One biiiiiiiiiig experience

At the end of each season, the Q-Parks shape crew builds a massive set-up to host a group of riders and media who gather in the beautiful resort of Sölden. This year was no different, and Q-Parks contacted Reverse Mag to put together a team of riders and head over to Austria to tame the beast.

We were stoked about the invitation and immediately started looking for potential riders. Eventually, we convinced young gun Moritz Thönen, underdog Nicolas Hüber and dome slayer Jacco Bos to pack their board bags and join us on the trip.

Right before leaving for Sölden, the riders were sharing their opinions on the setup. They got a peek at the massive kicker through a teaser on Instagram. It’s fair to say that all of them were impressed by the size of “The Wedge”, which is the name of this year’s media obstacle by Q-Parks.

Once we got up the mountain, it soon became clear that the size of the feature far surpassed everyone’s expectations. We expected something big, but this — Well, we could basically describe it as “holy f*ck”, “OMG”, “that thing is not big — it’s huge!” or one of the other phrases exclaimed by the riders when they saw The Wedge. The first thing the boys wanted to do was to get a picture of themselves standing at the bottom of the big booter, to get an impression of its actual size.

About five minutes after we arrived, a brave skier summoned his courage and launched off the big kicker. We were all curious to see how much speed he’d need to make it safely over the gap, so we watched the guy drop. As soon as he hit the lip of the kicker, he noticed he was going too fast and yelled “Oh shit… oh shit…” mid-air. He overshot the kicker, but eventually landed on both feet and rode it out safely. His words perfectly described our impressions of the gigantic feature.

The skier overshooting the kicker wasn’t great motivation for our team of riders to hit the setup. Nico and Möru decided to warm up with some hits on the hip, which was smaller but still scary. Pretty soon, Nicolas got confident with the setup and decided to just go for the big jump. After only one speed check, he launched himself off the steep take-off and landed straight on the sweet spot. Moritz couldn’t just stand back and watch Nicolas claim the spot, so he joined in for a couple of hits on the main kicker.

The first day turned out to be a good, mellow warm-up session that allowed the riders to get comfortable with the setup. After watching the footage together, we ended this successful day with two huge pizzas and beers.

The second day, we got up the mountain around 10AM and as soon as we got to the spot, the riders got all excited to throw down a killer session. It was a bluebird day, with a nice and hard take-off, and a soft landing because of the sun. The conditions were perfect for a photoshoot, so both the riders and Nicki, the photographer, were pumped! Whilst Jacco had stayed on the low slope the day before, he quickly joined Nicolas and Moritz for a session on the kicker. It was easy to tell that the guys were a lot more at ease after the warm-up from the first day. They killed the session straight away, with banger tricks such as a frontside 1440 by Moritz and a double backside rodeo by Nicolas. Both guys as well as Nicki were satisfied with the shots, so we wrapped it up with a short tranny session on the hip.

Throughout the two days, the atmosphere was super relaxed. There was never any pressure on the riders. Still, the guys killed it and performed beyond the expectations we had when we first saw the enormous feature. We would like to thank the riders as well as Q-Parks, and especially the shapers who were involved. These guys were always helpful and therefore we are very grateful.

Thank you for reading, get inspired by the pictures and go out and shred!
Dries Meesschaert

Pictures: Nicki Antognini
Words: Dries Meesschaert
Location: Solden, Austria
Thanks to: the shapers of Solden and Qparks for the invitation