Snowbasin Retro Day

Snowbasin threw its first Retro Day.  It was an event filled with crazy costumes, rear entry boots, and Icelantic Skis.  I had a blast and thought my costume was pretty decent.  Here's how it went down:

Icelantic PR Day with KSL Radio and Snowbasin

I had the chance to be apart of an excellent PR day pumping up Icelantic Skis and Snowbasin.  Scott VerMerris and I entertained the KSL Outdoor Radio Show hosts and Jodi Holmgreen, PR Manager of Snowbasin.  We had a good bluebird day on good snow with good people.

Each person seemed very skeptical of the ski shapes and size recommendations, but were sold by the end of the day.  We had guys not wanting to give up their Shamans so that another could try it out.  It was a lot of fun watching the excitement and enjoyment that all were having. 

We had a good lunch at Earl's Lodge, a great interview on the patio, Scotty absolutely killed it, and a fun little impromptu photo session with Bryan Smith.  Too bad we didn't get that done earlier in the day otherwise we could have gotten some sweet cliff shots in before the snow hardened up.  Here's a couple of the pics courtesy of Jeff Sory of KSL Radio and Bryan Smith of Snowbasin (Jeff had the group shots, and Bryan did the action shots).

The group on top of Strawberry

Looking out to the Sisters

Snowbasin PR Manager Jodi with Scotty, a troller, and myself

Sunset Turn

Small Air on John Paul

Scotty's Sunset Slash

Sunset Air

Coastin' With Friends

I love just going out skiing with a good group of skiers and rally the whole resort. Friends, ski buddies, and good skiers make for a fun day of getting after it.

This is from a powder day at Snowbasin on Jan 23rd. Haven't had many of these days this year but man it was a good one.

Icelantic SIA Video Clip

Here's a clip of the new Icelantic booth and new line up from SIA in Denver put on by New Schoolers. Christian, Riley, and I had a little jam session. Enjoy.

New Year's Demo at Alta and the Goldminer's Daughter

I had a pretty good weekend working the demo with Icelantic at Alta Ski Resort.  The snow stayed good after the New Year's Eve dump and we had some good turns; the phrase for the 1st and 2nd day was "it does not suck."

I rocked it out with Ashley and Scott, and brought my friend Carmen along to get her out of the house and on the slopes.  I met a lot of people, hyped up the skis and company with lots of skiers, and had a blast.  I did get some footage of the event, combined it with some footage that Scotty captured, and produced an edit to promote the Goldminer's Daughter and Alta Ski Resort.  I tried to be a little more up beat and stylish with this edit.  This edit, as well as my ski tuning edit, is up on Icelantic's website also. Enjoy.

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:

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

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

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.