The GMon Airline Sessions were straight up ALTER

 Alter, meaning dude, was thrown around a lot, along with Junge (boy) and OH MEIN GOTT, which is quite self explanatory. You could argue that the whole dictionary of Innsbruck jib culture was used to explain the organized chaos up at Nordkette on Saturday, February 28, and rightly so—because it was mental.

A perfect spring day with deep slush, blue skies and a million side hits ranging from mini to mega down the whole Dreierstützlift. The event started nice and mellow with a hike park up the top featuring a propeller and an airplane marshall. Further down the run, the Peanut Butter Club had set up some nice jumps next to a quarter pipe with a window seat with a view.

It kicked off nice and mellow with everyone out in the sun skiing around. Different sessions would happen wherever you found the captain, Simon Geminiani (already seen his Core Shots episode?). Then a usual suspect of big airs, Sam Baumgartner, opened up a big road gap which got people randy. All of a sudden a large crowd of skiers had piled up around a sketchy jump about halfway down to watch the sendiest of the sendies send it. At this moment Gmon Airlines took off: People were hucking their meat in every which way, throwing down doubles, triples and basically everything in between. I think the total success rate of landed tricks could have been about 7%.

The crowd was alive with cheers for the miracle rideaways and absolutely insane bails. There are lots of really awesome unknown riders that I’d love to shout, but I can’t so I’ll list off their tricks so they know we saw them. Double backflip, Triple Backflip, cork 10s, dub 10s, some nice bios, a back-back full and the classic beer in hand straight air. Keep in mind that most of these didn’t make it far past the landing, and more often than not finished in a spectacular crash landing. The day progressed and the beers flowed down while the onlookers listened to ABBA while watching skiers launch. Unfortunately due to some pretty low tide snow conditions and long boarding lines for the lift, the beloved train run down couldn’t be completed but I think everyone up there would agree that that day might have been the most quintessential Nordkette spring day to ever exist.

As the shade took over the feature and the lift line down, you could really get a sense of the tight-knit ski community in Innsbruck that makes these events so special. A true spectacle of freeskiing that is so important, especially after an event such as the Olympics. I hope that this event inspires others like it: inclusive, exciting and seriously unserious. Thank you Gmon for hosting such a special event, and we can’t wait to catch the same flight with you soon. Only next time, let’s go first class.