Vince got 30 in style! Great wild party in a remote location in Jura! Pics are here.

All the pics are here!

in the mean while check out this cool video from Nico Vaudroz, the second best known rider from Leysin after Tonton Holland(or not?), riding his Dupraz board in last season’s fresh powpow! Oh by the way this video is on Zapiks a great french extreme sports video community. Learn more about it here.

Watch the video

The first ever CCrew snowboard movie. From 2002, this movie is whatever!
It was filmed in Leysin and Les Diablerets in nov 2002.
It’s more about having fun with friends than going huge…

Tags: chafouincrew, snowboard

This video was originally shared on blip.tv by dikonaca with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license.

Ha ha! This cow made us laugh! We spend a few days in Leysin for some hikes and bike rides. We went to Lac Lioson which is a beautiful lake on the way up to Pic Chaussy. This is where we met her, the only cow chilling her legs out on a patch of eternal snow. Otherwise more pictures of flora and fauna are here. Remi & Marie c’etait bien cool de passer! Wyatt Earp, bing bing, si t’as pas 10000 dollars ben..tu peux pas poser de sortileges.

A view from the balcony this morning in Leysin. 6 cm of fresh snow and more to come in the next days. Summer skiing will be good this year!

The program from the Montreux Jazz Festival has been revealed end of April. You can check it out here.
This year we will almost be there for sure and we'll be going (as usual) to the Gilles Peterson's Worldwide evening featuring SA-RA – Herbert – Dani Siciliano – Soil & "Pimp" Sessions – Bugz in the Attic.
Looking forward to it and pretty excited to get to hear Soil and "Pimp" Sessions live in the Miles Davis Hall. This six-piece group from Japan have just released their second long-player, Pimp Of The Year. Click on these links or check out their website for the latest videos of their singles, Summer Goddess and Crush.

Slamming club jazz from Soil & Pimp, a group with an incredible sound. The Japanese group work in the same live jazz mode as Sleepwalker, playing tightly-crafted tunes in a mostly-acoustic style, but grooving with a hard, soulful dancefloor energy that's amazing. Intense work from one of the most incredible club jazz groups around, a combo so great, so fierce, Soil & Pimp have a sound that grasps you right away, an incredibly precise approach to jazz, one that has them riffing away with an intensity that recalls some of the big groups from the 70s soul jazz scene but which seems to blow even them away with sheer ferocity. Led by President on vocals the group comprises of Tab on trumpet, Motoharu on saxophone, Midorin on drums, Goldmam on wood base and Jyosei on piano. The band works very much in the club jazz mode, using acoustic jazz riffs in a style that's spun out in plenty of dancefloor rhythms but on this set, they're also ramping up their energy level even more taking off to the skies on waves of sound that would leave any dancer far behind. But there's still plenty of nicely grooving modal numbers on the set stacked nicely next to other more intense tunes that show the group evolving a sound way past any others in the pack! The grooves are great skipping along with trumpet, sax, keyboards, and some riotously heavy percussion and a few numbers feature vocals in Japanese.

There is a swiss cultural center in Paris. It's quiet active and nicely located in the 3rd arrondissement, hidden in a small medieval street. Definitly worth a visit because swiss art rocks! hop. (picture above by daka)

On May 5 and 6 it’s the Solar days, a good opportunity to go visit the houses and installations of some foreseeing people in Switzerland who use the sun’s energy for their homes energy needs. Presented in the picture above is the chalet of M. Dulex from Leysin who is the guy behind meteoleysin. His chalet uses a self made state of the art solar installation which covers for the entire needs in energy and heating.
You can find here the list of all houses/installation to visit around Switzerland and read this or this to take some consciouness about the stakes.

June is getting closer, and the worldcupmania is building up…hope you like football because it will not be possible to escape it.
Except…except if you, ladies, follow the good advice of the swiss tourism board!
Check it out for yourself here and get natural.

Watch the video

We are back in business! The sun is shining, the sky is clear. So we went to the glacier des Diablerets to end up the season in great conditions. In fact the glacier is the only opened resort left. Leysin, as most of the other local resorts, closed last Monday.

Up on the glacier, the snow conditions are really good. We encountered all lot of different flying “objects” up there : the local eagle cruising around and chasing the choucas, some old-school military chopper and most bizarre three guys experimenting with their WOOPYKITE. This is a new flying wing concept invented by two Swiss guys. The snow woopykite seems to be just one year old. It’s a mixture of flying and gliding on the snow. The guys were having a great time. Check it out for yourself on the video.

Tags: diablerets, woopykite

Sweek is like Swatch It’s a contraction of swiss and week! We are spending a week in Leysin to enjoy the last days of the winter season on the slopes. We were joined by Erwann and Delphine. It’s starting to be some kind of tradition (2 years is a row! weeee!), the four of us in the mountains for the long eastern w-e. However we have been unlucky with the weather, only managing to get a couple of hours of snowboarding on slushy snow before the rain invited itself for the rest of the w-e. So we had to find other distractions and we were good : day spa, skateshops hoping, a lot of cheese eating (raclette rules), drinking and partying with the locals for the season closing night, eating ice cream (Mövenpick rules), ice skating, watching movies….
All in all it was a great active and easy w-e with the “blackponpon”. Erwann and Delphine are getting married in October, and it was cool spending quality time with them. They are sooo good together! You can witness it here.

Watch the video

Le glacier des Diablerets is just a 20 minute drive away from Leysin. Last saturday, the snow was still fresh and there were very few people. We made it in the first cabin up to enjoy the powpow and then a good soup in the Yeti’s house.
Check out the unfamous road gap on the intro picture.

Just for info, in April, the Demonium crew is organising its Masta Camps on the glacier. The park looks allready great…

Tags: snowboard, switzerland, leysin