High speed standup sledding

[Stingray Sam]

Do you board, do you ski? Do you worship the perfect corduroy of newly groomed runs? Do you pray at the alter of the snow gods hoping for endless powder? Does the first snowfall make you pine longingly for those mountain slopes?

[Stingray Sam]

I was considering going to montana state university because bridger is 15 minutes outside of town and there's snow on the ground for a good portion of the school year. I still think about it sometimes

[iamacyborg]

The lack of snow and mountains is why I loathe living in the UK. :(

[tomsfood]

Have snowboarded for about five years now, albeit only on tiny central wisco hills. I've been really disappointed that school/work/responsibilities have kept me from going more than three times so far this year. The last time I went I taught myself how to ski though which was really exciting, never been more proud to make it down a run without falling. I'll definitely be skiing more in the future.

It was also the first time is gone skiing/boarding by myself, which I actually really enjoyed, it was peaceful. Anyone else ever go alone?

[Stingray Sam]

Skiing/boarding by yourself can be really great. You never have to compromise on what runs you're going to do. For instance i spent the last part of one day testing out some blizzard bonafides and decided to just do laps on a run that i really liked. I find that it really lets me focus on technique and pushing my own boundaries rather than having raise or lower myself to someone else's skill level.

Speaking of Blizzard Bonafides, I tried them out and really loved them. I think that i'm going to get some and the should be a good in bounds alternative to my K2 Mt. Bakers, which are just a bit too flexible for skiing on anything other than soft powder. I also have some A/T bindings on them which i'm afraid i'm going to break along with my skis. Anyways the boot i'm on right now is the Scarpa Skookums



They're awesome for powder and backcountry skiing, but they're way too flexible to be skied on the way i ski on in bounds terrain. The problem is that they have a flex rating of 110 and once you get into the 125-130 range it seems like most of the boots are race boots. I need to upgrade because i feel like i'm going to hurt myself in them, but i really don't want a race boot. Does anyone have any suggestions on boots i could try?

[ramseames]

Pretty much everyone's top end freeride model will be 130 (although soft for that number) dude. I know Technica (what people who raced blizzards usually were on) make 130 and 120 flex boots. Fischer makes by far the best stuff I've tried unless you're toe-inward, lots of shitty dudes with their goggle inside their helmets like salomons, atomic makes supposedly decent stuff although I never tried the boots because the rep couldn't get me to do more than a few runs on the skis when they had that big change 4 or 5 years ago, etc.

[iamacyborg]

Could always take a look at Full Tilt boots, the flex comes entirely from the tongue, which is easily replaceable with a clip.

[ramseames]

If there was any merit in raichle flexons they'd still be making them, people on the WC would still be racing them, and they'd never have sold the moulds to K2. Other than being comfortable/easy to put on there's really no reason to get them over a standard 2 piece boot.

[iffe]

[iffe]

I'm really excited for this thread because I LOVE skiing. Sadly we're having a terrible winter this year, so I've only gone skiing a handful of times.

Top to bottom: powder floatation devices, terrain park skis, beat to shit old park skis.



Some actual skiing:

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/60667030[/vimeo]

Park skiing in my local mountain. I'm the guy in the red hoodie.


[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/19345616[/vimeo]

Powder skiing in the sun in the Alps. Some of the best days I've ever had.
Volume warning for headphone users: song gets louder at 0:48

[Thomnd]

Yessss skiing thread

One of my favourite segments

[CMYK]

Been skiing since I was 4, skied park for most of high school, now I'm moving more into backcountry/tele. I grabbed my AIRE Level 1 and a beacon shovel probe setup a few years ago and was immediately hooked.

[ramseames]

[iffe]

[deth]

skiing is so much fun! It makes me sad to be away from the west coast and good skiing. The mountains on the east coast are so wimpy.

I've been cross country skiing since I was little and was on the cross country ski team in high school. Did a lot of backcountry stuff with my dad as a kid, mostly camping on old logging roads and things like that. Started downhill later on, though I've been doing that more lately because my brother is lazy and enjoys it more. Still not as solid with it as I would like to be, though I really enjoy moguls and glades

I'd really like to get more into telemarking, but there are very few places that rent skis/boots in small enough sizes.

my favorite place to ski is Fernie, BC:

[Stingray Sam]

I'm going to be hiking in 5 miles with backcountry skis to a lodge in the middle of nowhere and will be using it as a base for skiing for couple of days later this month

[iamacyborg]

I am

[ramseames]

(smiling))))))

[Stingray Sam]

we're heading out in a couple hours for our ski trip. The temp is staying could and it looks like we have 8 inches of snow coming our way.

[Stingray Sam]

Just got back from the ski trip. hiked out and no one knew exactly where to go. It was pretty foggy and we were lost for the entire time. The mountains were beautiful. It took us about 5 hours to hike to the cabin and we had one run that was really good. The avalanche conditions were terrible and the slope was sliding under our feet while hiking. It was about 4 inches on top of an ice crust. It snowed all night, but the weather was pretty warm and when we woke up there was a bit of a crust on some really heavy snow. From the cabin we hiked up only around 1300 feet in elevation to a peak nearby. The avalanche danger had only gotten worse and we were on some wind loaded slopes so we skied back down the ridge we hiked up. we also ran out of beer early on so we raided the lodge owner's liquor stash which made the trip much more tolerable. I'll post some pictures later on

[odradek]

living the dream
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/92502298[/vimeo]

[MxmHrpr]

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/7198576[/vimeo]

Wait for it....

[Thomnd]

reviving thread 'cause the stoke is real

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/104060711[/vimeo]

[ramseames]

http://www.powder.com/stories/news/jp-a ... 0.facebook

god fucking dammit fuck fuck fuck motherfucker

[ramseames]

rest in peace JP







(RIP andreas too)

[Thomnd]

oh god no not another one

[odradek]

this is rad as shit

[ramseames]

not including music was such a good call

is it lame that i'm more impressed by the auto pass scanner than anything else

why doesn't whistler have those damn


since when

admittedly I havent been up yet this year even though i was in the village for NYE

[Thomnd]

They're new this year

[Prince of Scandinavia]

Not sure if you guys have seen the movie Supervention but I'm telling you to do it anyway!

The movie is fucking amazing, and that's understating it a bit. Field Productions has two teams of norwegian/swedish/canadian skiiers filming different places in the world for the movie. They ride freestyle almost exclusively with some urban skiing in it too. Most of the footage is from Norway, Canada/Alaska, New Zealand and a lot of other places. They even fucking go to Svalbard, where everything is empty and snow and they ride industrial buildings. They do 360 spiral grinds, they jump off the norwegian olympic ski jump and other crazy shit. A lot of mountain gliding too, quite a few crashes and they dig a lodge out of 2 meters of snow and sleep in it, just to get a few shots the following morning. The music in the movie is great, a bit typical freestyle ski/snowboarding music (Big Lies, MS MR, Woodkid etc.) but the visuals are some of the best I've seen in any sport movie.

Here's a trailer and higlights video:


I can't wait to see how skiing and snowbarding will have changed in the next 10-20 years.