© Dean Blotto Gray

Two and a half days of shooting and filming on-hill during the day, while hanging around the rental house cooking and filling in a few scrapbook pages during the evening.

Once again, Bear Mountain hooked up the custom features for the team riders to get gnarly on and secure a few film shots and some choice stills. Big thanks go out to Dan, Clayton, Greg and crew for taking care of the obstacles proper! You guys rule! And thanks to the girls for grinding out the snowboarding maneuvers sun-up to sundown.

With the Bear Mountain shoot wrapped up, I’m off to LAX to catch a flight over to Japan for the next mission. I’ll check back in ASAP. Blotto.

© Dean Blotto Gray

© Dean Blotto Gray 2010

In a stacked final that included Shane Dorian, Grant “Twiggy” Baker, Carlos Burle, Ramon Navarro and Grant Washburn, it was Mark Healey who rose to the top and took home the top prize — a Costco-sized bottle of Patron, a ton of bragging rights and his first international big-wave victory. Often a bridesmaid but never a bride, Healey was long overdue to win something like this. His calculated but aggressive backhand approach has been blowing minds in heavy rights across the globe for more than a decade now, but this was the first time he was able to channel that skill and put it all together in a final.

In absolute elation and still a little out of sorts from the celebratory fiesta, Healey commented: “I’m fired up! It would have been nice to win some money, but to be honest, it feels like I just won $100,000. We’ve got a movement going on and the caliber of surfing in the event was as high as any other event, every heat was like a final. Guys are hungry and going to the end of the world to chase these waves. It feels good to win.”

Last year Healey won the XXL Tube of the Year Award, and now he has the Todos trophy to add to his mantle. For the tiny freckle-faced haole who grew up battling for respect and waves on the North Shore, Healey’s always earned everything he’s achieved. As a stand out at Pipe, a regular outer reef charger and a world-class diver, the only thing missing from the résumé was a title. He can now check that off his bucket list.

But giving credit where credit’s due, Gary Linden and his crew deserve a huge amount of praise for finally bringing an event back to Todos — without the support of a primary sponsor, no less. It’s been 10 years since “Killers” hosted a contest and it’s about time. The event was about as grassroots as a professional event could be, but you wouldn’t have known it from the high level of judging, organization and efficiency with which the contest was produced. Running a big wave event 10 miles out to sea on a tiny island in Northern Baja is no easy task. Greg Long also deserves special recognition for putting in a few nickels of his own to finance a portion of the contest’s production costs. Without his investment and the countless hours of production by the “staff,” the event would not have happened. After the success of this contest, hopefully it’s only a matter of time before we are back here again with jerseys.

“After 10 years of trying to get a sponsor to renew the event, we finally had a commitment in August but when it came down to the start of the waiting period, they pulled the plug,” explained Linden, a legendary shaper, event director and father to this contest. “Faced with not having the event after six months of work, we made a decision to continue on our own without prize money. Greg said he would donate his Eddie bonus, inspiring us all to go the extra mile to make the dream come true. Knowing it was an El Nino winter, we had to take advantage of the opportunity. A big-wave world tour without Todos does not seem legit.”

Throughout the day, the level of big-wave surfing was incredible. In second place, Shane Dorian put on a style clinic and surfed Todos with such a relaxed approach that it almost looked effortless. Good to see he didn’t waste any time getting back on the horse after his heavy wipeout at Mavs two weeks back. During the awards, Shane commented, “There will never be another event like this, guys surfing for nothing else other than the love of it.”

Gabriel “Peru” Villaran won the “Wave Of The Day” award, but he was thrilled just be in the event, let alone walk away with the best ride of the day. With a celebration to match the day’s biggest sets, the victory party went on well into the night.

There’s only a month left in the North Pacific swell cycle and it’s safe to say this was one of the best winters on record: Numerous big-wave events were seen, epic rides were had in all conditions and the paddle barrier was pushed to new heights. As the long days of summer near, it’s a bit sad to think the party’s almost over. Here’s hoping the ocean has one more swell in her to give us all a proper send off.

