Making of Eurogap the movie

Season done for some of us! Eero and Rasmus finally made it back from the states after few extra weeks caused by a volcano you all must’ve heard. Here’s mr. Ettala after happily home after a succesfull winter… He is officially done now.

Meanwhile in Sweden…. Mr.Holymoses himself is at the moment doing the famous Gumball 3000 race. Here’s Hampus few weeks ago on his way to Åre in Sweden.

Our favorite skier mr. Jon Olsson held a contest in Åre and thanks to him and Hampus we got to hit the same obstacles. Got a little unlucky with the weather though…

On our way to Åre we spent a day with Holymoses in Östersund. Hampus’ girlfriend getting her first tattoo…

Markku got exited too. He wanted to get this on his lower back…

You know it’s permanent?

Jon Olsson invitational is a film contest. I think I saw like 20 different homemade dollytrack setups with a P2 camera. Although it was skiing, this is still one of the reasons why Euro Gap goes 90% hand held.

Heikki has been in States since the Japan trip in Feb. He sent this pic from…hmmm… Colorado I think?

Been lagging with blogging, sorry…

Last week we went to Sweden… as Hampus puts it, “back to where it all started”. Riksgränsen sure is a legendary place. It’s amazing how much publicity the place got from one single method. Joni was amped too. He shot his very first videopart completely in Riks around 37 years ago.

lunchtime

Meanwhile Markku did this contest is Czech Republic and landed on his head causing a good concussion. He had to wear a neck brace for few days and the doctors told him not to ride for a while.

head first

He’s back in the game now and we’re heading back to Sweden today. Fredu was supposed to go too, but that mysterious wrist problem appeared again few days ago. Besides that half of the filmcrew had a diarrhea.

Our youngbuck Niki Korpela has been in the US lately shooting for the new Forum movie. Last week he landed on the deck of a hip and bounched all the way down to the flat. He  broke a piece of a fracture and decresed disc height of his back. Back injuries are always really scary, and this time is no exception. Luckily he should be fine after few weeks of physio.

Niki's x-ray

Just got a message from Heikki. He’s been riding in Park City and learning new tricks. Here’s the result…

fs board on a short flat box = 14 stitches

And the scariest thing is… he’s just warming up to take it to the backcoutry.

So we’re back home from the roadtrip to middle Europe, 2 weeks earlier than intended. Must say we had one of the most fun trips ever, even though the conditions were not that great.

Last week we stopped by in Verbier to jib this chairlift cable.

This session didn’t go too well. Both of my riders got hurt and had to take few days off. The good thing was I had a chance to take a day off too, and go ride with my homies who stay in Verbier for the whole season.

Filmer's day off

and meanwhile…

Rider's day off.

Looks like most of the crew is heading to Sweden next week. We’ll see..

Half of the crew made it back home from the successfull trip to Japan, but meanwhile the other half has been on a roadtrip in middle europe. We knew it was getting warm here and it would be hard to find any pow, but I guess the crew just felt we had enough of the freezing cold winter so far, and wanted to get on road and see how the mountains look.

Well they didn’t look too promising, so we ended up drivin all the way through to Monaco! Super fun roadtrip so far!

Joni, Hampus, Niki and special guest star Chris Sörman checking some yachts in Monaco

Swedish skier Jon Olsson lives in Monaco, and he’s homies with Hampus and Chris so we went to say hi to him. He’s been building a kicker in a resort close to Monaco and it was cool for us to hit it too. Thanks Jon!

The jump in a resort called Limone

After the session we drove back to Monaco. It’s nice to chill under the palm trees in the middle of the winter. It should start snowing soon. We’re not sure what to do next.

Jon's front yard

Here we go with an update from the EuroGap crew in Japan! We´ve been here allready 16 days of wich four in Sapporo @ the Toyota Big Air! You might have heard, Peetu won, Eero was second, Autti third and Markku fifth! So it was a pretty awesome finnish show! The parties were off the hook, as you can imagine since also Peetu flew in straight from Vancouver! Gold party, silver party, party party and raibishgele party! Eero, Heikki and Markku was supposed to be the crew, but Markku got a last minute invitation to the Olympics while he was allready traveling in Japan. So he took a flight to Vancouver and we flew in none other than Fredu to join Eero and Heikki! Markku came back though straight after the ShaunWhiteShow.

But to the actual filming part. We were unbelievable lucky here in Hokkaido, we had perfect snow conditions the first couple days and got really good material! As soon as the snow got kind of bad and everything was tracked, it dumped another half a meter or so and we started all over again! There were a bunch of other crews filming all over Hokkaido, but none really got pow stuff done except for us!!! We hiked everyday about 5 hours in waist deep powder, thank god we stayed at LaVista spa resort! They took so good care of us again this year!! Finnish sauna, hot springs and most of all – free ice cream!! What do you want more? Japan rules! Good bye! Sayounara gozaimasu!!!

Last wednesday we were hitting this one handrail, and part of the the staircase was property of some hotel. The lady on the front desk saw us and decided to call the cops. The cops told her there’s nothing illegal really, but if she’s afraid us getting hurt she should make us sign a filming contract. So here it is, our first official filming permission ever!

Legalize snowboarding!

One more nightshoot with Markku, Fredu and Pasi. Hit this kinkrail where we usually get kicked by the police, but like every other time this year, no one cared! Finished at 3.30 am. PasiPhoto made himself a comfy little bed in the back of his car since he had to go work again early in the morning. Markku got a shot which is great! We will still hit one more urban thingy friday morning and then leave to Japan friday afternoon! Hectic! Markku, Heikki and Eero! The rest of the crew will maybe head down to Europe or Russia again or Mars?

So we got invited to do a “small demo” at the local hill close to St. Petersburg. The crew was supposed to be Joni, Niki, Fredu, filmer Jaakko and photographer Peter. Fredu didn’t go though… smart move maybe yes/no? We really had no expectations what will happen, just took the train there too see what’s up. Here’s a teaser for the demo. Pretty epic uh?

We had no idea about this trip before we got there. Here’s Joni and Niki clueless in the train.

After a quick arrival seremony we had some late night snack at the local strip club… as usual. Here’s the view from our table.

Here’s pretty much the only cool thing we could find. It was ok to hit this, but for some reason we had only few minutes to do it before we had to quit for “security reasons”.

Strictly forbidden!

Nightlife in Russia is pretty hectic. Ready for the demo mr. Malmi?