FYTB teamed up with the Masters and made inspirational gold for anyone who swings a golf club. I put Leslie June to bed with this last night and she woke up wanting to watch it again… and again and again. It’s Masters week :)
Props to you Tom Brady.
SCRIPT:
Where does greatness begin?
There is no specific place.
No exact location you can pinpoint on a map.
True greatness starts within.
Internally.
With a dream.
Dreams are not some fleeting thought or ambitious notion.
Dreams are alive living inside each of us.
Relentlessly pursued.
Followed.
Chased.
Fueled by passion.
And with enough support and self-dedication.
Dreams are confronted face to face.
Defining us in the most important moments of our lives.
Greatness isn’t found at a certain place.
True greatness is measured by where our dreams take us.
Somewhere others could never see.
Inside yourself, you knew what was possible all along.
How to throw an innovative and successful ski & snowboard contest … with both Men and Women.
1 – Let it snow
2 – Target a window of time
3 – Choose iconic location
4 – Let the athletes be judges
The 1st annual Kings and Queens of Corbet’s Couloir freeride competition took place during a window of time from July 31st to February 4th, 2018. The actual contest was held on February 1st and 25 athletes took the plunge into one of the worlds most famous ski runs.
Judged on three basic criteria — Speed, commitment and degree of difficulty of line, followed by innovative and progressive maneuvers with control and stomped landings revealed only a single champion King and one female Queen. After an athlete deliberation viewing party and video presentation of all the runs … King Karl Fostvedt and Queen Caite Zeliff were crowned champions.
This was a fantastic event to socially follow … each athlete had their own versions of instaStories to reveal what it was really like to be at and compete in such a great event. Jackson Hole at first rewarded the men with higher pay-days … but after some simple griping from the women they quickly corrected their decision and matched the same winnings to the women. I can’t really say I fully support this decision – but it was the socially correct thing to do.
11 months later, Jackson Hole finally released this video recapping the event … and in perfect timing to amp for the 2nd annual Kings and Queens of Corbet’s to take place during the February 10th – February 16th, 2019 window.
The first two minutes of this Salomon TV tribute to JP Auclair and the history of the Salomon 1080 is filled with ridiculously awesome banger quotes. Take your pick, and enjoy the flick.
“JP JP JP JP JP JP JP” — Everyone
“I think the greatest thing you can do with one of your friends is to remember them in your hearts and in your minds… and here everybody is and I think it’s just the coolest thing ever. I really do.” — Blake Jorgensen
“Thank’s a lot everyone for coming out on the 20th anniversary of the New Canadian Airforce and honoring a great man … JP Auclair.” — Mike Douglas
“Here we are, Blackcomb wind lip session … it’s been a long time since I’ve seen something like this go down. It’s a throw back to the old days, the tribe has rallied… it’s just good to be here man, it feels like old times.” — Feet Banks
“It’s awesome to see everyone getting fired up, just sending it, just strictly out of love for him.”
“Vinny and JP’s and Szocs and Mike, they are just on the next level”
“Every single trick they did was groundbreaking and never been done before… and what really stood out for us is that a lot of the shots we saw were in Whistler”
Well, this is where we kind of learned a lot of this stuff. So to be back here exactly 20 years later is super super cool.” — Mike Douglas
“That was the first back flip mute I think I’ve done in about 10 years … that one was for JP” — Mike Douglas
“My back is sore, my shins will be sore… and I need a masseuse and a hot tub. I can’t do those hard landings anymore.” — Shane Szocs
“Back to 97 baby!” — Mike Douglas
“Back when skiing was just furry boots and malt cider and like kind of FIS bullshit, these guys stepped up, they turned it around, they took it backwards.”
“And that’s what made them rad.”
