173 | Massive Powder at Monarch, CO | 26 Feb 2011

Nearly two years ago, one of my usual partners JJ and I scored seriously deep snow at Monarch, Colorado where only 10" of new snow was reported but the mountain skied more than double (click here for the pictures and video from that February 13, 2009 day).

Towards the end of last week, a storm was brewing and finding its way into the state. The question wasn't about if there would be snow, it was more about how much and where. Surely enough, Monarch received the highest amount out of any other resort with 23" reported in the previous 24 hours as of 4am Saturday. With a plan in mind, I headed down with Forrest along with Tom and Eric for what was an amazing day of deep powder shredding. Unfortunately, the snow was much heavier than the 2% water content had back in 2009, but it was still plenty soft and it skied every bit of 3 FEET deep.


A short edit that doesn't quite showcase how awesome a day it was, although it was largely enhanced while skiing on the 2011/2012 Jaguar Shark from Moment Skis (shameless plug!):

172 | Dragon's Tooth Couloir (Dead Elk) in RMNP, CO | 19 Feb 2011

This past Saturday, my backcountry partner Andy and I continued along our unbelievable stride this year. After scoring a super soft pillow line at Berthoud Pass on New Year's Day and after finding unsuspecting cliffs to jump off of into two-plus feet of snow in the Dream Lake area of Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, we pushed ourselves to a new and incredibly rewarding limit.

The goal of the day was to go after Dragon's Tail Couloir, a line I skied once before. However, after examining all our options at the top, we decided it would be best to go for the more eastern-facing and the more wind- & sun-protected neighbor, Dragon's Tooth, or commonly known to the new school crowd as Dead Elk. Click the following link to visit the topo map of our route.


The photo below courtesy of Eli Helmuth of Climbing Life shows our route on the left side highlighted with red dots with Dragon's Tail on the right.




Dragon's Tooth is a 1,700-foot descent with the top quarter averaging out to 44 degrees before reaching an overall angle of 39 degrees. The snow was completely blower up high before the crux, then it turned super creamy and rippable the rest of the way down to Emerald Lake. Total trip time car-to-car was 4.5 hours which could have been drastically shortened had we been more prepared and had we didn't change our minds on what couloir to tackle.

But this was a day unlike any other that either of us have had in RMNP: the sky was clear, the sun was bright and warm, and the wind was absolutely non-existent while pushing a hefty gust to maybe 5 mph at best. On the skin up, we had to constantly contain ourselves from admiring the beautiful weather like the schoolgirls we were. During our periodic breaks on the ascent, Andy and I would glance towards each other with an omniscient smirk acknowledging the rarest of rare days in the park without wanting to disrupt the gods that gave us these amazing conditions.

The most interesting part of the trip was the navigation through the crux which presented us with slight obstacle of sorts. The downclimb was something neither of us perceived prior to dropping into the chute, but we both kept our cool and reasoned thoroughly on how to proceed safely.

And now to pimp my good friends at Moment Skis, this was my first time on one of next year's many new models, the Jaguar Shark, which has dimensions of 143-116-129 combined with tip rocker, camber, and a flat tail. They planed very responsively at various speeds while skiing down the couloir, and the medium flex felt uniform and stiff enough for support through varying and changing snow conditions.



Without further ado, the video portion of our program can begin ...

171 | The Art of Flight: the best thing to happen to skiing and snowboarding

Two years ago, snowboarder Travis Rice and company were responsible for arguably the best snowsports-related film of the year with the movie That's It, That's All. Just when everyone in the industry thought the bar couldn't be raised any higher, they go out and tease us with this September 2011 release of The Art of Flight that will no doubt permanently alter the ski and snowboard filming landscape.

Warning: everything you've viewed up until now will forever seem obsolete and dated.

170 | Super Bowl Powder at Vail | 5-6 Feb 2011

There are a few days a year where Vail Mountain will be completely empty: Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, and Super Bowl Sunday. With a strong NW system pushing its way into Colorado, Vail was expected to get around 1-1.5" of precipitation; little did we know that would turn into 30" of fluff from Friday through Monday morning and 40" through Tuesday. Fortunately, the Super Bowl did keep the crowds away but with the biggest snow day of the year likely on hand, all the locals were out in full force. Still, there was more than enough to go around and this was easily the best weekend of shredding in a long time, especially when sharing the slopes with my Eagle County buddies Matt, Sean, and Christian who I haven't skied with in nearly two years.