These photos are from a Vans Triple Crown contest from March of 2002. It was actually the first thing I ever shot for money. Somehow I talked Dave Finger from EXPN into letting me do a story. I did not even have a digital camera at the time. I went to Circuit City and bought one the night before and stayed up till 3 am trying to figure it out. On the way to the event at Snow Summit I called my friend Kurt on the cell phone. He was driving to the Olympics with Lee Crane and John Stouffer from Transworld. He said "Focus on the lip before when the rider is on the flat becasue elphs are really slow, have at least two batteries, turn the display off to save batteries and always use the flash" I was sweating bullets man. I drove up Saturday, drove home, worked till 3 am Saturday night, drove back up Sunday and repeated. Got it all done though and here we are, for bettter or worse. By the way, Dave Finger still works at EXPN, Kurt is wandering around South America, John Stouffer is the marketing guy at Fuel TV and Lee, I am not sure what Lee does right now. I also made freinds with Chris Overholser at Vans and I am still friends with him and am lucky enough to do some work for them still

Here is Shaun White, he won this stop of the Vans Triple Crown for pipe. Shaun had been around for awhile already, having been in the TB films at like age 7 or whatever. By 2002 Shaun had been killing contests for a while already. This contest went on the very same weekend as the Olympics and I forget why Shaun did not qualify for the Olympics. I know for sure he would have won the 2002 Olympics. He did win this 2002 stop of the Vans Triple Crown though

This photo of the Viking, Terje Haakanson, caught with an Elph, made me think "hmm maybe I could catch some good photos every now and then" Terje was obviously still competing in the circuit, so was Daniel Franck and other og heads

Andy Finch from Fresno, California. This was the first time I ever had heard of Andy Finch and from day one I liked his style - balls out all or nothing. Also, how can you not like a snowboarder from Fresno, CA?

Talk about changing of the guard. Here is Gretchen Blieler doing a frontside air. On the podium for halfpipe at this contest was Carabeth Burnside and Gretchen, 1 and 2 although I don't remember what order. It may even have been Carabeth's last contest on a snowboard. Of course Carabeth is a snow and skate legend but many out there may not even know she was also top dog on a snowboard too at one point