the yearly snowboarding trip is over, and this year it was a great one. over 20 inches (almost 2 feet!) of snow in 4 days made it a blast.

i’ve been taking a snowboard trip every year for at least the last 10 years. thanks to my wife for letting me go – she knows it’s the most fun i have each year and how important it is. also, I get to go on these trips with my closest friends – thanks to their wives for letting them go as well. since it’s been a long-standing tradition, it’s usually just accepted that we go each year. if we were to start this yearly trip now when we have mortgages, kids and a lot less disposable cash it likely would be a bit harder to convince everyone. 90% of the time, the trip is to Whistler Blackcomb, but sometimes we’ll mix it up and go to Austria or go heliboarding.

Whistler just has too much to offer since it’s so huge and always different. It’s my home away from home, one of the places I most spend time each year. and we always end up with accommodations within walking distance to the hill. lots of thanks to Nicole and her family for letting us stay at her place many times.

this year I was really looking forward to the trip for 2 reasons – the riding and the bro-time. with kids abound for all of us, I don’t get to see my friends as much any more and when I do, it’s usually quick chats between watching the kids run around. this trip would be days without kid interruptions.

this year i had considered going elsewhere (Kicking Horse for one option) since I thought it was going to be very crowded and overpriced due to the Olympics being held there. apparently, i wasn’t the only person thinking this way as it was very quiet before and after the Olympics. we talked to locals and they said it was packed during the olympics but when we were there a few weeks later, it was nearly empty. also, there were good deals to try to attract tourists. but for the most part, we chose to go back to Whistler because we’re lazy and cheap. we know the routine, we had airmiles to burn – we booked the trip within a day of discussing it. and this year it definitely paid off.

we flew out to vancouver on Thursday afternoon and flew back on Monday afternoon – typically we just ride 3 days, but for this trip we stayed to ride on Monday as well so we could get some extra time in the powder. before we headed out west, we were watching the snow reports and it was snowing constantly and big amounts. i kept thinking – “why couldn’t we be out there now?”. it was being advertised as the 3rd highest snow season on record and has since become the 2nd highest. thankfully, we got to experience a lot of that snowfall.

there was some fresh snow the previous 48 hours before we arrived and we ended up with a couple more inches our first day out. day 2 saw no new snow. but days 3 & 4 were legendary. we’d been watching the forecast and it kept getting better and better. on day 3 we woke up to 5″ of new snow at midstation and it was even more at higher elevations. a full day of riding and it kept dumping big snowflakes all day. on day 4, we woke up to good (or rather great) and bad news – the good news is that there was another 12″ of fresh new snow. the bad news is we only had 3 hours to ride it since we needed to leave at lunch to make it to the airport. so we rode and got buried and played in the snow as much as we could that day. snow days like that don’t come around that often, so when they do and you’re able to be there for it you have to soak up the experience – it could be another long while until you see it again. i kept telling myself as i was riding – “have fun, remember this, and live in the moment”

thankfully, I’ve got photos and video to remember the days. and you can experience a little bit of those days as well. check out the video. the real snow fun starts at 3:30 in the video.

What better milestone marker than a 35th birthday. It also marked the milestone of snowboarding for 20 years, along with my buddy Ben. Significance needs to be planned for and rewarded. In the end, 4 of my buddies did all the bribery required with their wives and made plans with family to look after the kids so we could get away for a few days in Whistler.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t cooperating with my planning and tried to throw a monkey wrench in the plans. Heavy early season storms and periods of heating and cooling made for some of the worst avalanche conditions seen in the area in years. And not a great amount of snow leading up to the trip started to look like the heli experience wasn’t going to happen. No sense in dropping $1000 for a day to ride ice. I can do that in Ontario for a fraction of that price. But we lucked out when we got there. WhistlerHeliSkiing.com found some great untouched areas with great fresh snow. The terrain wasn’t as steep as we’d like, but given the avalanche situation we were fine with it.

We picked the best day of the week to go out – great blue skies, warm weather, great visibility, and endless powder fields. We lucked out. The video speaks for itself.

We documented this trip like crazy. I carried a video camera & a small camera. Z carried a small camera and his SLR. John carried a small camera. We also had the heli videographer and bought his footage from the day so I could weave it in with all our footage for a 35 minute video. YouTube only allows 10 minutes of video, so I had to drastically chop down the footage so I kept all my parts for this blog. Sorry guys, I’ll see what I can do about getting the whole thing posted elsewhere.

