It is that time of year again… Time to put away the sleds and think of the business side of Thunderstruck… An extremely busy time for me, a time of rest and summer fun for Team Thunderstruck (oh, I will get out fishing a few times, too 🙂 ).
All our riding footage for TS9 is digitized now. It was an amazing year. The BEST powder ever, by far!! Through it all, the bad weather, the lack of snow, the horrible avalanche danger, we found some fun. We found some snow. And we found some amazing weather. Thunderstruck 9 will be another departure for us though. Some of our regular riders did not even see snow this year. One of our most popular riders did not get out with us at all this year. Some of our other riders put their sleds away long ago.
And some of them went CRAZY. Good CRAZY! Plain and simple, I have NEVER seen the quality of riding I filmed this year. Technical. Tight. Well-thought-out. Amazing. From Julio Eiguren’s amazing throwing-around-of-the-Apex to Brad Story’s squeezing through extremely tight first ascents to Randy Swenson’s bid at yet another record-breaking tall chute climb, it has been NUTS. From Cam Hicks’ HOURS of powder footage to Mark Mesenbrink’s show-up-and-kick-butt attitude, it has been nuts. From Shawn Hastings’ fourth-times-a-charm ascent to Trennis Baer’s 9 chutes in an hour to Doug Anderson and Travis Hyde and Wes Little’s 3 foot of powder and sun day… From girls Riley Jensen and Tina Thomas and Julie Marquart, taking women’s sledding forward with amazing powder riding and crazy chute climbing. And Dave Schell and Dan Bush pushing their sleds and bodies to the limits! What a great time! Of course we did miss Ange Dyer this year… Ange was married and moved somewhere with NO SNOW! Doc Shawn Nesbo also took the season off from filming as work and family kept him occupied. And our resident Snow-crosser, Taylor Dyess, also missed out on the film season, mainly due to a very busy race schedule! But for the most part, the boys and girls of Team Thunderstruck made the upcoming film TS9 a monument… An incredible journey into our world we like to call EXTREME.
Coming soon: TS9 on DVD and Blu-Ray, a TS9 teaser, a 2011 calendar, new clothing, new hats, new picture galleries, and much, much more!
Our TS9 premiere schedule will be coming out soon also but our first 3 dates are set:
AUGUST 14 in Boise, ID at the Egyptian Theater (WORLD PREMIERE)
AUGUST 21 in Spokane, WA at the Bing Crosby Theater
AUGUST 28 in Ogden, UT at the Egyptian Theater
Many more dates to come soon!!! Thank you for reading!!!
– May 11, 2010