“A guy once told me that anything less than 20 years old is just news, it’s not history. And it’s been 20 years now since the TenEighty came out so… I guess we’ll see.” — Mike Douglas
“I sense snowboard coming really big two years ago like all new tricks I was like fuck man – should I change for snow board but, like I said in my mind – ah fuck there is something to do with skiing. There’s not because we got pole that we can’t grab so… last year I started to do flip like mistys and rodeo and I think skiings awesome and we can kick snowboards ass easily.” — JF Cusson
“Skiing was pretty much dead in the 90s, snowboarding was taking off.” — Jonny Moseley
“Skiing was your parents sport. Nobody — No one young with energy or that was cool was getting into skiing.” — Mike Douglas
“And the New Canadian Air Force came along and they invented twin tip skis … and that just like set it off.” — Jonny Moseley
So 2 million of your closest friends and you saw this awesome GoPro video. There are so many GoProYourself moments in this 3 minute and 50 second masterpiece that it is overwhelming … what isn’t overwhelming however, is there is only one song. So how do you get this in-correctly named song, download it (for free) and throw it on your own bike mix?
2 – Click Download Track which will require you to either login or create a Toneden account … or not. Just click the small “No thanks, I want to download without an account” text.
3 – Click Follow on SoundCloud, link your accounts which will unlock the Evangelos – Honorem et Gloriam track of awesomeness to be downloaded.
4 – Transfer to your listening device and jam out on your Bike Mix.
***NOTE*** – Next week this post will be post dated back to December 24th, 2013
Merry EPIC Christmas-Holiday-New Year and Happy End of Work Day on December 24th, 2013.
As many of you know I have been charging around the world with a couple awesome people skiing and “in a way” competing in something called Vail Resorts Epic Race. The Epic Race was conceived by Vail Resorts as a contest for the first 10 people who successfully skied every Vail Resort in the 2013/14 season which included 26 ski resorts spread across 4 different continents. 12 were located in the US and the remaining 14 were in Austria, Switzerland and France — The reward for the first 10 people who accomplished this goal would be a Vail Resorts Lifetime Epic Pass. Of course, when I first heard about this randomly awesome competition in early October I knew it would be a fun endeavor to attempt to win what would be known as “THE” ski pass of all ski passes! What I didn’t know is that when it came down to the final day of the FINAL resort to open in Brides-Les-Bains France… was that there would be 131 people from across the world contending for this most EPIC of Epic Vail Passes. Vail Resorts didn’t even expect this kind of final day outcome… and even though Vail has stated that we would all know the final results from this most epic of epic races by end of work day today, I’m happy to announce that they have decided to take some “EXTRA” time to review all the content and all the angles from this 29 day race!
To summarize what Ashley Cooley, Devin L Rhinehart and I have all accomplished in the last month is pretty difficult to comprehend. I think it can best be described as a test in school, like your final final of the semester. Only if you didn’t pass this final, there was ZERO chance of you passing… or “winning” in this case – which all made sense to us. So I basically used that approach to find some motivation to get our team into and through the final day. All three of us from “Team Fun” were in the top 10 percentile through school as we grew up… so we simply needed to apply these rules of life to the final day and if we succeeded and tried our best … we should probably be ok on the final leader board. Sounds simple enough, however there were some additional requirements to get you to the top. 1 – time, 2 – paying attention to detail… and 3 – being sure all your previous content for the race was up to snuff. Of course there is always LUCK involved too, but we had plenty of that on our side with Ashley being the lucky one. Devin was our Time freak, and I was pretty much Mr Detail. Put us all together and we find ourselves at number 20, 21 and 25 on the final “unofficial” Vail Resorts Epic Race leader board. However, when you throw a little detail into it you will notice that 9 people in front of us automatically get tossed from improper uploading on the final day — Two of those don’t even have video links. Add another level of detail and 4 more get dropped for not following resort rules – aka “you can’t hike outside of resort hours”. That brings Rhinehart up to number 7, me at 8 and Cooley as the top girl finisher just out of the top 10 at 12.
