Snowboarding Madness in Colorado: Halldór Helgason, Aaron Bittner and Crew

Colorado has been one of snowboarding's great proving grounds since the sport's early days, and this short edit, "Snowboarding Madness in Colorado", catches four riders of the late-2000s freestyle scene at full speed: Mats Hofgaard, Aaron Bittner, Erik Botner and Iceland's Halldór Helgason. The channel Easyseven uploaded it to YouTube on 18 December 2009, just weeks before Helgason won gold at the Winter X Games.

The Snowboarding Madness in Colorado video

The edit is a classic of its era: a fast cut of jumps, spins and powder runs set to music, built for the early YouTube audience that was then discovering snowboard films online. It puts Scandinavian and American riders side by side on Colorado snow.

The riders: Halldór Helgason and Aaron Bittner

Halldór Helgason was born in Akureyri, Iceland, on 10 January 1991. A few weeks after this video went online he won Big Air gold at the 2010 Winter X Games in Aspen, the first X Games medal ever won by an Icelander. His riding is known for huge rotations and a sense of humour: in 2013 he went for a triple backflip in the X Games Big Air final, and in 2014 he came close to landing a triple barrel roll. With his older brother Eiki he later co-founded Lobster Snowboards and released free online films such as Sexual Snowboarding (2011) and Pepping (2012). He also starred in Standard Films' The Storming and Nike's Never Not (2013).

Aaron Bittner rode for years as a leading pro for DC Snowboards and filmed with Mack Dawg Productions. He built his reputation with street and backcountry video parts. In his early days in Salt Lake City he would even haul snow to handrails to make a feature rideable.

Mats Hofgaard and Erik Botner complete the line-up, sharing the same Colorado sessions in the edit.

Colorado and the history of snowboarding

Colorado's resorts were among the first in North America to welcome snowboarders. Ski Cooper and Berthoud Pass allowed them early on, and Breckenridge hosted the World Snowboard Classic, known simply as "the Worlds", in 1986. Breckenridge later held the opening stop of the Winter Dew Tour. Keystone was one of the last big Colorado resorts to open its lifts to snowboards, yet its A51 Terrain Park became one of the best-known parks in the state.

Today the X Games are held each January at Buttermilk, near Aspen, and Copper Mountain was named the best resort for terrain parks by OnTheSnow for the 2024–25 season. Summit County, with Breckenridge, Keystone and Copper all within a short drive of each other, is still the easiest base for a park-focused trip.

When to snowboard in Colorado

Most Colorado resorts open between November and early December and run into April. The parks are fully built from mid-season, usually by late December or January, and spring brings softer snow and sunny days that suit jump lines and rails. February and March are the safest months for both a deep snowpack and full terrain.

Wear a helmet in the park, and start each new jump line with a few straight airs to check speed before trying a spin. More snowboard films to watch next: Marcus Kleveland’s identified Vierli sequence and a separately credited Chilean snowboard film.

Related reading

• Chilean Andes Snowboarding: Funner Filete
• We Ride: The People and Culture of Snowboarding
• Don’t Panic: A Snowboard Film Excerpt
• The Balance of Powder: A Sherpas Cinema Film
• This Is Skiing!
• Bon and Montant’s Wing-Assisted Eiger Descent
• The Khumbu Icefall through Theodore Fairhurst’s Helmet Camera
• Marcus Kleveland’s identified Vierli sequence

Sources