First day of riding, off too a late start, no new snow, everyone feeling unmotivated. We head to Solitude, a 40 min drive at most. Cloudy skies, calm winds, pretty warm. No lines, we get passes and head on up the lifts. Right off the second lift we head into gnarly land through a gate with warnings for experts only. We survive, but it was hardly worth the effort, snow conditions were not prime.
We did find some fun stuff, but later in day the precipitation started, which from midway down was rain. Rain makes for pretty sucky snow.
An not bad first riding day. My impressions of Solitude up to now, easy access, not crowded, no lift lines even on a long weeken Sunday of regular season, pretty good sized area, lift price on par, food prices high on par with resorts. Wish we had some of the Utah powder it’s famous for as that would be something to give it props over WB. Only other main complaint is they have a bunch of slow lifts and seem to like making steep exit ramps that shoot you right into walls.
Archive for the 'Snow' Category
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AO SFO. SFO-SLC flight delayed first by one hour, then by two. So much for first day boarding…
(0)Off to board in Utah. Hopefully the snow conditions will be much nicer than what Root and Fabio experienced on their initial early-season exploration last time!
Sorry you people finding our site through odd searches, this really is about bindage, not bondage. At the end of this past WB trip, I picked up a set of this years Burton Cartel bindings courtesy of the cool people at Showcase snowboard shop in Whistler village. I only rode them one day, but that was enough for me to do a review here on how it compares to the Flows I’ve been using for years. I started a season or two on some entry level strap bindings, then switched to Flows. Flows are a pretty clever quick entry design that makes use of folding back the highbacks to allow entry into the bindings. They did not suffer the problems of step/click-in binding system of clogging with snow, having to precisely place boot, and possibly its biggest was being able to use just about any conventional boot. Continue reading ‘Of Bindage’
If you have boot fitting problems, Fanatyk Co in Whistler village is the place to go. They’re primarily a ski shop but they know what they’re doing and can assist you with what ails you in the way of boots. I first visited them a couple seasons ago with my DC boots. Good boots, but they told me that they were flat out too big. They tried what they could & it helped, but they were right. Since then I’ve switched to a Thirty Two brand dual BOA in a ladies size. So far best fitting boots for my foot shape but I still get hot spot pressure points on the bone along top of foot. We heat formed the liners with additional spacer on the pressure point that gave more space at those points. Additional C pads at back of ankle bone put in to help with heel lift. I can report that riding the day after this was done was dramatically better.
Mad dash to get out of condo to catch bus. Close to a foot of fresh fluff on village walks. Early in the morning, I entertained the thought of putting the board back together, running downstairs, and ninja a run down the stairs and down the mall. I think if they catch you it’s a healthy fine though.
Anyway, we are at YVR BK with the farewell poutine. No travel issues, down here it’s rain.
So does the 25cm flu work on airplane tickets? Of course overnight before the day we leave, 24cm has fallen and it is still going, winds are calm, the day is forecast for partly sunny, it’s a weekday with deserted village. Curses!
Can’t complain, we got some decent stuff, but man, this looks so choice.
So we were fooling around Bigfoot’s Jump Playground, and for some reason I decided to video capture Taro riding through some fun tracks, but instead caught this:
[flashvideo file=media/P1010896.flv /]
Good job! Thankfully the previously wrist injury wasnt made more serious.
Not like I could go snowboarding today anyway, but seeing as there is 3 to 6cm of snow in town, it must be off-the-hook at Kokusai! I’m so salty about the deletion of the early season weekday buses, that I don’t want to even go look at the webcams until I’m back in The States. I don’t need the aggrivation!
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