The Our Camp ladies have announced the dates of two winter camps this forthcoming season in Morzine.

There’s an all-girl camp, based at More Mountain chalet, running from January 18 to 25. It includes half board accommodation, coaching in small groups with British pro riders, lift pass, yoga sessions and transfers to and from Geneva airport. The camp costs £659.

If you want to take your man, brother or Dad with you, you could check out Our Camp’s mixed camp which is based at Ride&Slide from March 15 to 22.  The campo includes half board accommodation (including unlimited wine!), lift pass, six days of coaching, transfers and other goodies. It cost 920 euros for the week.

Next up is another ladies week at the Ride & Slide chalet from April 5 to 12. This camp also includes six days of coaching with British pro riders, half board accommodation, meals, lift pass, après activities and transfers. This week costs 920 euros.

For more info on the camps or to find out how you can book day-only camp sessions in Morzine next season with the Our Camp crew, visit www.ourcamp.co.uk

Just only two months until the Metro Ski and Snowboard Show in London. If you’re heading to the capital for the show you might be interested to know that there’s also an FIS World Cup event taking part here at the same time. Rumours of a multi-day snowboard and music festival at Battersea Power Station are still emerging – more info when we get it!

Our Camp’s summer snowboard camp for girls hit Les Deux Alpes last week. The crew recorded the thoughts and experiences of the campers throughout the week and we’ll be reporting them in the blog.

For more info on Our Camp events visit www.ourcamp.co.uk

DAY FIVE

Claire is a biochemical engineer currently completing a PhD in London. She started snowboarding three years ago whilst working for a biotech firm in New Zealand, when her friends persuaded her to go up with them at the weekends.

Since then she’s had a two week holiday in Fernie and spent a week in Serre Chevalier. She’s hardly done any freestyle, and decided to come to camp so that she could have more fun playing around on the slopes.

“I’m much better at learning from instruction than by just picking it up myself, and I get nervous learning around boys. They look so confident and it somehow that makes me feel less confident, so I just don’t give it a go.

“After this week, though, I do have more confidence, so now I’d be prepared to give things a shot even if I was not nearly as good as them. I felt a lot better doing the jumps today. I managed to get some air and actually I enjoy getting speed to go into the jumps now, whereas before it freaked me out – I barely even got up the jump when we first did it.

“It’s nice to know that I can do the spins, too, even if it’s just low off the ground. We were trying spins off the banks on the side of the boardercross, so it wasn’t scary, it was just a case of getting used to getting around. I didn’t think I could do it at first but I can – now I don’t have to worry so much about the take off and spinning bit, I can start working on shifting my weight over to my front foot.

”Oh, and I did some good ollies today – we just watched it on the video. You can actually see my board go off the snow! And it felt good too – it felt solid. I was getting my knees up, getting my shoulders right.

“Gilly helped me to see what I do wrong, which means that now I’m able to correct it. I’m a scientist: I need that blow-by-blow breakdown. I like to have a set of instructions and to analyse how I’m doing something – that’s just the way I process things. And I feel a lot more confident and a lot happier now. I had a crap second day; at first I thought that the other girls were so much better than me, but now I realise that’s just because most of them have been snowboarding for longer.

”Actually Michelle and I are pretty much at the same level, so I’ve realised that what I can’t do is just down to my lack of experience, not because I can’t inherently do it. This week has set me up so that now when I go on my next holiday I’ll try some 180s and to ride switch, and practise some hits on the side of the piste – it’s given me the confidence to try stuff on my own.” 

Our Camp’s summer snowboard camp for girls hit Les Deux Alpes last week. The crew recorded the thoughts and experiences of the campers throughout the week and we’ll be reporting them in the blog.

For more info on Our Camp events visit www.ourcamp.co.uk

Day Four

Jenny is a biomedical engineer from Belfast. She teaches climbing, she kayaks, and she’s been snowboarding for about fourteen years, having started out going on school and family ski holidays.

Surfing and skateboarding had always looked interesting to her, but she found the scene in Belfast a little bit intimidating and didn’t know how to get started. Snowboarding seemed more accessible – it was easy to find lessons, and she had seen other kids in the resorts doing it.

 After going to a dry slope back home on a regular basis, she decided to take five months off work this year to spend a season in Morzine. It was great, but she’s been feeling like she didn’t progress as much as she wanted, and has been stuck on a plateau.

Originally she chose Our Camp simply because the dates fit her summer plans – but the more she found out about it, she realised that she was looking forward to having female coaches.

