Yes you can. You have probably only heard of the area in a negative way but it's been a long time since the war ended in 1996. It was the host city of the 1984 Winter Olympics and while Vancouver's games were going on it was our destination. Jf Fortin, Jesmond Dubeau, Alterna filmer Byron Kopman and myself jumped the pond to meet up with Tadej Valentan and Doman Bizjak. Tadej and Doman are both from Slovenia so that's where we began the journey south into Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital city, Sarajevo.

Flying direct to Slovenia was far to much money so we chose our layovers accordingly. First one was a couple hours in Amsterdam so we took the train into town for a quick tour. Holland is well known for a few things. Clogs are one..

So are bikes..

There's a lot of them..

Amsterdam is also well known for a few things.. One thing is legal prostitution which is insane, the other thing is weed but that shit's lame so who cares. Being tourists the first thing we asked directions to was the " red light district ".  Had to take at least one picture but it didn't go over to well and I found myself running down the street when this lady came bursting out the door screaming at me..

After the hooker scare we had a quick flight to Vienna where we would meet up with Tadej and Doman. It's a few hour drive from Slovenia and was our final destination. When your in Europe cars like BMW and Mercedes aren't imports which means they aren't cheap but there affordable enough to be a cab. Better than a Crown Vic any day.

After a day spent being tourist's we drove to Sarajevo. This is at the resort Jahorina about 20 minutes outside the city.

One of the best parts about eastern europe is you can smoke inside everywhere, even the cooks were smoking while they prepared your meal. Jesmond and Jf were loving it.

We found a lot of unique places to shoot at. This one had seen some better days before the war....

Like this.. Prior to the war and freshly built for the 84 games, Hotel Igman down the street from the ski jumping centre.

At the end of our stay in Sarajevo we treated ourselves to a nice dinner out. To our dismay they didn't allow guns or dogs..WTF!!

Everyone was super pissed they had to leave there dogs and guns in the truck. The consolation was this place served brains so we quickly changed our tune and ordered the smartest thing on the menu.

For a non sarcastic version and some actual snowboarding from the trip check out next years issues of Snowboard Canada.

So Will Demers from Brothers Factory really wanted me to put this video on the site because if he gets the most views in a week he can win $10,000 or something. Lord knows his greasey broke ass could use it. Plus we're down for the cause over here. Plus there's some good shredding in it from Jeremy Cloutier. Billy-D, if you win you owe me as many poutines as I can eat and as many Belle Gueules as I can drink.

Becoming a quadriplegic is one of the worst injuries imaginable. Anyone who has ever stepped on a board or been involved in an action sport has likely experienced some brief moment of repose where they’ve thought, ‘What if that happened to me?’ It’s the kind of fear we push deep down, pretend it doesn’t exist and pray some like that never happens to us. Thankfully incidences of paralysis in snowboarding seem few and far between. But what’s even more rare is to see someone recover from it.

In response to the Get Over It feature in the Winter issue Jodie Thring from Australia sent in the story of her struggle to return to snowboarding after a fall left her paralyzed from the shoulders down. Against the odds Jodie got all Uma Thurman in Kill Bill on it and recovered. Today she even competes, something she attributes to the power of the mind. “I am living proof that visualization can help repair the body,” says Jodie. Here is her story. —Gerhard Gross

I am currently Australia's only disabled snowboard athlete and the only quadriplegic snowboard athlete in the world. I learned to snowboard in Whistler in 1996 and never looked back; I'd found my passion in life. I moved to Thredbo when I got home so that snowboarding could be a part of my daily life. In July 2005 I broke my neck snowboarding at my home resort. I fell really hard on my coccyx after failing to ride out of a Boardslide on a box. It was a really random fall, which instantly paralyzed me from the shoulders down. I woke from an induced coma 10 days later to be told I was a C5 quadriplegic and it would be very unlikely that I would ever walk again. I'd compressed my C4, split my C5 in half and chipped my C6 with splits in my spinal cord. I couldn't talk because tubes were down my throat to assist me with breathing. I tried to ask my mom for a pen so that I could write my questions down, not realizing I wouldn't be able to hold a pen let alone write.

Jodie Thring [second from left] with fellow adaptive athletes.

I was moved from Intensive Care to the Acute Spinal ward a few days later and there began feelings of anger, denial, depression, loss and fear. How dare they tell me I was not going to walk again? Three months later I was ready for my first day of rehab. I was really positive and determined that I would walk out of hospital. It began with the doctor coming in every day for the next three months pricking me all over with a pin to see if I regained any sensation. She'd also ask me to try and move my toe. I'd lie in bed thinking, 'Move your toe Jodes, move your toe', trying to get my brain to send the messages down that were being blocked. Around the three month mark she came in one day, did the usual pin-prick and asked me to move my toe. I couldn't see it as I wasn't allowed to be moved for 14 weeks, or feel it, but my toe moved. Just a small flicker, but it moved. She made me do it three times to make sure it wasn't a spasm. From there I started to get movement in parts I couldn't feel and feeling in parts I couldn't move. The spasms started to kick in, which is part and parcel for a spinal cord injury.

After 14 weeks they sat me up for the first time and prepared my new motorized wheelchair, still not confident I would walk again. I told them I would be walking out of hospital and they said, “Jodie, we know you're really positive but we don't want you to be too optimistic". That just made me more determined to prove them wrong.

Shortly after I was moved into the rehab ward and that's when the depression really kicked in. On the first day in rehab they tried to teach me how to transfer into my chair so that I could independently get in and out of my bed, chair, etc. I couldn't even sit up on my own or push with my hands let alone lift my body. I burst into tears. Reality kicked in along with depression but I was still determined to do everything I could.

Like a baby I learned from scratch how to move again (except for the crawling, haha). About a month later I was able to stand up without falling in a heap and took my first step with a frame. After five months in the spinal ward I walked out of hospital with a granny frame. A month later I was able to walk unassisted. I was able to manage most things on my own by May 2006 and moved out on my own again, but stayed close to the hospital as my rehab continued two days a week for the next three years. I am now classed as a C5 Incomplete (standing) Quadriplegic. Nothing functions properly from C5 down. It's a lot easier to snowboard than it is to walk but I'm grateful every day for every step I can take, to be able to clean my own teeth, brush my own hair and wipe my own arse.

In July 2006, just shy of a year after my accident, I got back on my snowboard. I had been planning on spending the 2005/06 winter season in Japan so in January of 2007 I went snowboarding in Japan. In February I attended the first Canadian Adaptive Snowboard Program with the CSF (Canadian Snowboard Federation). There I met a guy who was working with Adaptive Action Sports in the U.S. and he invited me to go to Northstar-at-Tahoe for USASA Nationals at the end of March. In July I moved back to Thredbo and learned to drive Pisten Bully's. I had wanted to be a snow groomer and was about to start learning just before I had my accident. I went back to the USASA Nationals again the following year at Copper Mountain, skipped last season since I was broke.

This winter I had the opportunity to be coached for the first time so I'm living in Park City, Utah training with Team Utah. We are trying really hard to get snowboarding into the Paralympics for 2014, which will hopefully be a SBX event. The WSF (World Snowboard Federation) have started to hold SBX Adaptive World Cup's, which will be held in conjunction with Nationals at Mont Tremblant at the end of March, Copper Mountain, Colorado April 4^th to 11^th, then in Cardrona New Zealand at the end of July. We compete at Nationals in SBX, Slalom, GS, Slopestyle and Pipe. There's a long way to go as there is no classification process in place just yet. I'm competing against amputees who have full strength in their body, no paralysis, no spasticity and prosthetics specifically designed for snowboarding. It's going to take time but it will happen. —Jodie Thring

Jodie would like to thank the Canadian Snowboard Federation for their support of Adaptive Snowboarding.

