The Chamjam 2003, Chamonix, France
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This season seems to be flying by super fast. The first two months in Avoriaz have been action packed and unfortunately plagued by injuries amongst many of the British locals...Duncan Crawshaw breaking his back (!), Austin tweaking his ankle off the big kicker at Les Crosets, and not to mention my own injuries; broken rib, dislocated shoulder, and sprained ankle. All this meant that I was left holding up the Avoriaz flag in the Chamjam this year, the only Avoriaz rider capable of riding, well almost capable anyway...
Having spent the past two seasons in Chamonix it felt good to be back, seeing plenty of old faces and old haunts. We made it onto the mountain for the slopestyle day, where a good amount of riders had turned up including the legend that is Ingemar Backman, Frederick Sarvell, Jacob Wilhelmson, and Nicolas Bache to name but a few of the pros present. The course was a little sketchy (to say the least!) in places, and the landings for the kickers were far from perfect, but the riders were doing their best to throw down some tricks in front of the judges panel which consisted of Babs Charlet and Jonas Emery. The course consisted of two sets of kickers, a quarterpipe, and enough rails of all shapes and sizes to keep the jib monkies happy. The Thursday comp started well with Sonia Shaw sticking a 50-50 over the high rainbow rail and the Finnish mafia sticking switch nose presses, as well as Roland Morley-Brown who was ripping the kickers with corked backside 5s. However mother nature was obviously unimpressed, and decided to end all the fun - within 20 minutes the weather had closed in, the kickers were invisible, and we were all freezing our tits off! The organisers let the riders decide whether to continue or whether to postpone till Saturday. 20 or so very cold snowboarders all blurted out "Saturday" and got the fuck outta there! It was a shame though because some of the riders were unable to stay till Saturday, meaning that when it came around, fewer riders entered.

...But alas, there was always the Big Air comp on Friday before then, which turned out to be a super sunny day. Plenty of riders and spectators showed up to what was probably the best big air finals the Chamjam has seen. There were two kickers, both with 20 metre tables, but one was about 3 metres high and the other around 4 metres. Not many people were hitting the bigger one cos it was pretty big and the run in wasn't very fast. Timo Aho may be the official best unsponsored snowboarder in the world, but he was showing the pros up in the qualifiers with switch underflips and cab 7s smooth as peanut butter. Local pro Nicolas Bache was getting the crowd amped up with attempted backside 9s in the qualifiers, before sticking a perfect corked backside 7 in the final off the big kicker, which earnt him first place and a sweet amount of cash. However the biggest cheers of the day went to the guy who went off the kicker on a blow-up rubber lie-low! Absolutely crazy.

To cater for all the live music acts, a huge marquee had been erected next to the sports centre in Chamonix town, however David Holmes' set on Wednesday night was so banging that the Gendamerie were called (apparently there were over 200 phone calls complaining about the noise) and the whole thing was shut down at 3am. A lot of dissapointed holiday makers and clubbers alike were turfed out onto the streets, with only Le Garage (aka cheesiest club in the world) still open, nightmare!
...So for Thursday night the venue for Rodney P and Skitz was L'Arbate. After some fish and chips and the newly opened Fed Up were made our way down to what we were sure would be a blinding set from two of Englands best hiphop dj's. Having personally witnessed their performance at the Chamjam last year I knew we were in for a treat...however more dissapointment struck when the owner of the Avalanche bar in Argentiere kidnapped Rodney P and Danny Skitz, only to invite them to play at his bar! Cheeky or what!? By this point we were far too pissed to be navigating the road to Argentiere (but evidently not too pissed to navigate the road to Jon's pad in Le Praz) so we stayed at L'Arbate, entertained by some of the local bands and dj's. Apparently Rodney P and Skitz went off till 6am, no Gendamerie in sight.

Ian Brown's lyrics "Woke up so fresh this morning..." could certainly not be applied to the way I felt on Saturday morning. I could barely walk, let alone snowboard, and I had the slopestyle finals to think about. I tried water, tea, red bull, but it was eventually beer which made me feel better, fight fire with fire eh! It was another sunny day at Grand Montets, and the course had recieved a little fine tuning since Thursday. The comp took a very relaxed jam style format, with an hour and a half of time designated, each rider could take as many runs through the course as they liked during this period, and were judged on their overall riding and of course, style. Again Roland Morley-Brown was on top form, mastering the kinked rail with 50-50s, tailslides, and frontside boardslides, and possibly the sickest trick of the day..a nosepress nosegrab over the rainbow rail. (Someone's been watching Primevil!)
Gary Greenshields was also riding well with some smooth spins off the top kicker and nice frontside airs out of the quarter. Still pissed from the night before, my only trick worth mentioning was a 270 tailside 270 off along the rail, unfortunately the comp was over by the time I landed it! Ingemar Backman was floating huge airs out of the quarter (how the fuck does he go so big???), including a backside 900 and a cab 1080 to take first place in the highest air comp. All in all it was a wicked style of comp, even if somewhat disorganised. All the riders had a good time and kept pushing each other on each of the obstacles. Roland was stoked to get first place overall, and he definitely deserved it..the name of the game is slope STYLE and Roland just oozes it.

Overall it was a wicked week in Chamonix, and the Chamjam we have all grown to know and love, the only difference this year being that I woke up the next morning in bed with one of my mates rather than with some Swedish chick. See you next year...