On Location With British Snowboarding Star Jamie Nicholls
All photos by Scott Pattenden

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On Location With British Snowboarding Star Jamie Nicholls

Chronicling the making of Jamie Nicholls' #HemelRun2 at The Snow Centre.

Jamie Nicholls has long been considered the UK's most promising snowboarder. His talent was clear to see from the age of seven. Spending his days as a young shredder at his local dry slope in Halifax, Yorkshire, he quickly demonstrated an incredible talent for snowboarding, and at just 15 he turned pro. The Bradford-born rider was about to embark on a journey any hopeful snowboarder dreamed of: riding and competing all over the globe.

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Now 22, Jamie's had the full experience of what it's like to be pro and has secured multiple podium spots in various events across the globe. In 2015 alone he won four gold medals at the Orange British Championships in Laax, and more recently placed a respectable sixth at the first ever slopestyle snowboard event in the Winter Olympics (one of the most watched events of the games). Not bad for a 'dry slope kid'.

'Forged in Steel' — a 15-minute film documenting Jamie's jounrey, from his earliest days riding a board at just seven up to his Winter Olympic experience and performance — aired online last year. However the focus of the video, for many people, was a minute-long edit presenting a project Jamie completed at one of the UK's most most popular indoor ski slopes, The Snow Centre.

In this short but ingeniously choreographed video, Jamie rides an improvised slopestyle course starting outside the backdoors of TSC, leading into the indoor ski slope, and then back through the front doors. The idea was initially thought up by one of the TSC's very own park team builders, Joe Rackley.

Jamie's HemelRun went viral, racked up millions of views on Facebook, and was aired on national TV. But what a lot of people didn't know is that during the filming of the edit, there had been loose discussions of a potential second run…

You can watch the first video here.

HEMELRUN2

After the success of last years project, and the huge amount of praisle it received, it made sense for Jamie and the team at TSC to revisit the idea and come up with something completely different. Together they spent an evening beginining to plan and design a new run that would be bigger, better and a more progressive version of the previous one.

Two days were decided on in April to execute the new run. One day to setup and build everything, and a secound day for riding and filming in order to produce an edit that everyone hoped would knock the previous out the park.

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HEMELRUN2 saw 70 tonnes of snow brought outside. Over 15 hours a highly skilled team of shapers along with the assistance of a piste basher and mini digger, commenced constructing a course far more impressive than the last. The loose discussions of a secound run in the previous year had become a thing of reality.

Jamie arrived at the crack of dawn just as the building was coming to an end and set about testing and re-adjusting sections of the course with subtle changes. It was barely light enough to see, and there he was 'testing', hopping off a rail with a 12-foot drop at 6am.

"It looks way more mad than last year," he grinned.

Finally the course was dialled, and you could see Jamie was determined to smash it. Everyone and everything was ready to go, but first came a saftey briefing and the signing of what seemed like an endless amount of documents by everyone involved.

The new run was a combination of six main features positioned in different sections of the top-to-bottom run.

Starting from the top of the unkempt grasslands with drones buzzing around in every direction, Jamie launched off a medium-sized kicker onto an overhanging ledge placed on a fence that encloses a generator. After landing, he hits a small gap on his way down a hundred-metre strip of snow to build speed for the next feature, a quarter pipe built into the side of a shipping container. This was 'the hardest feature to build due to the uneven terrain and angle.'

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From the exit of the transition of the quarter pipe he hops onto a kinked hand rail before dropping 12ft into a built up wall ride that led way to the indoor section of the course. This is where speed (or lack of it to be precise) became a real issue. However Red Bull (who funded and supported the project) leant Jamie a high powered winch to help him into the remaining features.

With a cable cam trailing him, Jamie then hit the two indoor features. A long flat box and a decent sized kicker. Having stomped these it was time for the last hit of the run. With one last pull from the winch, Jamie boosted off a kicker out of a fire exit, gapping over a dingy stairwell, and landed on a snow covered arangment of scaffolding and plywood infront of a welcoming audience and camera crews.

The smile on his face was priceless. The #HEMELRUN2 was a success.

Since the Winter Olympics we've seen a huge increase in people getting involved in snow sports, and with Jamie producing projects as insane as this one it's a huge inspiration to the next generation of riders. Seriously, who'd have thought that snowboarding outdoors in England, in the middle of April, was actually possible?!

"He's the only guy I've seen use a kicker out of a fire exit in the UK, so yeah I'd say it's pretty unique," laughs project manager Kris Amstutz.

It just goes to show that you can come from a small island nation without 3,000-metre high mountains, and still succed on a world level. The future of British snowboarding looks promising.

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Thanks go out to: The crew of builders & shapers, The Snow Centre staff, Red Bull, Jamie's sponsors, The GB Park & Pipe team, all of the film crews and everyone else who got involved.