Grand Finale, Savage Blade, The End and someone is going home in a new car.

The bottom half of Whistler hasn’t been getting the same kind of snow as the upper mountain this season, so the Whistler parks staff had their work cut out for them when they set out to build the course for the Grenade Games Six Grand Finale. After last years amazing version of a slopestyle, we wanted to once again bring something new to the idea of slopestyle courses. The trick is to make it fun enough to ride and exciting enough to watch. But the bottom line is that it wouldn’t be Grenade Games unless we gave everyone a thousand options of how to get wild.

the course

By the time practice was over I knew this was going to be a legendary night. People were trying next level tricks in places you’d never expect, and putting together imaginative and sketchy lines. Considering the hectic days and late nights that had already taxed competitors, it was a small miracle that there were enough riders left standing to step to the course, but in fact many had to be cut as the Invite list was longer than there was room and everyone wanted to take a swing at the 10 thousand dollar first prize.

I’ll just say this, riding without a shirt is sketchy on the rough spring slush, but dropping your droors as well is borderline psychotic. That’s just one of the many colourful words that people were using to describe Kael Hill’s performance this week. Although he may not have stood on any podiums, he took home three different 500-dollar prizes for his various antics, and more importantly made an indelible impression on everyone who watched him.

Yesterday evening Standard Films Black Winter debuted to a sold out audience of more than 350 people in the prairie city of Calgary, Alberta. People began to amass at The Plaza Theatre over an hour and half before the movie was set to begin and frantically tap the Steam Whistle beer and Monster Energy reserves. Albertans are savages; a reputation supported not only by their massive secret jumps but also by their massive bar tabs (it’s part of their appeal). Especially savage is Calgary’s weather. It might be ‘summer’ as you enter the theatre and ‘winter’ as you leave so it’s in your best interest to pay close attention to the movie and build that trick list because you might be snowboarding sooner than you thought.

Faces began to stream into the theatre and amongst the anticipation some of Canada’s finest riders could be seen shuffling into the theatre including Raewyn Reid, Dustin Craven and late arrival Leanne Pelosi. With a good sprinkling of celebrity athletes in attendance, and the sound of smuggled beers being uncomfortably opened, it was show time! Footage that really had people going was Monster Energy athlete Torstein Horgmo’s insane park follow-cam and Xavier Delerue’s savage rock lines. Chas Guldemond’s part was also one to soak up because he completed an entire video part in spite of spending most of his time at contests landing tricks with obscene rotations and gymnast precision (recall that Chas recently led the TTR World Tour by landing on the podium of almost every major slope style contest in the world). Monster Energy athlete Leanne Pelosi had some respectable rail representation and shares a section with always-colourful Andrew Geeves. There was also abundant avalanche footage in Black Winter, leading one to wonder if perhaps those close calls were the inspiration for the movie’s title.