Andrew Matthews

One Shot Wednesday Switch Front Lip

2012-01-25T21:21:00.000-08:00

Discovery Air - Diamond Sponsor!

2012-01-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

Discovery Air has answered the call of supporting high performance sport in the NWT. This year they moved up two levels from last year's Silver Sponsorship to my Diamond Level! Discovery Air's philanthropic contribution has allowed me to increase my amount of high quality training, case in point my three week training camp in Colorado this past December. Without the support of outstanding community leaders like Discovery Air, I would not have the opportunity to pursue my dreams and goals in competitive snowboarding. Thank you!

Discovery Air is also supporting NWT high performance snowboarder Molly Molligan with her athletic pursuits; as well as several other well deserving initiatives. For more information check out their Community Involvement page here.

One of Discovery Air's companies Air Tindi planes, photographed here, charter and schedule flights across Canada's north

From Discovery Air's website we learn the following about the company:

Founded in 2004, Discovery Air Inc. is a specialty aviation services company operating across Canada and in select locations internationally. With over 140 aircraft, it is one of the largest air operators in Canada, employing more than 850 flight crew, maintainers and support staff to deliver a variety of air transport, maintenance and logistics solutions to its government, airline and business customers. The Corporation's subsidiaries include: Top Aces, which delivers airborne training and special mission services to the Canadian military; Discovery Air Fire Services, a supplier of airborne fire management services to the Ontario government and charter services to government agencies and corporate customers; Discovery Air Technical Services, which provides a range of maintenance, repair, overhaul, modification, engineering and certification services; Great Slave Helicopters, the second-largest VFR helicopter operator in the country; Air Tindi, the largest fixed-wing aircraft charter provider based in Northern Canada; Discovery Mining Services, which supplies all-weather exploration camps as well as expediting and logistics support services; and Discovery Air Innovations, the innovation arm of Discovery Air that identifies and captures large, new market opportunities.

Another of Discovery Air's companies,

Great Slave Helicopters (GSH), is one of the largest helicopter operators in Canada.

Canadian Dream "Team"

2012-01-23T16:09:00.000-08:00

Introducing the Canadian Dream "Team"! Action Talent Sports Management is changing up the game for corporate funding and sports management. They're trying to help Canadian athletes get the funding they need to achieve their goals. Kyle Thomas and I are fortunate and excited to be on the "Team"!

Check out my profile on their website www.actionsportsmanagement.ca.

Crazy flag tap!

2012-01-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

I still haven't got the footage from last weekends BCSA Slopestyle so here's a wild accidental flag tap shot Keystone Colorado!

Couple Laps Edit

2012-01-12T22:18:00.000-08:00

This was such a fun afternoon shredding with Sam and Tac I had to put up a couple more shots. Check out Sam's blog here: http://samweston.blogspot.com/

One Shot Wednesday Back Rodeo

2012-01-11T19:09:00.000-08:00

This week I've been training with the National Slopestyle Team on a private custom air bag jump session. It's been great to get comfortable flipping again. Today I decided enough is enough, time to get comfortable pulling back rodeos on snow. Thanks goes out to Tack for getting the shot and Canada~Snowboard for allowing me to session the bag jump this week!

One Shot Wednesday

2012-01-04T21:30:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

I thought it would be cool if I try to upload my favorite shot from the week every Wednesday. Here's the first One Shot Wednesday. It's from an amazing lap where we got incredibly lucky with the opening of Harmony Chair as we were debating whether or not to stay and wait. Needless to say, it was epic! Enjoy

- A.M

Triple Cork or Best Angle Ever?

2011-12-30T17:31:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone!

Here's a shot of me from Keystone in real time and then again in slow-mo. Is it the newest triple cork? Maybe just a cool angle?

- Aces

Dew Tour Slopestyle Finals Video

2011-12-18T21:03:00.001-08:00

See More Videos at AlliSports.com

');" href="javascript:void(0);" style="color: white; float: right; margin-right: 5px;">Embed

Colorado has it going on!

2011-12-12T21:45:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

I'm in Colorado right now for our early season training camp and I'm loving it here. They have free buses; its sunny; everyone is friendly; and most of all the resorts here work their tales off getting the parks up and running early! To give you an idea, the resort we've been riding is called Keystone and they only have a base depth of 18'! They've been making snow non-stop and already have a full park with over 100 features including a huge, very well built, triple jump line. We hardly notice the lack of natural snow.

The level of riding here is insane! Most of the best pros are here because Keystone has one of the best parks in the world right now. Colorado also has the best halfpipes right now. We went to watch the halfpipe Grand Prix on the weekend. The level of riding in competitive halfpipe is incredible! The sport really progressed leading up to the 2010 Olympics with competitors pulling double cork tricks. Now its difficult to even make the finals at the Grand Prix without a double cork! Congrats to Luke Mitrani for taking the win with an absolutely sick run.

As for this guy, I just finished filling out a trick list that my coach put together. There are so many tricks that I want to learn this season. I guess that's a cool part about freestyle snowboarding: there are almost no limits to what you can learn. At the moment I'm really focusing on building my confidence jumping from the ground up. Yep, that meant spending 2 days only doing straight airs followed by 180s for another 3 days. I'm now doing some of the best straight airs, 180s and 360s I've ever done!

Here's a new tune that's just plain amazing: Midnight City by M83

In addition to snowboarding I've also started back to University. I'm studying microeconomics by correspondence and really enjoying it so far. I've also been watching quite a few 'Ted Talks' in my spare time. Check out this one that I found really interesting:

Aces,
Andy

And It Begins...

2011-11-28T19:21:00.000-08:00

November 18, 2011 - Whistler Mountain officially opened for the winter season.

This is such an exciting time of year... where you are limited only by your own imagination as to the possibilities that await in your future. Will this be my breakthrough year? Will I land double corks? Podium at a huge contest? Get sick photos? Magazine coverage? Film an awesome video part? Shred epic powder days?

At the moment I'm having a great time riding again - dialing in my new gear and old tricks. I'm packing my bags for an epic training camp in Colorado. We're heading up (vertically) to go ride perfect snowboard parks for 3 weeks. I'm stoked to have the chance to push my riding before the competition season really gets under way in the new year.

I like to think this season will be my banger season but only time will tell my friends. Stay tuned to find out!

Adventure Season - Off-land Training

2011-11-20T21:00:00.000-08:00

This fall I put a little extra flavour into my dry-land training program... you could even call it 'off-land' training. I went surfing! My girlfriend Frida and I went to Costa Rica and Nicaragua to seek out waves, adventure and an experience of a lifetime before the snow started falling in Canada. Surfing is one of my new favourite sports! It’s seriously challenging but a ton of fun when you catch a wave right. Plus you get free chiropractic sessions when the waves crunch down on you!

For the first time in my life I was paddling out in the ocean free from the rubbery constrains of a thick wetsuit. The liberating feeling of being out in the ocean with only you and your board is fantastic... until a school of fish swarm around you that is! I wanted to progress as much as possible in surfing while I was there but I realized that you need to be patient with surfing. The conditions have to be It takes a lot of time paddling, duck diving, paddling more, ducking diving more, paddling until your arms feel like jello, and then trying to stand up before get the hang of it. Its that one great wave you catch that keeps you coming back.

Throughout our trip we saw some beautiful places and met lots of awesome people. It was a great experience to see other cultures, try new things and practice spanish. Even though the places we saw were amazing, the trip really made me appreciate Canada. You don’t realize how safe you feel here until you’ve been somewhere outside of your comfort zone. And lets be honest, Canada is beautiful too!

Beach to myself at 7am

Ridin the 'Perfect Wave'

This one speaks for itself. Pic by Frida

Training with the oldest equipment ever for less than $1 drop-in

This guy loves the attention

Postcard (also by Frida)

Beautiful beach yoga session

I felt like a warrior standing there!

Us at the top of a Maderas Volcano

NZedit 2011!

2011-10-27T05:49:00.001-07:00

Here's the edit I put together from my trip to NZ this September!

NZ Photos

2011-10-08T13:32:00.000-07:00

My trip to New Zealand was a lot of fun and was well worth the effort of going overseas to find snow. In addition to how awesome it was to ride in September some of the highlights were skydiving; going on an epic 3 hour mountain bike ride (watch out for Auzzie breaks!); and going on an adventure hike up and down Mount Iron (who uses the path?).

On the snowboard front, it was really good to continue to practice. With only 6 weeks off snow I felt like I was able to get back into it right away. It was also awesome to have one of the Whistler Valley Snowboard Club coaches, Duncan, there to ride and film with. I learned a lot of jibbing tricks (rails and boxes) and got a lot more comfortable flipping on jumps. It was too windy to jump as much I would have liked but I made the most out of every light wind day. Video to come soon! For now check out the pictures from my trip below

Freefalling! Sorry Mom!

Mount Iron Peak

Jibbing is fun

Dave killing it with a front board!

Back corked 5

Backside 180

Awesome start to NZ!

2011-09-15T02:36:00.000-07:00

Greetings from NZ!

I've made the trip down south and have settled into a freezing cold house in beautiful Wanaka. I forgot just how nice (and cold) it is here. This year none of my usual crew came down so I've been doing a solo mission for this trip. So far its been really good. I've already met lots of nice people and got some really good riding in.

On my second day here I competed in a the Volcom Peanut Butter and Rail Jam. Thanks to my riding this summer I felt solid on my first day back on snow and decided what the heck, this will be fun. It was a cool contest with a more mellow vibe because you can do your run whenever you want and do as many as possible within a certain time limit. I busted out some tricks that I've never done before - nothing like a little competition to get me stoked to try something new! I was happy with my riding and even placed 4th, which at this contest is also a 'podium', awesome! Check out the video below... I'm in the light brown Westbeach coat at 1:30 and 4:43.

Untitled from Volcom Australia / New Zealand on Vimeo.

Kiwi Bound

2011-08-26T18:25:00.000-07:00

Hello,

As MBM Camp comes to a close next week, it will be time for me to trade in the mountain bike for my snowboard... I've decided to head out to New Zealand this September to get some tricks dialed in for next season. Thanks to support from Northern Canada Ventures Corp (parent company of Ryfan Electric) I will be able to afford to get in some great riding in this September! Thank you very much NCVC!

Here's a video of what I'm flying halfway across the world to do:

Snow Park Triple Line Opens from Snow Park NZ on Vimeo.

Summer Camp is Awesome!!

2011-07-27T00:44:00.000-07:00

Heyo,

I just finished off the most intense, progressive 4 weeks of snowboarding of my life! I'm exhausted but I feel great! This was the first summer that I stayed in Whistler to ride the glacier at Camp of Champions. Camp of Champions is a private (read: very expensive) camp with debatably the best snowboard park in the world at this time of year! In order to afford such an amazing camp, I was lucky enough to get a volunteer job salting the park for the first week, organizing the salting crew and putting up banners for the last 3 weeks. Thanks to my outstanding support from the NWT, I was able to afford to have my coach come up for the entire 4 weeks to help me reach my goals for the summer.

We had "the worst weather ever" this summer but I didn't let that stop me from making as much progress as I could. They had a sweet air bag setup with 2 sizes of jump bags and one halfpipe bag. Air bags are relatively new in the snowboard scene so I'll explain why they are useful. Air bags allow riders to try tricks without worrying (as much) about the consequence of landing, say, on your head for instance. I used this opportunity to learn several inverted tricks, these tricks will be crucial in my riding as a competitive snowboarder. I now feel a lot more comfortable going upsidedown in the air than I ever have before. I did my first frontside and switch frontside inverts in the halfpipe; landed my first backside rodeo (backflip 180) on snow; landed first ever backside 270 onto a box; made progress on my jumping fundamentals - you get the picture yet? I made some serious progress!

Below are some photos from my 23rd birthday which just so happened to fall on the last day of glacier riding. It was one of the rare sunny days and such a fun way to spend my birthday. A big thank you goes out to my girlfriend Frida for taking these awesome pictures! To see more of her photography click here: www.fridaberglund.se.

Season Kick Off - Ante Up!

2011-07-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

Starting my season off BIG

Greetings!

On Canada Day I kicked off my summer season on snow with the 5 Star TTR Billabong Ante Up Big Air Contest. I was lucky to even have a chance to compete in such a high calibre event where they only took 30 of the top riders in the world. I snuck in as an alternate with my results from last season. The competition was an 80 foot gap Big Air jump, one of the biggest jumps I've ever done. Despite having a bad fall in training I was able to have a solid performance in the competition. I landed a frontside 1080 but wasn't able to stop my rotation so I lost some points for that. I was leading the competition for a few riders and ended up 16th out of 30 riders, a solid result for such a stacked field! The contest was an amazing experience to see the best riders in the world perform, and to see what I need to do in order to get to that elite level.

Here's the video from the event. Guess who is the second snowboarder in the video?!

Thanks for stopping by,

Andy

Summer is here!