Of course, these are unofficial results — even by my count. I have no idea what Vail Resorts will ultimately choose to do or how nitpicky they are going to get in judging this most EPIC of epic races! When you start digging into 26 mountains of content it becomes pretty overwhelming pretty fast! How do I know? Because I’ve done it. One of the cool things about this race is that everyones piece of content from accomplishing all 26 ski resorts is public which is why I am happy to see them taking the extra time to get the correct 10 finishers on top of the board. After jumping into the 52 photos and 26 fifteen second minimum videos from each contestant, I know who gets tossed and who sticks around. And almost every other racer knows too… Except for the one element that is publicly unknown in this race, which is who actually emailed Vail Resorts a photo of their completed European ski stamp passport by 11:59:59pm on December 20th, 2013. Assuming everyone in front of us accomplished this 1 simple task … I see myself finishing in 7th place – Rhinehart moves to number 6 and Cooley… well there is a super slim small chance that she could pop into the top 10, but even though I know there are technicalities with some uploaded content between us, I do not expect Vail to jump to that level of detail to pop her into the top 10 — If they do choose to go that route, then I would probably be dropped for having goggles or sunglasses on in one of my photos or videos. Sunglasses were never actually addressed, but goggles were recommended to be off your face as you must be visible in all photos and videos and you must include #epicrace in your titles and your Facebook posts and you must choose 1 video and 2 photo locations from a list of required elements at each area and have all your content upload by midnight of the time zone of the mountain you were visiting and you must have lift scan data from the given mountain on the given day and you can only ski 1 US mountain or 2 European mountains per day and you must accomplish this all during resort operating hours and you needed to shoot horizontal video opposed to vertical iPhone video and you need to talk loud through plastic on GoPros and and you can’t promote other brands or use copyrighted material on and on and on… can you see how run on and on this contest could get let alone judging it all!? Either way, at some point there needs to be a line drawn in the final judging criteria in order to release the official leader board and award the top racers their Vail Resorts lifetime season pass!
If we are on that list — Fantastic! If for some reason we don’t quite make the official top 10, then we will still enjoy the experiences that have been had and the Vail Resorts Epic season pass for next year that will be awarded to anyone who completes all 26 Vail mountains in the 2013/2014 season. In keeping with the original spirit of “Team Fun”, I will end this post with the 1 simple rule we had while blowing over 2700 miles in the car and almost 14,000 miles in the air to accomplish this 1 impressive task of skiing 26 ski resorts in 29 days in 4 different countries — “Skiing is fun… and that’s about all!”
It was amazing meeting so many *awesome people* on this incredible adventure! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!
*Awesome People*
Nick and Scott Annis
Joe Jensen, Weather Man Steve Sacco and John Victor
Michael Lahey + Epic Race Mom Sharon Mcmonagle
Devin Rhinehart, Ashley Cooley + Greg Hydle … “Team Fun”
Bill and little man Charlie Fiveash
London man Steve Curtis
Japan master Zoe Huebner
The Beard of Ando!
Golden locals Michael + Nila Ferrone
Newlyweds Jessica + Dave Schnoll
Sister + Brother team Jannah and Jeff Din!
The Wilson Duo
The Beard of Sean Regan!
The Jackson Hole Greece of Nick Greece
My manager… Kim Jackson!
Windy Wendy Smith
Ultimate video bomber Parker Jackson
The always proper Carolyn Pope!
Crazy Face Troy Martinez
The child in Annie + David Childs
The always Rad Rad Roubeni!
The hair of Tom Slazinski
Epic start with Matt Dority
Webmaster Will Tran
Crazy Man Kai Whittier (never actually met but heard ridiculous stories)
The Curls of Kim Klopp!
Tera + Garrick Keatts
The Silent JK Johnny Kuo
Sock Firestarter Zac Irwin!
The Humor of Jason Walence
Master Ski Sabbatical Jay Irwin
The entire Liu Family!
Will you marry me Matthew Walence
Ryan Garnett, “Pets Heads Falling Off” Colin Dean, and Backflip Trevor Posey!
Green Icelantic Machine Hollis Carter
Our Shit Got Jacked Alexandra Malkin + Aaron Marks :(
Completed the Epic Race Right Jessica Jackson Hill!
The Finished in Fine Fashion Lawrence Bayer
The Dreads of Jonathon Blair Ermer
Yellow Man Giovanni De Francisco!
The Ned Man Kip and Legitimately Last Place Final Day Finisher Kip Lagorin
One Take Timmy Jarred Simpson
The One and Only Man of Epicness Himself … Adam Warot!
