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A couple weeks ago, our good friend and photog, Chip Kalback, was front row for all the action that went down at the first of three Dew Tour stops. Despite being the coldest place on the face of the earth, the Red Bull skiers kept it hot in Breckenfridge.

Check out the full gallery!

...and by "graces" we mean obliterates a big puffy pow pillow. The December issue of Powder should be hitting stands real soon, so keep an eye out for the Red Bull helmet and pick it up.

In other Windstedt news, Henrik recently signed with freeski powerhouse Salomon Skis, joining Red Bull teammate Simon Dumont on the sticks from France. Congrats to both Henrik and Salomon.

Meet Dano Bruno. This past January, on the morning of the X Games 13 Superpipe Finals, we walked into the zen zone that is the garage of the Armada house in Aspen. The smell of wax and methodic buzz of an expensive cordless drill permiated the senses. Enough Armada skis lined the wall, in various phases of mounting and tuning, to thorougly stock a retail shop for an entire winter...and it was all next year's shiz.

I talked with Dano while he moved through the preparations on Tanner Hall's Armada Pipe Cleaners for the evening's event and got the story on Dano, Tanner's Skis, and perhaps why the Pipe Cleaner is the winningest ski in X Games Superpipe history...

Continue Reading Tech Talk....................

Behold the fruit of three days of labor for Red Bull Photofile Photog Christian Pondella. Aside from being a winner of Powder Magazine's "Photo of the Year," Christian is a general big mountain badass: he's currently taking shots of Red Bull skier Chris Davenport on Mt. Rainier.

It's truly a treat to see Pondella in action. He never messes around, bringing out the big gun flashes and suspending his uber-expensive camera from a 15 foot tall pole, all in the name of getting a better shot of Simon Dumont for you.

Enjoy the gallery.

Fire drills and slow-roasting. This is what making ski-movies is all about. You'd think that after all the snow storms and cloudy days of winter you could just roll into late-spring Mammoth and throw up a pipe and get a bunch of shots in the can in a day or so. Not exactly so.

If it's not one thing, it's another. Clouds, storms, rain, high-winds. Out of the five days of potential shooting, most went like this: up at 7am and out the door by 8am. Rally to the parking lot. See every flag in the place straight sideways like it was starched that way. Pull out the cameras and get shots of Simon pretending to unload to go ski...like four times in a row. Load back up for real, go get breakfast for two hours. Go play some basketball. Nap in the afternoon. You get the picture.

But, as you can see from the second Mammoth gallery, when it's on, it's on.

You didn't think we were done at four did you? Well, we just had to take a break from editing all the epicness that was our six day trip with Tanner Hall and Poor Boyz Productions at Retallack to film their fall offering, Everyday is a Saturday.

Our trip was classic Retallck: it never dumped all that much at night, but when you stack 10cm on 10cm on 15cm on 5cm, well, all of a sudden it's waist deep. The icing on the cake was the sun coming out on Day 5. Enjoy the shots!

Click here for the full gallery!

Our forth day at Retallack with the crew consisting of Tanner Hall, CR Johnson, John Spriggs, and Poor Boyz dawned like the three before: dumping. Everything was in it's right place, but sometimes things just go amuck. The day started off with one of the three cats getting stuck, and quickly escalated with a skier in another group getting injured (note: if you ever go cat-skiing please, please beware of the cat road and don't huck over a roller onto it. It claims more victims than you'd think). When these things happen, everyone at Retallack-staff and clients alike-seems to pull together towards a common goal.

While the crew didn't get as much done as the previous days, we still snagged some killer shots and got to ski the deepest powder of the trip yet, so nobody was complaining. And after charging for three days a slower day was a nice little bit of respite.

Enjoy the Day Four Gallery!

After gracing us with some fresh snow the previous day, Mother Nature decided to bestow upon us an opening of the heavens to reveal Retallack in all it's bluebird glory. The crew wasted no time having Karl The Gnarl push up a huge mound with this snowcat and the session was on.

CR Johnson won (or was it lost) the rochambeau and hit the booter, situated goal-post style between two trees, first. Johnson sent a huge corked out 720 and barely made the knuckle of the landing. He called up to Tanner and John Spriggs, saying to go faster. They stepped a few feet higher on the convenient cat-road in-run and the launching really began. Tanner threw and stuck a lazy double-backflip and Spriggs replyed with the same. Other highlights included CR's first 1080 off a big booter since his accident, Spriggs lofting double-backs so big he had time to adjust his goggles, and Tanner coming in hot off a 720 and chopping a tree in half in his landing (wait until you see that one in "Everyday is a Saturday").

Enjoy the full gallery!

Day number one at Retallack was super fun. The snow was not bottomless, however. We got lots of work done for "Everyday is a Saturday," and got some shots, but somewhere deep down there was still that craving for some classic Retallack blower. The kind seen in "Believe" and "The Massive." Enter day number two. Riding up in the back of Karl the Gnarl's cat, we found about 15cm at the weather station. Just enough to push Retallack from the "good" category into "epic." There's not really much to say that the photos and a poem from Karl can't. After a fine meal at the lodge, there's really nothing in skiing like when Karl stands up to deliver one of his famous poems. The whole room, brought together by shared stoke for the day, is bonded even more.

Enjoy the shots, enjoy the words.

Retallack Mar 5 2009

Powder, Powder, Turn it up Louder
What a day to play in the snow
The energy continues to amaze
How fortunate we are to share one of these days
When the stars align
And you're standing atop a pillowy spine
You look down and know, that is your line
To you again why you came
For that feeling you get nowhere else
But in Powder, turn it up Louder
5 and 2 in Cat One
Second day of work and fun
A few photos and filming
Of the athletes three
To show in a movie next year
So others can see where they
Want to be how they ski
The feelings the same for you and me
Use patience and respect
Enjoy your time. Give thanks for what you ate
Let's do it again all again tomorrow
I bet it will be great

-Karl "The Gnarl" Guderyan

It's 6:45 and Tanner Hall is pounding on my door screaming in a funny accent something about going to ski powder. It's day one, and our crew rolls out from the sleepy town of New Denver just up the road to Retallack Lodge. Our trip this time consists of Red Bull's Tanner Hall, CR Johnson, and John Spriggs on the skis as well as Tyler and Phil-Benjamin from Poor Boyz Productions. After a quick and dirty gourmet breakfast at the lodge, we drag all our crap out into the parking lot just in time for our cat to pull up. The cat stops, driver's door flies open, and Karl the Gnarl jumps down off the skids to add to the already high levels of stoke going around. It's a classic Retallack moment that has played itself out many times before.

After some safety breifings, we move out into Retallack's vast tenure of terrain. While the snow isn't bottomless like you'd hope for after seeing Retallack so many times in the movies, it's still really damn good and the best it's been for a month, according to our guides. We spend the day poking around and looking at lines. Tanner, CR, and John all line up nice little pillow lines and knock them off. A good warm up to the trip. Snow is suppossed to be coming in, so the real fun is surely a day or two down the road.

Stay tuned for more, but in the meantime peep the gallery from Day One.