Snowboarding
More accustomed to high-flying performances on solid snow, boardercross champion Pierre Vaultier set out to conquer an icy mountain lake in his new project: Floating Shapes.
What's left to achieve when you've already got a trophy cabinet packed full with Crystal Globes and gold medals from the biggest competitions in your sport? It's a question worth asking, certainly. For Pierre Vaultier, the answer is quite simple: keep pushing the limits with ever-more creative challenges.
After Shapes, a giant pump track with colossal gaps, ReShapes with its cliffside course and Dual Shapes with its competitive edge, the snowboarding champion has once again taken to the snow – but this time where precision becomes art. For the snowboard cross legend, that could only mean pushing himself on a snowy pumptrack on a partially frozen lake near his home in Serre Chevalier.
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The pumptrack of his dreams
A technical challenge on both water and ice, with the goal of redefining the boundaries of aesthetics in movement, Floating Shapes sees Vaultier once again find a new direction in which to push creative snowbaording.
"Floating Shapes follows the same path as I’ve done in the past. The main goal was to express myself and bring the essence of my art to a place where no one would have ever imagined it – on water."
For Floating Shapes, beyond the challenge of launching himself across the middle of a frozen lake, 37-year-old Vaultier added an extra layer of difficulty by narrowing the width of the pump track. In Shapes, his first project, the track was 3m wide, but by the time we get to Floating Shapes, the track has been narrowed to just 1.2m. Riding a shaped run in the snow requires absolute precision. The slightest deviation from the course – just 2cm in either direction – could plunge Vaultier into the frigid water. "You have to push the limits of precision," he explains. "If I veer off by 2cm … I’m in the water."
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Adding to the challenge
As if all that wasn't visually striking enough, the world champ took it a step further by adding a backflip in his Prada snowsuit to create a seamless sequence shot in the middle of the icy waters of Lake Serre Chevalier.
"When you have only 1.20m to land on, you need to stay in line and keep the rhythm; it’s a real challenge, "he says. "It’s tough to stick a really clean and punchy landing, but I still managed to finish the line, so that’s great."
The water section is part of the project's identity – mixing ice, snow and water
To top it all off, at the end of the course, Vaultier had to maintain enough speed to skim across a section of unfrozen water – without getting wet. Even with a winch pulling him in, progressively smaller gaps (starting at a hefty 7.5m) and his experience with pumping, the feat was monstrous:
"The water section is part of the project's identity – mixing ice, snow and water. I had to be sure I could reach the island with enough speed to clear that 6m stretch. It’s not huge, but water slows you down a lot, and if I hadn’t been going fast enough, I would've sunk."
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Going off track
Of course, with a track this demanding – combining technique, speed, and precision – crashes are inevitable. In the middle of his test runs, the sun played a nasty trick on Vaultier, weakening one of the structures and causing him to make a costly mistake mid-run.
"It broke under my feet," he explains. "I could have fallen into the water, but that’s not what happened. Instead, it gave way and sent me flat on my back into the next module. I smashed my back, and at that moment, I thought, ‘That’s it, I won’t be able to go back.’ The evening was tough. The next morning, I struggled to get up – I was really wrecked. But in the end, I managed to push through. It all worked out, and we got some amazing footage, but I came close to disaster."
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A unique shaping process
Merely creating a playground suited for a project like this in an entirely new environment was an achievement in itself. Designing the pump track required extensive planning – not just in terms of logistics, but also shaping and feasibility. The ‘flow’ of the course was designed in perfect harmony with the conditions imposed by the partially frozen lake and the incredible backdrop of the Serre-Chevalier mountains, to create an extremely harmonious visual result.
"The idea was incredible; the modules and the snow emerging from the water," explains Vaultier. "The idea was to create something totally original, different from anything else, and to install a pumptrack in an environment where no one expected it"
The project went through multiple stages, with design ideas evolving as Floating Shapes became a reality. Ultimately, it all came down to the use of formwork – Vaultier’s secret weapon for the past four years – which was placed on beams. Beyond the ambitious execution, the entire construction was done by hand, ensuring a minimal carbon footprint:
"We built a solid walkway at the bottom of the lake and it was all done by hand. In fact, everything in the lake was carried in manually – no wheeled or floating motorised vehicles were used to bring anything in. That’s a real plus for the project."
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What comes next?
After Floating Shapes, despite a sore back, Vaultier didn't hide his desire to get started on a another ambitious project. This time he hopes to involve more people: "A dream would be Floating Shapes as a duel, but you really need top riders because it’s far from easy. Having that competition, that specific environment with about 10 riders, could be amazing – pushing the limits even further to make this level of precision something truly sublime. Even more so in the middle of a lake – it would be absolutely crazy."
It's certainly an intriguing idea, but if building a pump track in the middle of a lake has already been a challenge, finding nine more riders at Vaultier’s level is going to be an even greater one.
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