Markus Ascher is a Snowmad

gloryfy teamrider Markus Ascher realized his dream of a pow-chasing vehicle last season. After hundreds of kilometers in his own gloryfy The Search truck it seems as if his project inspired some of his friends to start their own project. And as Markus’ state of mind is generally laid back and supportive for all things freeriding, he joined in with his friend Fabian Lentsch, to help him realize his dream! But read the whole story in Markus’ own words. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the “Snowmads”!

“Where should i start? Maybe in April 2015, after my friend Fabi Lentsch had the balls to step back from his safe spot at the Freeride World Tour. I tip my hat to Fabi for this tough decision. But same as with his skiing, he made the hard things look easy. He was like „Man, I really didn´t feel it anymore and I want to really focus on „free“ riding and exploring. Actually I would like to build a van similar to yours that you built with gloryfy. But big enough to fit a whole camera crew and some riders in it and travel the world’s unexplored mountain ranges!“ He asked: „Are you in for building another truck and pow chase missions with?“ Of course he asked that question with a smile, as he knew that I would say yes…”

“We bought a old fire fighter truck and here we are 10 months later, sitting in the snowmads truck , the most amazing pow chasing camper van you’ve ever seen, driving it through Turkeys foothills just now, already seeing snowcovered mountains on the horizon!”

“We´re just stoked to find snow and finally ski again! After those absolutely heavy months of planning and converting the truck (it sounds easier as it was – Fabi thought it was probably the most exhausting time of his life and I could kind of agree).
You can check out the story of the conversion cut down to 3 minutes at snowmads.world

So 7 days ago we started our first trip with the van, the „journey towards eastern suns“ , packing our stuff into the van while putting the last screws into their place. Right now skiers on the truck are Fabian himself, Neil Wiliman (the amazing skiing human) and me – plus Jonas Abendstein, the filmer, and Leander, the photographer. Simon Thusbas, the second filmer, just joined us yesterday ! And i couldn´t be more stoked to start with that crew, because the vibe is super nice!

We drove pretty much non stop through the balkan states and had a so much needed stop in a remote ski center in the Kosovo Mountains. It reminded me of a mix between mediteranian Italian mountains and the vibe and style of things beeing done in Kirgistan or generally Asia. Definitely amazingly welcoming, relaxed and SUPER freestyle. Nobody knew if the lifts gonna open and so we waited with some super stoked locals for an hour till the first chairs started flying out of the station while a big cheer went through the crowd!”

“We were amazingly stoked to just have our skis strapped to our feet again and were super happy to put some turns into some 10cm of snow with meadows and some rocks underneath while enyoing the stunning scenery of the Kosovarian mountains.”

“3 days ago we´ve driven through Greece, finding the ocean and amazing natural hot springs for having a bath, since our shower in the van is full of our skiing stuff, we kind of needed that! Turkey seems to be the place in Europe with the most snow just now and as it seems the Snowmads Truck will bring us just there. I am looking forward to write another post from the Turkish Mountains around „Erzincan“ and stoked to hopefully find nice mountains and places to stay for some time and finally start riding and feeling the calmness of the mountains!”

Check out Markus Ascher´s favourite snow goggle, the gloryfy GP4  and his fave lifestyle sunglasses, the gloryfy Gi2 DeJaVu.