MATT BELZILE | BEHIND THE COVER, ISSUE 14.3
Matt Belzile gets surprised by Chris Rasman and lands the cover of King Snow Magazine Issue 14.3. Here's how it all went down.
"On this day, we ripped straight to the jump spot. Chris and I built a good chunk of it the day before, and we put in some work to finish it with the help of Colton Conway and Sean Miskiman. Sean got roped into hitting it with us. We did a Roshambo to see who would hit it first. Chris lost. Sean and I looked at each other with relief cause we were both terrified. It was a big high-speed jump and it had a dog-legged inrun that was hard to manage. Thankfully we had such a dope crew. Chris was instilling confidence in us, Sean was bringing his young and hungry energy, Rusty [Ockenden] was behind the camera putting on the perfect amount of pressure, Jody [Wachniak] was bringing some jokes and Colton was helping out any way he could.
I hit it twice. On the first hit, the dog leg got me, and before I could set up I was already off the lip. I overshot it, straight air to back-drop. On my second hit, I got my Back 7 and left the rest of the landings for Chris and Sean. There’s a lot that I like about this photo, but mainly that it does the jump justice and it looks as big as it felt. The clip is in our video Plank, you can watch it on The Bomb Hole’s YouTube channel. I feel this session was a good example of conquering something difficult. As a crew, there were a lot of moments when we thought about pulling the plug on this jump, but we pushed through a lot of fear and uncertainty thoughtfully and methodically. Big props to Chris for taking charge of this jump and getting us to hit it." —Matt Belzile
"I got a text from The Manboys the night before saying they had a big jump built that I would definitely want to come shoot. Of course, I said yes. I met up with the crew the next morning and we sledded right to the spot. Upon first seeing the jump I was stoked, it looked giant.
We finished a bit of prep work on the in-run. It wasn’t long before it was dialed and they were doing some speed checks. I’ve never seen these guys this nervous to hit a jump. There was definitely a bit of uncertainty about the speed. Chris lost the ro-sham and got the speed dialed for the crew, and I think that lowered the nerves of everyone seeing that he made it to the landing with no problem.
After getting bucked on his first hit, Matt Belzile went back up and stomped this huge Backside 720 like he was going for a walk through the park.” —Ben Girardi