Living, Working, and Shredding in Breckenridge

One Year in Breck

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We’re All Going Somewhere

I’ve been pretty busy lately – getting gigs left and right in addition to working my normal jobs. Here’s some photo work to catch you up on what’s happened in the last few months.

Spring Fever has been in full swing in Breckenridge. In just the past three weeks I’ve shot concerts from The Soul Rebels and Donovan Frankenreiter, The Throwback Throwdown, Easter Egg Hunt, and even a wedding day ski session. Here’s the videos from the first two weekends:


 
 

Over at Keystone, they had the Volcom Peanut Butter and Rail Jam which I shot for them. No edit for that or The Throwback Throwdown yet, but here’s some pictures:

Peanut Butter and Rail Jam

Peanut Butter and Rail Jam

Throwback Throwdown

Throwback Throwdown

Throwback Throwdown

Throwback Throwdown

Throwback Throwdown

April 11, 2012 | Categories: Breckenridge, Cinematography, Keystone, Music, Photo, snowboarding, terrain park, Video, Work | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Why No One Should be Skiing Backcountry Right Now

I’d like to start by mentioning that I am by no means an expert on snowpack and avalanches. I have general knowledge, and do venture into the backcountry occasionally. That being said, I haven’t touched the backcountry in months due to Colorado’s current snow situation.

Last week at Keystone while hitting an in-bounds pillow line that Ciufo and I found last year (maybe 100 yards between two marked trails), Ciufo dropped a 6-8ft gap. Where he landed, the snow ripped straight to the grass:

As you can see, that slide is about 3-4 feet deep, 2 feet wide, and ran for 50 feet. That’s about as small as avalanches get, and Ciufo ended up getting knocked over and buried with everything but his head, an arm, and half a ski sticking out. This is the second slide Ciufo had been caught in in three days. The snowpack in Colorado right now is very unstable, and has been for some time. On the right you can see a map of the backcountry areas and their relative danger levels from March 3rd.

Several weeks ago, right near Keystone in Montezuma, Meesh Hytner triggered a serious slide, but stayed safe thanks to an “Airbag” from BCA. There is a lot of talk about these bags becoming required equipment for backcountry travel along with your typical shovel, beacon, and probe set-up. However, there are some discrepancies in the research – there’s a great article from Outside Magazine you can read here that goes in to more detail.

Colorado has had 6 avalanche fatalities this season, and many more reports of people being caught or buried in slides. It’s not just Colorado either, there have been 23 avalanche deaths nation-wide including events in Montana, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

You can never know too much about avalanches. Frequent backcountry travelers should take Avalanche Certification classes (Level 1 & 2), which are available damn near everywhere. There are many other classes that don’t get you certified, but can definitely help you improve you backcountry knowledge. In fact, there is one today – Thursday, March 8th at Keystone’s Warren Station that I’m planning on attending – you can see the flyer here. It’s free, and they do them over at Breckenridge fairly frequently as well.

Here are some other resources:
Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC)
CAIC Class Schedule
Avalanche Basics for Skiers and Snowboarders
Frequently Asked Questions (by the Utah Avalanche Center)
U.S. Avalanche Forcast Center

March 8, 2012 | Categories: Backcountry, Keystone, Photo, skiing, snowboarding | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Burton Mountain Festival at Keystone


The Burton Mountain Festival is touring around the country this season as a chance to “shred, get positive with people, product and parties.”

Keystone had the second stop in Colorado this past weekend. The event consists of a Riglet Park (for the kiddos), Demos, and a Pro-Test with rail jam and slopestyle components. On Sunday morning I got a call from my lovely girlfriend telling me I had to come do some coverage for the rail jam that started in 20 minutes. Despite the short notice and flat light, I got some pretty good photos.

One of the highlights for me was seeing Redman Gerard ride. This kid is from Frisco, CO, is only 11 years old, and absolutely kills it. There’s a picture or two in the gallery below, but you can see him riding Copper a few months ago by clicking here.

And here’s the full set of pictures:






February 14, 2012 | Categories: Competition, Keystone, Photo, snowboarding, terrain park, Work | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Helly Hanson Big Mountain Battle or: How to Not Win

The Helly Hanson Big Mountain Battle is an event that visit several resorts over the course of the season. This past Saturday, it was held at Keystone – just like last year, only with much less snow.

Last year, my friends Drew and Brian won the whole thing by a wide margin, and out-hiked damn near everyone involved. This year, my roommate Andy and I decided we would keep the tradition going and crush everyone on snowboards.

Let’s back up. I work part-time in Vail to earn my season pass. And I mean part-time. Since being hired in February, I’ve probably been asked to come in less than 10 times. But this means when I’m asked to come in, I go. So earlier in the week, my boss called me to ask if I could work Saturday morning… from 6:30 – 8:30. Which gave me four hours of sleep between getting back from the TransWorld Riders’ Poll and waking up to drive to Vail. It also gave me one hour to get from Vail to Keystone to register for the competition and change. On one of the busiest Saturdays of the year.

