Riding the Horse

[Steeps]

Well, it almost looked like we were going to have a season.... good snowfall Saturday to Sunday, great riding on Sunday, and more snow on the way this week. I finally got my hands on my new pair of Sticky Icky Ickies on Saturday, too (bought them in January in a tariff panic, but had a friend pick them up in the US and bring them back here - FedEx and border fees are killers).

Monday morning, the main hanger beam on a gondola car failed, and a car full of 8 people just fell off and hit the ground. Luckily, it was immediately after taking off from the base, and it was only a 10 ft drop with no critical injuries, but ouch!

The gondola may be shut down for the rest of the season. With the total breakage of a steel tube, I expect that it will at a minimum need complete non-destructive testing of all the gondola cars, and I'll be really surprised if it re-opens before the resort closes. There are a couple of lower mountain lifts available at the moment, but both are slow and access limited terrain. Pioneer is a legacy lift that regularly breaks down, so good luck to any who chose to ride it. Neither accesses the good stuff at the top of the mountain. I can't imagine that the resort will limp by on these two lifts for the rest of the season.

Might get a couple of days in on other resorts - Revelstoke is offering 'locals day' tickets for dirt cheap to Golden people in a couple of weeks - and RCR is letting us ride for free on their other resorts if I don't mind driving 3 - 4 hours to do so. Bert is down in Kimberly so maybe I'll get a proper skiboarder day in.

Other than that, the season is probably done in any meaningful sense, just as it was starting to get good.

[Steeps]

Hehe thanks.

I don't track my speed (I use a flip phone so no ski apps) but know that I can hit 100+ kph based on riding with others who do. The GoPro's speed doesn't seem accurate the few times I've tried it.

There are few locals who can keep up with me. One of my friends can usually outpace me a bit on skis on smooth blue runs like Wiley (~2:50 to 3:50) based purely on mass but is slow on harder runs, and I ride with one former World Cup racer who will kick my ass about half the time depending on terrain and conditions. She's somewhere around 5 ft tall and usually pulls out an old pair of 210 cm straight-edge skis to shred moguls in the spring (we've also dropped some of the more notorious and iconic runs on Snowblades for fun - need to get her on real skiboards this season). I don't ride with anyone who can outpace me on the steepest terrain; reaction time for skiboards is just too quick.

No, I didn't spray the patroller. I've been literally told by a patroller that "ski patrol knows who you are and we approve" so I want to keep it that way. Kicking Horse patrollers are badass, focused on keeping the avalanche hazards down and recovering injured people, and definitely do not have a cop complex.

I found this video that I suspect is a patroller checking out the terrain pre-season this year:

I need to ask around and find out who it is so I can ride with them; that's my type of terrain!

[shortydude]

Did you spray the ski patrol when you smoked past him

[sempai]

It looked and sounded like you were flying down that run. Do you track your speed?

[Major Q]

Wow! Excellent run.

Now, tell me how skiboards are slower than long skis...

[Steeps]

Here's a full top-to-bottom run from the big vert day. Not the most extreme terrain - it's a pretty standard CPR double-black run off the bat, then the usual cruise through the mid and lower mountain main runs. I was surprised to see that it's under 5 minutes on this run as it wasn't a particularly direct route (fastest drop time to date is around 4:13). I was on a bit of a mission that day....

My favorite bit of this run is the short gully section called Brigg's Brag from 1:48 to 2:07. It's one of those narrow little connecting trails that's a bit of a half-pipe format, and routinely mangles (and is mangled by) beginners. The lower section is typically full of triangular shark-tooth moguls from slowboarders cutting back and forth across the run. I love to see how fast I can clear it from cat track to cat track, but I often have to throw on the brakes and stop or slow right down if anyone is ahead of me. 19 seconds is a pretty leisurely clear time. Will aim to get some better recorded video of that particular section as I think my best time to date is 0:14.

[Steeps]

New video time.... well, new upload. The powder never amounted to much at the end of last season so I just rode without a cam. I'll be putting up some videos I've been sitting on from previous seasons, including some full runs from the 60,000 ft day.

Whitewall is a great section of the mountain, but tends to be either a complete foggy whiteout or has been ridden heavily. It's a big open headwall with some notable rock features at the near end, reached after a very short hike by taking the stairs at the top of Stairway to Heaven chair.

[Steeps]

I'll try to get some more for you in that case. Did get the cam out on Sunday just to see if it's working properly, but neither of the runs I shot were particularly great. Had one without it that would have made for good footage. The buttons don't seem to be working too well, it might need a firmware update. GoPro has planned obsolescence down to an art, so it takes a bit of maintenance to keep using an older camera (7 Black).

Had some fortunate timing with terrain openings over the weekend; managed to hit several areas shortly after opening. A large portion of the terrain was still closed on Sunday, particularly the hike-in areas of the resort. 30 - 50 cm avalanche crowns were visible in a number of areas, some probably from patrol bombs (with big propagation from the start zone) but a few looked natural. I think the patrollers might be waiting for the snow to consolidate a bit on the bigger slopes so that it stays put naturally instead of bringing it down with bombs before it sets up. We need it to stay in place right now.

My favorite zone, which is a hidden in-bounds gem that only the hardest-riding locals hit on a regular basis, hasn't been opened at all this season. It was looking a little slide prone on the weekend and hopefully it stays closed until next weekend so I can get at it! I've had dream days where I was able to hit that zone 8 times in a row and get untouched descents every time. It requires a long run in on a narrow, twisty goat-trail ridge traverse, a short hike, shimmying on a narrow ledge on a cliff, and some pretty precise drop-in points before hitting the steep, deep glades and chutes... skiboard paradise!

[jjue]

Glad you made it pass your concussion and are finally getting a good dump of snow.! We have had a pretty good season overall in Tahoe , and we are also getting bombed with a huge 3 day snow storm right now! I will not get to enjoy it for a couple of weeks as a group of us are going to Andorra for the EuroShredfest meetup of skiboarders this year! Unfortunately it also has been a very low snow year in Europe but they also have just started to get some snow to improve conditions but not the mega dumps you are getting or we in Tahoe. Keep us all posted on your adventures. Love your deep pow videos!

[Steeps]

Long time no update...

Last season was unfortunately very lame; snow conditions were underwhelming enough that I didn't bother riding with a camera all season. Still had some fun days with friends, but it was low snow, low coverage and virtually no decent powder days.

This season has been even worse, with a near complete snow drought since opening day, rocks showing everywhere, extreme cold (-35C) followed by a melt-out that closed the resort for a couple of days due to extreme avalanche risk - entire slopes were starting to slump, especially around rock outcrops. There have been rocks showing everywhere all season but they suddenly multiplied. The lower hill was down to less than a foot of coverage with scrub brush dominating a lot of the runs on the lower mountain (Kicking Horse's brushing program depends heavily on ski edges to do the work).

I concussed myself doing a tomahawk on a freakin' green run in early January, broke a board in the same crash (due to force of impact as my feet came around after my head hit), and have never missed so many ski days out of a season. Overall it sucked...

Until this week. The snow started last weekend, and the storms just kept sweeping through. As of this morning, we had 139 cm in 7 days, which is about a quarter of the total snowfall this season. The Horse is back! Patrol is still struggling to open terrain - it's high avalanche risk right now - but I'm back to bombing steep deep powder runs. Better dig out my camera again...

[Steeps]

Thanks Jack, sorry on the late response! I grew up skiing but never really missed the poles when switching over. My skier friends are a bit skeptical about losing the poles whenever I can get them on skiboards, but they usually pick it up pretty quick. I do a lot of the same motions with my hands and shoulders as you'd do with poles... as far as steep slope pole planting, I think it helps to not go through the motions of trying to jump down around a pole to make a turn. I just jump and turn where needed, and there's often no forward travel needed.

Here's a video I was saving from last season... It's not ridiculously steep or epic powder, but it's one of my favorites to watch and shows off the forgiving, relaxed ride that the Spliffs give you through unexpected obstacles. Kicking Horse doesn't have many of the gully runs that I grew up with at Silver Star, but this is the best of the bunch and really challenges my reaction time when doing it in a single shot. Had a couple of buddies behind me; they showed up about a minute and a half later.

[jjue]

Great video! I am really impressed at how well you make those Playmakers work in really very technical terrain that would have scared me witless! It was definitely not hero powder and you needed to get those edges set in what seemed like some pretty firm snow with only some soft snow on top . I was very impressed how you could pivot around , sldeslip and set and engage an edge on very steep , narrow terrain strewn with rocks etc . Having done some of this kind of stuff myself ,I am also super impressed how you can do this without poles . Being from a skiing background I always ride with poles in this kind of terrain and use the pole, planting the pole , and unweighting around it and then setting my edges . It helps with balance , etc and I am sure you have skier friends who ski those chutes like that with poles. . It is super impressive that you have the balance to do all of that without the aid of poles ! All around this video is a great demonstration of fantastic skiboard free riding skills and what can be done with these tiny boards in super technical terrain , Bravo and thanks for sharing !

[Steeps]

Here's the goods from the 60,000 ft day:

The camera doesn't do justice to some of the lines... watch the acceleration rate on the ride-out of #3, #9 and #10 in particular. And yeah, I cherry picked the heck out of the clips! It took a full minute to climb my way into the shelf that Glory Hole is located on, and another 1:30 to carefully ease into that starting position. Didn't look too good from where I dropped, but I was too lazy to climb back out of it. Most of the names are either official run names or patrol names; I got my hands on a laminated set of the patrollers' mountain atlas cards part way through the season, with the explicit warning that just because it's got a name it doesn't mean it's a rideable line (some are just places to throw explosives for avy control). But hey, you gotta check, right?!

What a day... the culmination of best season I've ever ridden. Playmakers rule.

[Steeps]

For sure! But I can also get you that Biggest Day Ever video soon, and it's got some gnarlier lines in it! Did that 60,000 ft on the PMs, and squeezed short highlight clips from every run into about a 5 minute video.




This season led to me coining the phrase "Post Traumatic Shred Disorder", when you finish your run shell-shocked, repeating "WTF? WTF did you just do? WTF is wrong with you?", and the lines you rode that day haunt your dreams all night. By the last weekend, I'd got my mind hardened enough to take the strain and just started looking for any survivable lines I hadn't hit yet. There's a few lame burner runs that happen towards the end of any day that big, but I got into some really fun spots along the way. Even starting to get some respect from our crazy patrol team.

Can't wait for next season!

[Greco]

Why are my hands sweating?!

Awesome!

Can I use the video on the Playmaker page?

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