For the $100 I got in 3 lift served runs and one heli run. The conditions were pretty terrible, but I went into it knowing everything was going to be skied off and icy. It’s tough to put into words just how skied off and icy it was. I couldn’t have imagined riding much of the mountain on a rocker snowboard without magne traction(even a ‘rocker-camber’ board like a Never Summer). I was on a Jones Flagship 158 I recently found at the REI Denver garage sale over new years for $210. I’m still dealing with broken laces on my 3 season old Salomon Malamute boots (one inner lace, one outer lace). So I rode on 6 season old Burton Shaun Whites, not the best conditions for a packed out park boot.

The mountain was awesome. Going to be going back for sure. I had a lot of fun on the 4 runs. It’s not often, especially this early in the season, you can find runs with exposure and no fall zones – especially lift accessed terrain. The day really made me wish I had an ice axe. Runs we rode -
We spent another night in Ouray and headed to Telluride the next morning. I’d never been to Telluride either and this place was great. They had reported 2″ overnight, some areas definently held more. The hike to Bald Mountain wasn’t too bad and we got 2-3′ of new snow. The winds were HONKING!

Headed to Aspen monday night and stayed at the hostel in Glenwood Springs. I’d stayed there by myself about a year ago and got one of the private rooms for $25. They didn’t have any doubles or family rooms (up to 5 people) available so we paid $16 each for a bed in the big open room. I think there were about 10 other people sleeping in the room but it was hard to tell because people were getting up and coming and going all night. For $16 we both felt kind of ripped off. It’d be worth it if you were on a trip on your own, but if traveling with others splitting a motel would be worth the extra.

Skied Highlands on tuesday. Good stuff, few feet in some areas. They opened the bowl around noon but neither of us hiked it. I had a to get back to Boulder for work tuesday night.

Wednesday and thursday nights were the classroom portions for an Avalanche 1 course. I didn’t feel like I walked away with too much new knowledge. I had previously taken a “free” (donation) FOBP course and have been travelling with experienced backcountry skiers for 5 seasons now. The on-snow portion of the class was sat/sun and the beacon work was great. It really helped having someone show me how to actually use the beacon for fine searching.

Lift evac training I took part in a month or so ago-

Heading to Crested Butte early next week!

Here is some footage from last season (very ADD friendly) -

Music by Regulations from Sweden.

One of my roommates’ pets, it resides in our kitchen right next to the coffee maker -

Found this on my street the other day, gotta find a sail or a paddle now!

A lot has been going on recently. Skydivers set a Colorado state record for bigway formation skydving Sunday August 28th. 69 skydivers jumped from 4 different planes (a King Air and Twin Otter from Mile-Hi, and a Skyvan and Twin Otter from Eloy, AZ) and played “beat the cypress.” The cypress is the Automatic Activation Device (AAD) that automatically opens your reserve for you if you’re still in freefall at a certain altitude (typically 1200ft AGL). There were no cutaways or cypress fires over the weekend. During bigway skydiving they are racing against time, or altitude, to complete the formation. Due to the number of people in the air they want maximum seperation from each other before deploying, it is not uncommon in bigway for a cypress to fire when the skydiver forgoes altitude for more separation.

Here is a video from the ground of canopies deploying on their jump BEFORE the record was broken. This was a 71-way attempt. (The link above has video from the air of the completed 69-way formation)

Sunday I was able to get in 3 jumps out of the Skyvan. The Skyvan is unique because the plane has a rear exit, as opposed to a side exit common in most jump planes.

I was browsing craigslist missed connections late at night last week trying to find myself and ended up on “1000 books for less than 5 cents each!” I emailed the seller and got a call the next morning, 2 hours later, that they were still available. They barely fit in my truck. So if you’ve ever wondered what 1000 books looks like, here you go -

After spending a day sorting through them all I ended up with a couple boxes of baby books and books that had the word “hath” on every single page (Christianity books). The rest of the lot wasn’t bad. Lemme know if you want a copy of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” I have enough to go around.

My friends from Static Thought came through Denver last week before finishing their tour friday in SLC. Johaan, their bassist and a friend and former bandmate of mine from high school invited me to roadie for them on their spring 2008 Europe tour. Needless to say, it was an amazing experience. To help them out we tore down a wall for them and bought them pizza.

22 days til Loveland starts making snow! I’m ready for winter, get your car camping recipes dialed!

Buy my shit! Never Summer SL 153 (’10-11), Atomic RT80 171 w/G3 Targas (’07-08), Scarpa Domina Women’s AT boots size 26 brand new!! (’10-11)

I went up to RMNP this past weekend to scout for snow, not much left.

As you’ve probably noticed I have a whole winter season missing from my blog. I guess I didn’t create space in my life last winter for social networking and blogging because I was too busy traveling to places like Monarch, A-Basin, Winter Park, Snowbird, Crested Butte, Aspen, Copper, Eldora, Steamboat, Quandry Peak, Loveland and some super-secret-bro backcountry spots. Also my smugmug account went down so all the pictures from seasons previous are gone. I’ll get all the pictures back up soon and update with trip reports from last season. I promise to be a better anti-social blog loser this winter in my quest for a free pair of sunglasses and new ski pants.

Cool picture from the other week -

from last fall -

I’ve been reading up on summer backyard parks. Get some astro-turf, soap, and a drop-in and you’re set. Got my 2010-2011 season edit just about done. Stayed up all night tuesday, literally, working on it. It’s ADHD friendly, 5-6 hours of footage (albeit mostly boring helmet cam), down to 2min 11sec.

1995 suzuki dr350se with about ~4500 miles. bought from co powersports boulder for $2300 out the door w/ a helmet. ran for 2 weeks then started leaking fuel from the air intake. put a new non-vacuum petcock in off a yamaha raptor 660 and it still didn’t work. carb is apart now, hoping it’s the float bowl o-ring.

bought some new skis, 2008-2009 (maybe 2007-2008) skilogik rage’s (now known as the “rave”) 175cm, 92 underfoot. need to buy some bindings still

I got more pictures and video I’ll put up eventually, I’m having issues renewing my smugmug account.

Sunday night jib session

Tyler

Area we opted for instead

The Ripples, patrol was telling us it was gonna be completely bumped out…uh huh…

I almost didn’t bring my snowshoes with me, I’m real glad I did, we had a 20 minute bushwhack out through thigh deep snow before we found the packed down traverse out.