We went out with Whistler Heli Ski. They were really great. Each day, after the day out you could go to the bar and the day’s footage was played straight out of the camera so you could see your day’s riding immediately. The other benefit of this was seeing conditions if you were considering riding – this helped us make the decision when we saw the video from the day before we went out.

I had a lot of questions about heli-ski before going on the trip and hopefully some people doing the same searches will come across this and I’m more than happy to answer any questions about the experience. Just leave your questions in the comments section.

http://www.actionsportsart.com/about.html

Vapor

This is my dream ride. Light and very tech. When the Vapor came out last year, I had to see it in person. When you’re in a shop, pick up a regular freeride board to judge the weight. Then pick up the Vapor. A significant amount lighter. I’d love to try this out on a demo day. Save some extra cash if you wanna ride this one.

T6

The T6 has a cool new edge dampening under the binding area. I’m not sure if it’s intended to give more flex under the binding area. It looked like it might help stiffen it a bit in those areas. You can see it in the images.

Custom X

My favorite…my ride. I rode a Custom for several years and thought that was the top. Then came the Custom X. I got this last year and it got even better. New this year is a wide version of the Custom X. I’ve got big feet, but would still go with the non-wide version to maintain faster edge to edge responsiveness and better tortional flex. Unless you’ve got size 13s, you don’t really have a choice. Light, great flex, a great all-mountain ride, really stable at top speed and highest quality materials.

EST bindings

The new big thing for Burton’s binding lineup this year is the EST (Extra Sensory Technology) bindings. They’ve gone away from the 3 and 4 hole mounting pattern with this binding and now have 2 mounting points on the side edges. This takes away the solid stiff area under the foot and should give a better boot-to-board feeling. I’d like to try this out to see how well it works. I want to see what the flex pattern is like on the board. The attachments mount to a metal groove that runs the center of the board called “Infinite Channel”. It’s not available for all boards, it looks to be more suited to freestyle, park boards. If it takes off, I’m sure it’ll be available for the all mountain boards next year.

Fall arrived yesterday, winter is on the way. It’s not too soon to get out gear shopping.

All photos, from www.burton.com

I put together a video of all the video clips and photos from the trip. Keep an eye open for the automobile-sized avalanche boulders. Click the arrow to play the video clip.

Click the arrow to play the video clip.

on the weekend, i stitched together a series of photos i’d taken from my austria trip. the original is (7417 x 2345), but it’s worth it to see the details of the mountain. be sure to click on all sizes >original to see it in full detail.

Wow. What an amazing week. I’ve never had so much powder in my life. Run after run of fresh untouched powder. And so light. I’m used to heavy, wet powder on the west coast. This was fresh, light, champagne powder. If you carved a turn in it, the snow would fly up in your face.

Friday/Saturday – hit the airport for a long overnight flight to Munich, followed by a long wait at the airport, and a bus ride for a couple hours into Innsbruck. We (5 of us) arrived in the city around dinner time, exhausted. We grabbed some dinner, explored the city and had some drinks ready for a solid week of snowboarding. The city was great to hang out. Temperatures were around -6 C or warmer most days. It was only slightly colder in the mountains which made for great conditions. Such a beautiful city with mountains surrounding you.

Sunday – Off to Stubai Glacier. We lost one guy already. The city nightlife was too much and he never woke up until noon. We couldn’t get a hold of him in his room so we were down to 4 guys. More fresh tracks for us then. The drive there was amazing – so many massive mountains surrounding you. 10,000 feet at the peak of Stubai. The highest elevation I’ve ever been riding. Some altitude sickness crept in for one guy at lunchtime and made him sick. The jetlag and dehydration contributed. I think I felt a bit on our final day as well, but kept riding. The snow was crazy. Deep powder lines through rock chutes. Untouched bowls of powder. So much space to ride, and everyone stays on a groomed run down the center of the mountain while everything off to the sides stayed untouched. Photos from Stubai

