Steeze Muffin

Injury is tough and a certainty in ‘Action Sports’. Severe neurological injuries are the most unfortunate but occur none the less. Even with the use of helmets, there is still a risk of Spinal Cord and Brain Injuries. Pearce’s case is one example of an unfortunate injury in snowboarding.

Kevin hit his head while practicing at Park City in the pipe, reportedly while doing a double cork. He has suffered a Brain Injury of which the long term effects are not known. He has been showing improvements since the accident on Dec. 31st, and his family has been providing updates on a Facebook Fan Page. If you would like to help Kevin, leave a message on the fan page. You will be giving support to his family who are most influential in his recovery during his early stages.

He has been making very good progress. I hope his outcome is good and continues on the track he is currently on. We wish for the best… may his youth lead him to a speedy recovery!

I hit up the Rail Yard at Ruby Hill in Denver, Colorado on Jan. 9th! The set up is basic but fun, and most important free! Yes, Denver teamed up with Christy sports to make the rail yard free and available to the public. They have a plethora of wide ride on boxes, but they have two urban set ups that are okay. The rails are maintained by volunteers who were really cool and fun to ride with.

It does not have a great amount of variety, but it is close and good for getting comfortable trying small stuff like switch on, unnatural spinning simple lip slides and the like… Check out the video of Ruby Hill Rail Yard, Denver, Colorado to see what it looks like!

This is old news, but I was recently sent a link about a collaborative project between Redbull, NBC and Shaun White. The cohort banded together to build a 550 foot long pipe in Silverton, Colorado. The kicker… it included a 600+ square foot foam pit at the bottom!

The size of the pipe and the amount of time and money invested in the project is impressive. It makes one ponder how Red Bull can continue to give away thousands of free cans of product, and have the money left over to invest in stunts like this. A rally car jump on New Year’s eve probably does not hurt sales, but how much publicity will ‘Project X’ get.

Yes, Red Bull is marketing Shaun’s session in in the pipe as a secret endeavor named ‘Project X’. Regardless the questions of the company’s financial stability, the session that Shaun had was impressive. He attempted two different double cork 1080s, a double rodeo and a switch backside 9. NBC is featuring a presentation of Project X on January 30ths at 2pm EST(that is a weird time slot eh?). Some of these tricks are destine to show up during the Olympic halfpipe competition, so check out a preview of them below.

Red Bull’s ‘Secret’ Project-X

There is a new feature on Steeze Muffin… ask Coach Kyle! If you want some help dialing in a new trick, just hit Kyle up. Kyle has coached at Woodward Camps in Pennsylvania and Colorado with great success, and he is ready to help you.

Add links to pictures or video to get better tips!

Just head over to Ask Coach Kyle to ask for some advice.

Snowboarder Andy Finch stopped by Woodward Camp to hang out for a week.  He tried the new snowboard box and bounced a lot of trampoline.

He has also written a post about his visit including more photos and video (Andy at Woodward).  We have some pictures from his visit.  Enjoy.

It is official, the popular summer camp is opening a new camp in China.  Woodward Camp is designing a new facility near the capital city of China, Beijing.  The building costs are estimated to be $4 million dollars[1].  The camp will reportedly host all of the same activities it does at its US camps, with the exception of snowboarding and skiing.

Not all of the details seem to be finalized, but with the growing population of the Asian market, Woodward Camp in China will likely be successful.

1 – Inline Skating Blog

2 – Sports Business Journal

Recently, we have received a lot of hits from people who have been looking for Travis Pastrana’s twitter account. There is no definite answer, because two different accounts claim to be Travis. The most legitimate account it TPSuzuki199. The account has zero updates and has followed zero people as well, but, it has over 1,200 followers to date. We are reasonably sure this is Travis, but he never updates, so why follow? Or… why not, he will not be cluttering up your twitter feed.