[YouTubeUlar] <— 9,119
Today Ashley Cooley and I purchased two tickets to the 2014 Craig Hospital PUSH Dinner where Snowboarding star Kevin Pearce will be the recipient of the Craig Hospital Inspiration Award. Pearce was recently selected as one of the National Geographic Adventurers of the Year amongst several other, and somewhat crazy adventurists...
Adventure Educators - Amy and Dave Freeman
Alpinists – Raphael Slawinski and Ian Welsted
Big-Wave Surfer – Greg Long
Climber – Adam Ondra
Community Builders – Stacy Bare and Nick Watson
Explorer – Sarah Marquis
Long-Distance Swimmer – Diana Nyad
Skier – JP Auclair
Sky Runner – Kilian Jornet
Snowboarder – Kevin Pearce
If you haven’t taken the time to watch “The Crash Reel”, which documents Kevin Pearce’s recovery from a crash in Park City, Utah where Pearce sustained a traumatic brain injury, I would highly recommend you point your iTunes or Apple TV this direction.
Pearce was attempting a cab double cork while training in the halfpipe on December 31st, 2009 — only 49 days before the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Pearce spent 34 days in critical care at University Hospital before being transferred to Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colorado to begin his rehabilitation.
“The Crash Reel” documents Kevin Pearce’s remarkable recovery while educating about the effects of traumatic brain injuries specifically tied to Action Sports. Defining the art of snowboarding and tracking Kevin Pearce from childhood to a professional career as the only snowboarder with the ability to beat Shaun White, the dynamic story line of The Crash Reel brings together every emotion related to overcoming such incredible odds.
I personally can not recommend a better documentary film for anyone to watch and am excited to see what Jake Manley and the media team at Craig Hospital have created for the upcoming 2014 PUSH Dinner.
Yesterday we did our final mountain of the race before the final scavenger hunt day today for Brides Les Baines, Les Allues and Meribel. It was a pas a pretty uneventuful day since I think everyone was wanting to prep and feel good for today. It was snowing, which was the first time we’ve had snow since arriving in Europe! But the visibility was pretty bad, so we all took it really easy, nobody wanted to get hurt before the final day!
We ran into a bunch of epic racers and took some pics in front of the final stop at Meribel, Mont Vallon, where the lift was still closed. And the rest of the day we just spent cruising all around Meribel, getting familiar with the mountain.
Once we were done with the mountain, we packed up our room and headed down to our new room in Brides Les Baines. We saw a few fellow epic racers in town, chatted with all of them for a bit, and then grabbed dinner at one of only two restaurants in town that were open. We saw some more epic racers at dinner, and everyone wanted to talk about what would happen today. Rhinehart finished his final edit of the trip at dinner, and then we all went back to the room and called it a night early.
Now we are at the calm before the storm in our rooms. As much as we’ve tried to prepare and strategize, we also all just have no idea what is going to happen today. Some predictions are that we will have to do a lot of running through towns and between lifts. I’m nervous because the guys are WAY faster than I am at both skating on skis, and running. I’m gonna be the weakest link physically for sure! I feel fine about keeping up with them on skis, but the stuff in town is gonna be really tough for me!
I also hope that however this final day happens, it doesn’t leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. We’ve had so much fun so far, that would suck for it to end poorly for us/everyone else and leave with that being our primary memory!
We have met so many super cool people, people that totally deserve to win, people who have sacrificed a lot to be here. People who brought their kids to literally give them an experience of a lifetime (hopefully the kids appreciate it, I think they will!) I definitely think we will leave here with some friends we will stay in touch with.
We’re excited and nervous and ready to rock this morning. It all begins at 9 am local time, and who knows what will happen after that!
The flight last night was easy and we got some more attention through the airport in the form of Hydle meeting a fellow beard guy, so we took some pics with him and then were on our way to grab our rental car and head to Mt Brighton!
We got in to Brighton around 11:30, and decided to hit up Redddddddddddd Robin, yum! The guys powered down some late night milkshakes and dinner, and then we got to our hotel room, edited a bit and then slept like babies for the night.