2011-06-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

I've been really busy lately setting up MBM Camp and enjoying all the awesome activities Whistler has to offer in the summer like mountain biking, hiking, climbing and skateboarding to name a few. This is the first year I've stayed in Whistler for some of the summer and I must say this place is awesome in the summer too! We filmed a day where we went to Squamish for some skateboarding, climbing and hiking. Edit dropping.... soon?

I only have a few days left before the glacier opens for the summer! I've decided to stay here to train at Camp Of Champions for the entire time its open. This has been a dream of mine since I attended the camp for the first time when I was 13 years old. I can remember thinking 'Imagine how good you would get if you could snowboard everyday for a month here!' Well now that dream has become a reality and I'm stoked!!

With all the outdoor fun lately, I haven't had a chance to go through my footage from the year yet but here's a teaser, well its actually a couple years old but I stumbled upon it on my friend Chase's vimeo so boom! Here it is:

I also found Chase's new teaser, it looks pretty sweet!

Sequence Shots from 2K

2011-05-26T00:42:00.000-07:00

Hello,

As the season comes to an end here in Whistler I figure I better get these awesome photos that Kevin Klingbeil took of me in the Whistler Black Park. This was back at the end of March just before the Showdown Over the City so I was really pushing to learn some new tricks. Kevin was there to capture my first ever landed frontside 10. Definitely one of the best days of my season! Thanks for the photos Kevin! Check out his photography here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinklingbeil/5752291849/in/photostream/lightbox/

First front 10 stomp!

Switch back 5

Another frontside 10

Here's some shots I just had to post... Here's my cousin's son (second cousin?) Trevor grabbing tail on my board and looking like a rock star! He'll be snowboarding soon!

He's a natural!

He almost didn't give those back

- A

Best of the WSSFest 2011

2011-04-27T13:05:00.000-07:00

Bonjourno,
This year the World Ski and Snowboard Festival was unreal! There was amazing snowboarding, skiing, films, art and music. The village was packed with tourist and companies promoting their products. Here are some of my favourite films from the various film competitions held during the festival:

These guys had 1 week (in April) to shoot and edit their videos for Intersection. I was blown away at how sick the videos turned out!

This video took the 3PO film contest. I love the idea of shredding the city.

Pro Photographer Showdown Finalist Russel Dalby

Funny because its true. We love poaching hot tubs!

Zoolander + Snowboarding = Awesome

The Showdown Bubble - In or out?!

2011-03-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

Hey oh!

The past couple weekends have been Showdowns - The Showcase Showdown in Whistler and the Quiksilver Showdown Over the City at Grouse Mountain. What is a 'Showdown' you may be asking? Well it seems like the people who name snowboard contest snowboard contests think alike (or maybe they just copy each other). Anyways, these 'Showdowns' were huge slopestyle contests that brought some of the best riders from BC, Canada and even the States out to throw down.

The most recent one, the Showdown Over the City started pretty typically for a contest at Grouse Mountain - in the middle of a cloud. We could hardly see the course with massive rails and... average size jumps. I was in the amateur qualification for the chance to duke it out with some of the top pros in Canada. They originally set out 100 spots for ams but only 10 signed up. I guess once they saw some of the big names that were showing up they decided there wasn't much point competing. At the riders meeting they told us that the qualifiers would be pushed to the next day in hopes of better weather. Oh, and that only 3 of the ams would make it through. So much for an easy ride into the pro contest!

The next day it was... sunny?! Everything looked awesome in the sun. I had to get comfortable on the course really quick because they were now running 3 contests in 1 day which made it a bit tighter for time. I landed a few different runs in training but not even close to the run I was thinking of. For some reason I can usually ride better under pressure and this was no exception. I landed my first run with a switch back nine, aw yeah! I fell on my second run and I knew that my first run would be right around that 3rd place bubble.

There have been a lot of times I've been outside of the bubble looking in: the Showcase Showdown the weekend before this I was the first person cut from finals! Not this time though! I made it with my first run and qualified in 3rd! Boo yeah!!

After that I was ready to shred it! Too bad the course wasn't... the sun started turning the snow into slush and the uphill wind made it nearly impossible to make the jump. It was turning into a "boarderstyle" event, a mix of boardercross and slopestyle because you had to hit the rails as fast as possible in order to have any hope of making the jumps. I was feeling really good on the rails but it was really frustrating not being able to do the tricks that I wanted on the jumps. Ah! Anyways I wasn't able to land a run in the pro contest, I knuckled (didn't have enough speed to make the landing properly) the last jump on my second run that might have put me through to the super final.

Besides the speed being such an issue it was an awesome day. Such a fun contest to be part of. Congrats to Robbie for placing third, even after he popped his shoulder out in semis. What a champ!

As for the Showcase Showdown, the new kid in my club WVSC Darcy Sharpe took the top spot and he's only 15 years old! Yellowknife rider Molly Milligan (and also new to WVSC) took second in the female category. Another friend and club member Ali Tracy rode really well and just missed the podium, coming in 4th. Way to kill it guys!!

Check out some edits from the past couple contests below.

Switch Back 9 & YLG Contest

2011-03-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

Hey!

Last weekend the we left the epic snow of Whistler in a gang related black Suburban for sunny peaks of... Sun Peaks! This was the next stop on the YouLookGood Riders Cup Slopestyle. We were all stoked to get out of the Whistler bubble for a bit and ride a new park.

WVSC crew, stoked! FLTR Ali, Darcy, Sam, Me and Marlee

Going into this contest I had one trick in mind that I was determined to learn, the switch back 900. I was close to landing it at the last stop and I knew I would have to if I wanted to have a chance at the podium.

After spending a night at a dodgy motel in Kamloops, we rolled up to Sun Peaks to find a really fun, long course. The jumps were built a lot different (flat takeoffs instead of kick) from Whistler's so it was nice to have a full day of practice to get a feel for them. I was close to landing a couple s/b 900s but they weren't that clean...yet.

Darcy killing it as per usual

The format for the contest was best of 2 runs, top 10 make finals then best of 2 run finals. I stomped my first run really clean on the jumps and qualified 4th with my safety run of back 5, switch back 5, front 7! In the finals I let it all hang out! I went for the switch back 9 and stomped it first run. It was a six hit course and I sketched out of a few of the features so I knew I could clean up my run for my second run. On that one, I was killing it! I nailed it on all the rails and went huge on my back 5. I stomped my switch back 900 and had one jump left. I went for a front 7 but spun it weird with a new grab I was trying. I came around and fell on the landing. I was so frustrated but at the same time I was really happy with my progress, and lets be honest - its all about the progress. So for those of you that have no idea what a s/b 9 is... think takeoff backwards and do 2.5 rotations - its just the best trick I've ever landed yet.


Me getting some switch backside air time

Ali showed everyone whats up with a huge backside 3 that won her best trick! She also placed 2nd in Pro Women, way to go!

Best Slopestyle Run Ever & 5th Place = Awwww Yeahhhh!!

2011-03-01T17:22:00.000-08:00

Hello!

Last weekend I kicked off my competitive season with the YouLookGood Riders Cup Slopestyle Contest at Mount Seymour. This is Canada's pre-eminent slopestyle series with 4 stops across Canada. As I mentioned in my last post, I suffered an injury earlier this season where I broke my 5th metacarpal snowboarding back home. After a successful surgery and rehab, I'm back to my old tricks (yeah, pun intended!) and feeling really solid with my riding!

I had an awesome training day on the course the day before the contest. I landed THE BEST slopestyle run I've EVER done! I did switch (riding backwards) frontside boardslide 270 out, switch frontside 7, switch backside 7. I realize you probably have no idea what that means so you'll have to trust me that its a really technical, solid combination. On competition day my back was feeling really sore from riding hard the day before. I was able to push through it and put down a nice clean first run. After that I knew I had to step it up to make the podium so I went for a switch backside 900, a trick I've never landed before but would have put me in contention for the podium. I wasn't able to land one clean but I came really close, I'm sure I can learn that with a little practice before my next competition at Sun Peaks in a week and a half.

My first run was good enough for 5th place out of 27 athletes in the Pro category! Not a bad way to kick off the competitive season, which gets really heavy in March/April. I'm so excited to be back competing, it feels so good to land a run under pressure. I can't wait for the next stop of the tour at Sunpeaks!

- Andrew

I get knocked down but I get up again!

2011-02-24T12:09:00.000-08:00

Hey how's it going?

It's been a while since I've updated this bad boy of a blog. The main reason being that I could only type with one hand for 5 weeks... I broke my 5th metacarpal bone on my left hand in a snowboard fall while I was home for the holidays. That was a bit of a snag in the wicked start to my season.

In snowboarding you will get knocked down. Injuries are inevitable. Todd Richards wrote in his book 'it isn't a matter of if you'll get injured, it's a matter of when and how bad.' You've got to take the good with the bad and play the hand you get and all the other cliches out there but its true. You can't stress out when your body needs a break, you just have to roll with it. That's exactly what I did while I was injured and now I'm back up again and feel better than ever! Now I'm back feeling good and getting ready for my first competition, YouLookGood Slopestyle, this Saturday at Mount Seymour. So stoked for that! Before you keep reading, press play below for the theme song for this post!

Tubthumping by sweettart

To switch things up from what can end up being me boring the glasses off of readers, I've done up a timeline since my injury.

• December 27th: Hard fall hitting a rail feature in Yellowknife ends up with broken hand.

• January 4th: A week after my break my bone didn't settle properly. I find out that I need my first surgery ever. This sucks but I know it will help it heal faster and stronger.

• January 10th: I had surgery in Vancouver. They gave me a local anesthetic completely freezing my arm. After some sedative I fell asleep during surgery and woke up to them putting 3 screws into my hand. It was weird but I was surprisingly mellow about it. Those drugs are stong! The staff at St. Pauls hospital were really nice, Dr. Wells nailed it (or should I say screwed it? ha) with the surgery.

• January 10th - Feb 2nd: No boarding for 3 more weeks after surgery - I kept busy by reading lots of books (Climbing From the Wreckage by Gwynne Dyer is awesome); lots of small workouts; learning about investing and of course hanging out with friends.

• Feb 2: Bone healed - I had to bus back to Vancouver for a follow up. It was a long day but when Dr. Wells said my bone was healed and I was good to go back to snowboarding it was well worth the trip. I felt so good! Now back to some mellow riding and hand rehab begins.

• Feb 10th: Hand has about 90% of motion back and feels solid. That means back to boarding hard!

• Feb 12 - 18th: Whistler gets 2 meters of snow in one week. Epic powder riding!

With so much snow, I couldn't see outside my window until the maintenance guys did this!

• Feb 20: At this point I'm back to doing everything in the gym and doing yoga. I'm stoked! Check pics bellow of workout with Kyle

• Feb 23rd: Awesome day in the park! I'm back hitting big jumps/rails in the park and it feels awesome. Time to get back my old tricks and learn new ones.

I just picked up a new training log and I'll end this post with the quote from the front.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act but a habit. - Aristotle.

Boom!

- A

Whistler Video

2011-02-07T15:30:00.000-08:00

Wow this video is cool! If you've never been to Whistler, tell me this doesn't make you want to come see what its all about! I'm so lucky to live and ride here for the winters.

Whistler Blackcomb XXS from Whistler Blackcomb on Vimeo.

Double Frontflip Video

2011-01-09T12:29:00.000-08:00

I've wanted to try this for a while now.

I'm pretty stoked to finally have a double flip under my belt.

Double cork 1080 coming soon??

Colorado Video!

2010-12-31T09:13:00.000-08:00

As promised here's the video from our Colorado/Copper Camp!

Copper Camp Part 2

2010-12-14T18:04:00.000-08:00

Hey there,

The second half of the camp went by in a flash. My days riding the pipe were limited with the start of the Grand Prix training so I made the most of every day I went up. On my last day training, I had a really good session hiking the pipe getting some tricks back. I love sessions like that, it's all about me pushing my limits and progressing. I get in the zone and visualize my trick as I'm hiking up. I've been working on my body awareness. On this day, I started off with a trick that has been a struggle for me in the past: the back 5. After I was landing them consistently I decided to move onto the switch frontside (AKA cab) 5. I was getting them around pretty well and this was a good start for the season.

The pipe got super busy as the trip went on. This crowd is all waiting to drop in.

In addition to pipe riding, I also practiced jumps one day at Breckenridge and jibbing one day at Keystone. I met up with my buddy Robby at Breck and we jumped for about 4 hours straight. It was sick to get some tricks back on the jumps, I was pretty rusty! The next day I felt like I had been running a marathon and then been hit by a bus at the finish line. If anyone thinks snowboarding is an easy sport, they are seriously misguided. Once I had recovered, Kyle and I bused over to Keystone (1.5 hours) to check out their park. For that early in the season, heck even for mid winter, their park is amazing! They had 4 different jump lines, from beginner to 'oh my god!' big as well as tons of fun rails and boxes to jib. Solid day.

