TGR DOES CROATIA!

**Bez, Steve and I enjoy our first night in Zagreb.**

 I have just recently spent two weeks enjoying the fruits of what a 50 year storm-in-the-making has brought to Croatia, and eating fresh seafood in coastal towns and villages. When I first heard about this trip, I thought to myself, does that country even have hills with a high enough elevation to receive snow? As a matter of fact, YES, they do! Not to mention, they possess some of the best tree skiing I’ve ever found. We arrived in Zagreb to fresh snow on the streets.  Then, we headed to the Olympic ski center, Bjelolasica, and were stoked to find a newly fallen, three-foot blanket of snow surrounding us. We skied the trees every day for a week, rarely crossing our own tracks; we were the only people on the mountain that had left the groomed trail. We found some fun playful terrain and explored many gullies and openings. The trees were really pretty dense, but we found all kinds of wide panels that made it possible to pick up speed and rip through them.

**Looking down a clean pow filled hallway.**

**Heading up the second chair into the mist.**

**Dylan and I get a ride to the hill by horse and carriage.**

After a day or two of skiing in the trees, people started to warn us about these crazy holes that are all over the mountain. Supposedly, they can be up to 80 meters deep and have been responsible for the death of some skiers. Once we learned about them, we started coming across a lot of these holes in the woods where we had been skiing. There were a few instances where one of us would ski right over one of these man-eating crevices, and the hole would, all of a sudden, just open up revealing its treacherous depths to the eye. We made sure to ski fast and to only stop up against trees.

**The trees at the top of the mountain were covered in this crazy ice rind**

**After skiing in a storm for multiple days, the sun came out for a few hours and we were finally able to get a lay of the land** 

**The Boys pack up after cracking of some scenic shots during the break in the storm.**

**Posted up next to a tree looking for man eating sink holes.**

**Our crew packing up the van (pronounced wan in Croatia) at the end of the day.**

After we had torn up almost every vacant patch of fresh snow, the temperature began to rise.  Additionally, what had been a constant falling of snow, turned into rain. This was devastating to the snow pack, making it impossible to film skiing anymore, so we decided to head to the coast. We packed up and headed to Opatija. A lovely town on the northern part of the Adriatic Sea where the streets and buildings are old, and the water is a crystal clear. We ate some fine seafood and decided that since we had come all the way over to Croatia, and we were on the coast, we had to jump in the water. The next morning, our guide, and friend, arranged for us to go to the Island of Cres where he spends the warmer months and has a few flats. That night on the Island, his friend and wine maker prepared an octopus feast that we ate in an old stone hut. We enjoyed the most exquisite tasting octopus any of us had ever tried while we sampled beautiful homemade wine and grappa. 

**Dylan loves his dope cars.**

**Seafood Fights.**

**Matty Moo (TGR Cinematographer) watches our fairy leave for the island of Cres without us.**

**An old cliff side willage looks off at the Adriatic Sea as the sun goes down on Island Cres.**

**Hanging out in the hut while we await our octopus feast.**

We then drove back to Zagreb to catch a flight south to the city of Dubrovnik. During our time there, we learned about the incredible history of this nearly two thousand year old city. This seaside, medieval city was a great end to an amazing trip that could not have gone any better for us. We saw Dylan hood off and the rest of the TGR production crew and I headed to Italy for some high alpine shredding in the La Thuile.

**The main square in the center of Dubrovnik**

**One of the cobbled streets that weaves through this almost two thousand year old city.**

**The best hotel room view ever.**