Skiing Pow Into the New Year

Some days just are meant to be "working from home" days.  With no bosses in and no work coming through, New Year's Eve became one of those days.  It was a good thing too as Snowbasin had a good foot of fresh waiting for me.

iPhone with work email connection...... Check. Work laptop...... Check. Skis, new boots, and new HELMET CAM..... Check, check, and CHECK!!!!! Thank you Mother for the amazing Christmas and B-Day gift!!!!  Hopefully you won't regret seeing what I do on skis now.

It was a good day on the hill and I did actually get an email from a customer while out and did address it; so I really did work and put myself in position to get whatever work done that was needed. This was the first day with my new boots, the Garmont Prophets, and the V.I.O. POV 1.5 helmet cam.  It was fun testing out the camera and figuring out the side mount angles that look good.  I still haven't received my new Icelantic Shaman 173's from Denver yet so I was rocking my Nomads still.  I love these skis and they destroy everything on the mountain.  With all the soft new snow, I finally hit a couple of cliffs.

I still have to get an Up-Res plug-in for the footage I get from the POV 1.5 so it looks better when put in with an HD video edit.  I blew a couple of good shots from the first two runs because I didn't wipe off the lens after exiting from the clouds and it had fogged up. But here's a short edit from the test day of the usable footage.

True Ski Love - An Artistic Ski Tune Edit (Attempt)

True Ski Love - It's about how one treats and respects their skis, the same objects that allow one to express their feelings and life experiences on the mountain side.

My Icelantic Nomads can take a beating and give one right back. The Icelantic Shaman is just the same. Because these skis serve us and endure our skiing, we in turn keep them in good enough shape to ski another day.

This is my first attempt at an artistic edit. I didn't want to have it be super artistic or over dramatic. I merely wanted to portray the feelings and aspirations that come to me through my skis. Enjoy.

First Ski Edit

Here's that short ski edit of my first day out that I have been promissing would be out.  I finally got "most" of the kinks out of the compressed file.  I think that it's not bad for my first edit ever, and using only about 90 seconds of ski footage to make it work.

Enjoy and please let me know what ya think:

'09-'10 Season Goals

Yep it's that time of the year again.  The time of year that I actually produce goals.  And with the third day of skiing for the season completed, here they are in no particular order of importance:

1. Ski at least 45 days; includes both frontcountry and backcountry
2. Ski at least 800,000;
3. Ski the south face couloir of Ben Lomond with Christian
4. Drop S&S
5. Ski Monte Cristo
6. Ski Superior
7. Put a couple video segments together
8. Shoot more photos
9. Call in sick to work at least twice for a weekday storm dump of 15 inches or more
10. Solo Willard Peak ice drainage and then ski down into Liberty
11. Throw more 3’s
12. Stick the front flips in all conditions
13. Start throwing back flips
14. Stomp my line at the blonde cliffs with the flip
15. Find a hot ski babe to date

Pretty much amounts to mannin' up and huckin' more

Thanksgiving Ski Day - Snowbasin

Day two of my '09-'10 ski season is under the belt and boy are my quads feeling it from the groomers.  I went up to Snowbasin, my resort choice of the year, for a couple of hours prior to the Thanksgiving festivities to get my legs in shape.  The resort only had a single run open, which is standard for opening day.  I got in a total of 5 laps before I had to head back to get ready.  That's a good 11,550 vertical feet on hard, loud snow.

I can't wait until winter is in its full swing and the runs are filled in.  I'm pretty sure that I'll have a lot of fun at Basin this year.

I'll post my season goals tomorrow.  Here's my awesome Basin Season Pass pic for ya to enjoy:

My Winter Has Started

I finally got out on my sweet Icelantic Nomads.  It has been exactly 7 months and 5 days since I was last on these bad boys, and man it was sure nice.  As the snow was falling in huge flakes Sunday night, Christian and I hatched our plan to skirt our work for the day and head out to get some video footage and just get out for some preseason powder.  I will admit that I had a hard time falling asleep because I had the "Christmas Eve" jitters as I couldn't wait for the morning to come.

Christian and I decided not to get out there until the skies had cleared and we had good light for filming.  That meant we wouldn't even hit the trail head until closer to 10:00 am.  This was a nice change of pace as Christian usually likes to meet at his place around the wonderful hour of 6:00 am.