“I often don’t get on particularly well with male coaches that I’ve had in my various sports. This week has been so much more friendly and relaxed and so much more positive and encouraging than any coaching that I’ve had before.

Today we rode the pipe for the first time this week. I tried riding into a small pipe before and fell flat on my face, which left me with a fear of them; they’re quite intimidating to look at. But Gilly had taught us how to do 90 degree hops on the slope so we knew how to do the turns already, and we’d been practising keeping low and kepping our base nice and flat on the boxes and the whoop-de-woos, so it was just a case of bringing that all across.

We dropped in right at the start so it wasn’t so high – and it just felt right from the start. We weren’t trying to go too high at the beginning, just getting used to the turns, but that feeling of weightlessness – it was amazing. 

“Then we moved on to some bigger kickers. The first time I went I was too slow, so the second time I straightlined it and the ground just fell away from me. After that I was worried about going too far, so third time around I followed Tamsin in and had just the right speed, which was great.

We had the first ever Irish Snowboarding Championships this year in Livignio, and I’m feeling like I’m getting the confidence now to give that a go.

“We hurried down the mountain to go white water rafting. It was pretty tame compared to kayaking, but it was great fun because the instructor was completely mad – he made the whole trip like one big bumper car ride.

Oh yeah – the owner of the rafting company came out with a load of leftovers to feed a piglet that he’d been given as a “stupid gift” (his words). I was feeding it the food and it – well, it tried to eat my thumb…”

Our Camp’s summer snowboard camp for girls hit Les Deux Alpes last week. The crew recorded the thoughts and experiences of the campers throughout the week and we’ll be reporting them in the blog.

For more info on Our Camp events visit www.ourcamp.co.uk

Day Three

Michelle is a research chemist from Cork. She started snowboarding two years ago on her first ski holiday, did a snowboard taster on the last day and decided immediately to wave the skis goodbye. She’s only ridden about four weeks since then, but decided to give the camp a go because she wanted to ride in the summer.

“It’s the only kind of holiday that I want to do anymore. None of my friends snowboard so I had to come on my own, and I thought a girl’s camp would be a bit more encouraging; I never went into the parks before because I found all the fellers a bit intimidating.

“Yesterday was good because everything just kind of clicked. I found that I could take the 180s and switch riding that we had done the day before on the piste straight to the rollers. But then today – well, the weather was hot, the skies were blue, but I just couldn’t get the boxes. Okay, I got the first one. I didn’t think about it, and it was perfect; they were all like, “you’ve never been on a box before?” But I couldn’t do the second one, and then I came down on the last. I started thinking about it too much, I think.

“It’s just in my head, just the way I work – but I suppose I still learnt tail presses today, and even coming down off the mountain I was throwing some of those in, so … it’s just something you have to get over.

“Luging cheered me up a bit. Getting the speed was cool, after going a bit slow the first time, we started to try to chase each other down.

“And I was surprised when we went skating this evening; I thought that because I’d had a bad time on the hill that it would cross over, but actually I was learning stuff. And I think that will probably help too, when I go back up the hill tomorrow – it gets your confidence back.”

Scottish Our Camper Jess

Our Camp’s summer snowboard camp for girls hit Les Deux Alpes last week. The crew recorded the thoughts and experiences of the campers throughout the week and we’ll be reporting them in the blog.

For more info on Our Camp events visit www.ourcamp.co.uk

Day Two

Jessica is a liftie in Britain. She’s proud to work at Nevis Range, one of Scotland’s four remaining resorts, and this season (lasting from February through April) got in about five days a week on our very own powder, hardpack and heather.

Having never ridden outside Scotland before, she had planned a summer trip to the Alps with some friends - aiming to get at least a few days on snow between now and next season. The friends cancelled, Jessica typed in “girls’ freestyle camps”, and voila - she’s at Our Camp.

Actually, that makes it sound a bit too easy: Jessica’s travel plans ncluded a night bus from Scotland to Stansted, which first broke down and then abandoned her in Birmingham when she went to make a call to check on her flight. She rolled into Les Deux Alpes a day late, weary but determined.

“I can panic a lot about meeting new people, but when I arrived yesterday afternoon I found it really welcoming; everyone seemed really calm, despite the typical Scottish weather that they’d had up the hill.

Jess hits the park in L2A

”Fortunately the weather today was amazing, really hot and sunny. I only started riding in park this year, but because I was in a group of girls I didn’t mind giving new stuff a go; at home the guys are always going huge, so unless I ride with the one other girl at our hill I find that I don’t really push myself.