Since the first update we have been way to busy to tell anyone where we were or what we have been doing so.... you had to wait!
The crew at Black Diamond Lodge in Niseko have been awsome, and we have been getting shots daily just driving around and taking short walks off the highway!   We did however decide to go do a day of riding up on mountain on the Niseko United resorts.  The snow was fun, and the Apres' at the huge all you can eat Buffet in the Hilton hotel in Hirafu was outstanding.

With some warm weather hitting Niseko we geared up and drove North to a resort that I cannot mention right now.....

We arrived late to the Gondola... 2:30 pm to be square.. and there were a whole 5 other cars in the parking lot. ( Considering at least 2-3 were for employees.... you can imagine how many people were on mountain.  

Stepping off the gondola, we rode knee deep blower powder through steep trees.....Yes, thats right... UNTRACKED, BLOWER at 2:30 in the afternoon... AND THE MOUNTAIN TO OURSELVES!!!!

The little town is celebrating a sort of "ice festival" with huge sculptures built in the river valley just below town, It was an amazing site, after 3 of the best runs of our trip.

Today was the crews last riding day, we are just now in Sapporo for an evening, then off for 3 days of excitment and tourist activities in Tokyo!

Are the Olympics almost over???

We have all decided that the last little resort Gem will need a bit more attention on our next visit to Japan....

Whistler, B.C. – A lot of good things happen at the annual SIA tradeshow, in Denver Colorado. You get to check out all the new lines of next year’s gear, see a lot of the pro shreds you might not bump into at any other time, and you get to meet with all the brands so hear what they’vr got going on..

 At one such meeting with Oakley Canada's Alex Langevin and Ingrid Siriois, they told us of their massive plans during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games (yeah, using the full name here just for S.E.O.) to bring in all of their big partners (a who's who of the top North American retailers) for the week for the festivities and culminate in a day of catboarding at Powder Mountain Catboarding --  which is owned in part by snowboarding legends Don Swartz and Ken Achenbach – on the day after the women’s pipe finals, and they wanted Snowboard Canada there to join them. So really, how could we say no?

What started with an early morning (6 a.m. at the Oakley Safe House in Vancouver, to be exact) ended up with us at the base of PMS about two hours later.

Here we are, just getting assembled before the drive up to the cats. Birke photo.

And in the cat on our drive up to the snow. Birke photo.

The view out the window on the way up... some sick terrain in here, and some of it's really familiar to shreds. We're just a few minutes sled ride away from the famed Tricouni Cliffs. Michel Laramée photo.

Once we're at the top, we're treated to a great view of Whistler Blackcomb... in a way I've never seen them before. Whistler, with its runs to the Creekside are in the foreground. Birke photo.

Oakley Canada's Alex Langevin drops in with a nice surfy backside slash. James Ray/Powder Mountain Catboarding photo.

Axis Boutique's Phil Chouinard drops a Tailgrab as our guide Shamus Hayes looks on. Safety first. James Ray/Powder Mountain Catboarding photo.

Me, with a little slash too... Couldn't resist, really. James Ray/Powder Mountain Catboarding photo.

Canadian shred emeritus Derek Heidt cruises with fresh snow all in front of him. Heidt wanted to get into some of the gnarlier stuff PMS has to offer but due to questionable condistions in the days previous, we had to stick to slopes that had no "convexity". (Right, Shamus? Proper use of the term, eh?). James Ray/Powder Mountain Catboarding photo.

And here's one of Derek's classic Indy pokes.

Mineki from Rude Boys in Banff tried this drop twice and nailed it both times... Here's an Ollie. James Ray/Powder Mountain Catboarding photo.

Just some of what we gazed at all day... our lines from afar. James Ray/Powder Mountain Catboarding photo.

Snowboard Canada's Matt Aiken got in more than a few slashes before the day was done, including one that resulted in a really close call with "Death Rock" or, as most of our crew called it: "Le Roche de Mort". Matty survived the tumble with everything intact, except for his goggles... Good thing he knew some people there who could help him out. James Ray/Powder Mountain Catboarding photo.

And here's the crew at the end of an awesome day. 'Til next time, PMC. Birke photo.

For more into on Powder Mountain Catboarding, check out their website here.