This morning we took our time getting out of bed and the hotel because we knew we weren’t gonna need a lot of time on the mountain considering it had two lifts, one rope tow and a total vertical rise of 250 feet (elevation 1,100).
The hotel was 1 mile away from the hill – this seemed weird to me because it felt like we had stayed in a suburban downtownish area of Brighton, not a “mountain” town and there were by no means any “mountains” or really even any hills around town. So, on our drive to the hill, we were chatting away, and all of a sudden, Mt Brighton was in our sights and we all shouted out “whoah, there it is” in total shock at the same time. It was pretty hilarious, out of nowhere there’s literally just a big hill covered in snow when the rest of the surrounding area is flat and dry!
We grabbed our snowblades and not knowing that there was an actual entrance, we cruised down a dirt patch on the side of the building and onto the slopes. Our first run was up the most ridiculously fast rope tow, that was literally just a high speed rotating rope. I thought I knew what a small town “home mountain” was like until coming to Mt. Brighton – nobody was manning the rope tow, and the lift operators weren’t scanning tickets (we found out at the end of the day that they scan tickets upon entering the “entrance” like an amusement park (which we didn’t use).
We did some hilarious gaper laps on the rope tow, Rhinehart did a couple daffys off this run, and then we went over to their “high speed quad” – I guess when you only have 250 feet of vertical, you wanna move people up those lifts quickly
We took pics at the top of chair 3, and then cruised over to the magic carpet section where I took my video, and the guys talked to the lift operators who were working on the magic carpet. Even though it was fully dry outside and no snow anywhere besides the hill, it was dumping on this run because of all the snowmaking they were doing!
The last stop was at chair 1 and the race course. Imagine if you put a race course on your average mountains bunny hill and you get the idea!
We finished up the day and had to get back to the airport, so after having more fun than expected at Mt Brighton, we packed up and headed to the car and then the airport.
It started snowing a ton on the way back to Detroit, where we started to realize that so far, every time we have left a place, it snows (or in the case of Tahoe, dumps) right after we leave! Wtf, we are due for some fresh snow with all this storm missing we’ve done so far!
We actually were really early for our flight, and Hydle didn’t know what to do with himself. He was equally as out of sorts being early as Rhinehart and I are when we are running late!
So we went into the sports bar at the airport, and quickly realized everyone working in there was cranky. But we rolled with it, had some lunch and the guys edited.
We got on our first flight – to Atlanta, which is ridiculous because it’s not anywhere closer to Denver, and now we are on our final flight to Denver, where the one and only D-Roge is going to pick us up again (thank you D Roge!!)
The Broncos won, and other than being overdressed and got wearing our onesies, it was all in all a really fun weekend full of skiing and traveling that we would have not normally ever done.
Europe on Tuesday, we are all getting really excited watching the other epic racers who are already out there. The snow and terrain looks great out in Europe not to mention the appeal of the villages. Can’t wait to go! Epic Europe time!
We are back on the grid and epic racing! The morning started off with another 3:45 am wakeup call (dude who am I? I don’t do this, I need my 8 hours sleep!!)
Darren Freaky D Roge offered to pick us up at 4:15 am from Hydles house. Boggles my mind why anyone would volunteer such a thing on a Saturday morning, but he insisted so we got in his truck and headed to the airport – all three of us wearing his onesies – in the wee early hours of the morning.
The airport was a breeze, and we got quite a bit of fun attention, including a flight attendant who gave us free drink tickets, a chick who asked for a snapchat with us, and a 12ish looking girl with dreads wanting a pic with us.
When we landed, we headed to the rental car counter where an attendant asked if we were epic racing, uh ya, we’re epic racing, why else would we be wearing onesies through an airport at 8 am on a Saturday morning!
We got a sweet mini van with the doors frozen shut…after climbing through the back and then battling through it a bit more, we were on our way to Afton Alps with a weather forecast of a 1 degree high for the day.
We got straight to the hill, strapped on our snowblades (also thanks to Darren Freaky D Roge) and proceeded to go up the closest lift (which was close) to the parking lot.
