A poor season for snow in the Pyrenees hasn’t stopped Spain and Andorra’s dedicated freestyle scene from building next level parks and progressing their riding, Amplid Cartel rider Luka Melloni is testament to that. Last week Luka competed at Grandvalira’s Total Fight Masters of Freestyle 2012 competition and snagged a podium finish for his efforts. If your Spanish is up to scratch you can read all about Luka’s 3^rd place finish and the contest here. If like me, Spanish might as well be Russian, Chinese or a language from another planet, you can enjoy the rad photos from Esteve Munmany and Pep Malo, and a short edit of the competition.

Luka is now off to Vars in the French Alps with Popthespot and alltheski.com to get some shredding footage and stills, his prize for winning this year’s PrimeTime contest. Enjoy Luka!

Photo: Pep Malo

The days are longer, the sun is baking and Mayrhofen’s Penken park is soft and slushy… it must be spring! Austrian Ambush team manager Harry J dropped this banging edit of Ambush rider Jürgen Nigg making the most of forgiving conditions and dismantling the Penken jib line piece by piece, with more style than Prince in a crushed velvet suite. The afterbang levels in this edit are getting critical!

Renowned for its light dry powder, Utah attracts skiers and snowboarders from around the world. There is one resort in Utah that stands head and shoulders above the competition when it comes to its park setup, that’s Park City Resort. Now an institution among the freeski community, many of the world’s top pros call PC their home. Cartel rider Steve Stepp now bases himself in Park City which allows him to session PC’s immaculate terrain parks daily and shoot banger edits with 4bi9 media. The ARC fired across a few questions to Steve to find-out what keeps Steve going back to Park City season-after-season. (more…)

Amplid HQ was sent this gnarly snap of Austrian Ambush rider Fabian Sandholzer attacking what looks like an impossible 9 kink wooden hand rail, designed exclusively to damage snowboarders foolish enough to give it a go. Well we haven’t heard from Austrian Ambush team manager Harry Juen if Fabian made it, but here is a follow-up photograph of Fabian painfully close to (more…)

PRIME TIME is a video contest held by ALL THE SKI. Last year lots of prize money was to be won, this year the black firday situation “only” offers a trip to Vars, France. Since Vars is a bad ass place (even though it sounds like warts), that prize isn’t that bad.

Check out Luka’s latest self edit – footage from the past 4 months … nice ! Spain wasn’t blessed with tons of snow this year, but that didn’t keep Luka away from sticking new tricks.

Loose cannon, Teddy the Berrisch, headed over to Canada as they are getting some fresh pow these days. He took the Garhammer brothers plus cam setup and Austrian  Zillertalshredder, Roman Rohrmoser, with him. Choclate Skier, Phil Meier, is expected to join the crew the upcoming week to get some bigger lines done. Check by every now and then to keep up with what it is all about with that JOB project. Will be massive!!!

Roman with his classic Zillertal-Smile. Ladies in Whizz, you better wash your panties!

While others mount their high tech GoPro on a high tech carbon stick, Kevin Mills oes for the old school polaroid :-) ! POV, frozen the other day in Mayrhofen – which actually is one of the view british colonies in the Alps. That explains the amount of pubs in the village …

Austrian Ambush team rider Fabian Sandholzer recently visited the Crystal Ground in Kleinwalsertal, Austria and filmed a little spot check video. This is how you’re meant to ride the park set-up and the Dopamine is the perfect board for it!

Guys – I’m  super stoked to be 3rd, behind 1st Dale Talkington and 2nd Niklas Erikson. Enjoy the video, Greets, Luka

With neighbours like Lech, Zurs, St Anton and Montafon it’s unsurprising that the resort of Diedamskopf has remained a locals secret. Tucked away in Austria’s Vorarlberg, it’s only 50km from the famous lake side town of Bregenz, but with an hour’s drive to the base of the resort, only those that know how good Diedamskopf is make the pilgrimage. Cartel rider Benny Deeg is one such man. Benny has made Diedamskopf his local resort since he was grom and when we asked him to answer a few questions about his regular riding spot, he was stoked to let the cat out of the bag. With epic backcountry, an uncrowded and pristine terrain park and a day ticket costing less than 40Euros Diedamskopf is a ski and snowboard paradise. (more…)