Mt. Cardigan, Mt. Washington Avalanche Course

Long time no post!  Busy spring and summer changing jobs, moving, etc.  But I'm starting to pull everything together.  And that includes sorting through old videos and getting a few more posts up from the past six months as the weather starts to get a bit cooler and we all start looking forward to snow!

I am also looking to sell my Contour and buy a Go Pro before Christmas.  Lesson from last winter is that the Contour just doesn't have a wide enough FOV for skiing. This is especially clear to me now that I am looking at all of this footage for the first time in a while.  Some of it is quite disappointing, to be honest.  But that doesn't mean you shouldn't watch!

OK.  Enough rambling.  Here is a combo video with shots from the trip Scott and I took to Mt. Cardigan in late February, 2012.  Awesome snow fields.  Crappy snow on the day we went though.  I'm also including some footage from a March trip to Tuckerman for an Avalanche course with Osgood, Chad Greenlaw and Josh Lent.  I won't make a practice of filming snow pits, but thought it'd be worth taking a bit of footage during the class.  No soundtrack to this one.  Boring, I know.

More to come.  Enjoy!

Tuckerman Still Shots.

With the season just about over, I thought I would throw a quick post together with some still shots from last weekend's trip to Tuckerman.  In the coming weeks I'll get some video up, and also some more stills from a few other back country trips Scott and I took over the past month, including photos from the Mt. Cardigan/Firescrew Snow Fields and an Avalanche Course on Mt. Washington (mostly around Hillman's highway and the Dutchess).

Enjoy!

Bottom of Left Gully and Chute - where we spent most of our time.

Scott at the top of Left Gully (our first run), with Wildcat in the background.

Mad River Glen - Feb. 2012

Back log on these videos is getting smaller - here is a clip from our trip to Mad River Glen the last weekend in February following a 20+ inch storm.  Easily the biggest system to hit New England this year, and as usual, when there is enough snow on the ground, MRG delivers in spades.

Enjoy the flick. 

Engelberg, Switzerland - February 13th and 15th, 2012

Headed over to Luzern, Switzerland for ten days in mid-February.  In between trips to Sweden, Germany, a pitch black restaurant in Zurich called the Blind Cow, and the epic Fasnacht festival that doubled as the best 30th birthday party ever, I managed to make it over to Engelberg twice.

The first day was great - but it hadn't snowed for a couple of weeks and the off piste terrain generally felt like skiing on a chalkboard.  On the second day, however, the 2-4 inches in the forecast magically turned into 2-4 feet, resulting in the deepest day I've ever had. 

I took an absurd amount of video, and had a hard time cutting footage out, even though most of it didn't come out very well.  Visibility wasn't great on either day, but during the snow storm on the second day, it was just about impossible to differentiate between the pow I was slapping on the ground and the pow that was falling from the sky and slapping me in the face.  The lack of a fish eye on the Contour didn't help, either, because it prevents the viewer from being able to at least see my ski tips. 

But enough talk.  Enjoy the video, which features a 9 minute techno song and guest stars Scot and Dean Osgood.  Additoinal footage staring Kelly O'Hearn and Nikki Roux is available upon special request. 

Switzerland, I miss you already.

Sugarloaf, Maine - 28 & 29 January 2012

Checking in again with some video footage from the 28th and 29th of January up at Sugarloaf, ME.  A chronic lack of snow continues to plague New England, but Sugarloaf allegedly pulled down 8-10 inches on the 27th, so we made the 3.5 hour drive after work.  The snow reports were more or less accurate, but unfortunately, some freezing rain followed the snow, effectively ruining anything off piste.  We made an effort to explore a few areas, but generally were met with some pretty heavy junk to push through.

The weather was great though - blue bird skies - and Darren's slopeside condo was pretty spectacular.  A couple of issues continue to plague my videos, however.  For example, when I jump off something, it looks like I am jumping about 6 inches.  I swear to God, there is one clip in this video where I make a 3+ foot drop followed immediately by a 6+ foot drop look pretty good, but you would never know it from watching.

Anyway - at the end of the day, we all have needs.  For the guys on this trip, we felt the need to ski, so we headed up and we had a pretty damn good time despite the iffy conditions.

Enjoy the flick (especially the last scene, which stars the one and only Gene Connolly)