Kyle and I at Keystone

And Again

I also took advantage of the Grand Prix competition to see what the big guns in snowboarding are throwing down in the halfpipe. Unfortunately, no Canadian men made it to the top 16 finals but Sarah Conrad squeaked in on the female side and ended up in 8th place. The finals were unreal! Everyone in it was amazing, the guy that qualified in 16th dropped in and did a perfect 1260 about 10 feet out - and it only got better from there. Yah I know, ridiculous right! Double corks were the hot trick that the top guys were doing. Louie Vito took the title with back to back double corks and solid riding. It was super good for us to watch the contest to see where we need to be in order to compete at this level.

Some of the world's best snowboarders getting ready to drop at the Grand Prix

I'm still waiting on some footage from Joe to complete my video edit from the trip - stay tuned for that.

I had to put this in... Joe about to chow down on his birthday desert! Look at those hearts.

Overall that was one awesome trip. We were able to rip the halfpipe before anyone riding in Canada or most world for that matter. It was a great way to kickstart our season and set the tone for the year. I learned a lot and I'm stoked for what the season has in store. Now I'm glad to be back in Canada and Whistler for a bit before I head home for a quick trip over the holidays to Yellowknife.

Sunset from the plane window

Peace,

A M

Copper Camp Part 1

2010-12-04T16:38:00.000-08:00

Greetings!

After talking to some of our friends who were in Colorado last year, Kyle and I made the call change and extend our planned dates. I was originally going to come down after the Grand Prix for about 10 days to ride the amazing halfpipe but we found out that there is another contest after the Grand Prix with only 2 spots for Canadians. Instead we decided to come down on November 24th, hoping that they would have a halfpipe up at that time of year. They usually have the first one in North America but early season is always a bit of a gamble with snow conditions. Its really cool that our club WVSC was cool with the trip, Joe for coming for so long and Rob for allowing the head coach to be out of Whistler for so long. I like to thank Northern Canada Ventures Corporation for their sponsorship which has made this camp possible for me!

Copper Mountain Sign - Kyle's photo

When we arrived at Copper Mountain, we saw that they were cutting the halfpipe, a great sign that it would be done soon. Little did we know that our timing could not have been better and the pipe was ready for our first day on snow! Its been great to get the feeling of riding halfpipe again. I have some awesome new equipment this year thanks to a very kind contribution from Overlander Sports. My new board (the Burton Vapor) feels amazing in the halfpipe. I've been feeling pretty confident riding for this early in the season, despite some aches & pains from the body as it isn't used to riding this much anymore. I've been learning a lot more on this trip about tuning my board. I might do a 'How To: tune your board' video on the blog pretty soon.

Laser precision shaped halfpipe! - KT photo

Fixing the edge

Our place has a sweet waxing station underground

Sunny day, nice halfipe, you know we're pumped!

We arrived in the States just in time for American Thanksgiving. It's always tough to organize international trip when you aren't allowed to bring food along. To make things a little more confusing, we decided to go green and save money by not renting a car for this trip. After our first day on hill, we were supposed to go grocery shopping but we were already starving when we saw this 'Thanksgiving Special' sign. Full turkey dinner for under $20, SOLD! When in Rome right? Turkey dinner is too good to pass up, just listen to KABA!

I'm loving it, Joe wishing he didn't eat so much

Who knew? My boot strap doubles as a mustache!

The following day was Black Friday. Once again, we had to experience this American event so we bused it to the Outlet Stores in Silverthorn. It was definitely not as crazy as I thought it might be but there were some mad deals! How mad? Well I better not say... I may have bought some Christmas presents of some people that may read this.

Loungin in Copper Village!

This year was my first year that could have competed in the Grand Prix - a huge contest circuit in the States that's used to pick to American Olympic Freestyle Team. After talking it over with my coach, we decided that it would actually be better for me to just focus on training right now so that I can make some serious progress this year without needing to worry about competing this early in the season. It was a tough call because I've wanted to compete in a Grand Prix for a while but I'm sure the decision with pay off later this year and next year when I will have a run that will be able to compete at that level. I decided to stay to watch the Grand Prix next week. So I will be here for just over another week. I'm planning on riding Breckenridge or Keystone next week which have amazing snowboard parks!

Joe's been taking a bunch of video and I've also been taking some with my new GoPro. I'll try to get some up here soon! Until then take it easy,

A

FSC Architects & Engineers steps up sponsorship to Crystal Globe!

2010-11-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

FSC Architects & Engineers continue to amaze me! For the third year in a row they have sponsored me at my highest level to help ensure that I have adequate funding to follow my training schedule for the year. When I added the Crystal Globe level to my sponsorship package this year I wasn't sure if anyone would even consider sponsoring me to that extend - however, this level of support is now crucial for me to progress in my athletic career as the costs of training and traveling continue to escalate. I'm very thankful to have the amazing support of community leaders like FSC to help me achieve my goals!

Me standing with FSC partners Kevin Hodgins, Jerry Jaud and Warren McLeod

To view the official press release regarding the sponsorship go to the Sport North website. Here it is below:

News Release

FSC Architects & Engineers Announce Top Level Sponsorship for High Performance Snowboarder Andrew Matthews

November 22, 2010 - FSC Architects & Engineers have announced that they will continue to support Andrew Matthews in his high performance athletic training again this year, increasing their sponsorship to his new ‘Crystal Globe’ level. The new sponsorship will allow Matthews to continue to pursue excellence in his sport. It will allow him to participate in training camps and competitions that would have otherwise been too expensive for him to cover.

“When I added the Crystal Globe level to my sponsorship proposal this year, I wasn’t sure if anyone would even consider supporting me to that extent,” acknowledged Matthews. “FSC continues to amaze me with how supportive they are of high performance sport in the North. This funding will make a huge difference in allowing me to train and compete at the elite level that I need to in order to make it to the next step of my athletic career. When Warren told me that FSC was going to step up to the Crystal Globe level I was at a loss for words, so I just gave him a hug. Crystal Globes are very prestigious awards presented to athletes that are on the very top of their game and win the annual World Cup Tour. FSC continues to lead the community in high performance sponsorship and they are definitely on top of their game!”

Warren McLeod, a principal at FSC said that the company feels strongly about supporting high performance sport in the North, “FSC believes that supporting highly visible athletes from the North encourages the development of healthy communities by inspiring other youth to follow in their footsteps. Andrew has and will continue to be a positive role model for all Northerners and we are more than happy to help him as he pursues his dreams.”

Andrew has recently moved into the Whistler Athlete Village, which will be his base for training this winter, and started back on snow training. He heads to Copper Mountain, Colorado this Wednesday, November 24^th, for some early season halfpipe training. This will give him a competitive edge over many Canadian riders who won’t be able to train in a halfpipe until late December.

Matthews’ first major competition is the Burton Canadian Open Global Series which will be the first week of February. He is hoping on improving on his last year’s performance where he made it to the qualifying round in slopestyle. “I’ve set some high goals this year, and for the next four years,” explains Matthews. “With the help of community leaders like FSC, I believe I have what it takes to achieve these goals.”

For more information visit:

www.andrewmatthews.ca

www.andrewsnowboarding.blogspot.com

www.fsc.ca; or contact:

NWT Boardsport Association Warren McLeod, P. Eng., Principal

(867) 920‐2997 (867) 920‐2882

Exploring, Adventures and Snowboarding!

2010-11-21T12:10:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned on Friday, Whistler mountain opened!! It's been a long wait over the summer but really... why wait? Since I arrived in BC I've been super busy exploring, getting settled into my new place and going on adventures. There is so much to do in BC! Kyle Thomas (my new roomate who's been my good friend and training buddy since I met him riding in my first snowboard club 6 years ago) and I decided to take advantage of the short time we had before the hill opened to head out to Tofino for a surfing trip.

Heading out on the Ferry

November in Tofino is cold, I have to get the photo without the hood though!

On our second day in Tofino we were exploring a trail to South Beach in the Pacific Rim National Park. We were out on the beach trying to find a way to get onto this big rock by the ocean, little did we know that a black bear cub was hanging out on the same beach. We were so oblivious until we got within 20 feet of the bear and Kyle mentioned something along the lines of "Hey I think that's a bear." I look up and my heart starts racing. My immediate thought was to get as far from the cub as quick as possible in case we were between the Mom and her cub. Kyle had to remind me that running probably wasn't the best thing to do (I'm probably faster than him so it would have been fine for me, haha). Once we got far enough away we watched the cub for a bit with no sign of Mom before heading down the trail. Further down on another beach we almost ran into more wildlife, this time a beached seal. I've never seen a live seal before so it was cool but I felt bad for the guy, he wasn't moving much.

Such a cool bridge!

The other 2 days we spent surfing. I've started to really, really like surfing. It's a similar feeling to floating over powder on your snowboard (which is one of the best feelings). On the first day I met up with some good friends from Yellowknife - Kelsey, Josh & Danielle for a fun surf session. Josh and Dani had to catch a bus so they only got a taste of the surfing but it was great to see them nonetheless.

I should really start reading signs...

I'm going surfing!

Getting the picture like a true tourist

Hello black bear! You can see our tracks on the bottom right. Scary!

Poor seal :(

Kyle checking out the rain forest

Kyle's ride!

These photos are from a hike we did just down the highway from our new place. You don't have to go far to see some pretty spectacular nature in Whistler.

We want you!...to be as goofy as us!

Freestyle hiking

Ali & me

The new pad, in the Athlete's Village. Couldn't ask for a better place

Opening Day on Whistler would not be complete without a super early morning, followed by huge lines of skiers and boarders eager to get back on snow. Every in Whistler was in a great mood after getting their fix of snow in for the day. We had a blast riding some fresh snow, jumping off every little bump and even riding the mini snowboard park they have set up.

Me, Kyle and Chase - stoked on our first day!

Fresh track are awesome!

Yeah Snowboarding!!!

Chase Harley's Edit

2010-11-19T20:07:00.000-08:00

Today was opening day for the winter on Whistler! Early morning, long lineups, burning legs - so much fun!! More on that later but first: I met up with my buddy Chase today for some laps and he mentioned this snowboard edit that he made of my friends and I from last season. He has some serious skills in the editing and filming departments. I was pumped on it, check out this video!

Dryland Training Video

2010-11-08T21:15:00.000-08:00

In the past couple months I've been in YK pushing it with my training. Here's a video of one of my recent training sessions, getting creative at the YK Racquet Club. I've been able to balance on these balls for a while and I've been thinking about trying this since I read about a bmx rider doing it.

Now it's one of the most exciting times of the year for me. I just moved into the Athlete Village in Whistler. I've already met a bunch of my neighbors, one of which is Thomsen d'Hont, among lots of other high performance athletes. It's going to be awesome living here this year! There is tons of snow on the mountain and there have been rumours that it might open next week. Awww yeahhhh!!!

TC Group of Companies Continue Support for 3rd year!

2010-11-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that TC Group of Companies will be sponsoring me for the third year in a row at the Gold Level! TC continues to play a huge roll in allowing me to pursue my dreams. I'm very excited that they are continuing to sponsor me and give me the best chance of achieving my goals. True to their slogan, they are allowing me to 'Build for the Future'. I look forward to representing them throughout the year.

I would also like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Tony and Elaine for their continuous support!

TC Group of Companies, whose principals are Tony Chang and Elaine MacDonald-
Grundy, is a diverse real estate organization with residential and commercial properties
across Canada. For more information, please visit TC Group's website: www.tcent.ca.

Get Stoked!

2010-10-15T17:07:00.000-07:00

Days are getting shorter, the air's getting colder, its beginning to look a lot like... snowboarding time! In Yellowknife it's pretty much winter already, shred season started yesterday! At this time of year, all the new shred flicks come out and get us stoked for the year. Here's a teaser of a ski & snowboard video that I have a couple shots in to give you a taste.

Inspirational Athletes

2010-09-27T17:04:00.000-07:00

Clara Hughes is amazing. Her list of accomplishments could easily fill this page. One that stands out for me is that she's one of few athletes in the world to ever medal in both summer and winter Olympics! Amazing, I know! She's very passionate about promoting sports for kids and donated $10,000 to Right To Play after winning gold at the 2006 Winter Olympics in the 5000 m. I was fortunate enough to meet her at the Champions for Children Dinner. She spoke passionately about how proud she is to be Canadian and how sport really changed her life. Very cool. It just goes to show that you can achieve anything if you set your mind to it.

I would like to say Thank You to Sport North for putting on such an amazing event. They brought up Clara, along with 2 other Olympians up to help raise money to allow kids to participate in sports.

Clara & I, look at the ton of medals she has!

On another note, my good friend Mike Gilday just qualified for the World Cup Circuit in Short Track Speedskating. He's killing it this season and I'm really stoked for him. Check his blog here: http://mgilday.blogspot.com/. Congrats man!

As for myself, I'm getting ready for when the mountains turn white. I'm back home in Yellowknife now for a while. I've been planning out my season and there is so much cool stuff going on, I can't wait! I'm currently working on my sponsorship proposal to help me fund my upcoming season. I'm lucky that the NWT community has been very supportive of my athletic career. If you, or someone you know, are interested in supporting me please contact me via email: andrewmatthews4@gmail.com.

