My name is Jiri, I am 28, already?
I am from Zlin,
raised up in Vizovice,
town nearby.
He saw that his older sister reads and studies,
as a second child he picked up lot of it very early.
When he hit first grade, he got lucky with teacher.
He had an awesome teacher who didn't mind the fact he knew a lot already and was eager to let everybody know.
She said she was happy to have him there since he didn't mind any tasks and felt happy with not easy homeworks.
She proposed he could skip second grade but I didn't want to cut his childhood short,
I always felt happy about that decision,
a child needs to go through the whole path and meet every kind of character on his way to adulthood.
In sports, he wasn't extraordinary.
Normal boy who liked sports.
In our family, we were skiermen.
Everyone, including all his grandparents and cousins, he was always part of the family trip to the mountains too.
As a child I did a lot of skiing.
Never competitive level, but I loved it so much.
I loved being in the mountains and go downhill on my skis. As fast as possible.
In school age, he joined the soccer team, but didn't stick with too long.
He joined his friend in orienteering instead.
There, he was in nature, in the forest, lots of thinking what to do included, that was his thing, he learned all his abilities with the orienteering team - organization, communication and so on.
It probably brought me to what I do now, I It probably brought me to what I do now,
I love nature.
And I love snowboarding because of that.
I love most to go deep in forest and be there alone or with best friends and ride.
With the first snowfall, sometimes as early as mid-November, they left to the forest and went crazy on boards. That's how it started.
Because he likes to think deeply about stuff,
he started to mess with the idea that the thing that he loves might become a thing that he does for living.
So he found a part time in Austria and started a carreer in terrain parks.
My journey to this job, to this life, started when I was 20 or 21, when I bought my van.
I basically bought it initially for one reason,
to travel with my friends in summer to France, for glacier snowboarding in Les 2 Alpes.
So we did and spend a week and half.
By the end of the trip, we met two other czech guys who asked us if we shape every afternoon.
I was like "what does it even mean?"
and they said: "you shape the park and get a skipass for the next day".
And that idea, that you can ride snowboard lift, without paying, only for your work up there, was so astonishing to us,
that we did it till the end of the stay and came back the next summer for 3 weeks.
A year or two later, I was about to finish uni and started to think about doing that the whole winter.
I emailed to the austrian company Qparks, who manages parks for many resorts in Austria and other countries in the Alps.
I got placed in Warth, it is a village one mountain away from here.
I did a season there, very good season as it comes to snow conditions, we had at one point maybe 5 meters of snow.
It was amazing, not a lot of work, not a lot of money either, it was all about the isolated mountain life and snowboarding.
After that season there was no doubt that is what I want to do in life.
11 A year after I started working here. It is more serious here, more work, better rewarded, it is awesome here.
30 I was two seasons here and last year, I took off with my girlfriend to Canada on Working Holiday visa.
I made a winter in a terrain park too,
it was my longest one, lasting 6 and half months.
. It is bit better there with conditions, compared to Europe last four winters.
It was in Sunshine Village, Banff, Alberta.
Hi I am Zuzka
we are together with Jiri for 3 and half years now.
He is an awesome person and when he founds a job somewhere,
I basically face the fact I need to find one there as well.
I used to live a traveller's life before,
I was away for a long time,
but now when we do it together it is perfect,
you are never alone far from home.
Of course it is difficult too, you have no permanent job or income
no real home, we basically have a home on wheels for last few years.
But it is fulfilling for me,
I believe for both of us,
a neverending exploration, I feel alive living in new places, no stereotype.
Mountains are awesome, summer by the lake too.
Now it is snow all around
and I can't imagine anything better.
From other sports,
I do a lot of freebording,
not so much in last two years tho, and wakeboarding, where last season wasn't so intense either due to the travelling around North America instead.
. I skate and longboard too but not so intensely to talk about it more right now.
But with freebord, we managed with my crew to travel some awesome places, we were on 3 weeks long trip to Switzerland in 2013.
The same year we did a trip to Balkan.
We did most of the shooting in Romania and Greece.
We were to Norway to shoot a movie in 2015.
Tenerife.
Last year in spring, Canary Islands.
So we got pretty deep into that for a longer while, we have made some videos that went pretty big in the freebord community around the world.
I first did wakeboarding long time ago in Croatia,
but then I had no money to really go for it for at least next for years.
But then I started making some money and got into it, not long after I found a job in Pasohlavky, Southern Moravia, on a cable park, back than it was brand new.
. I have spent there two seasons, got deeper into it and now it is the summer sport no. 1 for me,
something I want to pursue over the summers yet to come.
I would like to go deeper in the surfing, that I tried a few times and want more and more, since it feels great.
We are in Damüls, Vorarlberg, westernmost state in Austria, valley of Bregenzerwald.
It is usually very snowy area,
which wasn't really true this winter yet,
but with March everything seems to change!
After sunny February, we got March 5th today and March already brought 5 best powder days in the season :)
They are done
It is a park that in some form existed already 15 years ago,
when the first big boom of snowparks hit Austria.
We got four shapers here, it's me
it's me, Tom and Honza, friends from back home, and Daniel, local boy.
Aaaah, the german speaking is driving me crazy already.
My name is Honza,
I work here for fifth season now.
Some injuries and quitting happened here back then in the middle of the season
and manpower was needed, Jiri who worked on nearby mountain knew about it,
he called me and I didn't hesitate and went for the job,
called my boss to be and in 4 to 5 days I started.
Since then, I am here every winter
and I like it, still like it :)
I think in last 4 years this park made a big progress
it is roughly twice bigger now than when I started, too.
Our boss Thomas gives us a lot of space to do stuff how we like to do it.
He sets the groundrules, but we can get creative within the boundaries,
so we try to make it interesting and enjoyable for people.
The most common problem here, and it is a everyday thing,
are random skiers who enter the park not to actually ride the park
, but to hang around on the worst spots - takeoffs
landings, around and on features - and they make it difficult for park riders to have their run with the flow they need
they have to concentrate not only on "What am I going to do" but also "What is this guy in my way about to do".
They need to be more aware.
Hi I am Tomas.
We're in our park hut, in half an hour our shift starts.
We are going to shape some features
bit of cleanup
My first season here in Vorarlberg was a gig on nearby funslope.
I fell in love with local moutains and the powder
I work here in Snowpark Damüls, big up,
tomorrow is going to be awesome, we expect some more snow so we are going to do some freeriding
probably gonna close the park and go full send.
We have a park cat driver, Hannes,
and our manager, Thomas,
so in total it is 6 people working on this park.
We have 27 to 30 features,
we have the big air
it's about 18 meters long
we have to kickers around 8 meters long in the upper part
we are about to build some more even smaller ones for the kids
The rest of it is boxes and rails we try to get creative
we try to do combos that allow people many different ways to hit them.
You can hit 16 features in one run here, which is awesome, it is top to bottom park.
The initial park build-up time differs every season
, just like every day is different for us.
It is highly dependent on the weather
the sun, the snowfall, the temperature, the wind a lot
This year we started the build-up as late as early January
December was at first very warm, than it got cold but without snowfall.
By the beginning of the January
there was a massive snowfall followed by many consecutive sunny cold days
which created perfect conditions for the park build-up.
We opened around 20 features in about two and half weeks
, it was probably the fastest intial buildup since I started here.
Sometimes we are here all night, some previous years we did it 3 to 4 times a week for a month long period, to make it happen.
The everyday maintenance differs too.
In the morning it depends a lot on the snowfall overnight
our opening process can take from 20 minutes to pretty much whole day.
You wouldn't guess it
but there is a feature right here.
Let's dig it out!
The evening reshape takes 2-4 hours usually
depending on how many guys are on the shift and the snow conditions
If it is, for example, sunny and 15°C below zero, it is pretty fast.
My position, as the other 3 guys', is a shaper, a park ranger.
We are all equal.
Our job is everything the snow cat can't do.
So it is mostly the maintenance of areas unaccesible for the cat
like top of the kicker or close to the rails
snow cleaning, fences and so on.
It is not a job where you just take a shovel and dig
you need to think too
you need to know how a shape of a feature works for the rider,
plan how to do things effectively with upcoming weather.
How to build features to allow people to get creative is a big part
if you are not creative, it is hard to get people in your park
Alps are very competetive market.
Snowpark, even though not many german and dutch tourists realize that, is a place we build with everyone's safety on our mind
but of course, it is not the safest of places
you jump and ride on metal rails and it gets crowded
That's why we have rules
and the first and probably most important one is
''Look before you leap'' - check what are you about to hit.
We have this rail by the stairset and people tend to hit it's takeoff just to the side like a normal tiny jump.
Sometimes they land on those stairs,
it is usually without injury, but once in a while somebody gets unlucky.