The day was great with beautiful bluebird skies and a foot of 5% Utah blower powder on a minimal snowpack of unconsolidated snow.  Christian did his usual "skirt the main path" routine and we ended up getting a little bushwhacking in.  Nothing like climbing through a tough thicket first day out to get you ready for a full season.

Now the skinning, on the other hand, kicked my butt as I haven't done any cardio in close to 2 months.  I knew that'd be the case, so I just pushed on.

I had a couple of good face shots and Christian had some sweet powder bursts. The snow, was great. All the hidden shark tooths, ie rocks, weren't.  I seemed to hit a rock on every turn and that sucked.  Fortunately my Nomads held up to the "Wasatch Tune" I gave them.  I did hit a pretty good rock right when I started a turn going at a decent speed and ended up face planting.  Luckily I didn't hit my face on hidden rocks. And for you, luckily we caught it on tape.

Look for my season goals and my first skiing video edit to come out in the next day or two.  For now, here are some pics:

Christian a.k.a "The Dude" now resorting to bushwhacking after deadending us

Traci, The Dude's cool wife

 Looking up at Flagstaff

Me setting up the camera with a nice sun flare

Wolverine Cirque in the Background

The Real Man

Every once in a while I feel that I need to remind myself, as well as those around me, what a real man is and what he should look like.  To become a real man, it takes much time, dedication, and discipline.  For me it took about 3 weeks.

You might be wondering what standard I have become and now I'll show you.

The Real Man "Cool Man" Look

The Real Man "Excited" Look

Joey's Wedding

I know that I've slacked on this so I'll give you a little blurp on the most ridiculous, fun, exciting, touching, joyful, crazy, humorous, and out of control weekend.

That's pretty much it; I don't know how to describe it any better than that.

No really, I enjoyed being home with my second family. I've missed the Kraemers and this was a great weekend being together. I was so honored to be in Joey's wedding party. We definitely rocked the house, were loud, obnoxious, and joyous. I really can't detail how much fun we had.

Here's some pics

Marjean and Me

















Greg's wife Jess, Greg, Me, Sara, Ally, and Sara after Rehearsal















Getting the boys ready
















My wedding party counterpart and me exiting

Let the party begin







Jeremy at the end of the night

Black Diamond Gear Swap

I love this event; Not only do I get to find some good buys of things I "need" for ski season, unload my gear and come home with some money, but I get to feel the electricity in the air of winter being right around the corner.

I didn't take much to the gear swap this year since I don't have much to sell, but I didn't come home with much either. You see, I've learned to curb my gear purchasing, mainly due to the fact that I have 95% of the things I need and haven't been purchasing much recently...... of course I know you're all sitting their thinking "yeah right." Trust me, that 5% is a lot of items.

Since I saved Christian a spot last year, he was supposed to get there earlier than me and grab a spot. Yeah that didn't happen. I arrived about 6:20 and the place was already half full. I managed to grab spots for Christian and Scotty V, the Icelantic Ski Team Manager. We had our own little party section.

Winter is right around the corner. Yay!!


Christian rocking sweet handle bars and a sick mullet beanie

Bye Bye Birdies

So it finally happened: Marek and Seth got rid of Jackson and Bentley. These were their two African Grey Parrots that I've grown to love. Unfortunately with having a small almost year old baby crawling around, Seth and Marek didn't want to risk Scout crawling into the bird room and accidentally getting bit. You see the birds were very curious yet scared of Scout and would get defensive if she was around.

Yes I am sad and it's just not the same around here anymore. Here are a few pics for my memory.

Bentley


Jackson


Bentley 'n' Me



Bentley


Bentley and Jackson going at it - Bentley tells her off

Let's Go Shootin'

After all the fun at work with the Flybar pogo stick, Travis, Chris, and I travelled to Travis' father-in-law's place to let out some stress and have fun shooting. We, more like they, brought a decent arsenal of all types and calibers. We did everything from rapid fire close quarters, off-hand rifle distance shooting, to 150 through 300 yard shots.

You can really tell that Travis has spent a lot of time here as he is deadly fast and accurate with his .40 S&W. I really enjoyed shooting Chris' .45 LC pistol and carbine. You gotta love cowboy guns.

It was a really good time with some buddies that I've come to enjoy and am sad to see be let go from the company. That's one thing that I've come to not enjoy with working in the government contractor's world.

Gotta Love Handguns


Chris enjoying the awesome handgun target setup


Chris getting sharp


Taking Travis by surprise

Pogo Stick on Steroids

If there's one thing I like about my generation and those just a little bit older than me is that we love to bring things back from our childhood, but when we do bring it back we take it one step further.

