4FRNT Blog

I had such an incredible week. I headed out monday morning with a local film crew, Tall Treez Designs, and a good friend of mine Ty Dayberry. For those of you who don’t know Ty, check him out. Ty is pretty much the raddiest and sickest tele skier out there. Anyways, we headed out to search for some fresh snow, and hopefully some good pillows, which is exactly what we found. Blower light powder and pillow jumps everywhere awaited us. I had and incredible time and went way too big off some pillow jumps. I'm just glad we had the camera out.

Then, Tuesday in between filming with the crew, I ran up to test out the new 4FRNT backcountry setup. WOW!!!! Huge THANKS to 4FRNT for the new kit! This is the SICKEST, BEST setup I’ve EVER HAD! 195 HOJIs with the new Adrenalin bindings and glueless 4FRNT skins! Wow! So bomb-proof. I can’t believe how effortless the ski/skin/binding combo makes it to get out, but how incredible it all worked out on the hard sections. The door has just been opened. I look forward to all the new adventures, new peaks, new zones, and new ideas that I will get to experience. THANKS AGAIN 4FRNT!

So Yeah… what do you think? Is this a good week so far?

Finally my week wraps up with a film session in the Ally at Sierra at Tahoe. I showed up early for a jump session, but due to a little breeze the session was delayed for a few hours. Instead of hitting the jump we all decided to hit up the sick jibs they had set up. Then, after a few hours, we saw an old friend Jordan Nield drop in and start hitting the big jump. After seeing that, I decided it was time to join in on the fun. I tested the jump and then it was on. I got a couple really good shots. I even got this one of me getting a d-spin! One of my favorite pictures of the season on such a super fun JUMP! Huge THANKS to Steven at Sierra for helping us out and letting us film.

So that was my week! SUPER FUN!So Blessed and VERY THANKFUL! LIVIN’ the DREAM! In South Lake Tahoe and KIRKWOOD California!!!!

Where is your dream?    

I'm sitting at a lodge at Pyhatunturi in northern Finland surrounded by a bunch of half-naked freeskiers. Pyha is known to be one of the best backcountry resorts in Finland, which isn't that impressive if you live in the Alps or North America, but still enough for us to get some exceptionally good days on relatively deep and relatively soft snow. I've been using my CRJ's, the first rockered ski I've ever had and it's been working really well in variable Finnish snow conditions. This morning I even stomped a couple of bomb drops with them! 

Stretching in front of camera. Not sure why...

Sunday January 6^th: The backyard setup

After working 10 hours on my backyard setup over the holidays, I woke up on January 6^th pretty exited and nervous. It was a lot more organization than I anticipated to make this possible and I wasn’t even sure if the wall-ride was going to work. Wood surfaces are usually not the greatest for wall-ride, especially when there are a few nails sticking out. The wall ride surface was above the ridge where the wood connects together and a few inches below the top little window, there was a line of nails popping out. This is the kind of setup that always looks better on paper but when you are in front of it, you kind a question yourself about your judgment.

Around 10:00am everybody showed up to get ready for the day. My friend Samuel Lagrange helped me to prepare the last few things while Christian Turgeon was setting up his camera and flashes. In addition, my brother Dave and our friend Jason Audet from Pro Mountain, showed up and got the sleds ready for us.

Around 11:00am, I did a few speed checks and though that 60km/h would be the right speed but I overshot the landing by almost 10 feet.  45km/h end up being the right speed and we started riding the setup. We were slowly getting use to it and we find out that we needed to make the take off steeper and the landing a bit bigger. We worked on the setup for a while and then went for lunch to refresh ourselfves and got ready for the afternoon session.

At 1:00pm we started the afternoon session and everything was working smoothly. Sam and I were able to enjoy the setup and worked on a few tricks. Jason and my brother Dave had the right speed dialed for us and we were able to focus on our tricks.

All the photos that I included in this blog are screenshots and all the photos taken by Christian Turgeon will be use for different purposes. I had a great time doing this project because I reunited with some amazing friends that I haven’t seen for a long period of time.  Everybody was enthusiastic about the setup and had a good time. I still have a bit more work to do for my edit of the month but it will come out shortly.

I really want to say thank you to my brother, Jason from Pro Mountain, JF Brousseau, Samuel Lagrange, Christian Turgeon and Jess for coming out and making this possible and definitely fun! 

Stay tuned for my next post.

Talk soon

Carl Fortin

For the past weeks I've been doing exactly what you'd expect me to do. During the holiday season I explored a couple of new board games, ate well ad skied as much as I could. Some gnarly crashes limited my ability to ski full force all the time, but wounds have healed and I'm back on my mission again. In Finland the weather has ranged from +2 Celsius to freezing cold. The picture above was taken in -20's and it may depict something like new year and new promises in the dawning horizon, but in reality it's the only picture I have.