The notorious Are, Sweden socked in weather seems to be back, so little skiing action has yet to come out of this year's Jon Olsson Supersessions. Jon though wisely foresaw the potential for slow news days like this one, and had the wisdom to put Colby West on retainer to run the videoblog and keep us all entertained. There was also a main Supersessions kicker session the other night, the action from which is just fabulous. Also: Newschoolers has now set up a Supersessions video channel, so check back there often for more action than five circuses.

Overcast Hip Sessions from Jon Olsson Video Blog on Vimeo.

The most bad ass ski competition on the planet* is underway in Sweden. Jon Olsson and his Jon Olsson Supersessions are back for another go-round with seven teams vying to make the best damn ski edit they can in the next two weeks. The format changes slightly from year to year, and if you head over to Newschoolers there is a pretty good preview gallery of some of the features incorporated into this year's event... it looks like it will be a little more jib-intensive than in years past.

You can get more fo the straight dope from over at http://www.josupersessions.com/ , wherefrom this photo of Simon Dumont doing a handdrag atop giant shrink-wrapped hay bales was taken.

*The folks over at the Red Bull Cold Rush seem to be making a run at the title this year

JOSS - Arrivals and Red Bull Home Run from Jon Olsson Video Blog on Vimeo.

For those of you that had any doubts, Candide Thovex just cemented himself as one of the greatest freeskiers of all time by winning the Freeride World Tour at the ripe old age of 27. These days it seems like a lot of guys are focusing in and specializing in one discipline or another: and why not? You can make a very decent living being a pipe skier in the year 2010. But Candide has won slopestyle, pipe, big air, and now freeride competitions, not to mention popping the cherry on Chad's Gap and pioneering the athlete invitational with the Candide Invitational. Winning the Freeride World Tour is something in itself: on top of everything else Candide has done, it's incredible. Congratuations. Vive es bleus.

Also: when the hell are we going to see a new Candide Kamera?

Freeride Final Top Five:

1) Candide Thovex

2) Kaj Zackrisson

2(tied) Henrik Windstedt

4) Aurelien Ducroz

5) Julien Lopez

I have seen a lot of shit in my day... but I have never seen a Peruvian man named Domingo take the time to snatch an Alpaca, fit it out with a lifejacket, and take the thing fucking surfing. I have so many questions, I don't know where to start. First of all, I mean, are you fucking kidding me? Is this even real? Did they just pick the guy with the sweetest mustache they could find off the side of the street and dub some English over him? Did Domingo wake up high on the side of the road high on PCP one day and decide "you know what? Whatever else I do with my day today, the hell with it: I am going to take a fucking Llama and teach the damn thing how to surf." This is amazing. I am blown away. Awesome

Sure it's been plastered all over the BNQT network, but in case you haven't seen it, be damned sure to watch the teaser for Nimbus' new venture "en route departure" [sic, I guess]. The Nimbus Crew (Fujas, Benchetler, Pollard, Mahre, here augmented with luminaries like Ian Cosco, Anthony B, Bene Mayer, and Blake Nyman, is billing this film as being about more than "jump after jump," which might be true for the full feature length which is coming out soon, but the teaser here is stacked with white hot action. With Nimbus, you are not really landing unless you are landing switch. For lots more sweet vids and updates and the full length feature coming soon,check http://www.nimbusindependent.com

From the contest that brought you names like Tom Wallisch, Corey Vanular, JD Zicat and Michael Clarke comes the latest round of budding skiing superstar edits. Level 1 Productions chose 14 finalists for this year's comp; at the time of this writing five of their edits (as of this writing) are posted on the Level 1 site. I would love to post some of them up here for you to enjoy, but Josh Berman has something against letting other people embed his Vimeo videos, so you'll have to click over to the Level 1 site and help bring in those advertising dollars I guess. Check out all the finalists here: http://www.level1productions.com/news.php?id=298

So yesterday I took kind of a cheap shot at the European X Games, which wasn't really fair. I am certain it will be a riveting contest, given that the ski rosters are essentailly what they were for the American X Games. Kevin Rolland and Xavier Bertoni, frenchmen extraordinaire have a training video out today from the European scene that will give you folks a good idea of what is going on over there. It was the first day of training in Tignes. For more on Euro X, click here.

FollowUs.tv Ep7 Xgames Europe training

FollowUs.tv Ep7 Xgames Europe training

So there is something called X Games Europe or something going on in, well, Europe or some place, but the real action is in Grizzly Gulch up the Little Cottonwood Canyon. Chad's Gap is absolutely enormous. Just massive... and finally photos have begun to surface of the kicker, posted by the good folks over at Saga Outerwear. I mean, look at the size of this fucking thing:

Just crazy. You won't be seeing any footage of this for awhile, and who could blame the guys who built this thing? If you essentially move two tons of snow to build a kicker of that size in the (quasi) backcountry, you deserve the right to charge everybody 29.95$ to buy your DVD to watch the fruits of your labors. Word has it Tim Durtschi, Mike Wilson, and some snowboarders have been hitting it... look at the damn in-run:

Speed Check Time:

It seems there comes a time, for those in the public eye, where one runs the risk of maxing out their public persona to the point where they become a caraceture of themselves. Am I saying Shaun White has done that with this Rolling Stone cover? No, I am just saying he is getting pretty damn close: American flag pants, pissing gasoline on a snowboard fire, shirtless with a gold medal. The guy is awesome, no doubt: women want to be with him and men want to be him. But really, I get it. Shaun White is the man, there is no sense beating me over the head with this.

I'll let this go, right after this quote: "I think about what people will think in the future when they see my face too... I don't know what I want them to think of, but I definitely wouldn't want it to be snowboarding, because there's so much more to me than that." Man, I love that last line. Check it out in all its glory: http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2010/03/03/shaun-whites-big-air-and-big-hair-the-new-issue-of-rolling-stone/

Seems like a fine day for a teaser to come along, and so why not showcase the newest offering from the lads at PYP Productions. I didn't recognize any of the names in the title, but who cares? This looks like a fun little flick that is not entirely park and urban, as so many of the lesser-known production companies' films tend to be. Some nice pillow lines in here, as well as some glorious looking powder. Dig it: