Sebastian Müller

"The Wizard" Gigi Rüf qualified for the Verbier Extreme 2020 at the FWT in Fieberbrunn with a lot of style. [Should it take place, as of today: "Ghost Contest" with live broadcast, see below]. He has left his mark on Absinthe films, and we look back on these great, golden snowboard films that have been watched so often for their soundtracks alone.

Italy will survive and, despite the recent crisis, is coming back to life in the powder! We enjoy neve pulverosa and canale and canalone, and hereby show our solidarity with the southern side of the Alps. At least that's how it initially appears on the video... The fresh snow is sometimes sparsely reflected in moving images. So soon we had to pull out some gems, and finally, as is so typical, a PG-Conditions reporter and steep face skier completes this episode, and how!

If you can't think of anything, then you watch VLOGs. A bit of something has come together. At the end of the day, once again  PowderGuide contest reporter Tobias Huber saves us with his season edit.

There are freeriders, not only you and me from the German speaking parts of the Alps, but also Japanese freeriders, like Yu Sasaki. He is familiar to us from FWT competitions. I watched Kicking Horse and Yu's run i.m.h.o. would have been the winning line if he hadn't screwed up the drop from the wind lip on top of the face, which was penalized by the judges. ContestHappening didn't mention his run, thus, in order to let justice and mercy prevail, we honor Yu's great line and big drop here!

What we don't have to thank our alpine clubs for: huts with mountaineers' meals and tea, dormitories with scratchy woollen blankets, winter rooms and bivouacs! Magazines, equipment hire and courses! Environmental protection and policy! Anything else? Sure: the Alpine clubs of all Alpine countries have long been represented on youtube and deliver: Educational material, small adventures and big expeditions, as well as top-level Olympic sport. So let's take a look - in order from small to big!

Today in our Videos of the Week: The imaginary battle between EAST & WEST: Relatively interesting films from Japan and Georgia fight for your favor with two films from the USA. Have fun!

Please note: your esteemed editor was suffering from severe flu, only had enough strength to watch the pseudo-live broadcast of the Freeride World Tour in Hakuba, and then stayed alive after all. He then became aware of Elias Elhardt's film and connections began to emerge everywhere, between mountains and across valleys. A few flics from young and old for fun, and if that's not enough entertainment for you, why not watch Greta vs. Trump in Davos 2020...

Children and young people are still heavily underrepresented in the Videos of the Week. We would like to counteract this. This is an episode with overly cute children and their overly proud fathers, and with incomprehensibly good young skiers.

Just like the snow conditions, so are the Videos of the Week. You can go ski touring and talk yourself up about the conditions or not. In any case, it's these times that make us realize what really counts and what's missing. And if you're really starting to get frustrated or nervous, you could console and calm yourself with ski video games.

Seems like the first skiers are already secretly hiding in their favorite couloirs during these days with less snow. At least that's what the successful YT search for this special terrain suggests! Presented here: steep descents from the Pyrenees, the Rockies, Scandinavia and, of course, the Alps! We learn how to ski couloirs without using poles or hand straps!

This episode of "Videos of the Week" is presented to you in english! English is an aglo-saxon language and spoken by hundreds of millions of people all around the world. It is fair to say that this beautiful language is our common ground and only a little community, the French, so far resisted to adapt.

All good things come in threes? I've come across at least three films here that make for a very happy edition of VdW in their own right, and I won't add anything to them, just a few words.