“Today I landed my first backside 180, which I surprisingly found easier than a frontside one. Gilly was telling us to just give it a go and everyone was going down the slope trying new things together - it was a really good environment to learn in.

“This afternoon we went down to the fake lake. Gilly and Sara walked in and somehow made it look like it wasn’t cold, so me and Claire walked in and it was freezing! Then we did some yoga on the grass by the lake, surrounded by the mountains. I’ve wanted to try yoga for quite a while and it really felt like it was stretching out my muscles, so that will give me something to get started with now.

“Tomorrow I want to learn some tricks on the rails. Hardly any girls enter the Highlander Comp at Nevis Range, and there are some good prizes on offer, so I’m going to build up my confidence this week to give it a go.

”I do miss my little boy, especially seeing the other kids out here but it’s also quite nice being able to relax. He’ll have a go at snowboarding in the next couple of years but I won’t force him to do anything.

”I don’t care what he does - skiing, even blading - so long as he comes up the hill so that I can get to ride!”

Some of the campers on the Les Deix Alpes glacier

Our Camp’s summer snowboard camp for girls hit Les Deux Alpes last week. The crew recorded the thoughts and experiences of the campers throughout the week and we’ll be reporting them in the blog.

For more info on Our Camp events visit www.ourcamp.co.uk

Day One

Sara Helme is a computer programmer from Cheltenham. She’s been snowboarding for seven years: her boyfriend dragged her into it and she’s never looked back. She was fascinated by it right from the start, even though it wasn’t until the second week of her second holiday that she could turn toe edge. Now she spends two weeks of every winter in Canada, and tries to get some indoor riding in at least once a month.

“Usually a whole bunch of us go to Canada; we all ride together and spend a lot of time in the trees, but nobody else is really interested in going into the park. I’ve always wanted to get more into freestyle, so I thought it would be good to come and do it on a girl’s camp.

“There’s only one other girl in our crew usually, and I like riding with guys, but with girls it’s just more comfortable ¬ you relax a bit more. Seems like guys are always trying to impress each other, and are more competitive than supportive. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why they don’t want to ride in the park when we’re on holiday ¬ perhaps they're too embarrassed to fall?

Sara tries some apres skate lessons

“Today was flipping windy! My first thought was damn, I forgot my neck gaiter. But surprisingly, it didn’t matter; it was such good fun. I’ve been trying to do 180s for two years: I had an idea of what I needed to be doing, but it’s never really clicked.

“Normally I have a couple of goes, turn 90, smack my head on the floor and give up. But today Gilly helped me visualise exactly what I needed to do and then I just got up and did it! I think that I just needed to have it broken down and then relate that to what my body was doing. By the time we had to go down because of high winds, my legs were exhausted but I was so pleased. I could do a f/s 180, ride it out switch, and then pop it back - just really chuffed.

“The weather got better in town in the afternoon, and we had a go at skating. I’ve never skateboarded before so I'm impressed that I managed not to kill myself. I've always looked at people skating before and just thought it looked really hard, but everyone did so well and it was brilliant fun.

"It was nice to see the sun, but I don’t really care what the weather’s doing - I’m just thinking snowboard snowboard snowboard snowboard!”

South Africa is also celebrating its winter season at the moment and riders recently headed to the Lesotho mountains for the AfriSki Kings Cup at the AfriSki resort in preparation for the Quiksnow SA National Snowboard Championships which take place at the end of July.

Check out The Times picture gallery below to find out more about snowboarding in South Africa.

SMK Camps are offering powderroomies discount off their summer camps in France and Switzerland and accommodation at the Riders’ Hotel and Apartments in Les Deux Alpes this summer.

This is the fifth summer season of SMK Camps. They’re aimed at riders of any level looking to improve their freestyle riding.

Accommodation at the L2A camps is either in self-catering apartments or in the full-board Rider’s Hotel while self-catering is the way to go in Saas Fee.

The crew are kindly offering powderroom.net readers 7% off any camp this summer. To get your discount just enter the code POWD08 in the promotional code field when you book online at www.smk-camps.com

If you just want to hit the glacier or perhaps stay on a little longer in L2A after the camp, you can also get 10% off bookings at the Rider’s Hotel and Apartments (www.theridershotel.com) by entering the same code – POWD08 – in the promotional code field in the booking form.

