AustinStromme.com

Last weekend I competed in the Crystal Mountain Triple Crown.

I had several goals for this contest:

-Demonstrate improved IFSA-style skiing. (E.g. fast, fluid, speed over tricks, traversing is ok)

-Take 1st.

-Keep my skiing at about 70% of all-out.

-Build confidence and stay healthy for the rest of the season.

I accomplished the last 3.

As far as the first point I will break it down into several sub-points to highlight what I did well and what I could improve upon.

Fast skiing: I did this well in most parts, except after my second cliff, and at the bottom. After my second cliff I let my fear take-over and I “forgot,” that there was good snow underneath me I could shed speed on. I basically just skied to the side, away from my line. Check out 0:20 in my video. Also at the bottom my legs were feeling the long run and I shed some speed that I could’ve kept into the bottom. I don’t regret this because I would’ve crashed if I hadn’t shed speed; I was tired. Leg endurance is something I will continue to improve upon throughout the year with higher-rep squats and just plain skiing.

Fluid: I was very happy with my fluidity, barring 0:20. In the future I need to rely more on my scouting information. I knew the snow beneath me was good enough to shed speed on, but in the moment after my second air,I went to the side, I surrendered to the fear of hitting ice and going out of control.

Technique: I am working on keeping my shoulders down-hill through my turns and trying to angulate my hips as opposed to traversing one way then turning then traversing the other, haha! I did these things alright (still a long way to go), but you can see me just get fatigued and revert to a much sloppier skiing style at the bottom.

In short I could improve on how much I rely on the information I know after my inspection runs. Even though I only skied at about 70%, I don’t think there was a much more challenging line available that I could stomp, the conditions were pretty limiting. Stay tuned for another post soon regarding my preparation for the Snowbird National contests this weekend.

-Austin S.  (in Utah)

Hello reader!

     I thought I would start off my first post in months with a quick re-cap of my experiences since last season ended and my developing paradigm of living. I got a part-time job at QFC, started weightlifting, and became much more focused and confident about my goals for not only skiing, but more so life. Last season, I unfortunately did not win the TGR Grom contest. In retrospect the biggest surprise was that I was much more broken up about my finishes at the Junior Freeskiing Tour contests, I think that is because these “in-person,” contests engage my competitive side like nothing else. Like I said previously I got a part-time job at QFC, which is only relevant because it gave me a lot of perspective, and a fascinating foundation to develop my thinking from over the summer.

     This summer I read Thoreau’s Walden and Civil Disobedience, which I can sincerely say, have had a profound effect on my thinking and living. Don’t mistake me, I do not subscribe to some “holier-than-thou,” perspective now; I was much more touched by the breadth of experience that was presented by Thoreau. I feel a deep connection to him not because of his various arrogant, self-centered, and belligerent thoughts and perspectives, but because of the overarching liberty-based paradigm that he writes from.

I started Olympic weightlifting this summer and encountered another fresh perspective from athletes that have been training for decades to add another kilo (2.2lbs.) to their lifts, men who go into the gym for 6+ hours a day, punishing their bodies, going through hell, for years, only to go to the Olympic Trials and completely fail. They might miss every single lift in competition after 10 years of training. A normal person might give up after this, but they simply continue on. This not only takes immense courage and fortitude but also a delusional belief in themselves, a “huge ego,” if you will. They have to believe, as the great Donny Shankle puts it, “That they are the baddest motherfucker to ever live,” when they walk up to the platform.

The perspective of delusional self-confidence and even arrogance, combined with Thoreau’s ability to self-contradict, fail, and with impunity from his conscience write critiques of a society that he took part in, all made a lasting impression on me. These Men are self-assured, they answer to no one, except themselves. Finally, the idea of sacrifice for the abstract concept of freedom makes sense to me. Freedom is my paradigm now, under that broad umbrella I might use freedom to practice my own ethics, and live how I want, but always I will live free, even if my hands are in shackles, I know my mind will be free. After all, if I answer truthfully the question “What separates man from animals?” I can only answer that in a time of dire need we will forget our animalistic instincts such as survival, and live or die for mental ideals that are beyond our personal selves.

I hope that this post isn’t too obscure for you guys, but when I post PT. II of this series, I will discuss what this new paradigm of Freedom means for me and this ski season. This blog will from now on be much more rounded and I will try to practice and improve my writing to encompass my own rounded experiences of life; skiing, and weightlifting in particular. I will also be posting quotes and videos/other media that isn’t specifically related to skiing.

Check it out! Put tons of work into this and I’m really stoked with how it turned out!

There was some confusion about the edit that DNA posted being my season edit. It was just a little teaser thing for my season edit, I had to throw it together at the last minute. Anyways I hope this is fun to watch! I’m already stoked for next season! And thanks to Brian Gavin for helping me put it together!

Here’s my run from the Triple Crown contest this weekend:

Had a great time and got 1st place and $100 bucks! I love doing 3′s like that and it was just overall a great day shredding around my home mountain!

-Austin S.

Well I’m officially on the skiing grind and loving it!

February mostly consisted of filming about once every weekend and just lapping the park, as there was little snow to be had. But we made the best of it!

Towards the end of February we got some new snow and I decided to go learn some new doubles, double cork 10 being the main focus. Honestly I don’t have the normal tricks that most people do before they try double cork’s but I realized a while back I would rather try a trick into powder and maybe be a bit out of my depth, and master it purely by trial and error then try it in the park where it seems like you could get hurt a lot easier. I don’t really buy into the whole talent thing, I think if I have figured out a trick in my head, and have the proper jump and everything, then no matter what it is do-able. And by trying my new scary doubles into powder during the winter  I can just spend the summer time at Mt. Hood getting more diversified, as opposed to hucking new doubles on a hard park jump.

Anyways, I basically made  a mission for an entire week to be spent going out and trying to build this jump and try new tricks. Well, of course the weather got in the way, and it basically got pushed down to 1.5 days when we could get into the BC before the snow warmed up and ruined the landing.

So we got it built in the afternoon we had, and I hit a couple of times, and the transition was WAY too fast, I was just doing some mellow cork 7′s and I would get bucked into the back seat haha! So we decided we would tweak it the next day and see how it went.

Hey guys!

Had an amazing month of January, and I thought I’d share it with you all. I’ll let the edit tell the story for me haha:

Like my video said I’m going to be focussing on making an edit for TGR that will blow some minds so I’m gonna keep doing what I’ve been doing and keeping the best shots to myself and finally releasing them in the TGR edit so it’s a surprise for everyone!

Thanks everyone!

-Austin S.

Whats up everyone!

Threw together another video for your viewing pleasure of some tricks I tried this weekend with all of the new snow. Hope everyone gets super stoked to get out there and throw down!

I tried both my first cork 7 off of a cliff and my first double flatspin 720. Just one of those times when you gotta devote some days to pushing yourself and learning, not total stomping, I hope I get you stoked enough to get out there and get over your fears and go for it!

Looks like some precip coming in next week sometime but we’re not sure whether or not its going to end up as rain or snow. But nonetheless, expect to see these shots redone, but stomped within the next few weeks!

Thanks for checking it out!

-Austin Stromme