What if you still want to get news about Travis? Some Alternatives… You could follow TPFanPage, although contrary to the name, the author does not supply enough TP to wipe up all the crap that he posts. Most of his posts are not even about Travis. The best solution, you can follow people who are close to him. Some suggestions:

Nitro Circus: http://twitter.com/nitro_circus/

Erik Roner: http://twitter.com/Erikroner

Jolene Van Vugt: http://twitter.com/JoleneNitroGirl

Andy Bell: http://twitter.com/andybell_

Those were the easiest accounts to find. A little more searching could turn up some more!

Over the last 5 years RoundtopRiders.com has gown to be a popular website for skizzers and snowboarders around the world.  The members of Newschoolers.com have especially been loyal in watching and rating up our edits.  We (the RR crew), came from all over the Pennsylvania, NJ and Maryland area.  Most of us did not grow up together, we just met through competitions, summer camps and a love for the sport.  Roundtopriders.com was the host of our content, constructed and run by the talented Jason Wagner.  Our crew would occasionally travel and film.  We based Quick! off of the support of our previous edits: fun, energy and talent.

I was pretty surprised with how far we were able to take RoundtopRiders in just a few years. When we started it was just a bunch of high school kids who were average at skiing. It seemed pretty crazy to think that we could end up with over half a million hits a month and sell nearly 200 copies of our DVD. But, in reality, as we started to gain some of the top freeskiers on the East Coast, it all started to make sense. I’m super impressed at how quickly the team progressed and how far they were able to take RR.

- Jason Wagner

Three years ago we released our first real ski movie named QUICK!.  The movie featured over 10 popular PA freeskiers and snowboarders including Tom Wallisch, Steve Stepp, Kyle Barnoff, Tom Warnick, Evan Resetar, Kyle Wagner, Mike Gallaher, Alex Curry and others.  The movie was filmed at Ski Roundtop (PA), Ski Libery (PA), Bear Creek (PA), Mountain Creek (NJ), Wisp (MD), Stratton, Killington, Mount Snow, Breckenridge, Keystone, Vail, Park City, Mammoth Mountain and Lake Tahoe.

Since Quick was released some of the crew has went on to bigger movie parts, while others have only entered high school.  NS latched onto the talent of PA skiers Tom Wallisch and Steve Stepp and helped launch them to new levels in their careers.  A lot of people helped RR become the crew and the website it is (or once was), and we want to thank all of them for their help!

QUICK! by RoundtopRiders from Jason Wagner on Vimeo.

Jim DeChamp signing a camper's helmet

MTV’s Nitro Circus visited Woodward Camp this week to shoot for their upcoming season.  They shot for three days beginning on Monday, June 13th.  The entire crew was present including, Jolene Van Vugt, Jim DeChamp, Special Greg, Erik Roner, Streetbike Tommy Passemante, Hubert Rowland (everyon’e favorite redneck), Jermey Rawle and Andy Bell.  Travis Pastrana arrived on the set Tuesday, immediately after participating in a rally car race.  Jolene was sporting a (pink) cast from a reported motorcycle accident.

For those unaware, Woodward Camp is a summer camp with programs in: cheerleading, gymnastics, BMX, skate and inline.  It is a meca for skating.  The skate side of camp contains countless acres of indoor skate parks, vert ramps, concrete parks and even a mega ramp.  Some of the world’s best BMX, Skate and Inline pros train at Woodward Camp year round.

The summer camp was in session, but at times it felt like camp was brought to a halt when the Nitro Crew was filming.  Three days is a short time to

Tommy signing too!

film, but for the Nitro Crew it was enough time to get creative in every facility on camp grounds. The crew did some ridiculous things in the gym, got very creative on all of the ramps and even used the entire camp in one segment!  I do not want to spoil the show, but around camp they used BMX bikes, motorcycles, skateboards and almost everything else with wheels attached to it.

On Thursday the Nitro Crew was on their way to film at Bam Margera’s house.  The episode featuring Woodward is rumored to include footage from Bam’s house as well.  It will definitely be an adrenaline charged show.  Be sure not to miss the upcoming season!

A new season of Nitro Circus starts in August.  Sundays at 10:00 PM on MTV!

Mr. Todd Walnuts… (Wallisch), has finally joined twitter.  There are some imposters out there but TWallisch is the man himelf.  Follow Tom and give him an audience!