So to summarize – I’m on four hours of sleep, had to go to work at 6:30 for two hours, and am fighting a fierce hangover from the night before. A perfect storm.

The competition consists of riding, hiking, and finding checkpoints all over the mountain and tagging them with a Flaik GPS unit. Despite nearly puking on the first hike, I insisted that we complete the course.
Here’s the kicker:

“Course not completed”??? Shenanigans.

After missing the second hike on a lap because we couldn’t tell where it started, we went back to finish it just to avoid the dreaded “course not completed” result.

Here’s what the course map looked like:

Anyway, it was a fun event, but it definitely favors skier for maneuverability and speed. It was funny to see competitors pass us every time we got off a lift and had to strap in to our snowboards. Oh well.

The one highlight was hauling ass down groomers. They don’t like to advertise that you can check your speed on the GPS, but I reached a top speed of 47MPH at one point, which was the 8th highest by team, and 13th individually. The top speed was 55.3MPH.

February 3, 2012 | Categories: Competition, Keystone, skiing, snowboarding | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

SIA On-Snow Demo 2012

The second half of SIA takes place at Winter Park and Devil’s Thumb Ranch, and consists of two days of on-snow demos. You get to try all of next years skiing and snowboarding gear – skis, boards, boots, bindings, even helmets and googles.

Andy, Jessica and I got to Winter Park around 10:30 and checked in. We then proceeded straight to the bar to lube ourselves up for demoing.


Since we kinda got a late start, I didn’t end up demoing much – just two boards and two pairs of bindings. Up first, Andy and I both tried the Forum Snowboards “Kitchen Sink” with Republic bindings.

This board is awesome. It’s designed to be an all-mountain or backcountry freestyle board – twin flex, but with a set back stance. It’s stiff, maneuverable, and has a really cool rocker/camber construction that’s supposed to give you the best of both worlds. It also has a 3D nose and tail to emulate the hull of a boat and help you plow through pow. Now, I didn’t get to ride it in powder, but after taking a few groomer and park laps, I’d definitely like to get one. I don’t notice the setback stance, and the only drawback I could think of was its stiffness – it’s a little too much for pressing, though that may improve once it’s broken in. I rode a 157.5 centimeter, which is longer than I usually ride, but it still felt great.

The binding weren’t really anything to speak of. The Republic is responsive, comfortable, and good enough to let Pat Moore do his thing.


While Andy stuck with Forum and tried The Destroyer (which is a really fun park board), I wanted to see what YES and NOW were all about. I tried to stay in park-style boards because we didn’t have much else to ride, so I got on a 155 YESnowboards “The Basic” (see right). The board was fun enough – it’s twin shape with directional flex, but softer than I thought it would be.
 
My big problem with this set-up was the NOW bindings (see left). These bindings are supposed to flex front to back to keep your boot solid in the binding, and allow the binding to flex with the board. All it did was make me feel like I had no response edge-to-edge. They also run tight in the heel area, and my feet started to hurt in less than a run. I wear a 8.5 Nike Zoom Force 1 and was in a medium binding, so it really should’ve fit better.

That kind of ended the day on a sour note for me. I tried to take out a DC Ply before the end of the day, but at 3:15 no one would let me demo a set of bindings, they were only taking equipment in. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to come back on Tuesday because I had to film in Breckenridge for the opening of Imperial Chair. You see that edit by clicking this link.

Here’s the full set of pictures from the day:






If you missed my post about the indoor portion of the trade show, you can read that here.

February 1, 2012 | Categories: Photo, skiing, snowboarding, Work | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

SIA 2012

The SIA trade show has been going on since Thursday in Denver. I was very confused by the timing of this thing. Just like last year, the X-Games are going on at the same time down in Aspen. Plus the Helly Hanson Big Mountain Battle was scheduled for Saturday in Keystone. Since I had to work and then compete in the Big Mountain Battle early the next morning, Jessica and I only made it down to SIA on Friday for a few hours of the show and the Transworld Snowboarding Rider’s Poll.

Let me start off by saying this show has to be half the reason skiing and snowboarding are so expensive. In addition to the parties, it’s a huge display of excess. For example, GoPro brought in race cars and half a dozen 60″ HD TVs for their booth:


We started the day off at Footbalance, where you could trade in old insoles for a new pair. Here’s the process as Christine got her’s made (click for big):




From there, we swung by the TransWorld/Bluebird booth to pick up our tickets to the Riders’ Poll and walked around. The back half of the convention center was dedicated to ski and snowboard companies, while the front half was more tuning equipment, resorts, and similar companies.

We stuck to the back half and checked out Armada and Salomon skis, Ride, Rome, Forum, Never Summer, and Capita Snowboards, Union binding, Smith Optics, Helly Hanson, Volcom, and many more. Next year’s Charlie Slasher from Capita was probably my favorite graphic of the show:


I managed to score one of the long sleeve shirts The Volcom guys were all standing around in. I was pretty stoked on it – I love the avy beacon graphic (see right).

After wandering around for a while, having a few drinks, and schmoozing, I grabbed a final beer from the Never Summer booth and hung around the TransWorld area to make a plan for getting to the Riders’ Poll that evening. With the rumour of great schwag abound, we decided to make it over there at 7:30, before the show started at 8:30.

We didn’t find any free product, but it was really cool to be in a legit VIP area. I drank free Oskar Blues Old Chub all night and got free Chipotle with Danny Kass, which is something I never expected to be able to say.

The event got started with a slew of great presenters including Terje, Bryan Iguchi, Big Mountain Jeremy Jones, Danny Kass, Marc Frank Montoya, BJ Leines, DCP, Roman DeMarchi, and Scotty Arnold.

We had a table right near the stage for Keystone, but we elected to stay in the VIP area because it was way closer to the bar:

Results:

Women’s Rookie Of The Year: Enni Rukajärvi
Men’s Rookie Of The Year: Mark McMorris (who won X-Games big air a few hours later)

Women’s Video Part Of The Year: Jess Kimura (Capita’s Defenders Of Awesome)
Men’s Video Part Of The Year: Eric Jackson (People’s Good Look)

Online Video Project Of the Year (New Category): Jake Blauvelt’s Naturally

Video of the Year: Brain Farm’s The Art Of Flight

The Stand Out Performance Of Year: Xavier De Le Rue (for this)

Women’s Readers’ Choice Award: Jess Kimura’s
Men’s Readers’ Choice Award: Torstein Horgmo

The Legend Award: Jamie Lynn

Women’s Rider Of The Year: Jess Kimura
Men’s Rider Of The Year: Travis Rice

Nothing was too big of a surprise, but it was nice to see Eric Jackson getting Video Part of the Year. His section in Good Look was mind-blowing. To see the full list of nominees, click here.

Blackalicious came on after all the awards were handed out. We hung out and watched his set for a little while, but we had to head back home that evening so Jessica and I could get to work the next morning. Short Update on the Big Mountain Battle coming shortly.

Here’s the rest of my SIA pictures (click for big):





January 29, 2012 | Categories: GoPro, Keystone, Photo, skiing, snowboarding, Work | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Dew Tour Design A Feature Video

Over the past couple of days I’ve been helping my buddy Bob, who is the videographer for Breckenridge, film some stuff for the Dew Tour stop here in town. Here’s a video we shot on Friday.

December 19, 2011 | Categories: Breckenridge, Cinematography, skiing, snowboarding, terrain park, Work | Leave A Comment »

Early Season Terrain Park at Keystone

The season is off to a decent start, though we could use a lot more snow. Here’s a quick look at some photos I shot for the opening of Keystone’s A51 Terrain park, and the video my buddy Dustin made. I shot some video too, but you probably won’t see it for a few weeks when I have more content to make a full edit.








 
 
 

November 26, 2011 | Categories: Cinematography, Keystone, Photo, skiing, snowboarding, terrain park, Video | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

Monday Mixtape Vol. 23

Sorry about missing last week, gang. Between moving, getting my camera, and work, it was a little crazy. This will be the last official Monday Mixtape for a while. My pass is active, and I plan on spending more time shredding than researching music. That being said, I’ll have a Spotify link so you can see all the music I like riding to.
 

“Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love) by Jay-Z

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First and foremost, I’ve been obsessed with the Jay-Z track that’s on that new Cadillac commercial (not available online, just watch more TV if you haven’t seen it), and then it was used in Poor Boyz Productions “The Grand Bizzare,” which I saw premiere at Keystone on Friday (post on that coming soon).
 

“Home” by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

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This is a surprisingly good song to ride to – fun and infectious.
 

Everlasting Light by The Black Keys

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It would be easy to overload a playlist with songs from these guys, but I stick with this just this one. It’s driving and energetic.
 

If you missed the last few weeks of playlists, they’re available here, here, and here. And the whole thing can be viewed on Spotify by clicking here. Ladies, this shit’s more motivating than Kanye’s Workout Tape, so feel free to cop some tracks for spin class.

November 7, 2011 | Categories: Monday Mixtape, Music | Tags: , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Legs of Steel’s “Nothing Else Matters” Full Film

This awesome ski movie was co-produced by Red Bull Media House, so you know it’s gonna look good. Check it out. Featuring: Lolo Favre, Elvis Harsheim, Sebi Geiger, Nico Zacek, Tobi Tritscher, Toni Höllwart, Tobi Reindl, Bene Mayr, Paddy Graham, Thomas Hlawitschka, Sven Kueenle, Fabio Studer, Max Hill, Lucas and Tobi Mangold, Antti Ollila, and Oscar Scherlin.

 
 

October 31, 2011 | Categories: Cinematography, Powder, skiing, Video | Leave A Comment »

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