Dec 28, 2009

2009 Year End Recap Vid

Here's a little video recap of some of the adventures of this past year. The Edge makes a special guest appearance as the narrator.


Happy New Year!

Enjoy.

Dec 20, 2009

Dec 19, 2009

Snowbowl Lift Day 12/18/09 (Flagstaff, AZ)

Yesterday, I had the day off and met up with Maadjurguer, and Chollaball, and then we drove up to Snowbowl in Flagstaff, where we met up with Jrock and B. for a little lift area skiing. We finally made to lift area season. Woot.

It was a bluebird day, and my upper layer consisted of a shell and t-shirt. We pretty much stuck to the groomers, and focused on the sunny spots where the snow had loosened up.

We did find a pretty fun tree run that led us down a gully that actually had good coverage.

I'm still trying to get my boots dialed in, as my tele-turns really suffered. Time to get my boots fitted, cuz the blistering and shin bang were pretty bad.

Everybody ripped it up. Pretty fun day, and other than my feet, I felt pretty good; not to much anaerobic burn in my legs. I need a few more days like this.

My go to video camera was acting up, so I was limited on the footage I got. I did piece together a video. It features Chollaball letting his freak flag fly, and is accompanied by fine suggestion from Maad using of Wide Spread Panic's 'Going West'. Along with the soundtrack, Maad also provided the super pic of CB.


Great day.


Here's the vid:

Dec 12, 2009

Snowbowl Preseason

The big snow finally fell in Flagstaff, but just not quite enough to open the lifts. I couldn't wait, so I decided to head up anyways and skin up the groomers. The road to Snowbowl was open, so the only other obstacle was making sure they wouldn't mind if I did a couple of laps. I asked a couple of staff up there, and they said it was okay, but just stay outta the cats way who were laying had lines up for dragging snow.

My plan was to skin up from the bottom of Sunrise Chair which sits at 9,200 vf to the top of Agassiz Chair which tops out at 11,500. Heading up the groomers was easy except a couple the steeper slopes hadn't been groomed on my first trip up. Can't complain at all.

It was rather cool up there,spitting snow and low visibility. I had some new Scarpa T-2 tele boots to try out. They were much lighter than my old T-1 bumble bees, and they made the trip up a little more pleasurable. Despite a similar buckle system, they just didn't have the same rigidity, because the don't come up as one my calf. Despite this, I think once a get a few days of running them on the lifts, I get them dialed it. I might also opt the have the liners form fitted, so the fit a little more comfortable.

This was my first trip on the snow since Camp Muir trip the end of June, so I wasn't expecting much in my performance. I did end up doing two laps, for a total of 4,600 feet of ascending. I gotta admit, that I was pretty fatigued at the end of lap number two, but it was a good start to getting my fitness back.

Not much video footage, but here is short vid of what I got: