Riders: Gigi Ruf, Jeremy Jones, Kevin Pearce, JP Solberg, Romain de Marchi, Matt Beardmore, Bjorn Leines, Scotty Lago, Jules Reymond, Sylvain Bourbousson, Chris Coulter, Markus Keller, Blair Habenicht, Marco Feichtner, Mikey LeBlanc, Keegan Valaika, MFM, Wolfgang Nyvelt, Cale Zima, Nicolas Muller, Matt Ryan

If backcountry is your thing, then this is your movie. Absinthe is definitely known for hairy pow lines, cliff drops, and sketchy high-consequential big mountain riding. Ready comes through again for Absinthe with over 80-percent of the movie shot in the backcountry. The crew experienced epic conditions in AK this year, and riders like big mountain legend Jeremy Jones were ready to conquer Alaska’s most notorious beasts of mountains. Other shreds for Absinthe round out this film with their own style, the likes of Kevin Pearce, Wolfgang Nyvelt, Gigi Ruf, and Nicolas Muller to name a few. (Ever heard of these guys?)

Some details—Once again, Gigi Ruf bags another opening section. Gigi’s backcountry skills are just fun to watch as he seems to make the backcountry into his own little playground by making the most out of all the natural features. Jeremy Jones section will make you piss yourself, with the level of consequential lines he does. Helmet cam shots give an insane perspective of how steep some of these AK lines are. Nicolas Muller also tamed the beasts of AK while throwing some huge frontside pow slashes. Annie Boulanger has a good section with some big cliff drops and sick pillow lines. The crew got some rare sunshine and not so rare deep snow conditions at Mt. Baker. Matt Beardmore scores a stand-out section with creative riding making use of trees, rocks, cliffs and everything else. In one shot he does a huge backside 180 onto an exposed rock face. JP Solberg stomps a steezed out double corked 720. Although it seems like this crew stomps everything in sight, a welcome bail section (whatever happened to those?) shows some gnarly gut wrenching diggers complete with tumbles, tomahawks, tree smackers, and edge catchers—we watched that part a few times. As Jules Reymond puts it, “We can get the sickest bail section—they don’t even know.” The song for this section is perfect.

This movie shows some of the best backcountry riders in the most challenging backcountry scenarios. The riding level speaks for itself, along with good camera angles and a catchy soundtrack. The riders show how big mountain and backcountry riding should be done. On a down note there is a wack rail section in the middle that we could have done without. Absinthe should stick to what they do best and it’s not rails.

We give this video a noble score of 3 ass-kickers (out of a possible 4)

Tags: Absinthe, angry interns, Ready, Video Review

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Features. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.