Sunny blue skies, deserted runs, and the best halfpipe in the World all layed ahead today as I jumped on the bus from Aspen to Buttermilk. I skied with Jack Sullan, who lives in Snowmass, who is a really good skier and was in the Dew Tour too, so it’s fun to train together. I got there, the first opening day of the season for the halfpipe, knowone was there, I felt like, ‘should I try tricks’? Because if I fall nobody will see me, haha. It was like a private halfpipe.

It was really run and it was good to try lots of stuff that you don’t usually try, because the walls were soft and there was no pressure. The walls are 22ft, and it’s 700ft long, which is easily 8 good hits. The hardest thing is remembering what tricks your going to do each run because there is so many hits ha. I’m training there for next week, but it closes soon before the X games so trying to get as much training in as possible.

Sneak peak of next years custom Full Tilts! (AKA James Machon pro model haha)There are only 4 ever made. each country is having their own flag model of Full Tilt boot’s specially made for Athletes in the 2010 Vancoover, Canada Olympics. See the Full Tilt website for next years models and designs, I’ve herd the Tom Wallisch pro model 2010 is going to be so sick! Full Tilt boots are the best!

WINTER DEW TOUR – BRECKENRIDGE HALFPIPE

The Winter Dew Tour, first stop, Breckenridge was amazing! The halfpipe was 18ft high walls, which was relatively small compared with everyones training pipe at Copper being 22ft, which made transitions quicker, sharper, and harder to do tricks, as you have less time from trainstion to transition. It was snowing really hard in qualification which made it really hard to get speed, even with the best wax! I skied really good in prectice and was looking good for qualification. One of my best friends Walter Wood, was also in Qualification and we were the only few putting down solid runs in practice. I was lucky enough to get a spot at the Dew Tour from my results from last season. I landed both my runs, but not the way I wanted to, so I was a little disapointed. I finshed 34th Overall in the Dew Tour, which was satisfactory, but not so bad as I took 8 months off snow this summer to save up, and worked at HSBC bank full time to save up for this season, compaired with the people I am competing with who do it on a day to day basis. We had Jen Hudeck (AFP world halfpipe champion) at the bottom giving me some tips which was really good, and I was told that my first hit 900’s were one of the best of the day, which is good. My run is Corked 900 blunt shifty, right 5 mute, left 5 blunt, Allyoop7, Switch7, right corked 9. With abit more training, I should stand a good chance next time. I am the First British Athlete ever to get a spot at the Winter Dew Tour!