Let's take pogo sticks for instance. They were cool back in the day (probably everyone's childhood) but they lacked the "takin' it to the next level" capability. Well some genius had the idea to make a pogo stick out of stronger materials, add 12 more springs to the equation, and call it the Flybar. This thing can actually propel you over 7 feet high if you know what you're doing. Paul actually bought one of these $200 plus items and we convinced him to bring it into work. Let's just say that we weren't too talented with it and "barely" missed the 7 foot mark. Here's a few shots:

"What?!! I'm only a foot high?!"


"How about now? Huh?!?! Still the same? Watch this!"


"Wow that was close. I'm done!"


Paul banging his knee getting on the thing.

This made me feel better

So today I got some bad and saddening news. My last living grandmother passed away after the post-op "safe period." I received a call from my father as I was getting ready for work. As I never get calls that early from him, I knew something was up. Even though I hadn't seen my grandparents in a few years, the news and details of it put me on an off key for the day.

But I found these videos on a forum thread in this order and it just made me laugh and feel better. Enjoy.

Watch how far his goggles fly


I laughed probably for 2 minutes staright while replaying this over and over


This is what you get for sporting no beaning, sunglasses, and tight gear on a cold day




And this was just icing on the cake

Fun at the Jibyard

I was a little bored today after doing some garden setup with Seth, so when the call came requesting me to try out the Jibyard, I went without any hesitation. The Jibyard is a indoor rail park with rollers and plastic carpet. The handheld video will help you understand what I'm talking about.





Here's a video of a kid there so you can see the big picture.



Oh one more thing: I've moved out of the ghetto condos and moved in with Seth, Marek, and Scout. Once I get a dresser and finish putting the last of everything away, I'll give you a view of my new place.

My New Classy Look

I realized that it was time to fit in more with my work environment. The Air Force has a pretty stringent requirement on hair. I decided that I need to have that "classy" look to maintain the necessary relationship with my customers.

It's time to keep it high and tight.


Still looking high speed-low drag.


What is that? Is that a mull.......


Ah yeah!! That is a really sexy mullet!!!


Business in the front, party in the back. That's right I decided to get a mullet, a business mullet. It needs to be a business mullet to stay classy.

Trip to Tinker AFB

I just got back from 11 days in Oklahoma City. I was sent to assist our site team at Tinker AFB get back on track. It definitely was a fun and eventful "work-cation." I had a tornado develop right over my hotel the first Wednesday there. Luckily I happened to be downtown with a coworker and the tornado ended up touching down 15 miles to the east of my hotel.

During the weekend I had the opportunity to visit the Oklahoma City Federal Building Memorial. It was a quiet, yet sobering experience.

Winter Performance Review

So another winter come and gone. Today marked my end of winter; I took the ski cargo box off my car. Let's go ahead and look at my goal performance.

GOALS:

1. Ski at least 45 days: 57 Days; 15 Backcountry
   
2. Ski at least 800,000 vertical feet: 722,345 feet
   
3. Ski the the south face/couloir of Ben Lomond from the peak w/Christian: No
   
4. Ski Little Superior on a good powder day w/Christian: No
5. Get Avalanche Level 1 Certification: COMPLETED
6. Get Avalanche Level 2 Certification: COMPLETED
7. Huck a certain cliff on Banana Dayz in Big Cottonwood Canyon: COMPLETED
8. Huck a certain cliff on Honeycomb Cliffs in Big Cottonwood Canyon: COMPLETED
9. Drop Corbet's Couloir at Jackson Hole: COMPLETED 3 times
   
10. Learn a backflip: No
11. Ski Silverton Mountain: COMPLETED, Got arrested on my birthday
    
12. Ski Monte Cristo in Little Cottonwood Canyon: No
13. Film one or two short ski mountaineering films w/Christian: No
14. Call in sick to work at least once for a weekday storm dump of 15 inches+: COMPLETED
15. Ascend all 3 pitches of Malan's Waterfall: No
16. Solo Willard Peak ice drainage at least 3 times: No
17. Take an ice climbing trip to Ouray, CO: COMPLETED
18. Find a super hot Backcountry Babe to date: No

Ok so let's look into why I didn't accomplish some of these goals:

• I didn't get my vertical footage goal due to my job as a ski buddy with Dakota. I never got him to ski more than 10,000 feet per day (more than 5 runs).
  