Here are some photos from a recent workout at Body Works. Francis Chang has recently sold the original gym in Yellowknife. After so many years it's still a great place to workout! Thanks Francis for your support over the years!

I remember one time I was doing this one time with a few girls around and I slammed on the hard wood!

After meeting with my physiotherapist Andree on my recent trip to BC, I have a bunch of new core X exercises.

That's all for now folks!

Andrew

Wakeskating!

2010-09-19T11:25:00.000-07:00

Howdy!

I've been meaning to update my blog for a while now. There's a lot of things I want to post about so instead of doing one massive post, I'm going to do a few shorter ones here with lots of photos.

Here are some pictures from a wakeskating (like wakeboarding but your feet are not attached to the board) session (possibly the last of the year??) with my family a little while ago. Wakeskating takes a lot of balance and board control, its also a blast!

Wetsuit weather is officially here in YK

Bryana, smiling her entire run :)

Practicing my switch front boards for winter

Face plant!

Front board(slide)

- A M

Mountain Bike Madness Camp!

2010-08-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

The month of July was one of the busiest months of my life. Most of my time went into organizing and instructing at my camp: Mountain Bike Madness (MBM) Camp. It was my 5th summer running the camp since Thomsen d'Hont and I started it. This was definitely one of the best summers on record for the camp. We had nice weather, great kids and tons of fun! Some of the highlights this year were weekly photo scavenger hunts, playing 'bike', exploring new trails and having my birthday party on the last day of camp. The kids made me 8 cakes and deserts!

For more info about the camp check out our website: www.mountainbikemadnesscamp.com.

MBM Camp!

Daniel: Leading the pack on the Rat Lake trail

Group in air: 5 points!

Me showing Thomas how to clean his chain

Look at those shirts!!

- Andy

Robjn Taylor films

2010-08-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

Who is Robjn Taylor? Well he is an amazing snowboarder. You can find him lapping through the Black Park on pretty much any day from December to May, stomping tricks you could only think of attempting in Amp 3 with his signature Robjn style. He also helps out coaching for WVSC on the weekends and has taught me a lot over the past few years. Mostly how to have a great time on a board with your friends. And that, is one of the best lessons of all.

In addition to snowboarding, he is equally passionate and talented at Film Making. He has won the prestigious World Ski & Snowboard Festival 72 Hour Filmmaker Showdown 3 times now! He has also made several intros to snowboard videos that are definitely the most original and entertaining out of all the snowboard videos.

Here are some of his entries for the 72 Hour Showdown, the top one is his latest creation. Enjoy!

Firetruck Earrings. from robjn taylor on Vimeo.

- A M

Athlete of the Year?!

2010-06-28T20:31:00.000-07:00

OK, so this might be old news to some people but I haven't got around to blogging about it yet so here it is: This spring, I was awarded the Sport North NWT Senior Male Athlete of the Year Award! This is a huge honour for me to be considered one of the top athletes in the NWT. At the banquet I was very impressed with the accomplishments of all the other athletes. It's so difficult to compete with the rest of the country when you come from the north. Congratulations to everyone else that won awards. Keep it up!

I would like to again thank my parents, family, and sponsors for their support. They are the ones that continue to make it possible for me to pursue my dreams. I am very grateful to have them in my corner. Thank you!

Me accepting the award from First Air's Kim Poulter

I was more nervous for this speech than I was before the World Cup. Public speaking takes guts! Snowboard video playing in the background at the Elks Hall.

Weledeh MLA Bob Bromely and I posing for a photo. Thank you for nominating me Bob!

I'll end this post with an awesome quote I found:

"The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible."
-Arthur C. Clarke

I couldn't have said it any better than that,

Andy Matt

Nelson Languedoc's skateboard video

2010-06-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

One of my roomates in the WVSC House spent a couple weeks making this skateboarding video at the Squamish skatepark. It's so cool what you can do with the right equipment. When you watch the video keep in mind that Nelson is still in high school. Nice work buddy!

48 Music Video Entry!

2010-06-16T20:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I took on the challenge of making a music video for the Western Arctic Moving Pictures 48 Hour Music Video Contest. We were assigned a local band at noon on Saturday to make the video of. It was a lot of fun making the video. I've mostly filmed and edited snowboard videos so this took a lot of thinking outside the box for me. Sleep is a hard thing to come by when you're on such a tight deadline. 2 days later and I still feel like a zombie! I'll add the winning videos if/when I see them on youtube, they're wicked!

Erebus & Terror - Pretty Big Storm from Andrew Matthews on Vimeo.

- Andy

Mattafix - leading by example

2010-06-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

I came across this music group recently that I'm really stoked on. I heard 2 of their hits on separate occasions and instantly fell in love with those songs without having any idea who the band was. Once I figure out that it was Mattafix, I checked out their myspace page to see what they're all about. I was stoked to see that their video 'Living Darfur' was filmed in a warzone in Chad, bordering Darfur, to raise awareness of the suffering of the people in the region. All artist royalties from this song will be donated to Oxfam, Crisis Action and the Save Darfur Coalition I have tons of respect for a group (or person) that uses their public profile to help put solve an issue such as this one. I hope that other artists take note of what Mattafix is doing and follow their example!

Living Darfur from Maroon Missionaries on Vimeo.

- A M

Photo Post

2010-05-24T14:22:00.000-07:00

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well according to my calculations, this post has at least 12,000 words. Better pull out those reading glasses and get to it!Tube slide - Picture by Brendan Matthews

Stalefish grab at the Grenade Games - Brendan Photo

Loggin some airtime at the Grenade Games

I went for an epic hike in Squamish before I left BC. If you're ever around that neck of the woods, definitely hike the Chief. The first half of the hike is walking up past a waterfall and the view from the top is spectacular!

I had to do some yoga once we reached the top.

Thank you Judy at Taiga Yoga for helping me learn these poses and many more. If you are in Yellowknife, definitely check out the studio. It's so good!

Taking in the view of Squamish

Beauty panoramized

Jon going in for a closer look at the waterfalls

Back in Yellowknife, I put a snowboard movie in the ESJF film festival so we obviously had to dress up for the premier. Damn, those are some classy athletes! Michael Gilday, myself and Thomsen d'Hont

Nature is just plain awesome. A little change of scenery from my previous hike but this one was also really nice.

Bry, Lindsey, Jared and I taking it all in
Cameron Falls, no words required

- Andy

1 hit

2010-05-03T22:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a shot from the photo shoot with Mark Gribbon & Rob a couple days ago. Thanks for getting us to hit the kickiest jump ever! It was a really fun session. Thanks Mark for coming out! Check out his work on his website here.

Andrew 1Hit from Hagfish Productions on Vimeo.

Spring Adventures

2010-05-01T09:42:00.000-07:00

Spring time in Whistler is an awesome time. The weather gets warm, the snow softens up, the lakes are good to go (by Yellowknife standards) and everyone is in high spirits. I've been busy enjoying some of this weather on some adventures. Read on my friends, read on.

We decided to get out of the Whistler bubble for a couple days and adventure down to Vancouver. Nick, Kyle, Ettore and I had one mission - skim board in April. Other than that we just went with the flow and enjoyed a change in scenery. We checked out Stanley Park and decided to play a round of pitch-and-putt in Stanley Park. That night we ended up getting the last few tickets to see Miike Snow at the Commore Ballroom. It was amazing! The next day we braved the water and accomplished our mission. We earned a lot of funny looks from people walking by us on the beach. I followed that up with the coldest outdoor shower of my life. Good fun!

My attempt at a pop shuvit!

Nick getting ready to rip

Four!

Da boyz climbin treez

From mountain to ocean, how spoiled are we? Life is amazing.

A couple of weeks ago the Club (WVSC) decided to head up the backcountry to experience what the hype is all about. We rented a bunch of sleds from Blackcomb Snowmobile, put 2 (sometimes 3 people) on each and took off up the trail. The entire day was amazing! We did a bunch of snowboard laps up top in the spring slush. We built a couple jumps and started a session. Ettore was considering the infamous double backflip but stuck to a single backy; Ali stomped a back 3; and Aaron landed a sick tree tap! Check out the edit that Chase Harley made below.

The group getting ready for an adventure
Me on the 4 stroke 'robot'

Episode 10 from Hagfish Productions on Vimeo.

Check out these my friends Chase and Nelson's website www.thehagfishclan.wordpress.com for more cool videos and an awesome blog about random stuff.

More exciting stuff coming soon!

A M

Grenade Games

2010-04-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

Grenade Games were awesome again this year! Congrats to Jordan, Kyle and Justin for 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the Superpipe. These guys were killing it! Check out video below.

Grenade Games 6 - Day 4 - Superpipe from monster canada on Vimeo.

- Andy

Video from Quebec

2010-04-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

Here's some video from my trip! The snowboarding shots are of me unless it says otherwise. Enjoy!

Andy

Shakedown Videos

2010-04-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

Check out these videos of the Shakedown!

Also, I found out that my roomate/friend that
rides in my club WVSC/Rafiki Aaron Santos
also has a sweet blog. Check it out here:
http://www.aarondevourseverything.blogspot.com/

We're still waiting for Ali Tracy to start a blog...

Until then, ride fast and take chances!

-A

Un Voyage Magnifique!

2010-04-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

It has been a while and a lot has happened since the Olympics. Mainly, I've been gearing up for this crazy trip. To give you a little foreshadowing of what to expect from this post, I competed in 4 of my biggest contests of the year, rode at 3 different resorts, stayed in 4 different places, practiced my french and ate some delicious Quebecois food. Need I say more? Well that pretty much sums it up, I'll now go into further detail but feel free to scroll past that and just check out the photos.

The National Champions are a pretty big deal to me. I've been competing in them since I was 16 years old and I always enjoy seeing how I compare to the rest of the country in freestyle riding. Canada~Snowboard decided to split it into two resorts this year, Halfpipe was at Stoneham while Slopestyle (and all the racing) was at Mont Tremblant.

We arrived to Stoneham and found that the Halfpipe was in pretty awesome shape. It's a 22 foot pipe (the same dimensions as the Olympic pipe), which are really fun to ride in. There are only 2 in Canada now because unfortunately Cypress Mountain has no interest in keeping their amazing Halfpipe going now that the Olympics are over. That's a shame because Canada needs more good pipes to produce good pipe riders - but this post is supposed to be about my trip so I'll try to stay somewhat on topic. Back to Stoneham, right! Our first day of training was awesome. I ended the day by landing the best frontside 7 of my life (so far). My coach, Joe, has video from the trip that I hope to get soon and I want to post some here.

The following day was the last day of practice before the competition and my back was bothering me a bit. I decided to take it mellow and save my back for the competition. I've been dealing with my lower back injury on and off since January. I've been going to lots of physio and chiro appointments leading up to the trip to make sure that I would be good to go. Thankfully, this would be the worst my back would be during the trip.

I felt good on the day of the contest. I was trying the toughest run I've ever tried, starting with a frontside 7. I landed that trick really well on both runs but was not able to put a complete run together. I ended up coming up just short of making the top 12 final, placing 14th. This is the best I've ever done at the Nationals, however I still feel like I need some more training before I will feel like I deserve to be in the finals with the best in Canada. I'm stoked for spring pipe riding where it is a lot easier to learn tricks.

OK this post is getting huge. That was only 1/4 of the trip! We also spent a day in downtown Montreal. Check out the photos below.

Kyle and I, first and second cut for finals, it stings but we learned a lot and had fun

Look how straight and perfect looking the left wall was.

Oh that's where I parked my car!

Cobblestone street in Old Montreal

This art is amazing!

Joe and I in downtown Montreal

After that we were off to the Slopestyle Nationals at Mont Tremblant. I'll try to keep the rest of the post shorter. I was feeling pretty good on the jumps and rails. I had a nice flow in my run and would have made finals if I can landed it clean. Unfortunately though I went too big on my last jump on the first run and then over rotated a 540 in my second run. My buddy Robby came third, he's killing it this year!

To finish of our epic journey, we drove down the road to St. Sauveur for the infamous Ride Shakedown (previously the Empire Shakedown). This is the biggest, most competitive event in Canada. It attracts professionals from across the country and around the world. It was amazing to compete in this contest. They usually have a massive jump and a gnarly street rail setup. Kyle and I held our own, landing 720s on our first run but both of us messed up on the rail. In this contest you have to call your trick beforehand and you cannot repeat the same trick twice so I decided to go for my first frontside 1080. I was close in my practice run but I spun too slowly on my judged run. I competed in the rail jam after that which was so much fun. I'll try to put the video up once I get it because that is way cooler than me trying to explain it.

Yah right! The jump had people skiing under us as we jumped!

This is the scene from the top of the course during the finals. Massive crowd!

Well if that wasn't a post, I don't know what is! Video coming soon.

Thanks for stopping by,

Andy

Olympic Fever!

2010-03-02T20:37:00.000-08:00

The past couple weeks have been absolutely unreal. I have always been a huge fan of the Olympics; To be immersed amongst the magic and madness was unbelievable. It was amazing to see so many people proud to be Canadian.