Monday – Off to Axamer Lizum. Another great spot. It was the location of a few races in the Innsbruck Olympics in 1964 and 1976, so you know it has to be great. High speed powder runs in the morning with a powder dropoff. We met a skier from Geneva (originally U.S.) on the bus by herself and joined us for the day which was welcome company. The afternoon was more winding runs down to chutes and powder bowls. Photos from Axamer Lizum

Tuesday – Nordpark. We caught the city bus to Nordpark for the day. It’s funny seeing business people riding in the seat next to people with skis and snowboards. The public transit is free for anyone in ski gear. Nordpark was cloudy and blowing at the top. We took the gondola all the way to the peak looking for runs and couldn’t find anything that actually looked like a run. You had to hike out and the runs didn’t look like actual runs as they were so steep. Combine that with 5 foot visibility, we couldn’t find our way down. Along with everyone else, we took the tram back down. That’s when we saw the warning sign – “Runs are extremely dangerous. 70 degree slope. One fall could result in loss of life”. Definitely not the first run you want to start your day with. Nordpark has an amazing snowboard park. Hugh kickers. I saw 1080′s & backflips off of here. Amazing. We rode the halfpipe a few runs as well. After spinning and landing out too far from the wall twice, I returned to regular riding – no sense hurting myself so soon and missing out on all the great freeriding. The lower mountain was fogged in, but the upper mountain was bursting with sun. My freckles are back in full force. T-shirt weather. The remaining rideable area was only serviced by a double chair, unless you wanted to go all the way to the bottom, so this made runs slow. Nordpark was fun, but not as good as the other hills.

Wednesday – Schlick 2000. Best name for a hill. I think this was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life snowboarding. Unfortunately Ben took the day off to rest up so he missed riding with me. Just me, John & Al. I found a bowl that emptied out into a long set of powderfields with rollers (picture big snow waves) you could ride up and over and surf like a pipe. It was so much fun. I rode that all day and gave up on the rest of the mountain. I timed the run top to bottom and it was a constant 10 minutes of fresh powder. That’s as good as heliskiing and you can get on a lift right away and do it all over again. I shot video with my camera of a run, with me screaming and laughing all the way. We also met some Aussies who had just come from the Torino olympics and watched the snowboarding events there. Photos from Schlick 2000

Thursday – rest day. I had to take a day off. I rode Schlick until I could barely stand. I knew it was my best day, so I gave it my all. I slept in a bit, went to an internet cafe to email home and wandered the streets taking photos and exploring the history. I rested up for one final great day of riding.

Friday – back to Stubai. It was gray and overcast in Innsbruck, but when we arrived at Stubai, it was puking snow. Large fluffy flakes. So light you thought you were riding on feathers. A few times I got buried and had to undig myself and walk out at the bottom of the runs. Fresh pow up to your knees that had drifted to almost 2 feet in spots. A great way to finish off an amazing week.

I’m working on collecting everyone’s photos from the trip and putting them together along with my videos into a DVD video for each of the guys to have. This is something we’re gonna want to remember for a while.

If you can afford to hit Europe for a week of skiing/boarding, you have to do it. I’ve been to Whistler on many occassions and as much as I love Whistler, this was WAY better. And to visit Europe at the same time, see new cultures and languages – makes it even more fun. Next big adventure – South America (Chile/Argentina) for some summer snowboarding.

snowboarding, austria, innsbruck, travel, europe

I can’t believe it! At the start of the year, I proposed we head to Alaska to try out some new areas. After seeing too many snowboard videos where people sat in Alaska hotels waiting for the rain to stop, we reconsidered and decided on heading to the British Columbia interior (Kicking Horse, Fernie, etc). As of last week, another idea made it on the table. Austria! Skican has a great package price for a week of riding. One of our friends booked his trip there after having to cancel out of the same trip this year. I checked with J (you can see who wears the pants in this relationship) and she said I should go for it. The rest of the crew was in for it too. So at the end of February, I’ll be heading to Innsbruck, site of 2 Winter Olympics and surrounded by a whole lot of mountains. I can’t wait. It’s gonna be crazy. This also goes towards accomplishing one of my life goals – snowboarding on 3 continents. I think South America will be next. Chile or Argentina in September would be great.

If anyone’s been riding in Innsbruck, leave me some comments…let me know where to go and which mountains to ride. Now I’ve gotta hit the gym and get fully ready to ride.

image borrowed from vintagearte.com, where you can order the image as a poster.