Pro Snowboard Tips

Eric Themel - Freeride

Eric Themel - Freeride

Austrian daredevil Eric Themel needs little introduction. Terrifying couloir straight-lines, picking a line through the tightest of trees at mach 10 and throwing big 360s off impossibly steep spines are what’s taken Eric to the top of the Freeride World Tour. Eric talks to Snowboard Review about the tools of his trade.

Eric has been a dominant force on the World freeride scene for the last decade. With huge parts in Marco Lutz’s movies Primevil and Kingsize and some jaw dropping footage on the Pirates IREMEMBER there’s no doubting that Eric has buckets full of control, style and balls. But for Eric movie parts are a sideline, Eric’s real forte is competing on the Nissan Freeride Tour, which has enabled Eric to take his epic freeride skills to Mountains in exotic locations all over the world, from Russia to Argentina.

Eric has been working with Head snowboards for years to create a snowboard that allows him to cruise around the local ski resorts near his home in Austria and still provide the goods when he takes it to the steepest and deepest mountains in Alaska. Close to Eric’s heart is his dedication to reducing the detrimental effect of the snowboard industry on the Planet and Eric has been influential in getting Head to sign up to the Cool Earth project. As a result, Head invest huge sums of money to support the rain forest, effectively matching the value of their carbon emission 10 times over!  The result of all of Eric’s hard work is the Head Intelligence AK. We asked Eric about his ride and what makes it so good for freeriding…

“I am riding the AK Intelligence 167 pretty much all year around. I worked on the board from the beginning. Together with the development team at Head Snowboards we decided to create a board that I can use on the slopes in every ski resort…but also it should be able to handle the changing conditions in the backcountry. The shape is built for the deep powder days but it also works really well when you wanna carve a bit on the corduroy. With its carbon fibre reinforcements it stays on the edge right when you need it to!

But the real joy begins in waist-deep powder. In Alaska we sometimes wait a whole week to get out on the mountains, in that waiting time it can dump up to 6 feet of fresh out in the Coastals of AK. So what you need then is a fat nose and a super fast base to enjoy your day out in the mountains.

All these features are combined in the Head AK as well as all of my knowledge, experience and most of all, all my stoke went right in it!! So enjoy the Board!! Everyone will have fun with the Head AK.  Keep shredding and keep the planet a clean place!”

Eric’ Sponsors are:

The North Face global Team
HEAD international
Nissan Sports adventure
Scott international
Red Bull Friends