JT Holmes on Shane's Death

JT Holmes, also a Squaw local and professional skier, was with Shane in Italy when he died. See what he has to say below:

Yesterday, March 26, 2009, Shane died while skiing in Italy. There are some technical aspects that are left out from this statement, and it does not touch upon the beauty of the Dolomites and the skiing we shared before the accident or Shane's typical shining persona, full of adventure, humor and life experience.

We chose to ski off of a cliff with our wingsuits and fly them away from the cliff wall before opening our parachutes for landing. We skied and hiked off of the Pordoi cable car to a spot Shane had base jumped once before, in the summer. We spent a bunch of time preparing for the jump, building a kicker, helping each other gear up, and finally we were pleased and prepared and went for it.

Shane did a double back flip in perfect McConkey style. As planned, afterwards, he went to release his skis in order to fly away from the wall and safely deploy his parachute. This is where the jump went wrong. He was not able to release either of his skis. He remained focused on releasing them by reaching down towards his bindings. This put him into a spin/ tumble/ unstable falling style, that may have appeared out of his control, but in reality, Shane was not concerned about flying position or style; just concerned with reaching those skis so that he could get them off and fly or deploy his parachute. He succeeded in releasing both of skis and immediately transitioned into a perfect flying position; then he impacted the snow, and died at that moment.

The whole thing took place in about 12 seconds. Once he released the skis, he was immediately in control of the flight and would have only seen the ground and imminent impact for a tiny fraction of a second before he hit. Shane's parachute did not malfunction; it was never deployed.

- JT Holmes
March 27, 2009

Stale Sandbech Lands Triple Under-Flip 1260

The 18-year-old stomped it off a massive kicker in Europe.

While many of us were sulking because the season is practically over, Norwegian shredder, Stale Sandbech was busy stomping a brand new trick. A video of the 18-year-old hitting a massive kicker in Europe just surfaced, and in it, Sandbech stomps a triple underflip 1260. Yeah, we didn't really think that was possible either, but this video from Stale's sponsors proves it.

After seeing the video, we had to know what was going through Sandbech's mind when he stomped the new trick...

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Saturday, March 28, 2009 10:40pm PDT