What I Do When I Can't Go Snowboarding
Well, spring has arrived, and most -- if not all -- snowboard resorts have closed for the year.
It's a sad time for us all.
But, there are ways to cope with the loss of snow and months without shredding. People deal with it in different ways. Some watch snowboarding videos. Some drink away their until the snow returns. Some just cry into their pillow. Read More...
Reliving the Dream
It's a sad time of year. Another season has come and gone. Yesterday I tucked away my snowboarding gear in the storeroom. It was great while it lasted *sniff*.
Rather than mourn the loss of another season, this blog post is dedicated to remembrance of my five best trips of the season. Here they are. Read More...
David vs. Goliath
I've been travelling around the western U.S. this winter checking out resorts and trying to figure out which are the best. In a few weeks I'm going to have to announce my choices. This may sound fairly easy, but it's not. My quest to decide which resorts are the best has been consistently plagued by one extremely difficult question.
What's better, a big resort, or a small one? Read More...
Snowboarding Colorado
In my last blog post I talked about my experiences snowboarding in California. My favourite resort there was Sugar Bowl, partly because of the epic terrain, partly because of the short lift lines, and partly because the local small-hill atmosphere agreed with me.
The more snowboard resorts that I visit, the more I find that each one has it's own character. I was hoping to find more of that small town charm on my subsequent trip to Colorado, and I did. Read More...
Snowboarding Tahoe
I was fortunate enough to get to sample four of the many fantastic hills around Lake Tahoe last month. I learned a lot about the area and the qualities of the different hills. I was looking forward to visiting Squaw Valley the most, but it turns out that my best day was at a smaller resort.
It just goes to show, you never know which hill is going to rub you the right way.
Here are a few of the things that I learned. Read More...
Learning New Things
Continuous learning key to success, not only in snowboarding, but in life. With that in mind, I set out this month to educate myself about several topics that were long overdue.
First, I strapped my Solomon Grip to the top of the car and headed to Wyoming to visit to resorts I'd never been to before Read More...
Getting Back into the Swing of Things
My first day of the season at Snowbird was great, but it always takes a little while to get back into the swing of things.
When I tried turning at high speeds I was sliding more than carving. I fell after almost all of the jumps I took. I even felt off balance when I ollied. But, that's how it is every year, unless you get to train indoors in the summer or travel to the southern hemisphere for the season down there.
It really makes me with I'd trained a bit more in the off-season, but it's too late for that now. Read More...
Getting to Know Utah
They say that Utah has the best snow on Earth. It's a bold claim, but it may just be true.
A couple of months ago I moved to Utah. Having grown up in British Columbia, I thought I knew what great snowboarding was. I was wrong. Read More...
Overcoming Fear: Why I Write This Guide
Learning to snowboard can seem overwhelming at first. I felt that way when I first started. Snowboarding was so new at that time that it was banned on most ski hills, and we were never sure if it wasn't going to be banned on our own local hill.
The sport was so new and so few people knew how to do it that there weren't any instructors. About.com most definitely didn't have instructions for beginners. It didn't even exist yet.
Pro Training Facility Opens to the Public This Friday
The future of snowboarding is called The Bunker. In case you haven't heard of it, The Bunker is a 33,000 square foot multi-sport training facility at Woodward Tahoe, just steps from the chairlift at the Boreal Mountain Resort. It's my summertime snowboarding fantasy and it's opening its doors to the public on August 17.
This state-of-the-art training facility includes six olympic-sized trampolines, a spring floor, a skatepark, jumps that send riders soaring into pits filled with foam cushions, and other epic toys for training skateboarders, skiers, BMXers, and snowboarders. Have you ever seen videos of snowboarders zipping down artificial indoor jumps and hucking ridiculous spins and flips into pools filled with square chunks of squishy foam? This is where they do it.