I don't know who's asking? But I drove back to Minnesota from California to start the winter season off right. At the time it was mid October and my plan was to ride Afton Alps all winter and have the best winter of my life. When the season started I linked up with Nick Visconti to go ride Trollhaugen and we talked about me riding for Sessions. Of course I was down and a couple weeks later it became a reality!
Preseason was full of fun days lapping the tow ropes and learning new tricks. We got some snow in early December and I started shooting with fellow Sessions Pro Jesse Paul, Filmer Dawn Byrd, Photographer Stephan Jende and local board extraordinaire Lenny Bernklau. We did some pretty cool stuff early on and even though we all planned on having our footage in different projects later, it was a really cool crew and great times shooting and riding together at that time.
I flew to Tahoe for the Sessions Relaunch party and it was a blast! Skating Sacramento and catching air out of a good pipe again at Northstar were two of the highlights. Probably the best was Pow boarding at Boreal in a blizzard and slashing some pillows above Donner Lake with friends!
My home hill, Afton Alps, was a blast this winter. Snowboarding often at resorts is really important to me. That's how I grew up snowboarding, riding every night at Afton, and I wanna keep that going. Keep a healthy balance of resort riding and street riding. That said, I did a lot of street riding too! Toward the end of December Think Thank Filmer Sean Lucey flew into town and we started to Stack Footy for their new movie The Weather Outside Is Weather. At the time I had a crazy heel bruise and had to change up my riding to include exclusively low impact features while I recovered. That was actually really cool because it made me try different stuff and I got some pretty sweet shots out of the deal [laughs].
We actually got a ton of filming done in a relatively short amount of time, with a big crew and only one Filmer... Team Work really does make the Dream Work I guess! Always stoked to film with my friends from Think Thank, look out for the movie this year it's gonna be seriously Messed Up.
Some of the Contest Highlights for me were the ParkFab contest in Vegas and The Quallies rail jam at Seven Springs in PA.
After winter had ended in the eastern and Midwestern regions of the US I decided to drive west to do some more boarding out there. Met up with friends and found some good surf in Oregon then made my way to The Holy Bowly, a gathering of shredders riding snow pools at Mammoth Mountain. That was the best! So stoked to have made it out there. The set-up was awesome and it was super fun to ride with all of my friends who I hadn't seen all season.
Currently I'm residing in Mt Hood at the Sessions House. It's gonna be a fun summer! Follow me at @haryanpunch_ and @sessionsmfg as Sessions take-over High Cascade Summer 2016!
