Watching the official movie trailer for the new movie, “The Art of Flight” literally gave me chills the whole entire time. The movie follows Travis Rice, John Jackson, Mark Landvik, Scotty Lago, Jake Blauvelt, Nicolas Muller, Gigi Ruf, DCP and Pat Moore as they plan out new unthinkable adventures to places never seen or rode before. The trailer is packed with amazing scenery, huge gnarley jumps including launching off of the back of a flipping snow mobile mid air (2:45), grinding power lines and racing avalanches, this footage is pretty much straight out of a video game its ridiculous. Not only does the cinematic experience look phenomenal, but the sheer thrill and danger of the snowboarding looks like it will have you on the edge of your seat the whole way through the film. The movie is set to release in September 2011 so when summer is winding down, and we are gearing up to shred the winter of 2012, we will be blessed to be able to watch this gnar gnar shred flick.

The Art of Flight – official movie trailer from Extremal on Vimeo.

The men’s Super Pipe final is the clear featured event every year at the X Games. In case you missed the finals this past weekend here are the highlights. Shaun White took the gold again, his fourth straight in the event. Louie Vito’s run looked gold worthy but no one can ever seem to match how clean White’s runs are. He lands high on the wall and sticks everything with no shaky transitions. Still clear ahead of the competition, hate on the ginger kid all you want but you got to respect his moves.

Check out this INCREDIBLE snowboard trick from the full length movie “Pony tale” by Actionhorse films. There really isn’t much to say about this trick except it is awesome and completely bad ass and you will never ever be able to do something nearly as cool as this. Hit up below if you want to watch the free 30 minute full length snowboarding movie it was taken from, it is pretty rad.

full length movie below
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I’ve never been to Mt. Baker, Washington but as a snowboarder I’ve seen countless photos and footage of the infamous Mt. Baker road gap.  It’s a right of passage for any pro snowboarder and they come from around the world to hit it.  The line into the gap runs through the woods and the lip of the kicker is some 40ft above the road and has reached as high as 60ft with snow.  The first person to hit the gap was snowboard legend Shawn Farmer doing a shirtless method air in the original Totally Board video in 1989. Here are some photos from the legendary gap.

No this is not a rump shaking booty contest video tapped in a back yard in Atlanta, Georgia. This is Ryan Flett’s segment for KMC’s Backyard Booty in Nelson BC. The segment is about the transition everyone in Kootenays makes from Fall into Winter. From the moment the season ends they are waiting for it to return. So this video captures the Fall winding down, and the excitement and beauty of the transformation of humans and nature enjoying winter again, and he really captures the essence of that concept flawlessly. Every trick in the book is used in this video, from time lapse, 3d photos, super slow motion, and every other awesome technique you can use. I really wish I owned a $10,000 dollar camera, the footage of my drunk friends puking into watermelons would come out so much clearer (actually happened). Locations:West Kootenays, Nelson,Baldface Lodge. All footage shot on 7D with 24-105 L, 3D Photos (PS CS5 and AE CS5), Time lapse (Raw compressed with Quicktime 7),Editing (FCP 7 and Magic Bullet)

Backyard Booty Segment: Natural Progressions from Ryan Flett on Vimeo.

A week ago the east coast got some real early snow in New England with 14 inches hitting parts of VT and NH. It’s time to start watching shred vids from your cube and dreaming of weekends of powder and parties in the mountains. You can catch Zoot shredding Killington, VT on any given weekend. Here’s the teasers for some this years best vids Personally, I’m probably going to pick up the DC flick because it looks all around good and The Finger On Da Trigger flick because I need to get more thug in my shred style. Maybe I’ll get the Jeremy Jones movie because it’s like no other film before it with the adventurementary thing going on.

FORUM SNOWBOARDS – “F*CK IT”.

Check the other awesome gnar gnar shred videos below.
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Red Bull Illume is the world’s premier action and adventure sports photography competition. First conceived in 2007, the second iteration of this competition ended on August 31st 2010, with a grand ceremony at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. There were a total of 10 categories, with a grand prize winner in each. The photograph had to have been taken after 01.01.2007, and the winners were selected by a panel of 40 esteemed photo editors from around the world. This year’s competition saw over 22,764 images submitted from 4,773 photographers in 112 countries around the world. Below you will find the winning photograph for each category for both 2010 and 2007. The images are absolutely incredible! Be sure to visit Red Bull Illume for more information and photographs. As always and especially for these photos click on the image to view larger in it’s full beauty.

CLOSE UP
Images that show extreme detail of one or more aspects of an athletic feat: a tight shot of the action, the equipment, the body, the face, etc.

Photographer: Nathan Smith | Athlete: Andrew Mooney | Location: Wamberal, New South Wales, Australia | Camera: Canon EOS 1D Mark III | Lens: 10-17mm | ISO: 200 | F-Stop: f5.6 | Shutter speed: 1/1600

Photographer: Dawn Kish Athlete: Adam Strong | Location: Sedona, AZ, USA | Camera: Canon EOS-1V | Film: Kodak T-Max 3200 black and white

See the other 9 category winners below.
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Gnarcade is a short film meets rap music video, which mixes up 8-bit video game characters and dynamics with competitive skateboarder and snowboarder videos. The video really starts going at 45 seconds in so don’t bail on it before then, it is an awesome skate and snowboard shred video with unreal visual effects. A videogame invasion has hit Mt Hood and High Cascade! Check out Scott Stevens, Micah Hollinger, Chris Beresford, Tim Eddy, Ben Bogart, and Casey Wrightsman as they live life like it’s one big game: You can check more videos and shredding at knife show’s website found here. Music by Ground Up. Check out their latest stuff at their website: groundupsounds.com/

Gnarcade from Mike Benson on Vimeo.

With there success from the video above they have also put out other gnarley videos including the one below which I thought was pretty awesome as well, check it out below.
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Over the past 10 years an undeniable bond has emerged between hip hop and freestyle snowboarding and skiing.  From dominating the soundtracks on shred flicks to the park rat saggin his draws so low you wonder how he actually rides, hip hop is everywhere is snowboarding.   No where is the bond more visible than on the Jersey shred scene.  This past weekend our boys at BrakeFast Records told us they were heading up to Mountain Creek, NJ for 3rdRailJam.com, an event that could really harness the connection.  A rail contest,graffiti,freestyle battle, b-boys and girls breaking moves and an after party headlined by The Ruler himself , Slick Rick.  We had to go.

We showed up just in time to catch the finals of the Rail Jam and watch A-Class from Brakefast Records take the battle and win the right to open up for Slick Rick at the after party.  The energy at the after party was contagious, the DJ kept it old school and as the next song would spin the crowd would let out a collective “ooooohhhhhhhhhh”  and hands would fly as a favorite hip hop track from their pasts kept them fired up. Circles opened up into break battles.  There was an unexpected but awsome appreciation for the history of hip hop in the room.  A-class’s stand offish style brought a good contrast to the crowd and soon heads were standing militant, bobbing their heads, with hands in the air, the collective defiance that is hip hop.  As we waited for The Ruler I think we were all asking ourselves if he still had it or was he just some over the hill icon showing up for a paycheck.

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