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 Niklas Hollsten
Im a extreme snowboarder from Kimitoisland in the Finnish archipelago. Its funny that I am a bigmountain rider and comes from a island where the higest peak is 75meter. I got a good start in 85meter high Meri-Teijo Ski center, where I spent most of the free wintertime, got good basic technic by ride park, good slopes and lot of treeruns with small drops. Sometimes in 90`s I was with parents to the Scandinavian mountains and for first time explored the white gold.
Later when I started to travel around Europe for freestyle and boardercross competitions I got that I liked much more to ride offpist then to concentrate on the competitions. Decided that I will try my skills in freerideing, and it was one of the best decisions in my life. Of course I didnt made success immadiately, on competitions I went for the hardest and the most technical lines, before I “learned” to understand more what the judges was looking for. After a good tip from a rider in one of the Scandinavian BigMountain championships, everything went do much easier and started to make good results in freeride competitions.
Few years after that important competition I have got many good results and epic freerideruns. For example: Scandinavan Bigmountain Championships 1st place 2010 & 2nd place 2009, Freeride World Qualifier overall ranking 3rd place 2010 & 4th place 2011 etc. and winter 2011 I did three 1st decents on the mountains around Ankogel/Mallnitz in Austria where im based nowdays wintertime.
Nowdays I like mostly to go on tours (hike&ride), find nice new lines to explore. Offcourse its always fun to go on competitions, film and photo-shootings. A good mix of everything makes the winter epic. Freeride is not only about competing, its mostly about having fun and enjoying the moment in the mountains with good people(or alone sometimes).
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Kirjoittanut Niklas Hollsten
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29.03.2012 14:00 |
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 Last weeks has been busy and lot of action, even if the weather hasn’t been the best every day.
A long time dream came true last week Thursday. On Wednesday I was on a solo mountaineeringtour in the Ankogel area, it was a supernice springday with stabil snow. Wanted to check out a possible run a“overhanging” couloir what never been ridden. Went up on the morning with the lift to the top of Ankogel ski area, from there a loooong traverse to west side of Lucketörl, ride down a short steep couloir, then again traverse until it was time for crampons and iceaxes. Started to climb the couloir, half way up I made the decision that I will not climb it up alone without ropes etc. Cause a small mistake and you slide over a 100meter cliff. I climbed back down a bit and went for a shorter and less exposed 45degres couloir. Half way down I stopped and made my board to split and “skinned” up to one more peak in the area. Got a really long, on top really steep and exposed and later wide couloir run down to the bottow of the valley. After a long day of hiking and riding I got a phone call in the afternoon from Bernd.. He invited me to join for a tour the next day(read. after 10hours) to Top of Austria=Grossglockner.
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Kirjoittanut Niklas Hollsten
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19.01.2012 22:00 |
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Weekend after new year 6-7.1 I arranged Ankogel X-treme Invitational a freeride and chinese downhill competition. Even if the name is Invitational riders could sign up like for a normal competition. The days before the competition it was snowing really much with hard wind, but on 7th it should be a small weather window and the forecast was right. Still 6th on friday night it was snowing as hell when the ridersmeeting was and 4 of 5 avalanche danger, so around half of the registrated riders inhibited on friday when they thought it could be possible to keep any kind of comp. next day.
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Kirjoittanut Niklas Hollsten
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22.11.2011 12:27 |
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The winter is coming up, for a few months ago when it started to be dark and rainy outside it felt like the winter never will come, but now its a fact again the winter is soon, really soon here.
But actually the autumn wasnt so bad either, there is lot of good things with autumn too. For example the "summerguests" are going back to the cities and it start to be peacful again in the archipelago around the summerhouse. Autumn is also a exellent time to make some trips to south Europe and extend the summer a little bit.
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Kirjoittanut Niklas Hollsten
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12.02.2012 20:01 |
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Beginning of the season here in the Alps looked really bad with no snow, but suddenly in mid of January it snowed a looot. So now we have almost more snow then normally this time of the year..
My first real comp. should have been Stimorol Engadin FWQ in St Moritz in end of Jan. but they had to cancelled it because of too less snow on the mountain(all snow had blown away).. First i was almost little bit "pissed" that they not even tried to have it, but then i realized that what the fu*k, we have epic condition here at "home" in Austria so no idea to be sad or pissed, when we can make splitboard-tours, film and shoot here at home in the mountains around Mallnitz with epic snow.
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Kirjoittanut Niklas Hollsten
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30.12.2011 13:22 |
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About 2,5 week ago we left from Finland and started the roadtrip direction Austria. We took the ship from Helsinki to Travemunde, it should have been a 27 hours boatrip, but in the end it was a +30 hour trip. First we was late because of hard wind, then when we came to Travemunde and should drive out from the ship, we couldnt, because they had parked a carry in front of the passanger car entrance and German workers who should take it away hade went on coffebreak and "forgot" us in the ship.. :) But after over 1,5 hour of waiting they finally came back from their "short" break and let us out. The rest of the cartrip to Austria went without any problems.
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