© Jason Murray

The early bird mission was scheduled and the weather cooperated! With a sunrise departure from the airport, we entered the mountains around the same time as the Northeast facing snow was gaining light. With our spots already picked out, we simply dropped the riders at the top, placed the filmer and myself in our locations and started shooting. Mads and Sammy were able to handle eight runs by the time noon rolled around…at 12:30, the weather front had arrived and started to engulf the southern end of the range, so we packed up and got out. Hopefully this fresh storm will produce plenty of new snow for all to enjoy in the coming days…Blotto.

On day two we continued our journey into different areas of these gigantic mountains. With the sun still hanging low on the horizon, the good light is passing over the best snow very quickly (mid-winter characteristic). It’s been key to pick a zone, move efficiently, grab a shot or two, then move onto the next. We’re still in the process of figuring out exactly where our top picks will be once this approaching storm moves in, and then out.

At the very least, the snow has been great for blower turns and general snowboarding tactics including cliff drops, airs and mini lines. We’ll be back in the bird first thing tomorrow morning; I’ll post some images from our sunrise start. Cheers, Blotto.

We awoke on Friday morning to clearing skies and the call from our guide Will that we’d be entering the mountain zones today…finally! After a week’s worth of travel, waiting, training and going through our gear a dozen times, it was time to peep the alpine.

By no means was it bluebird, but the cloud layers were slowly moving up valley, opening up the lower range where we’re stationed. We loaded up the rental, drove up to the airport, weighed in and waited for Steve to land. After a quick refuel, it was off into the wild mountains of AK.

About 20cms (8 inches) of new snow had fallen over the past couple of days…not as much as we hoped, but still plenty to make it work. We took the first run on a north-east facing slope and it was all time! The quality turns in the fresh snow felt like way more than eight inches, so we slashed it up top to bottom, big smiles all around. After a few more runs on some different aspects and areas, we had a good handle on stability and the best places to be at certain times of the day.

For the most part, the new snow is bonding well with the previous layer, so we’re feeling aight in the avy department. This doesn’t mean it’s all good, we’re still on high alert and have all safety measures on point all the time.

After a good day of scouting, we’re prepped and ready to go for the filming days starting tomorrow. Thanks for checking in, Blotto.

Day two of our safety meetings was a visit to the helicopter we’ll be flying with to access the alpine. Seaba’s machine of choice for the 2010 season is a Eurocopter B2. Our crew has flown in similaraircraft as this, so most of the information was good review.

More importantly, we dialed in all the specific needs to use the heli as a follow cam to document Mads and Sammy. Travis and I figured out where we’ll be situated behind the pilot’s seat, where to anchor the harness and so on. A convenient design on this B2 is the rear doors slide, so we don’t have to remove them to start shooting from the heli. This will save us a ton of hassle (and time) once we’re in the field. Another perk is the pilot’s door remains in place and closed so he can stay warm, which translate to a happy pilot.

I’ll hit y’all back once the weather clears and we get into the alpine. Cheers, Blotto

The Seaba crew scooped us up in the airport, threw the bags in the van and we were off to start ourFort Seward Livin. Haines was built up around 1900 as a military establishment, so there’s an entire street of officer’s quarters, something like ten houses. Nowadays they’re rented out to town folk and visitors. Each unit is split into a duplex and features two complete houses on each side, one upstairs, and one downstairs.

The heli operation offers these to their guests as an alternative to the hotel rooms...we were like “sign us up!” Any ‘at-home’ qualities you can jedi into your travel is worthy…living room, separate bedrooms, laundry, home cooking. We have a safety meeting to attend tomorrow before accessing the mountains. I’ll try to post some useful info and pics for y’all. Blotto

I had this slide show created to present to NIKE SNOW this fall (edit by regbob (no longer IBob due to a recent chain of events)). This was a simple, 3 minute piece of what was shot in the 2008-2009 season including the ad campaign “birds eye of snow.” This will be beneficial for them to use at NIKE, as a visual representation of the NIKE SNOWBOARDING team. We only included a certain amount of content for each rider to keep the video at a respectable time.

NIke Slideshow 2009