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.

A Little Careless: An Avalanche PSA

The other day I had a little reminder about needing to be conservative and safe in the backcountry and sidecountry. As we traveled out of bounds for our last lap of the day, we seemed to let our communication, patience, and training slip.

We got a little careless.

Here's a what happened shot from my helmet cam. We lucked out. 

Happy Birthday to Me

That's right; 28 down and still not growing up.  As I enter my 29th year, I am realizing how much fun I can still have.  I appreciate all the birthday wishes and salutations that I received.  Yes it was even comforting to have a voicemail of my mother singing the same birthday song she's been singing to me every year since I can remember.  At least this year it didn't come as a wake up call at 6:00 am. 

In classic "Alex fashion," I did manage to make an entrance for my birthday.  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:

'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