This video is from the Opening Ceremonies at the Village Square when the Canadian athletes walked in. It was an amazing environment and it really got me pumped on being a part of the Olympics. Mike Janyk, a local ski racer that competed in the games, spoke at the ceremonies. He was so stoked to be there representing Canada. Awesome!

No wonder why we won gold, look at our hockey players!

I was so lucky to have the chance to watch the Canada Switzerland game with my family. The arena was nuts!! We couldn't believe that it went into a shootout but it was so much fun to see.

There were free concerts every day during the Olympics in Whistler. This is Matisyahu, he played a great show. Check him out here.

This was the massive crowd that came together for the hockey finals. What a riot! The place went nuts when Crosby scored in Overtime. I'll never forget that day or that game.

I could write a short novel about how amazing the Olympics were but I think I'll try to keep it short and sweet. I was inspired and proud so many times throughout the Games with the performances put forth by the Canadian athletes. Congratulations to all of the athletes. I was so happy to see Jasey Jay Anderson take it home in the giant slalom, Maelle Ricker win the boardercross as well as Mike Robertson take home the silver medal. All of them were riding so well it was fun to watch.

It was incredible that we won so many gold medals too; the Own the Podium funding did pay off after all (the negative talk during the first week). Elite athletes need top funding to support them in order to have a chance at standing on the podium in the Olympics and World Cup events. I read that 80 percent of Canadian Olympic athletes are left in debt after the Games. This goes to show that money isn't everything, these guys are doing it for the love of their sport. Nevertheless, I hope that our country continues to strongly support our athletes in the future so that we can keep the ball rolling with strong sport programs in Canada and give kids something to strive for. Go Canada Go!

See you in Russia!

World Cup Motivation

2010-02-07T15:29:00.001-08:00

Cab 540 tail grab, B Ma photo

The last couple of weeks have been pretty intense. I competed in my first ever World Cup in slopestyle followed just after by the Burton Open Global Series stop in Canada where I competed in both halfpipe and slopestyle. The level of riding at these competitions was the highest I've ever competed against. At this stage in my season and career, I'm focusing my efforts on improving my riding and skills, rather than trying to win at contests. I need more practice with bigger, more difficult tricks before I can step up to this level of riding. I feel good about the progress I've made so far this year; I'm excited to get back to Whistler to keep at it and have a great time while pushing myself to new limits.

Gap 270, B Ma photo

These contests served as a huge wake up call for me to really start to giver with my riding. It was pretty humbling not making it to finals in any event over the last couple of weeks but it was also very motivating; I'm now focused on improving as much as I can before my next big competition. It sucks not making finals. That being said, I was happy with my riding in the competitions. I was riding better in my competition runs than I was in practice; Nothing like a little pressure to get the adrenaline pumping! I landed some new tricks and figured out how to improve on some others. I also learned a lot from watching some of the worlds top riders killing it, double corks!

Switch Backside 540, B Ma photo

My brother (B Ma) happened to be in Calgary running a training camp for some Arctic Winter Games hopeful kids from the NWT during the World Cup. I was able to do a few laps with them and reconnect with where I started, pretty similar to them. They were really excited to have a chairlift and some nice jumps to ride. Good luck to those boys and all the NWT riders in the upcoming Games! Brendan took some cool photos of me competing in the World Cup (above). Thanks bro!

My friend and Westbeach team rider Robby Balharry placed third at the Burton Open Slopestyle, beating out sick pros like (Air and Style Winner) Marko Grilic. It's pretty huge for an amateur rider to podium at a prestigious event like the Open. Way to rip Robby!

- A M

World Cup Spot Clinched!

2010-01-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

It came down to the last minute for me to even compete in the Calgary NorAm. I suffered a back injury the week before the contest while riding the pipe. It seized up and I was in rough shape. My focus suddenly changed to doing everything I could in order to get my back better. In the course of a week I attended 3 physio appointments as well as 3 chiro appointments. I was improving every day but it wasn't fast enough for the start of the competitions. There was a halfpipe competition on Friday and one on Saturday followed by a slopestyle on Sunday.

On Friday I made the tough call to drop out of the halfpipe contests. It was more important for me to get my back healthy for the rest of the season. The following day, I felt well enough to ride and tried a few jumps on the slopestyle. I was able to compete in the slopestyle the next day and felt great. This scenario reminded of my experience at the Canada Winter Games a couple years ago when I competed with a knee injury, completely cold turkey and placed 5th. That is one of my most memorable athletic achievements to this day.

So here I am, standing at the top of the course, headphones blaring in my ears, bindings done up tight, trying to breath and relax while getting stoked at the same time. The starter radios in "Andrew Matthews, dropping in switch" and gives me the go ahead. I land my switch back (s/b) 5 really well and remember thinking 'Andrew, that was one of the best s/b 5s you've ever done, you better land this run!' I then line of for my front 7 mute. I spot my landing and, oh no, I'm still flying through the air. I send it deep but stomp. A few seconds later I'm sending a backside 5 and it's the same thing: there was the landing, there goes the landing. 'This is going to be really good or really bad,' I think to myself. Boom! I land clean. Then before I know it I'm in the rail section but I wasn't able to set up for the right side because I went so deep. I improvise and just get through the course.

That run got me through to finals where I only needed to land a run in order to make the upcoming World Cup (again in Calgary) as 9 out of 10 riders in finals made it. On my first run, I was shaky but stayed on my feet. On my second run (best run of 2 format), I did the best front 7 of my life, double grab mute and stalefish. Unfortunately I went down on my next trick, a backside 7, and so too did my chances of standing on the podium that day. My first run was good enough for 7th place and a spot at the World Cup!

So I'm off to Calgary again next week for my first ever World Cup slopestyle followed by the Burton Open Global Series slopestyle and halfpipe. Stoked!

-N Dub

Holiday Craziness

2010-01-02T13:10:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

The holidays have been jam packed for me this year. I was home for an all to quick stay, fitting in as much as I could in the time I was back. Despite the craziness, it was amazing to be home in the winter. Some of the highlights were seeing my friends; snowmobiling; playing hockey on the lake; charades with family and friends; amazing food; and snowboarding in Yellowknife again.

My family traveled down to Whistler with me to spend New Years here. Our trip back to Whistler was pretty crazy. I made a video of it because, let's face it, that's way cooler than just reading about it.

With the Calgary triple header Noram less than 2 weeks away, I'm working my butt off to meet the goals that I've set for those contests. My goal is to land runs in the pipe with backside and frontside 5s and back to back 7s, upping the ante from last years at nationals were I was doing 3 different 5s and a 7. In slopestyle I'm also looking to step it up by landing my first 9 in a contest. These contests have a way of creeping up on you and before you know it, it's go time! I have to get my game face on pretty soon. That being said, I've been feeling really confident and stoked lately so we'll see what happens.

All the best in the New Year!

Cheers,

Andy

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-22T09:25:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday.

As for an update of what I've been up to, the last month of 2009 has been... epic? Yeah, epic pretty much sums it up - see also: legendary, grand, monumental. My coach and I decided that since the conditions are so good in Whistler, it made more sense to stay in Whistler to train rather than go to Colorado for the pipe camp/contest. Again this year, I'm focusing a lot more on my athletic/riding development than on competition results so this just seemed like the best thing to do. We have a really good program going this year, in addition to tons of on snow training, video review and photo shoots, we also have trampoline 2 nights/week and dryland with Eric Soucy one night/week.

Core training with Eric

Backflips all around! Ettore going large

Me laying one out

Louise helping Grame learn a backflip

The snow finally stopped around the start of the month and was replaced by some cold but sunny days. I've had some great days in the Black Park. I've got most of my tricks back that I was doing last year and a few new ones to add to my repertoire. I've been working with Rob on really dialing in my tricks this year. I'm trying different grabs and spins to try to stand out from the pack of talented riders that I compete against.

One of the riders in my club recently bought a new digital camera that takes really good slow motion video and we were playing around with that the other day. Check out the video edit below.

It's snowing like mad in Whistler again which made it tough to come home for the holidays. I had to change my flight to squeeze a few extra days in while the snow was awesome. As for now, I'm back home and enjoying the comforts of being home, seeing all my friends and nursing a frostbitten toe from last night's snowboarding session. I guess I'm not used to snowboarding at -20 anymore. I'm looking forward to snowboarding at some of the spots I grew up riding while I'm back so I better get used to the cold pretty quick.

Best wishes over the holidays,

Andrew

Climate Change Action Now

2009-12-05T16:47:00.001-08:00

In a winter sport like snowboarding, I am especially concerned about the impacts that are already being seen from climate change. A report by the United Nations warned that downhill skiing could dissapear from resorts as early as 2030 (source: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/Projects/PlayItCool/play_it_cool_why.asp). The most recent scientific studies outline that the world needs to reduce our greenhouse gas emmisions by 40% below 1990 levels by the year 2020 and the global peak of greenhouse gas emissions needs to occur by 2015 in order to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change. We need action now.

The largest and most important conference (on climate change) to date will be starting on Monday. The United Nations Climate Change Conference starts on December 7th and goes until December 18th. This is a chance for world leaders to make an agreement to reduce emission and provide aid to developing countries. For more information about the conference, see the official website here.

Canada is stalling to commit to anything in line with current scientific targets. In past conferences, we have had a negative impact on moving forward with climate change action. Now we have the chance to make up for that. I have already sent a letter expressing my concern to Prime Minister Harper (along with Mr. Jim Prentice, the Environmental Minister, as well as others). It is very easy to let the Prime Minister know that you care about the future of the environment and Canada's roll as a world leader in these issues. To sign and send a letter to the Prime Minister, follow this link to the David Suzuki Foundation site. It's easy!

Here's the first part of The Age Of Stupid. It's a pretty intense documentary that I saw at an event put on by Ecology North while I was back in Yellowknife. If you have time, I would recommend checking it out.

Age of Stupid: DVD: Copenhagen Kids from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

-A M

Record Snowfall!

2009-11-29T16:05:00.000-08:00

Record snowfalls in November has made this a month to remember! I've had more powder days this season, in November, than I did during all of last season. There is already a snow base of 189 cm. Can you tell that I'm happy?! The riding has been SO sweet! Last night at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, I was trying to explain to Thomsen how it feels to ride powder. It's one of the best feelings in the world; floating over the snow, flying off pillow lines, snow spraying into your face. It makes all the time I spent doing physio and dry-land training for the season worth while without a doubt.

For the first couple of weeks that the mountain was open, the only way to get up was via the Whistler gondola. This (and 50+ cm snowfalls overnight) made for HUGE lines on several occasions. Check out the the photo below and imagine about 5 times that big, basically if you weren't there an hour before the lifts were supposed to open, you were anxiously waiting in this overwhelming line for a while. Once we got up the mountain, it was well worth the wait. In a word: epic.

Brendan: waiste + deep in snow and loving it!

I've spent the past few weeks transitioning from fall dry-land training to full on winter on snow training. I've been working on my freeride skills, which REALLY help overall riding. It's going well, I'm feeling a lot more confident riding natural terrain. We've been doing some hikes in search of deeper, untouched powder. One particular hike, my Italian roommate/teammate Ettore and I did a mission from the Gondola to the top of Whistler: a solid 1.5 hour trek. Needless to say, we were stoked when we got to the top and rode the fresh powder. The pictures are below.

Halfway point on hike

All for the powder!

Right after this Ettore said something along the lines of "Oh my god! Beautiful!"

Blackcomb Mountain is now open as well, complete with a nice park. We spent the day riding it today. I got the started to rebuild my confidence for hitting rails and jumps. Time to get back into the freestyle mentality and remember how to do those tricks! They also have the snow pushed into mounds for the halfpipe, so that could be done any day now.

It's pretty exciting to be here now with all of the snow as well as the Olympics coming soon.

On another note, I finally gave in and decided to start a Twitter account. This way I can post a lot more updates a lot quicker. I put a feed from it on my blog and website. You can also follow my account if you like at: www.twitter.com/andrewsnowboard.

Tweet ya later,

Andrew

Game On!

2009-11-14T19:57:00.000-08:00

Today was opening day at Whistler, 12 days ahead of schedule! We've been getting tons of snow and they pretty much had to open it early or there would have been a riot. There already have a 100 cm base! That's more than they had until Christmas last year. It looks like this could be an amazing season if it keeps up.

This was my first opening day... ever! I've never been at a resort when it first opened and I wasn't sure what to expect. My friends told me that the lines would be crazy so we got up at 6:30 so that we would be at the lift an hour before they started spinning. With it being such an epic early season, I think everyone was stoked to get back on the mountain. The line when we arrived was "nuts" as my brother put it. It went all the way to the bus stop from the Whistler Gondola! After waiting in anticipation for a while (and the line moved from towards the bus stop to threw the village) I noticed that the line had grown so big that I couldn't even see the end of it!

Once the lifts started running we got up pretty quickly. There was a crazy energy in the air the entire day with everyone so pumped to be back on snow. I got to ride with some Yellowknifers, my brother and Joel Smith who is starting with the WVSC program for the weekends this year. Yellowknifers are always fun to ride with because we're pumped on any hill with a lift. We all had some great turns in the powder. It was a great start to a great season! Game on!

PS: Sorry that I don't have any pictures but I didn't think my camera would do so well in the powder. To make up for that, check out my newly acquired photos that I received from a spanish photographer that was in Whistler for the Grenade Games. These were taken during the warmup.

Backside 180 sequence

See ya on the slopes!

Andrew

Darryl Tait is Amazing!

2009-11-05T17:24:00.000-08:00

If you have been in Yellowknife or Whitehorse lately, you've probably heard about my friend Darryl Tait and his sledding accident. I was lucky enough to have the chance to see Darryl recently in Vancouver.

Well before I get ahead of myself let me just say a little something about Darryl. Darryl is one of the nicest, most fun to be around, most amazing guys I've ever met. Most of the time I spent with Darryl was on snowboarding trips. He's a couple of years younger than me, but he's an awesome snowboarder. We competed together in the Arctic Winter Games in Alaska as well as the Canada Games in Whitehorse. It's always fun having Darryl around. He's always positive and stoked on life. He's one of those guys that does well at whatever he puts his mind too. He racked up 4 medals at the last Arctic Winter Games in Yellowknife for snowboarding. The funny thing is, snowboarding isn't Darryl's passion, nope, sledding is.

Darryl rips on snowmobiles (and dirt bikes). He takes huge jumps and does ridiculous tricks. I have a lot of respect for him. Check out his video below and you'll see!

For those who haven't heard the story: Darryl was recently in a snowmobile competition in Boston. He was trying a backflip (which he can do) but came up short. His sled landed on him and severed his spine. He's been through a lot in the past few weeks, recovering from a punctured lunge and undergoing surgery. He is, however, paralyzed from the armpits down. I was devastated when I heard about his accident. I know from experience how tough it is to deal with injuries but this is a whole different story.

Kate Stapleton organized a fund- and support-raiser for Darryl last weekend in Yellowknife. I knew I was heading out to Whistler so I offered to bring things down for Darryl on my way through Vancouver. We made him a giant get well soon card, took an awesome group photo (below) and filmed video of people talking to Darryl. It was a great event. Click here to see more photos from the event. Check out the website http://www.pullthroughdarryl.com/ for more info about him.

I visited Darryl on Tuesday. He is doing really well, better than I expected. He was joking around with us, remembering times we've had together and telling us stories. He was in good spirits despite the amount of pain he's in. Darryl also spoke to me about getting back on the hill once he recovers. He's looking ahead, staying positive and showing mental strength well beyond his years. I'm very proud of Darryl, he is truly amazing. Darryl wanted to thank everyone for their support. It made his night and he is very appreciative.

You should have seen Darryl's face when I gave this photo to him.

Cooking up some burgers to raise funds

Darryl and I, pre-bungee jump on NZ snowboard trip

As for me, I'm doing well. I'm in Whistler now, back in the WVSC house. I just finished my first trampoline session with WVSC here. It was sweet. I'm working on my spins and flips. I'll put up some pictures/video in the near future, so stay tuned for that!

Cheers,

Press Release - FSC Continues Support!

2009-10-24T18:38:00.000-07:00

I'm thrilled to announce that FSC Architects and Engineers will be supporting me for another season. They have signed on as a Diamond Sponsor (my highest level) this year! This is huge for allowing me to continue training at such a high level. I have big plans for this season that are only possible because of the funding that I receive. Thank you to FSC and all of my sponsors! To see the official press release, go to the Sport North website.

Andrew

Photos found!

2009-10-18T14:00:00.001-07:00

Andrew Matthews
Originally uploaded by Alba Pardo

Greetings,

I just found this photo of me from the Grenade Games on Flickr. I'm trying the auto blog post from Flickr so I hope it works out!

- A

The Uber Post

2009-10-06T21:02:00.001-07:00

Hello hello!

Thanks for checking in on my blog. Boy am I glad that you're here because I've got something special for you in this post. Last April I was selected to snowboard in a commercial for the Hudson's Bay Company. Well last week while my family and I were watching the hockey game, the commercial aired for the first time. It was interesting to see the final product after witnessing all the work that goes into making a one minute commercial (and that was just the filming!). The idea of the add is a timeline of the Hudson's Bay Company, I think it turned out pretty well. The YouTube video already has over 27,000 hits! What are you waiting for? Click already!

I realize that it's been a while since I last posted, the reason for which is that I was just finishing off a calculus course for the University of British Columbia by correspondence. With this course, I'm officially done my first year of Engineering at UBC. It feels great to have this under my belt.

On to more exciting things that I've been up to... I learned how to surf! I've wanted to try surfing for a long time, I've heard stories about how amazing it is. Well my experience definitely lived up to these stories, it was unreal! My friends Craig, Mike and I were only Tofino for one weekend in September but we made the best of it. We lucked out too, the weather couldn't have been better. On our first day, we decided it would be a good idea to take a group lesson as none of us had any idea how to surf. The lesson really helped set us in the right direction. I was hooked after my first wave. The feeling is amazing, similar to floating over powder on a snowboard. On our second day, we rented the equipment and went out on our own. We spent the entire day paddling out and trying our best to catch waves. After numerous times getting rocked by waves, and some tips from the locals, I finally caught some sick waves. I was totally wiped by the end of the weekend but it was well worth it. My friends Craig and Mike were also getting the hang of it by the end of the weekend. We all had a great time!

Mike and I getting ready for an adventure

"Paddle paddle paddle! Get up! Yeah!

At the end of the summer I worked a couple of weeks with my brother at Flipside Watersports. The water in August isn't always that warm and I was amazed that the kids were still pumped on going in the water.

Me teaching Dylan how to do it

The water may be chili in August but the sunsets in Yellowknife make up for it.

It snowed today in Yellowknife and I'm pumped for the upcoming season. I'm doing everything I can to be ready for the best season of my life. I've been doing a lot of yoga, along with my usual dry land routine to get in shape. I'll be doing crazy grabs and tweaks this year so watch out!

Until next time, 'Stay classy San Diego'

- Ron Burgundy

New Website Announcement

2009-09-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

On several occasions I've heard friends asking me "where can I find your videos online?" Well my friends, I've created just the site for you... I would like to announce the release of my new website: www.andrewmatthews.ca! On the site you will find my videos, photos and more, on one convenient site. I'll be updating the site throughout the year so make sure to check back.

Cheers,

Andrew

Andrew's August Sports Highlights

2009-08-25T18:39:00.000-07:00

Ola amigos. To mix up the blog, I decided to do a post about some inspirational sports stories. Let me know what you think :)

This month there have been several huge events in the world of sport. 23 year old Usain Bolt broke the world record in the 100 meter when he ran a 9.58. It looked like he was hardly trying! Remember when Donovan Bailey ran a 9.89, times are a changing. I wonder if Bolt will eventually crack the 9.5 seconds...the guy is not human.

On the other hand, it turns out that Tiger Woods is human after all. He lost his first major championship when leading after 3 rounds. I was watching the last few holes and it always seemed like he would pull it out somehow like he always does. Tiger has an amazing mental game that I admire. I guess even the best have to lose once in a while. To his credit, Y.E. Yang made an amazing approach shot on the 18th to clinch the victory.

OK those 2 first stories were pretty awesome, but chances are if you ever watch Sports Centre they're old news to you. This last story is about a sport that does not get as much mainstream coverage, about a little known snowboarder named Shaun White. While competing at the Burton New Zealand Open (which I competed in a couple years ago), Shaun landed the first back to back double cork spins. A double cork is essentially 2 flips, off access. I hadn't even seen one in the halfpipe before this. I thought that the progression of snowboarding in the pipe had slowed down; in the last few years there have only been a few tricks that have really pushed the bar. Then out of nowhere Shaun pulls out back to back double corks! I was blown away when I saw this. Check out the video!

Quote of the month: The difference between ordinary and extraordinary...

is that little extra.

Cheers,

Andrew

Mountain Bike Madness

2009-07-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

Buenos dias!

I've been busy running my camp, Mountain Bike Madness Camp, for the last three weeks. We had a good turnout this year with one week being full. It has been a lot of fun and the kids wanted to keep going all summer! We had some epic games of capture the flag, man hunt, the circle game and battle ball. We had some awesome rides; I was impressed that kids at such a young age can handle tough trails like the Frame Lake Trail.

The circle game: no feet down kids!

Me showing the kids how to do it

OK, Kylar is actually showing them how to do it

This is the slideshow that I put together to give to all kids in the second week of camp.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer. We finally have some nice weather in Yellowknife so (if you're here) get out and take advantage of it!

Adios!

Andrew

Ender bender

2009-06-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

Why hello there!

In the last couple of weeks I've returned home to Yellowknife. It was sad to leave the snow and Whistler, however, it is nice to be home with my family and friends. It's also nice to give my body a break from the high impacts it takes when I throw myself off massive snow obstacles everyday. I've been training at Body Works as well as my newest sponsor, the Taiga Yoga Studio. Thank you both for your support!

When I look back on my year, I'm really happy with how it went. There are so many great things from the year but here are a few that stand out: I put a lot of effort into my athletic development this year and I made a lot of progress, particularly in spins on the backside wall of the pipe. I also had the opportunity to shoot with some awesome photographers and may even be in an article in Snowboard Canada next year. Another highlight was being invited to and competing in the Telus Festival Grenade Games Grand Finale. Since the first time I watched the Telus Festival Big Air in Whistler it's been a dream of mine to compete in it. It was amazing to have the opportunity to ride with the likes of Danny Kass, Ikka Backstrom and Daryl Mathes in the competition.

Photo by John Scarth

I feel like my skills are continuing to snowball, from the early days of riding at the Latham Island Park to my first full season in Calgary to my current training with Whistler Valley. I'm building on and fine-tuning my basic skills and developing more complex ones. Snowboarding is amazing because you can keep pushing your personal boundaries every year, and I love doing that. It doesn't matter if you're learning a 180 or a 1080, when you finally get it, you're stoked! That's what keeps me excited year after year.

Pat King Photo

I'm already looking ahead to next year, planning and getting ready. I'm organizing another trip to New Zealand to get back on the snow with heaps of sweet as conditions bru! I can't wait!

Rob Picard Photo

The amount of support that I received this year from my sponsors in Yellowknife as well as Whistler/Vancouver was amazing. I would like to extend a huge Thank You! to all of my sponsors for making my snowboarding year possible.

Cheers,

Andrew

Video Time!

2009-05-31T23:20:00.000-07:00

Hey,

It's crazy to think about all the time that went into filming, thinking and editing a minute and forty five second edit of me. I'm finished now and proud of the final product, check it out!

Andrew Matthews Promo 2008/09 from Andrew Matthews on Vimeo.

Take it easy,

Andrew

One of Those Amazing Days

2009-05-18T21:33:00.000-07:00

Hey hey!

As I said in my last post, I've been filming a lot lately. On Friday I had the best day of filming this season... I was riding with Ali and Aaron, both my roomates in the WVSC Academy, while Rob (the owner of WVSC) was filming us. With just days left of riding the Black Park (the park where all the big jumps are) before it closed, we were on a mission to learn new tricks and get them on film. It was a hot spring day that would have been equally awesome for hanging out by the lake as it was for snowboarding.

We were all riding well and landing most of our tricks. It was really cool to see Ali charging the jumps. There aren't many girl snowboarders that can ride big jumps and Ali was killing it! She was stomping some frontside 180s and by the end of the day was trying frontside 5s! Aaron landed some nice frontside rodeos off his toes. I was stoked on my backside 3 melon grab on the hip. At the end of the day we were having too much fun to stop, so we hiked a jump a bunch of times. I landed a couple switch backside 5s that were feeling good so I decided to go for a 7. I had never tried one before and fell my first time. On my second try I landed it! The feeling when I landed was amazing.

After we were finished filming on the jump we sessioned a cat track gap drop. It was really cool to hit, I've never tried a gap like this before. We all got some tricks on the gap and slapped high fives all around. It was at this point that Rob reminded us that we had better get a move on to see if we could still download the chair - it was 5 o'clock and the hill closes at 4! We had lost track of time because we were having so much fun. We were the only ones left on the mountain besides the staff . We raced down to the Gondola and were lucky to find that it was still running. It was an amazing day, top 5 best days of my year!

I'm putting together a video part from all the filming this year which I'll be posting soonish.

I hope everyone is enjoying their spring. Cheers,

-Andrew

Pipe Mashup Video

2009-05-06T23:18:00.000-07:00

Hello there,

Spring time is the time when I'm done with my competitions and I focus more on filming, photos and learning new tricks. I went up last week with Snowboard Canada photographer and chief photo editor John Scarth. We did a shoot on one of the bigger jumps in the park. The weather wasn't great but it was good experience nonetheless. I'm hoping to get more done soon as Blackcomb is set to close on May 18th. Thankfully Whistler will be opening up at that time but I'm not sure what there park will be like.

