August 21, 2009 10:13 by
Seth
...Stepping out of the train (cog railway) I was greeted by the logo that adorns my boards, and a sign: “Kessler, snowboards for winners.” I realized I needed to tell him that “champions” might be a better translation to English. When your company can boast of six Olympic medals in the last two games the signage shouldn't sound like a feel good moto after grade school gym class.
Kessler’s products are simply the best handcrafted boards on earth. So the little village of Braunwald is “autofrei” as the sign boasted and I started my walk steeply uphill in dense fog as instructed by the woman in the Kessler sport shop. “Ten minutes up zee path…”
Thirty minutes later the pee soup had clearly obscured anything that looked like a factory and I placed a call to Hansjuerg, the founder, bummed that I hadn't been able to just drop in. When I found the place I realized why it hadn't stuck out. The Kessler factory is nestled in the back half of a shared barn/carpentry shop and is surrounded by sheep pastures. Bells were clanging away in the background.
We spent the day catching up, having lunch, talking about our own personal snowboard histories, plans, then got down to work on the computer coming up with designs that we would build.
I returned to Mollis for the night after a great lakeside bbq at the Klontal Lake. Surrounded by two-thousand foot cliffs that were peaking in and out of the clouds through the moonlight we dined on brats and bread till everyone was ready to turn in.
I awoke early to martin saying he wanted to go shoot a time lapse and that I should join him. So we had a nice morning rally back to Klontal passing one of my old world cup friends who was walking to a launch point for an early morning paraglide, and found upon arriving that the lake was shrouded thick in clouds. It might have turned out alright for Martin’s time lapse but I only had ten minutes to wait before going to catch the 6:50 am train back to Braunwald to lay up the boards.
The building process was a lot of fun to see and really drove home for me the true difference in handmade craftsmanship vs the way the big manufacturers cookie-cut mass quantities of product. At the end of the day I left with two beautiful boards built exactly to my specs and ready in my eyes to carry me to the top of many a podium on the world stage.
In all my years of working with people like Burton, Atomic, and Rossignol I had never received such treatment or seen such a perfect finished product. A big thank you and props to Hansjuerg Kessler and his team there in Braunwald for truly being artisans of the snowboard world.
So with the work of the trip done I headed off to Thun, to catch up with Tanja Frieden, the other 2006 snowboardcross gold medalist and stay with my alaskan freeride partner Ueli Kestenholz. Tanja and I had a great talk over coffee about what the whole process was looking like this time around, the pressure, the journey and just catching up on life. It was really nice.
A few miles around the lake of Thunersee in the village of Gwatt lives my good friend Ueli. Ueli and I went to Alaska for the first time together in 03 and he has been a big part of the development in my life and in riding to transition to big mountain riding. He has also been a pioneer in the development of the sport of speedriding. Check out www.playgravity.com to see what it’s all about as it defies explanation. Three dimensional freeriding is about the best I can do to put it to words. Shortly after our AK trip this spring Ueli successfully made the first ever descent from the summit of the Matterhorn with the aid of a speedriding canopy. I only saw the still photos but it was sick!
He is also about 5 months into fatherhood and we had a great time catching up on all fronts. In the morning he woke me and said we just had time to fit in a wake-surf before I would need to run to Zurich to catch my flight home. So under the shadow of the Eiger on the lake of Thun we surf our legs off for a couple hours before the clock was really ticking on me. Settleing back into my seat for the quick trip home I was in awe of my favorite little country away from home and was so glad I had made the jaunt. A couple weeks at home and it will be time to head for South America and the start of it all. Can't wait!