Roxy have just sent us a report on what their team of UK snowboarders got up to this season – here goes…

What an amazing season the UK Roxy team have had on and off the slopes!

The snow season kicked off to an early start for the UK Roxy girls with an on snow training camp in the legendary snowboard mecca Saas Fee, in Switzerland. The camp was held just before the opening half pipe World Cup in October so the girls had perfect conditions in the pipe and the park was in good shape as well. Abi Dempster (13), Ashlee Smith (16) and new girl on the team, Aimee Fuller (16) joined other junior Roxy riders from across Europe for a week of intensive training with acting coach and mentor long time UK Roxy shredder, Lesley Mckenna.

As well as lots of great on snow coaching the girls got some very valuable advice on how to cope with life on the road, stay fit, stay focused and make the most of all those media opportunities coming their way. The girls also got to shoot with legendary snowboard photographer Nathalie Mayer and were interviewed for Cooler, Bliss and Document Mag. They all seemed to take heed of the great advice as the season kicked off extremely well and continued getting better for the girls right until the end.

The first comp of the year for Aimee was the Roxy Chicken Jam in Kaprun in Austria. It was the first time Aimee had competed in the event and she was one of the youngest riders there but she held her own and out shone her rudimentary experience by qualifying for the finals. With Lesley Mckenna as one of the judges she had a hard judge to please but was impressive throughout the qualifiers placing 5th in the qualifying field to go on and joint the main field. The finals saw some amazing riding with Cheryl Mass taking the victory and Roxy rider Kjersti Buaas winning best trick. Aimee gained some very high level experience.

After Aimee's impressive performance at the Chicken Jam she was quickly selected on to the GB Junior Team as the only girl member. With Lesley, who is also a GB team member, as guest coach over the Christmas period, Aimee was getting just what she needed in terms of consistent coaching and great on snow experience.

Not being one to shy away from big events, she carried this experience on to the Burton European Open where she re- joined the other Roxy junior riders , again under the watchful eye of Lesley McKenna. The junior Roxy team cleaned up at the BEO with noteable performances from all the girls. Aimee ripped in the slopestyle event coming a very respectable 5th place with fellow Roxy riders Silje Norendal in 2nd and Mirabelle Thovex in 4th. Lesley then took a break from coaching the junior Roxy riders and joined her fellow Roxy team to compete in the half pipe event at the BEO. She stormed the qualifiers winning them by a good margin, but unfortunately crashed in the next round. Torah Bright put up the best Roxy result of the half pipe riding into 2nd behind Kelly Clark.

Meanwhile, back in Scotland Abi Dempster and Ashlee Smith were enjoying what was turning out to be the best snow in Scotland for around 10 years. Abi took her skills to the slope in Glencoe and Cairngorm winning her age category in the regional competitions throughout the season. Both girls got in some great training in preperation for the British Championships in March in Laax, Switzerland.

While Abi and Ashlee were ripping it up back home, Aimee was on the road with the GB junior team. She competed at the World Rookie Fest in the Czech Republic and came in a very impressive 2nd overall. Lesley Mckenna made a quick stop at the half pipe World Cup in Italy and laid down an impressive 4th place, the best result from a UK half pipe rider this season then rushed off to the US to film for her Roxy podcast and shoot for various magazines including SUK, Cooler and Huck, doing what she does best, riding the big mountain powder in very snowy Jackson Hole.

The girls all met again at The Brits in Laax where team Roxy quickly got themselves noticed. Lesley Mckenna has won over 20 British Titles in all events over the years so the three A’s, Abi, Ashlee and Aimee, have a wealth of experience to count on. In what turned out to be a very fun and action filled week with lots of new snow to contend with the girls racked up ten podium finishes between them.

Aimee very nearly did a clean sweep in the junior girls age group taking first in the Boarder X, Halfpipe, Slopestyle and 2nd in the big air. Lesley took 3rd in the Ladies Boarder X and 2nd in the Halfpipe, while Abi took 3rd place in the youth category in all her events. A job well done by Team Roxy.

With the season almost at an end, Lesley, having heard of epic conditions back home, jetted back to get in some Scotland shred. She was met by powder, YES POWDER, filled slopes on Cairngorm and totally unbelievable conditions. The conditions were so good that Onboard Magazine decided they would join Lesley in Scotland for a week of very good riding and shooting, a first ever for Onboard.

Definitely a perfect end to a great season!

The World Backcountry Freeride Jam will be held at Whistler Blackcomb on April 18-20 2008, towards the end of the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival.