Anyways I've put together a mashup of some of my best pipe shots from the last couple seasons to go with the theme of focusing on media. Lets face it, videos are way more fun to watch than reading posts. Enjoy :)

-Andy

Grenade Games Finale Video

2009-05-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

Hey, check out the video for the grenade games finale! Can you spot me?

Grenade Games 5 - Finale from monster dano on Vimeo.

-A

Grenade Games & Hudson's Bay

2009-04-27T14:25:00.001-07:00

Hey hey!

It's been a while since my last post and let me tell you, I've been busy! It may have been the busiest time of my year. In the last couple of weeks I was studying for my chemistry final, I shot a commercial for Hudson's Bay and I competed in the Grenade Games. Below are some photos of the setup from the Grenade Games Grand Finale, courtesy of Dano Pendygrasse.

My coach Joe had received an email (the day before the audition) that the production company wanted someone who was good at riding halfpipe for the commercial. There wasn't much other information other than the day of the audition, which happened to be the day that I got back from Nationals. I decided to give it a whirl and see what the film industry was all about. Kyle and I went down to the studio and waited for 2 hours for them to do a 5 minute interview with us. After that we were sent on our way, told that we would hear from them if they wanted us.

I ended up getting a call later in the week from my new agent letting me know that I was getting booked for the commercial! So I went up to Cypress for my shoot day, still not knowing exactly what to expect. The first thing that I noticed was the abundance of free food at the set. I was happy to hang out, try to study among the commotion and eat lots of delicious food. After they had filmed all the other actors/athletes, they tried to fit me in right before the sun went down. We got a couple of shots but they needed me to come back for a second day. After hanging out on set for most of another day. I did some frontside airs in the pipe and rode right past the camera. The commercial is meant to air leading up to the Olympics, the idea is a timeline of the Hudson Bay Company. I'm excited to see the final product.

The next thing on my agenda was the Grenade Games which was part of Whistler Ski and Snowboard Festival this year. Monster Energy Drinks was one of the main sponsors. Check out the Monster website for more info about the Grenade Games. Basically the Grenade Games put a more fun spin on the events that have been in the Festival before. For the halfpipe there was a jump at the top of the course as well as boxes and a telephone poll in the pipe. It was cool to switch it up from the regular halfpipe contest. We had a big jam format, which means that we were just riding at our leisure and trying to get noticed by the judges. I landed some 5 to 5 combos and a cab 7. TJ Schneider stole the show with a nice frontside 1080 and a crazy inverted maneuver that no one knew what to call!

The grand finale for the Grenade Games was a Big Air Slopestyle invitational event at the bottom of the hill. I was able to get invited, most likely because of my placing 2nd at the Showcase Showdown last year. This is always one of, scratch that, the biggest event of the year in Whistler. There were about 20, 000 people watching from the village and sidelines. It's been one of my goals to compete at the Big Air in the Festival ever since I saw it my first year out there, so I was obviously stoked to be in it. The course started with a big bomb drop into a huge straight jump or step up gap jump to a step down feature. After that there was a choice of street style rail, box or a tree jib. The bottom of the course entailed two spines with a PBC pipe in between.

I was pretty intimidated when I rolled up to the course for practice on Saturday afternoon. I had never hit features like many in this course. Most of the other riders in this event were established pro riders, who took no time to start destroying the course. It was a fun environment to ride and progress in. I landed some runs I was pretty pumped about including a front 7 and a back 5 off the step down.

The real contest was under the lights at 8 o'clock. This was only the... third time I've snowboarded at night this year. That was difficult to adapt to but I always find it awesome to compete in front of a big crowd. I was one of the only riders spinning off the bomb drop feature with some 270s, the only problem was that the guy dropping before me was Craig Belieu, who won the competition, and he was doing 450s. I didn't care about my results, I was just pumped to be riding in the competition. It was a great experience and so fun - a perfect way to end my competitive season.

As for now I'm focusing on learning some new tricks as well as filming and shooting photos. Spring time is always amazing in Whistler. You can snowboard in the morning and swim in the lake in the afternoon. I'm also going to be working with a personal trainer to set me up with a program for the summer so that I can get a huge beach bod, ha! Just kidding, but seriously I'll be stomping huge jumps this summer and next season with my beefy (chicken) legs.

Below are some photos of the Grand Finale of Grenade Games. Photos by Russel Dalby.

Thanks for checking out my blog, feel free to post a comment :)

-A

Nationals Trip

2009-04-06T22:34:00.000-07:00

Bonjour mes amis,

I'm back from what turned out to be an awesome trip. I could go on and on about it, so much cool stuff has happened since my last post. Instead of boring you with my random stories I'll cut to the chase of the snowboarding.

The first day we were there to get used to the conditions and the mountain. After a late start getting everything organized in the morning, we found out that the halfpipe would actually be open that afternoon. We had heard rumors that the pipe wouldn't be... up to standard, but I was optimistic that the organizers would make it good for the Nationals. Well it turned out that the rumors were true, the walls were smaller that we were used to, not to mention somewhat inconsistent and very difficult to ride.

Someone smart once said "In the midst of difficulty lies opportunity." With this quote in mind I trained that pipe like there was no tomorrow. It took me the good part of the first day to get used to riding the pipe. The next day was the official training, the day before the contest. There was only two hours to get ready for the biggest pipe competition of the year, so I made the most of it. I was one of the first people to drop into the pipe and one of the last to leave. By the end of it, I was linking some tricks that I had seldom landed before. I was feeling really good going into the competition and had a run in mind that was far better than anything I've landed before.

The format of the Nationals is the usual best of 2 years for qualifiers. The top 6 men in the 2 heats (of about 27) make it to the finals. With this in mind, I knew I would need to through down something amazing in order to make it to the finals. On my first run I landed everything but it wasn't very smooth and my amplitude wasn't that great. Bellow is the footage of my second. I was going for it and the first 2 tricks were going well, but I couldn't hold on to my seven. As you can see I went down, and so did my chance of making the finals. My first run scored 29.9 and I needed a 33.0 to make it in. It was tough to be so close and have to miss finals again this year. On the bright side, I learned some new tricks and I now feel like I have the foundation to beat the best riders in Canada.

For now I'm back to training and now is the best time of year to learn new tricks. I went riding at Grouse today for my first time ever, with Kyle and Sam. It was sunny and so fun. We did some filming with Sam's point and shoot camera so I'll put something up when we finish editing it. I have one more competition this year later in the month, the Telus Festival superpipe in Whistler, they joined up with the Grenade Games this year which could be really cool or ... well hopefully it's awesome.

Check out some photos from my trip, some from Mont Tremblant and some from Montreal. They have some nice views and cool old buildings.

Les Garcons: Me, Pierce, Sam, Robby and Kyle

Famous snowboard rail we found: me wishing there was snow

We obviously had to check out Montreal while we were there, I mean look at this sweet castle

Sweet views of Tremblant and Montreal

Cheers,

Andrew

Nationals prep time

2009-03-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

Hey!

With less than a week left before the halfpipe competition at the National Championships, I'm doing everything I can to be ready. The last 2 years I've been injured right before Nationals and had to put a run together in the couple training days just prior to the event. I've had some really good training days in the last couple weeks and I'm counting on that to pay off this year. My cab 7s (note: cab means switch frontside (also note: switch means backwards)) are coming around better than ever before, I made some key improvement on my frontside 7s and on my backside 5s. In my halfpipe training I planned it so that I would peak my performance for Nationals. This is going to be difficult to do because of the setbacks I've had to deal with my ankle injury. At this point I've learned some of the tricks that I needed to learn before Nationals but I haven't had time to put it all together in a run.

I had to make another tough decision yesterday: whether or not to compete in the Quiksilver Showdown Over the City today. It's one of the biggest pro contests in Canada. The setup is a massive jump to some crazy rails. I really wanted to do this contest but I figured it would be best to save my ankle for Nationals and focus on the pipe for now. So instead of competing I made the missioned it to Cypress so that I could ride some more pipe before I leave for Mount Tremblant on Monday.

I was lucky that my friends Lauren and Ben were going up yesterday and I was able to get a ride up with them. It was really foggy when I arrived with Land we were a little skeptical about riding the pipe. We checked it out anyways; the park crew had died the walls of the pipe and the fog lifted just about the pipe, awesome! I had a great day and landed some nice front 7s.

I'm going back up today to see if I can start putting my run together. My next post will be about my trip to Quebec. I'll be practicing my french, seeing new places and hopefully riding well in some nice conditions.

A la prochaine,

Andrew

Sweet Week!

2009-03-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

Why hello there!

Last week was the first full week I've been able to ride since I got the OK about my ankle, and let me tell you, it was a good week! On wednesday I filmed for the first time of the year, in the Black Park. It was my first time back riding big jumps again too. It didn't take me long to get back to what I was doing before my ankle put me out. I even learned some new tricks like front 7 tail grab. My ankle held up fabulously, it was sunny and I was really stoked!

My friend Kyle had been talking about going to Cypress the next day with some of our friends, who spoke of an amazing pipe there that was soft and perfect to try new tricks. I really wanted to go with him but there was the problem of getting to Cypress as none of the pipe riders in the club have a car. After our hope of bumming a ride from friends fell through, Kyle and I made some quick last minute plans with our coach to take us up there from Squamish, where he lives. We bused to Squamish first thing the next morning, and drove up with Joe for the rest.

When we finally got there, it was a beautiful day and the pipe was as amazing as we'd heard. My backside wall was right in the sun, getting softer by the minute. I need to learn some tricks on that wall that I've been working on all year, this was the perfect opportunity for them. I got into it by starting small, doing back 3s and building up my confidence. After a lot of those, I eventually got the go ahead from Joe to throw a back 5. I was stoked and landed the first one, not perfect, but a start. By the end of the day I was feeling pretty good about the 5s. I'm going to be doing them all the time so that I start getting them really good.

The pipe was so good the first day that Kyle and I convinced our coach to bring us back the next day. He was nice enough to put us up in his place in Squamish for the night before our big day. On Friday we got an earlier start and new what to expect. We got right down to business and I was determined to land some cab 7s by the end of th

e day. I've only ever done 2 cab 7s in the pipe, last summer in New Zealand. I was excited to try them again.

Well the trick didn't come back as easily as I would've liked. Again I worked up to it with some 3s and 5s that were feeling good but as soon as I went for the 7 it threw my whole spin off. I eventually slid a couple around but wasn't happy with the way I was spinning it. After watching some video, Joe pointed out a few key tips that I tried to incorporate into my spin. I made some improvement but by the time we decided to call it quits I was still feeling like my cab spins need some work. Nonetheless, it was great to get some under my belt this season and to determine what I need to work on.

The view from Cypress is pretty amazing of downtown Vancouver and the ocean.

-A

Park photos and ankle results

2009-03-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

Hey what's up?

The results from my CT scan came back showing that the bones in my ankle are fine - good news. The only thing is that they picked up some swelling and my doctor is unsure of where it's coming from. He prescribed me some anti-inflammatory cream and hopefully that will take care of it.

Handplants are fun!

On the weekend I started back training with my coach Joe and the ankle is feeling pretty good. I feel like it's back to the point where I can ride hard and progress again - such a good feeling. I've also had a few really fun days shredding the park recently. Here are some photos that my friends Sam and Marisa took of each other the other day (also see photo above).

Marisa on her "favorite feature"

Me on one of my favorites

Sam with a nice melon grab

So in other news my roomate Sam (above) found out that he qualified for nationals for his first time this year. That means that our club will have Kyle representing Alberta, Sam for BC and myself representing the NWT. It's sweet that the three of us will be taking over Tremblant at the beginning of April.

Tomorrow we're going up and to do some filming. I haven't done much yet this year so I'm pretty excited about that.

Take it easy,

Andrew

Midterm's over now lets get that ankle better!

2009-03-03T19:16:00.000-08:00

Hey hey,

As you can see by the title I've recently finished my midterm for the one course (Chemistry) at UBC I'm currently taking. I've been busy studying for that, doing lots of physio, training in the gym and on snow when I can, and hanging out with friends.

My midterm went well. The class average was really high, 81%, which is unheard of for UBC. The bad news is that this means that they'll make the final really hard. I'm set to start an integral math class that I obtained permission to do online which I've been putting off. Today I'm in Vancouver for my one class per week and I had a lab. This one was pretty cool, it was about caffein in soft drinks. We were able to isolate the caffein and compare to the amount supposed to be in the drink, I did mine of Pepsi One. I haven't worked out the results yet, but I thought it was pretty cool that we can do something like that in the lab.

I've been snowboarding on and off since the Calgary trip based on the advice of my doctors and physios. My ankle is still giving me trouble and has been doing so since the start of January. It has gotten better but it gets worse and never heals. I'm doing a CT scan tomorrow to get to the bottom of the problem. Neither the doctors I've talked to nor my physiotherapist are sure exactly what's wrong with it because it should have healed by now. I'm excited to get some definite results on it so I can get back out there!

