Mountain Bike Madness

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

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!

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

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