Its a new year and things are rocking along, a time for new beginnings, new gear, and deep powder. I am super stoked to be working with Atomic skis. Atomic has a incredible team that I am honored to be a part of, great product, and a progressive vision for the future. For these reasons I have moved forward with this sick ski company and look forward to shredding with them. For two weeks I have been riding the Bent Chetler, Chris Benchetler’s pro model, and I am so pleased. The ski is light, fat, and fun. Getting on a new ski has ramped up my stoke, I feel like I am skiing better than ever and have a hard time quitting at the end of the day regardless of the snow condition. Skiing rules!!!
After an amazing run, I am no longer working with Rossignol. A big thanks to the all the employees that I have worked with, many great friendships have been built and It has been an honor to work with the brand. Rossignol has been a key part of my mountain experience and this has been a great chapter. I wish them the best.
So… there is still some time to vote for the powder magazine reader poll. I made up this little video straight campaigning! make’n fun of how extreme I get.
peep the vid and vote HERE!!!
Winter turned on early in Utah, too early. Powder skiing was had in early October but storms were too infrequent to hold on for long. Thanksgiving week was approaching and a minimal snowpack and high pressure was on the horizon. meanwhile the Northwest was getting hammered with heavy dumps turning early season into mid winter. I jumped in the truck with Adam Clark and we headed off a bit late for the storm riding but decided that it would be worth it to have mid season base under our feet. Our first stop was Crystal Mountain in Washington. Then spent a few days at Stevens Pass before making our way to Whistler BC.
The week before Halloween some friends and I made an annual trip to southern Utah for one final bike mission. the location was Virgin, and the zone was the old Red Bull Rampage site. We headed down for 5 days of camping, riding, scaring ourselves, catching air, and hiking up cliffs. This was one of the larger moves we hit, the wind was always a battle as gusts were strong enough to push you over as soon as you became airborne. we would wait for a gust, look down the line and drop.
Winter is here. The second in a string of storms to hit the Wasatch just dumped 15-20 inches, blanketing the mountains with a tempting dust. At Alta there was a high concentration of skiers and snowboarders, boot packing, skinning, and snowshoeing their way up.
While things look nice and white, rocks, sticks, and bushes poke out everywhere, plenty of gnarly “shark teeth” lurk under the surface ready to punish the early season riders. the mountain is a wild horse, not used to people climbing up looking for a ride. P-Tex and metal edges grind in to rocks, roots, and bushes as people traverse into the tops of runs. Scoured spots, and ridges, are “summer like” but mid-winter lurks in the protected, drifted, chutes,and gullies. Tread lightly in the right spot, and you can reap the rewards of slow motion, waist deep turns, that feel as if it could be January.
Summer has come and gone, fall lingers, and snow is on the way. Time has a way of racing by, but there are many memories that last forever. This summer was interesting, fun, exciting, had its ups and downs, but remained full of love, and positive vibes. Traveling around the west, hanging with friends and family I spent time capturing some of these moments with photography. this is the first selection: the following shots are from an annual trip to the Black Rock Desert.
Excerpt from the commencement Address to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009 By Paul Hawken. For the full address, (highly recomended) click HERE.
Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich. The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.” (Continue)
