Corsica - Ile de Beaute - Easter Sessions Part deux

After a week of shredding in Finale Ligure I decided to pic up Manuel Köhler in Nizza and take the ferry to Bastia. Like  pretty much every easter, a trip to Corsica marks the end of our powder weekends and gets us started into our kayaking season. Corsica is a beautiful island that features a mix of mountains and the sea and many low volume creeks. As always camping out at the beach or in the mountains with good wine and cheese and spending "after-paddle-hottub-sessions" at the Thermas (Caldanes) are a big part of what makes this start into the season a very special one. 

Col di Vergio (1470m)

The mix of sandy beaches and cold (very cold this year) mountains makes spring on Corsica very special. Think of bringing my touring skis every time I see the snowy mountains in the northern part of the island.

Manu enjoying the beach and the view near Aleria

This year we spend only 5 paddling days but got happy as we had pretty good levels on most of the rivers. The Vecchio, Fium Orbo, Travo, Tavignano, Taravo and the Liamone made us smile and enjoy life in the water.

The following are pics of the Fium Orbo that saw some personal first descents which is pretty special since I ran this river countless times before.

Manu on the entrance rapid to the first gorge of the Fium Orbo - Good idea
to have some safety ready if something goes wrong (pics by Sonja Schweighofer)

The upper gorge of the Fium Orbo consists of 4 drops that are all runable but at least two are a little bit sketchy. First time that we ran all four drops on the same run...

Manu and Mandi enjoying the famous "Rocket"

The big pool after the third drop

After this follows the last drop of the mini gorge, Check out the video of Manu below if you are interested. He cut a little GoPro video of our week. Enjoy... 
(make sure to set the quality on HD)

Better don`t swich to summer tires before you go to Corsica at easter ;) Funny things
happening on the road this morning.......

This year Manu Köhler, Mandi Stich and Sonja Schweighofer (thank u for the pictures!) spend some quality time on the island. I am especially happy about having Mandi back at my side at some kayaking adventures.  

Did I mention the importance of camping and views ;) !?

So, the season has started for us, my foot doesn`t really bother me anymore, 

let the games begin!!!!

as always a big thanks to Liquidlogic Kayaks, Alpin Action, Sweet Protection, Kokatat and Hf Safety for the support!

cheers, re

Finale Ligure - Easter Sessions Parto Uno

2 beauties in the morning light

For the last two years our season started of with an easterly biking trip to Finale Ligure. Finale is a beautiful little village on the italian coast close to Genoa. Biking is the main but not the only reason to go there as there are dozends of osterias and gelaterias where u can spend your hard earned money ;)

Phillip Kaller and Benny Meier liking it a LOT on Isallo Extasy

the girlz Elli Dornisch and Florentina Gutsche do the same

Benny somehow flighs too fast

nice buttox, äh?

 The backcountrytrails presented themselves in very good condition. A big Thank You to the local guys who spend their time shaping the awesomeness of Nato Base, Isallo, Little Champery, Rollercoaster and many more...
For scenery and rocky terrain the Varigotti and Noli trails are a must go!

talking about views?

Phillip Kaller enjoying some of the "kitsch" on Wmn´s Downhill, Varigotti

so next year, eastertime same place? probably..... 
thanks to the group of Uschi & Gerhard Meier, Benni "my baby" Meier, Florentina Gutsche, Peter Neugebauer, Phillip Kaller & Elli Do for the beautiful time!

re

Waking up! - Arlberg with Spurbar

First some words about the overall situation of this blog:

I think I can say that I haven't been very productive on this blog the last year or so. It's not like I didn't have anything to write about or any photos to put online. I have the feeling that facebook kills blogs and websites. It's just so easy to post a pic or two there and add a line to it. But at the same time facebook also kills the quality of photographs and the quality of trip reports.

A couple days ago I decided to change the glanzbrothers facebook page to my personal one, simply because I had used it as a personal one and to get back to this blog with glanzbrothers content again. It think that's just the right thing to do. Me and my brother thought about starting an athlete or business site on facebook to promote our content, but we quickly realized that we didn't need another facebook page. We remembered that we had a blog where we could share our stories, photos and videos.

So, here we are... time to wake up this blog!

Last week I was asked by my cousin Basti if I could help filming for his ski movie. He had torn some ligaments in his ankle a couple days earlier and couldn't go to Arlberg to join the rest of the team filming the last parts of the movie.

After some negotiating at work and getting creative with family problems (babysitter - thanks Reiner!) I was able to join the movie shoot for a couple days and help out a bit. For me it was the first time working at a real movie shoot and I had a blast. Good fun with a great crew! Thanks to Basti for the opportunity and thanks to everybody else for the experience.

Anyway, apart from helping with filming, recording sounds and moving heavy equipment around the mountains I was able to take some pictures and also get some nice late winter pow lines.

Enough writing - here are the pictures:

The boys checking out some gnarly lines on the east side of Rüfikopf

The snow was shitty the first day, so we were just looking for possible lines for the next days

Benni enjoying some "pow" at Trittkopf

Dani doing the same

After getting a overview of the ski area the first day and discussing options for the next day it actually started snowing and didn't stop until the next day's evening. We decided to take out the red and do some slow motion stuff.

Some lift action to cut in between the epic rides ;)

After hours of shitty weather and the camera failing to turn on because of the wetness or oldness, we decided to call it a day and wait for better weather the next day.

Timelapse time! It's save to say, the weather couldn't have been better the next days. 

Another sunny day begins with the busride to Trittkopfbahn. We had seen the upper part of the Trittkopf from far away the day before. It looked like there were no tracks on the northern-eastern slopes. 

And we had seen right - Dani enjoying the pow. It wasn't the deepest shit, but it was still nice to ride.

Benni doing the same

Lukas shortly before eating shit

Lukas eating shit

Another nice untracked slope

As much as I love shooting manual lenses on my A7 - sometimes I want to throw my 135mm in the trash... I know, it's my own fault, but that damn thing is so hard to focus. This would be one of my favorite photos from the trip, but it's simply out of focus. Damn it!

We went on to film a steep little chute and after that it was time to hit the road and drive back home. Looks like next weekend will be a last time in the snow this year... Then it's time to put away skies and snowboards an hit the creeks! 

Cheers,

Harald

BellaCiao - Creeking in Piemonte and Ticino

Almost every year we come back to the fabulous rivers and creeks in Piemonte and Ticino. This year it was a special trip because we were joined by some good friends from across the pond. After they had guided us down some of the High Sierra runs last year it was a great feeling to return the favor and show them some of "our" runs. So here are some classics from Italy and Switzerland!


GBP Productions on Vimeo.

Paddlers:
The Austrians: HaraldGlanz ReinerGlanz LorenzHolzerJürgenMeier LukasSeitner
The Americans: DanielBrasuell DianeGaydos DavidTaylorMaurierEmmeKing KevinSmith LauraFarrell
The Japanese: YoshihiroTakahashi
The Germans: JonasGrünewald SebastianBetz ThomasDimke
The Canadian: EvansParent

Music: Alt-J - Hunger of the Pine rjd2 - Ghostwriter Alt-J - LeftHandFree

Thanks to: Liquidlogic Kayaks, AlpinAction, SweetProtection, Kokatat, °hf, toasted
and everybody on the trip!