With two weeks to go until the first festival of the season kicks off I thought I'd take a look at this year's Relentless Freeze Festival, based at one of London's famous landmarks, Battersea Power Station.
What better way to kick off the festivals than a huge kicker, followed by a great party on the shores of the river Thames. The Relentless Freeze Festival will be hosting the likes of Torstein (and hopefully another triple), current TTR champion Peetu Piiroinen and four-time X-Games Gold medallist skier Simon Dumont, to name a few. The evening entertainment also rivals that of any summer festival with the likes of Roni Size, Mark Ronson and Pendulum headlining and up and coming acts such as Jettblack, Bedouin Soundclash and The Nextmen.
An eventful 2010/11 season that saw double-corks taking precedent in competitions, Shaun White wining Gold at the Olympics, Bristol born Jenny Jones getting her third winter X-Games Gold and Torstein Horgmo's landing the quite ridiculous first triple-cork on film. Surely this can only mean another banging winter in on its way.
Along with a whole host world class athletes competing over the weekend Friday will again showcase the best of British, with the aptly named Battle of Britain. Competitors include Brits winners Gary Greenshields and Jamie Nicholls - who clocked up a top ten finish in August's Burton NZ Open. The British riding is always entertaining as it bring's together a crowd usually seen competing at The Dawn of the Shred and The Brits through to the indoor scene. Jamie has to be this year's favourite, but it will still be an entertaining afternoon finding out!
Friday is also the UK Premier and the final stop of the European Tour what is arguably the year's biggest snowboard film 'Deeper'. The film will be premiering on Friday night after the Battle of Britain competition and will then be screened throughout the rest of the weekend. Deeper follows one of snowboarding's all time greats, Jeremy Jones, on a mission to access the world's wildest terrain including friends Xavier De AL Rue, Travis Rice and Jonaven Moore.
The film, sponsored by O'Neill, has been in the making for the past two years and is set to take back country riding to a new level. The producers Teton Gravity Research have already premiered the world's first 3D snowboard film earlier this autumn, which went down a storm, and Deeper is set to be even bigger. The last time a film of this magnitude was released was Travis Rice's project 'That's it, That's all' and Jeremy Jones passion for free-riding will surely take this to the next level.
With 16 days until these two great events, I can't wait. I'm sure there will be plenty for me to write about after the show. Whether it's the snowboarding, skiing, music or the chance to meet Jeremy Jones the Freeze weekend is set to be a hit. See you there...
