projectDETOUR

Setting off an adventure becomes much more difficult when a plan is introduced, and getting lost is nearly impossible when you can always find out where you are. But sometimes it’s more about being lost in a moment. That was the underlying idea behind Shayne Pospisil‘s time in Switzerland to film projectDETOUR with DBK. This winter Shayne found himself on a two-month staycation where the only thing that truly mattered was recounting the events of an epic day with great friends, old and new. The landscape surrounding DBK’s home mountain of Hoch-Ybrig, Switzerland set the scene for the first of three short films that we will be releasing this fall on Snowboardmag.com. This was Shayne’s first time participating in an experience like this, so we wanted to get his thoughts on what it meant to get lost in projectDETOUR.

Captions and photos provided by DBK

The village of Bosco-Gurin is very, very small. A church and a couple of houses, that’s it. Shayne and I still found a couple fun runs through the village to be seen in projectDETOUR – ALPS

You spent a lot of your winter in Europe, was your first time meeting DBK?
Yeah it was the first time. I knew of David but I had never met him or gotten to ride with him before. So flying out to France with the whole Bataleon team it was my first time meeting a bunch of the guys, but yeah, it was my first time meeting DBK.

How did the topic of projectDETOUR come up?
I had been talking to the Bataleon Team Manager about a film project to work on this year and he had given me some budget, but the cost for a movie was super expensive. Then he mentioned that David wanted to do a project. He had a plan to do a three-part film project and I just thought it was really cool. The trips he had planned for it, the people, the whole thing seemed really great. So as soon as I heard about that I was really interested in working with him. It was weird not knowing him and then filming with him all year, but it worked out great. We’re super good friends, I traveled with him a lot.

Have you ever done anything like this before?
No, not really. Usually I’m just planning everything on my own and chasing the snow in my truck, mostly in Canada or California. This was the first year flying over to Europe with a board and a bag, then hanging out for two months, sleeping on a bed at David’s house and traveling around with him.

Was it liberating? Doing something different like that?
Yeah it was awesome to do something different. Usually you get caught filming up in Whistler and snowmobiling every day, it’s kind of déjà vu every season. So to mix it up this year by going to Europe and riding all of the resorts; David living like 30 minutes from the resort was awesome. His home resort, Hoch-Ybrig, was an epic place to ride with all sorts of different terrain.

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Some of these European resorts have full on, gnarly terrain that you can ride in-bounds. What was that like compared to riding resorts back in the States?
It was definitely different. First off, everyone that’s riding the mountain pretty much stays on the trails. You can find powder everywhere. I couldn’t believe the gondola that went from the top of the mountain to the main part, you could ride that run beneath it and no one would be under there. It was fresh tracks every run. And the terrain, there’s insane terrain. The stuff you can access straight from the lifts was pretty crazy.

That’s what I’ve heard, that it’s legit backcountry conditions right off the lifts.
Short little hikes and you’re in the perfect jump zone. There’s some lines and cliffs, almost anything you want is right there.

Who were you riding with?
It was David and I most of the time. We would hook up with some local guys that ride his home resort, they’re all Bataleon guys. Deniz Cinek, Mikey Knobel, some others too. Basically just David and all of his good friends who ride the resort.