I thought I had these snowblades down, and started cruising around, and then Hydle asked if I would grab his camera and film a shot of him blading. I did, got the shot, and then started to do some turns down the rest of the hill, where I quickly found a really steep patch of icy corduroy, totally wiped out flat back style, and slid down the hill for hundreds of yards, while Rhinehart and Hydle cheered me on and fist pumped my crash. It was hilarious although I did have a minor elbow injury, since I instinctively put my hands behind me to catch my fall, even though I now know thanks to Hydle that you should NEVER put your hands out when you fall…welp, learned that lesson the hard way! Oh and also, I kinda broke his camera since I was still holding it during my crash, and it was stuffed with snow when my crash was finished.
We went to Paul’s bar after that to regroup on my elbow injury, and take a look at the map to figure out where we needed to go.
After some lunch, we headed back out to get in a few more turns, and then finished up the day back at “Paul’s”
Since we had run into Adam – fellow epic racer – earlier in the day, and he happened to have brought a shot ski with him, we finished off the day with some rad green shot ski shots care of Jackie the awesome bartender, and then the guys finished up their edits while I periodically shouted out how much time we had left before we need to leave for the airport again tonight.
Another fun day of the #epicrace is in the books. Tonight we head to Detroit, and are gonna hit Brighton tomorrow! So Epic!
[VimeeeeeO] <— 6
Colorado doesn't suck... and here is your chance to show it. The Colorado Innovation Network (COIN) is giving away $50,000 in their Glorious Failure Challenge – In Search of Success.
Once a geologist. Once an entrepreneur. Once a mayor. This is Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.
We’re Coloradans and we do not shy away from a challenge. We’re risk takers.
Not just because we are pioneers, cowboys, skiers and rock climbers.
…but because we are entrepreneurs, industry leaders and INNOVATORS.
Innovation is a spirit and style fostered and propelled by bold, courageous and strategic risk taking. It’s a mentality, and an attitude.
It’s turning roadblocks into building blocks and obstacles – even glorious failures – into opportunity. It’s eternal perseverance.
The INTEGRITY of a glorious failure is in the learning, adapting, and pivoting. All of this affords and fuels innovation.
Like myself, Colorado has a history of entrepreneurs who have turned challenges, even failures, into success. What’s YOUR story of GLORIOUS FAILURE? Are you an entrepreneur with a high-growth-potential idea?
Submit your story of glorious failure and innovation, and you could be awarded the Colorado Innovation Network’s innovation prize.
Finalists, as selected by the community and a panel of expert judges will receive recognition at the 2013 COIN Summit and an awards package, with the overall winner receiving Fifty thousand dollars in cash!
We need your submissions and your votes. So spread the word about the Innovation Challenge!
YOU are the future of innovation in Colorado.
Congratulations to Mr. Dave Momper for his Post Modern contribution to this project and for sharing this awesomeness with me.
[VimeeeeO] <— 77,214
Tanner Hall nails it with this hype man speech to amp up Henrik Harlaut to throw the first ever nose butter triple cork 1620 which resulted in a perfect score 50 to secure his ESPN X Games Big Air gold medal.
[YouTubeUlar] <— 135
A quick look inside the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans winning Audi R18 Hybrid V6 Turbo Diesel. This is the first hybrid car to claim the championship at the grueling 24 hour race in France.
Audi continues their winning dominance at Le Mans overtaking Toyota this year for their 8th win in the last 9 years.
WARNING! If you aren’t bored, do NOT click on or start watching these ridiculously bad ass and “free” movies recapping the 2008 and 2011 Audi Le Mans wins.
In the history of HYDLE.com… this ridiculous “TSOIGDH” entry marks my 999th public blog post since May of 2009 – When I started this crazy world of blogging ideas, thoughts and Genius vs. Not Genius intermanents and social media successes or failures.
So for the sake of getting google credit for it…
“TSOIGDH” = TURNING SHIT ON IT’S GOD DAMN HEAD
Turning shit on it’s god damn head is going to be my 1 single inspiration for the next 999 blogpost entries. I can’t wait to open up my connection layer for all my loyal readers… so I can start finding out who you actually are.
