Kanada

After two weeks in northern Canada and Alaska (see Part I of our report), we traveled south to the Canadian Rocky Mountains. If it weren't for the endless solitude and the huge glaciers, you'd think you were somewhere in the Karwendel or Brenta mountains. The scenery is often reminiscent of the local Alps, but without the typical forest aisles, lifts, settlements and tourists, so that you can still experience the mountains here in their natural pristine state.

We continued on to Jasper. On the way we took several short tours, which always offered beautiful scenery. If you want to photograph animals in southern Canada, you don't have to search for long – you simply join the regular queue of car parks at the side of the road, get out, briefly assess whether you have already photographed the animal in question (whether bear, wapiti, caribou or other) and drive on after a successful photo hunt.

The most north-western territory in Canada – subarctic climate, arctic tundra, boreal coniferous forests, huge glacier areas with the highest mountain in Canada. Hardly populated and also bears, wapitis, moose and caribou. These factors convinced us to take a two-week trip to the far north. In the following report, we try to describe how we fared in the wilderness and solitude.

The last part of Patrick Fux's 12-week powder trip begins in Red Mountain in Canada and leads via a cat-skiing detour in deep powder to Beijing and from there back to the Swiss Alps, where there is very little snow.

We spent the Monday of my penultimate week of skiing in Mount Washington, where we had driven into the area the evening before and once again treated ourselves to the luxury of ski-in/ski-out accommodation so that we could safely catch the first lift. We were worried that the predicted large amounts of snow could block the access road and we didn't want to risk that.

Some fresh snow had fallen on Monday, but not enough to get me seriously excited. Time to write down the last few days and prepare for the first few days in Canada.

Patrick Fux, who has provided us with great powder pictures from Japan over the past few weeks, had left Japan for British Columbia, Canada, shortly before the dramatic earthquake and subsequent tsunami and the nuclear disaster that was omnipresent in the media. None of Patrick's friends or the Hakuba Powder crew were injured. Nevertheless, the reports from the news naturally make all the powder experiences and problems that you can have as a freerider much less important. Nevertheless, we have decided to bring you the last three episodes of the Japan-Canada winter trip.

Alterna Films from Canada bring a solid snowboard flick to the market with "Hello World", the chapters about Bosnia Herzegovina and Turkey really stand out. Unfortunately, there is mainly snowboarding to be seen in the cities, including tricks on bombed-out facades in the Balkans.

Warning – all of the situations depicted in this film are potentially dangerous! After taking note of this warning at the beginning of the film, Light the Wick kicks off with a few violent ski scenes showing perverse steep wall descents and nasty falls, soberly commented on by the protagonists. No bullshit, there's something to this warning...

Filmed mainly in North America, the new film from Transworld covers the entire spectrum of snowboarding. Only the sequences in the halfpipe are a little short. Otherwise, the scenes involving Ikka Bäckström, Chris Greniers, Eero Niemela and the others are truly impressive.

With "Eyes Wide Open", the young Filip Christensen has delivered a successful work this time, after he was not so successful last year with "Get Lucky". The riders - again mainly from Scandinavia - show off their skills in some remarkable contributions and even the jump scenes are not boring for the freeriders among us. Innovative jumps and, above all, the massive kickers ensure that you stay entertained. Not to mention the wide-angle heli shots, the incredible cliff drops, the fat powder and the impressive pillow runs (see picture)...

Flown halfway around the globe, and yet the snow is melting here and there. Our Swiss road trippers torture their aged motorhome over the mountain passes of British Columbia one last time in the Canadian spring. They reap what are probably the last powder shots of their Canadian ski season with a sigh of "goodbye winter".