Snowboarding and music festival AK Extreme kicked off in Akureyri on Thursday, RÚV reports. With events taking place both at the Mt. Hlíðarfjall ski slope and smack dab in the center of town, organizers needed to bring in 300 truckloads of snow to prepare for the event.
Held since 2002, AK Extreme is Iceland’s biggest snowboarding competition. The schedule of events is varied, including a nighttime ‘Burn Jib Session,’ where competitors snowboarding down handrails that have been lit on fire, a downhill race event at Mt. Hlíðarfjall, and the highly anticipated Eimskip Big Jump: a five-story jump constructed out of 15 Eimskip shipping containers that has been set up right in the middle of downtown Akureyri.
This main event is invite-only for the top participating riders and will feature 23 snowboarders this year, seven of whom are international competitors—the most to ever participate in AK Extreme.
The Big Jump will be both televised within Iceland on Saturday night, as well as viewable online. DJ sets and concerts will be held in conjunction with the event on Friday and Saturday nights. More information about the event schedule can be found on their website here.