I made the tough decision not to compete in the Showcase Showdown last weekend because of my ankle. I was going back and forth whether or not to do it up until right at the registration table. That's the competition that I placed 2nd at last year and it's a really fun event right in Whistler. In the end I'm happy with my decision because I want my ankle to be good to go for the rest of the season, not just one competition. I'm looking ahead to Nationals at the end of the month and the Telus Festival in April.

Good things are coming but good things come to those that wait...

Andrew

2009-02-16T21:11:00.000-08:00

Hey,

Check out the Westbeach Airtime that I filmed in January. It was really fun filming with these guys. We went down to Vancouver for the day, back when there was snow in Vancouver, crazy!

Take it easy,

Andy

The Good the Bad & the Ugly

2009-02-10T19:35:00.000-08:00

Howdy!

Wow, so I'm back from Calgary now and let me tell you... it was a bit of a crazy trip for me. First of all, I wasn't sure if I should even go. I had been hoping my shoulder would heal up faster and it was still pretty sore the day I was meant to fly out (and start training in earnest the next day). After an hour long debate with myself I decided to hop on my flight and see what happened.

It turned out the be a good decision because my shoulder was feeling pretty good by the next day. Just in time! That day the pipe was really slow and my wax wasn't great. It made a perfect time to work on my technique of riding the pipe and charging it. I was feeling great to be on snow again and having a good time all around.

The next day we went right into competition. It was qualifiers for halfpipe. Everything went well in preparing that morning: I had a good sleep and a great breakfast; but when I got to the top of the pipe I started to feel sick. My stomach was upset and my legs felt like they didn't have the power I needed them too. I had a really poor warmup and may have only tried my run once, actually I don't even think I did. I started feeling a little bit better in the time between warmup and my first run but I was unable to land my run. I put a hand down on my front 7 and that wouldn't do. In these competitions it's a best of 2 runs format so I still had a chance to redeem myself with my second run. I did end up landing my second run however the amplitude wasn't enough to see my score move me into the next round. BAD. I was happy that I landed my run after feeling sick but I know that I need to work harder before the next pipe competition so that I can do better.

After that I changed focus to slopestyle. The organizers of the Burton Open put a lot of work into this course, they built the biggest (possibly nicest) jumps COP has ever had. The course went from the top to the bottom of the run, which is also pretty cool. I had an afternoon of riding slopestyle after my pipe contest and was more or less ready for the competition the next day. In the Burton Open there are 4 rounds of competition per event: pre-qualifiers, qualifiers, semi-finals and finals. This is crazy compared to the events I'm used to which are for the most part qualifiers and finals.

Competition time: I needed to place in the top 40 of 100 riders in the event. The speed for the jumps changed significantly during practice. At the start of the morning you needed to make a couple speed checks in between the first and second jump. By the end, you needed to go straight between them! So for my first run everything was going really well, I landed my front 7 off the first jump and straight lined to the second jump. I spun a backside 5 but landed on the knuckle (for those of you that don't snowboard, this is the part of the jump right before the downhill landing starts). So I fell on that, but I was happy with how I was riding. I knew for my next run I needed to get as much speed as possible and stomp my run in order to qualify. Well that's exactly what I did. I'll admit, some of my tricks weren't pretty but I landed it all clean and that was enough for me to move on. I was pretty stoked. GOOD.

The next round was even more difficult to make it past (obviously). They were taking the top 10 of the 40 guys that made it to qualifiers. I took a day off riding to allow my body to recover a bit before the competition. It payed off because I was riding really well in warm up. I was stepping it up and landing a backside 7, front 7 combo on the jumps that I've never done before. I was feeling great. My first run of the competition didn't go so well though, I didn't get the full rotation on my first 7 which also made me lose all my speed for the next jump. I was still confident that I could land my next run with the added pressure. It turns out that COP is pretty much a funnel for wind coming from... everywhere. This time the wind picked up and it was point straight uphill. They put the competition on hold for a while to figure out what to do. The riders were having a really hard time making the gap on the jumps. You had tuck to entire course and hope that your speed would carry you past the knuckles. I was lucky to go when the wind was light enough that I was able to make the jump, unfortunately though the change in conditions was enough to through me off. Again, I didn't land the back 7.

If you're still reading this far down you must be really interested in my blog. Thanks!

So back to my adventures: After my second run I was a little angry that I couldn't land the runs that I had been in practice but I was happy with my new improvement. We were just about to leave COP when I overheard someone talking about giving some riders third runs because of the wind. I raced to the top to see if I could get another shot. It turned out that they were in fact giving riders another run. They were saying that only the riders most affected by the wind should be allowed but that wouldn't be fair at all because all the riders were affected by the wind. So we were given one last chance. On my run I tucked into the jump as I did the time before that but this time my speed was too much. I took off weird and flew too far on the jump. I landed on my back and was quite winded. UGLY. I was able to ride away but I was pretty sore. When I got back to Kyle's house, where we were staying, I started to get some pain in my kidney. I was worried about that so I went to the hospital to get it checked out.

I ended up having quite the time at the hospital. It took forever to get seen and once I finally did, I had to transfer to another hospital in case a CT scan was required. Thankfully I didn't need the scan after all and was diagnosed with a bruised kidney. Pretty scary stuff but I'm thankful that it wasn't worse and that I'm fine now. I learned my lesson that when the conditions aren't right, you can't push yourself. Progression happens when everything falls into place and shouldn't be forced when it isn't feeling right.

As for now, I just finished up a lab for my chemistry class and I'm heading back up to Whistler tomorrow. I'm looking forward to getting home and getting back to my training schedule.

Take it easy,

Andrew

Dealing with the Downs

2009-01-29T15:46:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

I'm sitting on the couch right now with an ice pack on my shoulder...

Injuries in freestyle snowboarding are very common. A snowboard legend (and now an announcer for the X Games) Todd Richards wrote in his book P3 something along the lines of "When it comes to injuries it isn't a matter of if, it's a matter of when and how bad." That pretty much sums it up. I've had to deal with the nuisance of injuries since I started competing in snowboarding. They suck but you've got to take them in stride and look at the bigger picture.

Yesterday I hit a jump and I was a little bit too forward with my balance. I fell forward on the landing and hit my shoulder. My shoulder got a little inflamed but it isn't that bad. I need a couple days of rest and then I'll be back on the board again, just in time for the Burton Open. For now I'm catching up on my chemistry work and getting ready to rip!

Peace out,

Cow Town

2009-01-21T15:59:00.000-08:00

Hello there,

I just got back to Whistler from my trip to Calgary. I'll put up some pictures to here for you to check out before I bore you with my stories. So my internet isn't allowing me to post the pictures right now so you're either going to have to bear with me for the stories or you can always just scroll down the the bottom. Here's a funny conversation I had with one a couple guys working at the ticket office:

I hand the guy my Canada West Pass (which works for lift tickets at all resort in BC and Alberta), he takes it and asks "Are you from Alberta or BC?"

I say "I'm from the Northwest Territories."

"Is that in Alberta or BC?"

"Neither, it's the No

rthwest Territories."

"OK, which state is that in?"

I look at the guy dumbfounded. "Uh..."

"Oh, it is a state?"

"Yah basically, you're not from Canada are you?"

Turns out he was from Australia. Fair enough that he didn't know where it is I guess but come on... state? I thought that was pretty funny.

Kyle cooking up a breakfast of champions for us!

Now to the trip... it was pretty sweet. The first day we were there it was dumping snow. In typical Calgary fashion the next day was a sunny +10. Our first day we spend riding in the late afternoon and night to see what it would be like riding under the lights. It took a while to get used to riding a 22 foot tall halfpipe again. For those of you that don't know, Calgary has one of the biggest halfpipe walls in the world. So the first night was mainly spent getting comfortable riding really, really fast towards these monster walls.

The huge pipe

Day 2 was the official training day and the day before the contest. It was cool to see riders from all over Canada shredding the tube. I tried to get into my contest run but was having some trouble with my backside spins so at the end of the day I decided to change up my run. This meant that I would have hardly any time to practice the run I was planning on doing in the contest but the up side was that I had done that run in contests before.

There were 2 pipe contests back to back and they both went pretty well. I wasn't worried about how I ended up because I was just using these contests as training. I landed my run both days and I was happy with that. I ended up finishing in the middle of the pack both days. I'm working on backside spins as well as some other tricks so that I can compete with the top guys in Canada by Nationals. Joe and Kyle taking vid and pics

The slopestyle contest on Sunday was fun to do. I made the finals and it ended up being really tight with the time we had to leave to catch our flight. I literally did my last run, went to the car and left. We couldn't stay for the rest of the contest, let alone awards or dinner. So I'm not even sure how I did. I know I didn't come in the top 3 because I fell on my last run and on my first run I did a backside 3 where I wanted to do a 5. It was a good experience though and something to build on.

I'll be back to Calgary for the Burton Open at the start of February, I'm excited to see what that's like.

Now if only I could get those pictures to work...

Andrew

Back to Business

2009-01-13T19:13:00.000-08:00

Hey there,

I'm in Calgary right now for 2 Noram halfpipe and 1 ASA slopestyle contests. My friend and fellow athlete of Whistler Valley Snowboard Club (WVSC), Kyle, has been kind enough to put our coach Joe and I up in his house for the time we're here. In the last couple of weeks I've been getting back to business. I've started back on my regular training schedule with WVSC and I've also started back to university. I'm taking chemistry once a week at UBC and spending the rest of my time in Whistler.

I've been training a lot in the pipe lately getting ready for the Noram, that and my slopestyle board was being fixed. Brad at Showcase fixed up my board and it's all good to go now, thanks Brad! I've been working on my backside spins in the pipe, one of my weaker spins. I've been able to do them in contests in the past but haven't been really confident about them. I'm putting in the time and effort to get them right this time. It's hard to have the patience to take a step back in order to take 2 steps forward but in the long run it will be a lot better.

My first contest is a night contest under the lights of Canada Olympic Park (COP). That will be really cool, I've only ever done one contest at night before. We're going to train at night today to get a feel for it. It should be a good time!

Side note: Check out Flight of the Concords It's Business Time for a laugh.

Take it easy,

Andrew

Summer Video

2009-01-13T19:08:00.000-08:00

Hey!

I'm trying out the video posting tool. This is the video I made from my summer trip to New Zealand. It was an awesome trip. They have some of the best terrain in the world for that time of year (August). Not only that but the country has amazing landscapes and tons of sheep!

Enjoy!

Park Pictures

2009-01-01T18:00:00.001-08:00

Happy New Years!

Here are some pictures my brother took of me in the park recently. The park is really fun right now and it's only getting better. I'm stoked that the parks and pipe are up now. Looks like its going to be a great season!

On the weekend I'm planning on going to Mount Seymour to film my first Westbeach Airtime! It should be fun.

Best of wishes in the New Year,

Andrew

First Post: Colorado

2008-12-29T17:39:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

Thanks for checking out my new blog. I'm still trying to figure this whole blogging out so bare with the weird format. I hope you're all having a great time over the holidays. I'm spending the holidays with my family in Whistler, getting some awesome riding and training in here. It's finally snowing hard and the conditions are improving. The park has been open for a while and continues to showcase new features everyday while the halfpipe is set to open any day now. It's been a slow start to the season in BC so in order to get some good early season training my coach, myself and two of my friends (who are also competitors in Whistler Valley Snowboard Club) decided to head south to Copper Mountain, Colorado where they already had a world class halfpipe. There are some huge competitions in Colorado in December which all but guarantee that the resorts will build amazing halfpipes early in the season. With this in mind we booked our flights, packed our bags and saddled up for a new adventure.

We arrived to find a halfpipe in near perfect condition! The down side, an average of -20 degrees celsius weather forecasted for the entire week. Being from the north I felt right at home riding in these conditions. The first day I spent getting comfortable riding a halfpipe again as well as getting used to my new board. We were riding alongside some of the best riders from all over the world who had also traveled to Colorado to ride this amazing halfpipe.

After riding we did some video review and had a great session of preseason goal setting with our coach Joe. We also waxed our boards in order to ensure they were as fast as possible the next day. This became routine for the trip: riding hard all day then waxing, reviewing video and goal setting. I was excited to have the opportunity to ride such great conditions in the early season and to have a crew pumped on achieving our goals.

During the week I was focusing mostly on my line in the pipe, riding position, straight airs and small rotations. Why wasn't I doing back-to-back inverted 1080s you ask? Well, by focusing on 'the basics' I will be able to BOOST out of the pipe higher than the American flags, that were soaring high over our heads, in no time. I made a lot of improvement over the week on my consistency and feel like I have a solid foundation of skills to build on over the course of the season.

On the last day of the trip we spent the day training in a different way... instead of hiking the halfpipe relentlessly or riding the park until the last chair, we spent the day watching other people snowboard. We made the short drive over to Breckenridge Mountain, where they were hosting the first ever Winter Dew Tour, to see how the world's best works their magic. We were watching the finals which included the likes of Shaun White, Danny Kass, Hannah Teter and Kelly Clark, all of whom are Olympic medalists (3 of them gold). The way that these professionals performed was amazing! It was really inspiring to see this level of riding.

Thanks for tuning in :)

Andrew