A couple of weeks ago now, I was lucky enough to hit up Stubai with Amplid. Nobody did a triple. That fact alone sets this article apart from 95% of the content coming from the Stubaier Gletscher lately. Though we had planned a park shoot, we got there, looked at the lift lines, did 2 laps and sacked the whole thing off. The Prime Park Sessions were in full swing and pretty much everyone who’s anyone in skiing was there. But they all had a secret weapon: The Prime Pass, which is essentially $2,200 queue jump permit, paid for in most cases by the riders’ national federation. For everyone else it was a 30+minute lap to hit 6 features.

This was frankly not worth the effort...

Luckily even in mid-october, Stubai has a wealth of terrain open. It’s probably the biggest (lift accessed) skiable expanse in the world at this time of year, so we had a great time just shredding around popping over various boulders and rollers until we found a spot to our liking. At this point I should probably introduce the crew, which consisted of the finnish innovator and all around rail slayer Kevin Salonius, Amplid TM and closet skier (but really, Snowboarder) Rich Ewbank and myself. We had no shovels, no radios, next to no water or local spot knowledge and 90mm park skis. Not exactly an ideal combination for finding, building and sessioning the sidecountry features we we’re going to need to get shots for this article.

... so we did a lot of this instead. Kevin and I searching for spots... Stubai is not small!

At this point Kevin skied across a race lane and was abused at some length/volume by a race coach, fully shaking with rage, who claimed this to be “the stupidest fucking thing [he'd] ever seen". A remark so lacking in perspective I felt the need to antagonize him for a good while afterwards about a variety of things ranging from US foreign policy to racers equivalent lack of decorum in the park. Hate-fire well and truly stoked, we immediately stumbled across an awesome zone of 2-3 spots. I'm chalking that up to karma.

"...with my mind on my money and my money on my mind..."

The gem of the three was a perfect feature. A big ol’mound of blown snow, covered in a dusting of untouched fresh right under the chair. Best of all, no major build needed, it was simply session on. Hitting a spot under a chair is a hell of an experience. You so rarely get to ski for an audience when skiing for yourself, not for a judging panel and the hoots and hollas spur you on for one more hit, one more trick. We lapped the spot for hours, until the landing was completely tracked and the job was done.

I do it for the chairlift props...

The next day we planned ahead, I took some fatter skis and we had spots in mind, but it was to no avail. A couple of spots didn’t work out and then the weather closed in. Photos were out of the question, but luckily there was just enough soft snow left to go shred for a couple of hours. I’d take that over a prime pass any day.

... and Kevin does it for the ladies!

Cheers to Amplid for having me out. Check out these reviews of the new Amplid shred sticks I rode and a few more shots below:

Amplid Antidote: http://www.newschoolers.com/reviews/4268/Antidote

Amplid Hill Bill: http://www.newschoolers.com/reviews/4256/Hill-Bill

Little and large...

Slightly heavy but still fresh tracks in October

Kevin plants a hand drag 3...

and I get inverted.