gap to kink rail. The whole day was spent taking laps in the park, and by the end of the day Mike Nick threw a big switch 5. Josh Malczyk was the surprise local of the day, with bio 7s and switch 5s all around. Matt Langley and his friend were throwing synchronized 360s off the same kicker. John Hoeplinger destroyed himself on a lincoln 180/bio 5 gone wrong, but still managed to hit rails the rest of the day.

The day concluded with a product toss outside of the Siver tent. People of all ages clumped together with the hopes of catching some free gear. Hoodies, t-shirts, stickers, gloves, DVD’s, and hats were tossed out to the ruthless crowd. Dash Longe took it upon himself to throw bricks of shrink-wrapped Line catalogues at unsuspecting victims. Good times.

The tour moved on to Okemo the next day, where high winds and a boiler-plate park gave way to an S-Rail session. The rail was super sticky, just an absolute bitch to slide. So much so that Mike Nick offered a Siver hood to the first guy that could 270 out. Iannick and some dude named Chris were the only two guys to nail it, Chris being the only one to 270 out. As the temperature rose near 40̊F, everyone moved back over to the pipe, where a gnarly session ensued.

Dash and Mike were boosting 10 feet each, with Dash having some airs easily in the 13-foot range. Skogen was having fun with really smooth alley-oop airs, and Iannick continued to destroy with cork 5’s and 7’s and some switch stuff. As the day came to a close, the kids were already in position for the product toss. This time Mike and the guys stood on top of the pipe, throwing the goodies down to everyone standing in the flat. The most sought after product seemed to be the Siver Cartel Beer Coozy, even though the vast majority of the kids were no older than 12. By 3:45 the crew had packed up and was ready to move on to the remaining stops of the Tour of Death: Friday at Tenney and Saturday at Sunday River.