Other big rule is that the feature is closed when we work on it - for our, but also your safety!
Most crazy situations are happening during the german springbreak,
in Canada it was the springbreak in Calgary, the big city nearby
Both Germany and Calgary are places stuffed with freat riders,
but 90% of the people got no idea how to behave in a terrain park and that's why lots of injuries happen that time of year.
When the crashes end up well it might get funny,
but it can get serious too.
Sometimes the parents here cheer their 8 year old kids to jump the 18 meter booter,
it is kind of sci-fi to actually make it to the landing for them,
so they land on the flat, end up crying...
We sometimes give hard time to the parents.
It is an interesting relationship between the park crew and the customers.
The other part of the customers, the actual riders, are always friendly and awesome people, our friends in many cases.
30 cm down here
up there probably more
White hell and we are about to ride a lot!
If the weather was about to change today
we probably have 6 hours of hard work ahead of us
but it is still snowing and not gonna stop soon
so we do it in the evening or tomorrow.
So we can head of soon.
To the forest!
This week we gonna rebuild 5 or 6 features completely
cuz the takeoffs are just sinking too much under the snow level around
or the whole features in some cases. Hard week ahead, lot of work.
We are on 5th anniversary ''Praseshred /Pig and shred/''
our traditional hometown event where we meet with friends before we head out to different mountains
we shred together, eat a pig, drink some beer.
This year first time on natural snow with pumptrack and tube.
We wanna ride, fuck we wanna ride!
My name is Pavel
I am 45
I am a snowboarding veteran
I come from Halenkov
village near Karolinka, where is snowpark
and Hrozenkov, where is the summer big air
so I had everything in my backyard, basically
I ride snowboard for 22 years
I was all about freestyle the whole time
only lately, with the injuries, I shifted to freeriding bit more
but I still hit a park once in a while.
First jump I have built myself was on local hill in Halenkov
I made a wooden frame and covered it with snow
it was there where I tried my first big tricks.
And it was my first park.
Later, in the era of ''Foshna'' (local brand supporting the scene) we had a park in Jasenka
2 kilometers from the city centre of Vsetin.
I believe we had pretty decent park considering the year.
At the same time
in 2004 and 5, there were 2 big events here in Zlin
called City Air Contest.
We had some top czech riders both ski and snowboard and I believe it was a great event
specially considering the snow conditions in Zlin.
It was always great get together and shred.
When the Foshna era ended
I worked one year in Karolinka
helped to transform it into significant park on czech scene.
The main builder there, Jose, is a great guy and does great job
park is always in mint condition there.
After that, I got an offer from Qparks to come to St. Anton am Arlberg, Austria.
It was a great experience
they require the highest standard of shaping
everything really crisp.
I stayed 3 seasons there and then I got an offer from Laax.
Now it will be my 4th season in Laax
the place well known for one of the best parks in Europe
possibly even the best one in world.
In Laax, I am in charge of the bag jump, that is designed for practicing the tricks before you take them to the park.
The one in Laax is more a beginner one
we call it ''tourist attraction''
the airtime simply isn't long enough to do doubles etc. on it.
It is good we don't work full days and can go for a ride too, which is always good.
I am a grandpa now
I have a granddaughter
I don't live with the mother of my daughter for many years now and the daughter is fully independent
so I have a chance to start a new life and I am now in the point of decision how to do it.
After the injuries I did a lot of thinking about my life and if it isn't the right time to change it and I found a way back to buddhism.
I spend summers now in buddhist temple in France
so I combine winter to make money for my studies there with summer in the temple.
That is what fulfills me lately.
I was riding next to the groomed run and suddenly I was falling off the cornice
I didn't see and landed on big rock.
I crushed my vertebrae and undercame a surgery in Switzerland.
I have screws in 3 of them now.
I was wondering if that wasn't a sign that my life should change
so I have found buddhism again.
Buddhism sees a world in a way where everything happens for a reason
and we create reality with our actions.
That is what affects our path through life.
All those actions you take are shaping your life.
I don't even realize if I have ever seen him riding a snowboard.
Only on a video.
As he started snowboarding, he shifted from going with parents to going with friends.
Don't forget my name in end credits!
I almost died in 4 avalanches!
My sister says it is a pity he studied a uni and now he works with a shovel
but I think life is not about the tool you hold
but more about if you treat people around you like a tool
or like a great person.
I am happy he turned his hobby in his source of income.
I am happy he travels. I am happy.
Translation : Jiří Hladík
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