Richard Jonas is a Tignes-Spirit sponsored rider who has been based in Tignes for quite a few years. Branching out to pastures new this season, he's been ripping it up in Lake Tahoe and representing Tignes Spirit around the parks of Colorado with fellow Tignes shredder Katie Blundell.
"Tahoe is so rad its unreal! The parks here are the best in the world. When it snows it seriously snows and when its sunny its t shirt weather... good old Californian sunshine! The only thing that is lacking is a party scene or at least one decent bar to go get drunk in!
"We've been riding mainly at Northstar at Tahoe which is so sick! The park here is massive. You can hit 15 + features in a row and then ride the pipe all in one run! There are four parks, a mini mini park which is really small, a mini park which is really fun with boxes, rails and small jumps. Pinball is the main park and will keep any level of rider happy with jumps from 20-50 feet and there's so many different boxes and rails from the exotic teardrops and flat up flats to the humble flat box. This is where we have spent most of the season and it is such a good park!
"Then you've got the 'straits'. This is the DC park and it is big! There are two jumps - a 60 and a 70 with huge landings on them so you can go as big as you want. They're both so well shaped too, nice and smooth. Next to this you've also got a run of 3 stair set rails in a row from kinked to straight. Pretty gnarly but good fun once you get the balls up to hit them! And then there are gondola bonks and all sorts of other stuff! Chas Gulemond was riding here this week and I saw him bs12 the 70 footer and make it look like he wasn't even putting any effort in! He's also the only person I've seen hit the gondola bonk. It's on a pillar, 30 foot off the ground - the guy kills it.
"Other than that Northstar isn't really that steep. The mountain is big enough for the days you wanna just run the piste. There is so much tree-riding so when it snows there is plenty to do and the storms usually bring 3-4 foot of snow. We got 5 feet over night in one hit last time!
"Oh yeah and you've got the stash too, a park made out of trees and natural features. This is really cool but doesn't ever get groomed so its only really good when it snows. There is all sorts of rails made of trees though including one carved rainbow kind of thing (see pic). and then half way down there is the Craig Kelly memorial hut which you can ride over/use as a wallride and has handrails on it for sliding. They also chop down trees to make jumps and drops out of.
"Our pass also covers Sierra at Tahoe which we have been making day trips over to but I'll save that for another time!
"We've also been hitting some street spots, one closed-down school which was pretty fun. Katie got some stuff down on the ledge (see pic) and there was a handrail too. We also hit up a fence gap on a baseball field which was fun but we didn't get any shots because we ran out of light! Damm it! Our latest conquest was the local skate park - 2 spined bowls which were really fun (pics up soon)."
Sounds amazing! We're already looking forward to the next instalment Rich - cheers mate!