• Any goal that I had with Christian became an extreme challenge due to Christian returning to school and having a baby.
  
• I never did learn a backflip because I just forgot about the goal.
  
• I never did get to ski Monte Cristo as I never got up to Superior this year. Montes Cristo is the true summit to Superior and it's easiest to do those two in the same trip.
• After my ice climbing trip to Ouray, I focused more on skiing and I didn't have any luck with weather as it was a really warm winter causing the ice at lower elevations to not form up as usual.
• And I didn't get that super hot backcountry babe to date cause I didn't really care for that goal. Maybe things will change this next year.

INJURIES:

So this year seemed to be the year of injuries for me. I couldn't believe how one injury would happen right after I healed from another one. Let's look at the damage I had:

1. Torn meniscus left knee - Caught my inside ski on the top of a mogul
   
2. Subluxed left shoulder - Cliff drop into really dense deep snow
   
3. Split lip and chin - Hit a patch of ice at high speeds as I initiated a turn = wipeout
   
4. Sprained right knee - Poor technique when exhausted on a bumped out technical run
5. Hairline fracture right fibula - Bad cliff drop onto a mogul
   
6. Sprained left thumb - Dakota ran into me while stopped and took out my legs
7. Sprained right ankle - I have no idea what happened
8. Broken ribs, 7th and 8th on left side - Carbon fiber ski pole to the ribs at high speed

Yeah I got a little beat up this year. Hopefully I will have better luck this next season. Plus I'm going to make sure that I workout during the season, do a lot of yoga, and stretching to stay healthy.

A really cool highlite of the winter was joining the Icelantic Ski Promotion Team. I love skiing so much and have really wanted to get involved in the industry. This has given me a taste of that and really doesn't seem like work at all. I enjoy working the demos and spreading the word about the skis. As long as I am not required to help out with demos on the really good snow days, I'll be good.

Ben Lomond Tour

Matt is now back in town for the time being. How is that good for me? I now have a local touring buddy. We had an impromptu ski tour this weekend up to Ben Lomond. I have never ever summitted Ben Lomond prior to this day. I've been up to the saddle and have played around many times in that area, but never topped the peak. That became an added bonus to the skiing.

The skin up was long and uh, long. The one thing that I don't like about touring in the Ogden area is the approaches. They are very long and flat before you start to actually ascend a slope. Matt and I came in through the north side. As we finally got to the high ridge, the wind started howling with gusts over 80 mph. That was absolutely brutal on the boot pack to the top.

We kind of slacked taking 4 hours to get to the summit. As we got to the top and I had a chance to look at the South Face Couloir. I got so excited as I was mere feet away from a season long goal, a goal that originated at the end of last season. I tried to convince Matt that we should drop the beautiful line, to test our ability. Matt stated that he didn't have enough juice in him to make the dangerous run, plus it was later in the day than is recommended for that line.

I had to accept the fact that I most likely would not attain that goal this season. However, seeing the line from the top helped me visualize my eventual descent, fortifying my confidence of success.

Matt and I skied two differing lines, but still close enough to see and rescue each other if need be. I watched Matt make his way to his first planned safe spot. Once he stopped, I dropped in. Here's my thought train that ensued: Ski cut hard to the left - two inch deep wind slab broke free but only ran 16 feet - I need to do one more cut before I feel good; Hard ski cut to the right - boot deep powder now, no signs of instability - Oh yeah let's get going; First turn - smooth and deep; Second turn - wind scowered hard pack - Oh crap hold tight; Third turn - punching wind crust - Hold on tight; Forth turn I'm going mach 9 this isn't going to be good - back to boot deep powder - Oh s#!t we're going down. At that point I was launched forward over the "handlebars" going head first into the snowpack. Man this is going to be tough.

The line was intense, not because the terrain was extremely steep, but because the spatial variability of the snowpack and quality was so drastic. Also my previously fractured fibula was a bit sore.

After we made our 1800 foot descent we had a lot of traversing and bushwhacking to get back to the car. We both were now getting drained as we spent most of our energy on the way up.

It was a good challenging tour that kept me in the realm of humility as I felt worked. It's good to have days like this every so often.

I apologize for the pic quality; I forgot my camera and used my iPhone for the documentation.

Tons of possibilities

Matt pushing through high winds

It all looks so good

The steep bootpack through 80 mph gusts

Ogden from Ben Lomond Peak

The South Face Couloir from the Summit

I think I'm stoked