Features and events include the North Face Backcountry Village outside the Roundhouse; the opportunity to demo backcountry equipment, including Prior split boards; taster 'randonnee' ski and split board tours with Whistler Alpine Guides Bureau; kiteboarding and telemarking clinics; short clinics on avalanche safety; and a couple of parties including a fundraiser for a popular backcountry hut.

There will also be three races (for crazy fit people, I suspect): the Whistler Wind-Up race uphill from the Village to the Roundhouse (1200m vertical rise); the Whistler Dash (in-bounds ski mountaineering race); and the epic Spearhead Passage race (26km out-of-bounds including 2200m of climbing).

It has been snowing here in Laax for more than 24 hours and most of the mountain is closed today. The final events of the Brits - the Animal Slopestyle Championships and Quiksilver Freeski Big Air Championships have been postponed until tomorrow when we're told the weather will clear.

Til then it's a powder day!

In the worst weather day at the Brits since the contest moved to Laax, the Brits continued with the Sno!Zone Halfpipe Championships today.

Despite heavy snowfall and sporadically high winds, visibility in the pipe (which had been painted almost entirely blue) was good enough for the contest to run.

MC James Thorne had his work cut out keeping the riders motivated in such cold, unpleasant conditions but his string of useless facts and rider-teasing kept every one happy on a pretty miserable day.

In the women’s contest, Olympians Kate Foster and Lesley McKenna were in action alongside newcomers such as Roxy’s new signing Aimee Fuller and other respected riders including Ivy Taylor and Laura Hill.

The guys were going huge all day. Sparrow Knox sparked a jubilant family pile up after his awesome qualifying run whilst riders with three letter names shone all day – shooting seriously high out of the massive pipe. Dom, Dan, Ben, Sam to name four of them. I was wondering how I’d add Angus Leith to this bunch but when one of the photographers shouted ‘Yeah Gus!’ during one of his final runs it became pretty clear he could safely join the three letter rider gang too.

Prize-giving takes place tonight – once we’ve all dried and thawed out!

So day two of the Brits got underway with some clouds and a bit of flat-light – rare for the usually blue-sky Brits. Also not ideal for riders spending the day hooning off massive kickers in the big air competition.

First up were the women and junior riders. Junior team GB coach Sonia Shaw has clearly been nurturing her young brood – the teeny girls in particular were flying off the kicker – mixing up some solid grabs and stylish tweaks.

The women’s field was fairly small but a couple of excellent jumps in the final by Samantha Rodgers and Claire Frost are sure to put them up amongst the winners. We have to wait til prize-giving tonight to find out who takes the titles.

Due to lack of time the men’s contest became a straight two run final rather than the planned knock-out contest. Some massive 9s and smooth 7s mean that too could be a close call.

The Brits 2008 kicked off in Laax, Switzerland today with the boardercross and ski halfpipe contest.

The results are top secret until prize-giving later tonight but I can safely report there was some superskilled riding, some near misses and some pretty scary collisions.

Zoe Gillings – who has had a fantastic season on the FIS World Cup boardercross circuit – easily qualified in first place in the timetrials for the women’s contest. What left many jaws on the floor was that her time was also faster than virtually all the men too.

Lesley McKenna competed in her first Brits boardercross for years and was on solid form. Laura Berry was also back in action at the Brits – after missing a year through injury. She’s still injured – but just decided to compete with a broken collarbone this time. Having broken it seven times now she didn’t seem that phased by the concept of a four-way battle down a rolly, windy boardercross course. Rather her than me.

There are a couple of sad faces in town. The disastrous opening of Heathrow terminal five has left some people still waiting for their luggage – including several riders who have had to borrow kit to take part in today’s contest.

I went through the airport yesterday fairly uneventfully so it’s getting better. We just had to wait on the tarmac for 45 minutes while they got our bags on the plane – but I’d been upgraded to business class for some reason so I wasn’t complaining!

Fingers crossed everyone gets everything they need soon.

The Oakley Arctic Challenge is getting underway in Norway. The contest kicked off with a new event – the ‘Evening Classics’ series. This latest brainchild of the event’s founder Terje Haakonsen gave riders the chance hit the massive quarterpipe in three disciplines: flat spin, upside down and straight air. Riders could get up to 1000NOK per run and what was left of the 23,000 NOK went to the winner. Peetu Piironen won more than 43,000 NOK by winning two off the disciplines.

Check out the highlights of the session below: