Category Archives: Cool Things

Gatorade | Sweat It To Get It with Peyton Manning

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[YouTubeUlar] <— 1919 Gatorade just released a series of 8 commercials with Peyton Manning and Cam Newton and of course Rob Belushi - the gas station clerk who is the star of the show. Nothing more to say here except... Genius. Here are the best ones.

Gatorade | Cam Newton – You Heard What He Said


[YouTubeUlar] <— 912

Gatorade | Peyton Manning – Get Open


[YouTubeUlar] <— 1176

Gatorade | Peyton Manning – Happy Birthday Yoga


[YouTubeUlar] <— 5,006 CREDITS from Adweek
Client: Gatorade
Chief Marketing Officer: Morgan Flatley
Senior Director, Consumer Engagement: Molly Carter
Marketing Director: Jamie Davies
Manager, Branded Entertainment: Nancy Laroche
Senior Director, Sports Marketing: Jeff Kearney
Director, Sports Marketing: Tom Prochaska
Agency: TBWA\Chiat\Day, Los Angeles
Chief Creative Officer: Stephen Butler
Executive Creative Director: Brent Anderson
Global Creative Director: Jayanta Jenkins
Senior Art Director: Dave Estrada
Senior Copywriter: Nick Ciffone
Copywriter: Nick Cohen
Art Director: Jon Soto
Director Of Production: Brian O’Rourke
Senior Producer: Tim Newfang
Managing Director: Peter Ravailhe
Branded Entertainment Manager: Marc Johns
Sports Marketing Manager: Erika Buder
Project Manager: Parker Adame
Associate Brand Manager: Ralph Lee
Group Planning Director: Scott MacMaster
Planning Director: Martin Ramos
Planner: Rebecca Harris
Junior Planner: Katie Acosta
Junior Planner: Matt Bataclan
Director Of Business Affairs: Linda Daubson
Executive Business Affairs Manager: Lisa Lipman
Talent Payment Manager: Mirielle Smith
Director, Traffic Operations: Dessiah Maxwell
Broadcast Traffic: Jerry Neill
Production Company: Caviar Content
Director: Jody Hill
Executive Producer: Luke Ricci
Producer: Brian Quinlan
Production Designer: Mark Snelgrove
Director Of Photography: Michael Svitak
Managing Partner: Michael Sagol
Editorial Company: HutchCo Technologies
Editor: Jim Hutchins
Assistant Editor: Joaquin Machado
EP: Jane Hutchins
Postproduction: The Mill, Los Angeles
Sr. Executive Producer Sue Troyan
EP: Enca Kaul
Producer: Kiana Bicoy
Production Coordinator: Jillian Lynes
2D Lead Artist: Robin McGloin
2D Lead Artist: Scott Wilson
2D Lead Artist: Patrick Munoz
2D Lead Artist: Scott Johnson
Colorist: Nick Sanders

Congratulations Pikes Peak Hill Climbing and Proposing TJ Fry

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Pike Peak Hill Climb TJ Fry + Dani Rae

Congratulations to good friends TJ Fry and Dani Rae for their successful engagement at the top of the 2014 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb :) Fry ran a 14:08.322 for his first hill climb up Pikes Peak, but more importantly delivered himself and his car successfully to the top in order to carry out his proposal.

I don’t have much else to say here… I Love Awesomeness and this is awesome. Watch the video below for the full story.


[YouTubeUlar] <— 72

The Bird — Hard at Work in the Mentawai Islands

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[VimeeeeeO] <— 5 Straight from the man and Bird pilot Paul Borrud himself…

“In June of 2014, we spent 11 days surfing the Mentawai Islands. The conditions were perfect the entire trip with light offshore winds and plenty of swell to go around. I was able to capture some pretty interesting angles using Phyllis (name of my drone). Enjoy the highlights of our trip and experience the beauty of the Islands from above. The Bird”

Looks like a surfers dream to me… and one hell of a Niit5 location.

Selway or the Highway

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Jackson Frishman

Selway or the Highway

An Idaho River Rafting Extravaganza and Review

WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

What: A long river trip on an incredibly rare river with an awesome group of friends
Where: The Wild and Scenic Wilderness of the Selway River, from Paradise Creek Ranger Station to Selway Falls
When: Meet in Missoula, MT at 6pm June 17, and return to Missoula by 11am June 24
Who: About 13 of us total
What else: email any questions to Dennett Dwyer

WHAT NEXT?

Read the below. There are some logistics, as well as a lot of info on what to bring—this may require some shopping/borrowing/stealing; also, the sooner we have confirmed details from everyone, the sooner we can nail down important logistics like shuttle and food.

LOGISTICS

Travel arrangements and requirements
• Please plan to meet in Missoula June 17, or arrange to be met in Darby (SLC crew).
• Please do not plan to be able to be back in Missoula until June 24th.

Weather
There is a lot of elevation change on the trip. Temperatures could be in the mid-nineties at their hottest, but most likely will hover around 70-80 degrees, with nights in the high 40’s to low-50’s (and the nights will get slightly warmer as we go). Afternoon thunderstorms are VERY common there in June/July.

Shuttle
Rivers go one-way. This means we’ll need to shuttle gear, people, and vehicles from top to bottom and vice versa. The most efficient way to do this is a paid shuttle service, but our total costs will depend on number of vehicles, space in vehicles for people and (heavy) gear, and time (one-way the shuttle takes a full day). This is why meeting in Missoula with time for us to sort this out is essential.

WHAT TO BRING

Key point: space is a concern, but weight is not.

Equipment / Gear
Everyone will be given dry-bag space of set dimensions when we arrive at the put-in on the afternoon/evening of June 18 Couples will consolidate into larger bags, and tent partners can be determined then. Here is what you will need:

  • Mess Kit: BRING YOUR OWN PLATE, BOWL, SPOON, CUP, FORK, KNIFE
  • River clothes: swimsuit, wetsuit/drysuit, river booties (wetsuit booties, NOT water shoes); helmet; PFD
  • Land clothes: pants, shorts, underwear, t-shirt, towel, jacket for chilly nights, hat, socks, rain jacket, optional gloves, long underwear
  • Footwear: heel-strapped sandals for the river/day, durable shoes that would allow you to side-hike, or comfortably sit in camp
  • Sleepery: Sleeping bag and pad. Expect nighttime temperatures in the mid-50’s.
  • Tent: please coordinate who you will share a tent with or if you plan to sleep under the stars or tarp (perfectly viable option)
  • Sunscreen. It is probably wise to plan for one bottle for every two people. We can coordinate at put-in so we don’t end up with 90 bottles of goop.
  • Sunglasses: if they are prescription or otherwise expensive, please be sure to secure them to your head if wearing them on the river.
  • Games: we’ll bring adventure bocce. Would be ideal to have a Frisbee, any travel-size waterproof board games, etc.
  • Safety: a personal first-aid kit is wise. If you don’t have one, no worries: there will be a large group first aid kit. If you have special medications or concerns (eg epi pin) let us know so we can account for space in the group kit (it is important to locate that centrally, versus your personal bag, so any responder on the trip can move as quickly as possible)

Food:
• Jesse will have a full 3-meal menu planned for the night of June 18 (campground) through the lunch of June 23 (takeout), including large-scale snacks such as trailmix. Please plan to bring anything you expect to complement that.

Booze:
• In general, plan to bring your own booze or drugs. Boxed wine is suitable, if the wine is in a durable bag inside the box. If liquor, please avoid glass bottles (transfer to another container if needed). Unfortunately, beer is the worst violator of the space consideration and we will not be able to bring nearly as much as we’d like. The glass rule applies here, too. Be warned: If you are a beer drinker, we will pack this last, allocate cooler space and ration the beer appropriately.

Boats:
• Please only bring a kayak if you plan to hard boat more than 1 day. Rafts will be three oar rigs and one paddle rig. This should be the perfect amount of boat for us to have more beer than normal.

Communication:
• We will have a satellite phone. This means you CAN call your children, wife, or lawyer if you’d like. However, please reserve that for emergency situations if possible. The same goes for in-bound calls. We will know the number for our sat phone by Missoula, in case you need to be reached while we are on the river, but please ask those who have it to use it to not expect to get a hold of you.

COSTS

Costs: Total per-person cost of the trip is currently estimated to be between $250 and $450. We will know more as the logistics and rentals finalize. Most costs will be handled by Dennett or Jesse, upfront. If you purchase something for the group, keep your receipts. If you are bringing a raft, you are not expected to pay into raft rental costs. An outline of possible costs is below.

Deposit: None. We can settle up by Square/check after the trip

Considerations: These are the things that will affect total per-person costs.
Equipment rental
Food
Shuttle
Fees
Repairs

OTHER DETAILS

1. Communism: It’s (dumbly) important that, if asked by ANYONE, we say every one of us has paid an equal amount of money and effort to go on this trip. As a collective. The reasoning is that if one of us is profiting, that person can be fined (massively) for running a commercial trip without a license. In recent years, put-in rangers have become weirdly sneaky about casually asking this question in order to write a citation.

2. Capitalism: As Dennett has probably said a dozen times to all of you folks, this is a trip of a lifetime. For me–as someone who does a lot of these trips every season—it’s a special kind of awesome to do it with not only my family, but also mine and their good friends. I’m stoked. And if you’re not as psyched as me, then just take solace in the economics: to do this river commercially, you’d be paying more than $2,000 per person. I think we can get that much fun out of this.

Allergies/medical considerations: Again: please definitely highlight these ahead of time.

Assumption of risk: It goes without saying, this is a group trip of individuals solely responsible for their own safety. Rivers are dangerous, and so are your friends (esp when they’ve been drinking). We have a lot of qualified first responders on the trip, but they have no legal obligation to help us.

Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways!

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How do you sell Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways?

You take this video:

And turn it into this video:

Then you support this campaign:
Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways INDIEGOGO Campaign <— $479,295 So who is this guy who re-created this original Solar Roadways Indiegogo campaign from Scott and Julie Brusaw and turned it into this completely new masterpiece? I aim to find out. Whoever you are - Way to TSOIGDH Solar Roadways, into Solar FREAKIN' Roadways! Genius. [Huffington Post on Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways]
[Architect Magazine]
[EcoWatch]

FACTION Collective Episode 3 – God’s Whisper – Raury

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[VimeeeeO] <— 43,900

Just when you think the inspiration of the ski season is over… And Freeskier publicizes this awesomeness.

FACTION — Way to kill it with your new team and video series.
Adam Delorme – Why don’t you have a “the facebook”?
Etienne Mérel – Keep up the Awesomeness.

Song – God’s Whisper by Raury.

Who the fuck is Raury?
“I am one of the greatest lyricists out here, fuck it.” Help him Roar.

Raury - God's Whisper - Artwork

[Raury – “God’s Whisper”] <— 54,588 Soundcloud
[Raury – God’s Whisper (Official Video)] <— 12,608 YouTube
[Raury – Anti Tour: Tyler, the Creator] <— 3,385 YouTube TSOIGDH

Vail Resorts Epic Race – Explanation of Awesomeness

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[YouTubeUlar] <— 442

***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!

Quad Quadcopter Copter Drone Magic – DJI Phantom 2

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[VimeeeeeO] <— 244,000 Here is a quick reminder to myself… Open my quad-copter trainer I purchased over a year ago … then buy one of these :) [DSLRPros Phantom DJI Aerial Flight Drone]

Now go fly that dji phantom quad quadcopter from DSLR Pros to new heights. The future of possible is in my fingertips.


[YouTube] <— 199,344 [DJI Homepage]
[National Geographic Drone Review]
[25 Random Phantom Tips and Mods]

Kevin Pearce – National Geographic Adventurer of the Year Nominee

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[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

KevinPearceCrashReel

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.

Hashtag – Love Your Brain – #LoveYourBrain

[2014 Craig Hospital PUSH Dinner]
[Love Your Brain Campaign]
[The Crash Reel Homepage]
[National Geographic Adventurers of the Year]
[National Geographic Interview of Kevin Pearce’s 2014 Running of the 2014 Sochi Olympics]

Team Fun Post Race Recap

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Winning Leaderboard Team Fun
Well, if you’re reading this, you most likely know that thanks to some serious shifting of the leaderboard, we came home with two official winners of the Epic Race – Hydle and Rhinehart – CONGRAT-U-FREAKING-LATIONS guys!!!

After the race finished up, Hydle and I stayed for about an extra week in Switzerland to decompress and enjoy some more scenery. We would have gotten more skiing in, however so far (January 9, 2014) we have officially managed to miss every.single.storm.so.far. So, after skiing groomers for 10 days straight in Europe, we were ready for a break from the groomer days, and ended up mainly relaxing, catching up on fast internet, and checking out Switzerland a bit. I think we also didn’t realize how grueling and exhausting our pace had been until we stopped and we kinda hit a wall after it all ended.

Rhinehart had to head straight back to get back to work, but we had pretty regular phone calls with him still from Europe just decompressing from the trip, chatting about the way it all ended, and discussing the potential for the leaderboard to still change (we were sitting at 20, 21 and 25 until Vail posted the official winners)…and of course missing each other because we got pretty used to traveling as the badass threesome that we were.

Now let me fill you in on one thing about Hydle if you don’t know him that well. He gets SUPER into things, like hyperfocused to a fault, once his mind is set on something. This actually was a trait that I know can be directly attributed in a large part on the overall success of the team throughout the entire trip. The amount of research that Hydle and Rhinehart did prior to even DECIDING if we were going to do the trip probably outweighs the overall research of any team for the entire trip. Hydle has spreadsheets galore on every minor detail he could gather on each ski resort, the type of travel we would do, our scheduling, the rough costs, hotels to stay at, reaching out to European friends for local tips, local hookups on rides and accommodations, etc. It was honestly hard to keep up with because his research was so thorough and involved before we even began the race that I struggled to feel like I could even help or contribute because by the time I was able to look something up and bring it up to the group, Hydle would say “Oh I know, we already have that figured out.” That said, Rhinehart was a huge asset in research, resources, and organization too. The duo of Hydle and Rhinehart combined was pretty unstoppable in terms of overall preparation I would say throughout the entire Epic Race. I helped where I could, but these guys had it dialed to a T.

All that said, the one prop I will give to myself is that I truly believe I’m a really lucky person. I mean, I know I’m a lucky person! So, throughout the trip, the guys kept telling me they were glad I was on the trip because they needed a good luck charm, and guess what, they got one, nailed it!

So now that you know that Hydle obsessively researches everything thoroughly, you should also know that after the Epic Race ended (at 10:17 am precisely on December 20) we didn’t even ski all the way down our one and only run of the day before we ended up at a bar, with Hydle and Rhinehart borrowing a pen and paper from the bartender, and proceeding to solve ALL of the puzzles that Vail had put out on the final day. This didn’t make any sense to me, I mean, the race was over, who cares what the answers to all the puzzles were. But Hydle in particular felt he needed to know if he could have solved all the puzzles, and wouldn’t quit until he did! I think the puzzle solving took about 2 hours in total, but he did it!

So along the same lines as him solving all of the puzzles, he was the same way with wanting to know who on the leaderboard would or would not remain there after being vetted by Vail and all of the rules in place on how to properly finish the race.

Since all of the information we had to post in order to complete the race was public, it was actually pretty simple – albeit time consuming – to sort through every single person on the leaderboard in front of us and make a judgment call on whether we felt they would remain on the leaderboard or not.

The most common reason for the leaderboard changing was a lot of racers actually didn’t catch the part in the rules on the final day that said you actually had to take a photo with the epic race sticker in it on the final day. Many people made it to the final locations, but missed the sticker requirement. This alone dropped off roughly 10 people who had been in front of us on just the first day.

The sticker requirement, combined with knowing that 4 of the first guys on the board had hiked up the mountain (which we felt wasn’t going to be allowed by Vail) meant Hydle especially felt that there was still a decent chance that they may actually bump all the way up into the top 10.

We all knew it was going to be a close call on how it all shook out when Vail actually sorted through everyone, but the more Hydle dug in, the more confident he was feeling about potentially moving into the leaderboard. Remember, the beauty of this race was that all of the entries were publicly posted, so therefore it was possible to determine on our own who had fulfilled all of the requirements.

So, from Switzerland, we spent an ENTIRE day sitting inside one of his friend’s apartments who generously let us stay in it for several days (thank you Rob, Laetitia, and Francis!!). Hydle busted out his spreadsheets and started going through every single racer above us’s content, one by one, extremely thoroughly. By thorough, I mean, if they posted a 4 minute YouTube video, he watched the entire video, even if in the first 10 seconds it was obvious they were at the correct location.

He chatted with fellow racers, he emailed Vail several times, he researched edge cases, and he confirmed via multiple sources that it was in fact against Meribel’s policy to hike to the top of the mountain while the mountain was closed (this fact was crucial because it gave Vail the discretion to remove the top 4 guys who hiked the mountain and got an advantage on the leaderboard on the final day.)

I don’t even think he got up out of his chair in front of the computer for 8 hours straight. He was lucky I was there to keep him fed and hydrated. But, we did run out of food by the end of this day, and I started to get super hangry and cabin fevery, and almost left to just get pizza without him after starving for hours, but he eventually finished it up and we did get to get out of the apartment for some sweet Mongolian bbq on Christmas eve!

After his long ass day of Hydle research (and more hours on either end of this long day), Hydle had come to the determination (going into this late night Christmas Eve dinner at Mongolian BBQ) that he and Rhinehart would make it into the top 10. We cheersed a little bit, but I was cautious and didn’t want him to over celebrate in case Vail was more lenient on some of their rules than they had promised. But Hydle was pretty confident, yet anxious for the official results as well.

We finished up our time in Europe, and got on our flights back to the US. We had an 11 hour flight back on Friday, December 27 (one week after the final day of the race). There was no internet access on this flight, and we didn’t know when Vail would officially release the final results. But, the second we turned on our phones back in the US, the first thing we got was the Vail official results email, which we read together while the plane was still taxiing.

It was so exciting to see the official results with Rhinehart in 9th, and Hydle in 10th! We high fived now that it was official, and Hydle started sorting through all of his millions of congrats messages (it was like his birthday but more!)

We got off the plane, and when we finally made it through customs, his two sisters, and two of his nephews were waiting right outside for us wearing full blown beards painted red, and holding up signs that had pics from us on the race, and congrats messages to the team for coming home with some wins! It was so cool to have his family greet us like that, what a welcome home!

We had a 5 hour layover before continuing on to California (I needed to see my family since I had missed both Thanksgiving, and Christmas for this race!) so we went to dinner with his sisters, nephews, and our other favorite team mascot, Darren Droge – to celebrate and catch up for a bit.

Turns out, Adam Warot of all people saw our post that we were briefly in Denver, and rolls up with his one and only shotski, and we took some celebratory fireball shots as well. Killing it Warot!

Once back in California, we had lots of time to now decompress on the win for Hydle and Rhinehart. We facetimed with Rhinehart and his family (thank you Rhineharts and Lauren for all of the support!), and the guys had tons of messages to respond to from everyone coming out of the woodwork to congratulate them!

The guys got several interview requests for various articles about the winners, so they had a couple conf calls with reporters to discuss.

Plenty of people have asked, “how did Hydle and Rhinehart win but not you?” so I will explain.

For starters, I was the weak link anyway – I was the slowest runner by far out of the three of us, and the entire final day was literally a foot race, we skied zero turns. I can keep up fairly well on skis, not so much running! That said, the guys were so amazing and patient and waited for me, helped me, and pushed me throughout the hour and 17 minutes on the final day. Thanks to them waiting for me, we all finished at the same time (Rhinehart unclicked out of his skis and ran up the final hill with me in ski boots for our final shots, Hydle skated up which would have taken me forever!) But, because the final submission was something you had to submit via your phone/cell service, we all had our submissions pre-loaded as we were on our final gondola ride up to the last location on the mountain. But, for some reason, my phone refreshed the web page that I had my photo and video preloaded on as I pressed submit for my final, official submission. So while the guys were posting to the board, I was reloading the content onto the page and then pressing submit. This process took me just about exactly :27 extra seconds. Within that time, Bill and Charlie had posted to the board (which I am stoked they did, because I want them to win before me) and another guy who finished at another location who’s submission popped in right between us. So, 26 mountains, and I lost by :27! Lol.

So, I did finish with the guys, it just came down to a phone loading issue that wasn’t really preventable, could have happened to any of us, and I’m glad it happened to me.

I can’t express how much I know that Hydle and Rhinehart deserved to win this race. Not only was the team preparation so incredibly in depth, but their attitudes, personalities, charisma, passions and content were spot on with what Vail wanted to see out of the racers, and Rhinehart did an edit for EVERY single mountain we skied (including the two a day’s in Europe). I don’t think anyone else on the race put in as much solid effort, as well as having the right spirit of the race throughout. Mad props to my teammates on that.

I am so incredibly and genuinely stoked for them and so proud of them.

And, along those lines, many of the other racers in the top 10 were awesome, and I am also super stoked for them as well.

One final thought, Bill and Charlie (our alliance team members on the final day) we believe still have a shot at making it into the top 10 if any final tweaks still come from the leaderboard. The Vail rules very specifically say that incomplete submissions will not be approved, however somehow Brittany and Cory Heintz – currently in the top 10, still have an incomplete link for their YouTube videos. I know that enough questions have been raised from fellow racers that this is likely still being researched a little deeper among Vail currently. So, in the chance that they move out of the top 10, I would be so freaking excited if Bill and Charlie got to join the leaderboard for lifetime passes. They are great people and fully deserve to make it in if this happens!

The cool thing is, even post race we have all gotten even closer with a lot of racers, it seems that we all have this common bond and understanding among those of us that got close, and I’m excited to have a larger skiing community to relate to and ski with in the future!

All in all, the experience was freaking rad. We are so glad we got to participate in this. It sometimes feels like a dream that it actually all happened. The friendships and memories we made will stick with us for life, and now, Hydle and Rhinehart get to SKI…FOR FREE…FOR LIFE!!! Thank you, one last time, to everyone who supported us from home, everyone who followed us online, reached out and congratulated us, and for watching our videos and reading our blogs! Welcome home to Colorado Hydle. Can’t wait for a Team Fun reunion on the slopes again soon!

Epic Race Mountains 23 & 24 – Courcheval & La Tania, Les Tres Vallees, France

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So last night we ended up going out to dinner across the street from our hotel at a restaurant/bar that ended up having a lot of epic racers, and young Brits at it.

We had a decent dinner and then headed upstairs to the bar where a pretty sweet live band was playing. Every epic racer in the bar knew who Hydle was, and came up to him to tell him how much they loved him and his videos.

Adam showed up, and we eventually ended up taking a shot ski with a group of epic racers, oh boy, I was feeling that this morning!

We called it a night at about 12:30 since we actually had a lot of skiing to do the next day whereas a lot of the other epic racers are finished with their 25 resorts, just waiting on the 26 on Friday.

This morning we all were running a bit slow and we ended up getting out of the room around 10:30 (after Rhinehart made some epic eggs mixed with our leftover chicken and rice dinner) Hydle claimed it was the best breakfast yet in Europe!

We headed straight up to the top of Courcheval, took some pics and videos, and then bombed down in some nice soft smooth sunny groomer snow.

When we got to the village, we met straight up with Eric (Vail videographer for the race) and Kaylin Richardson, two time Olympian skier!

They had asked the guys earlier if they could meet up to get some footage of all of us skiing, so it was nice that we found them that easily.

We got our stamps, played around in the village and then headed back up to the top to get some lunch and then some skiing!

We had lunch at the top of Courcheval, where we sat in a a sweet circular couch set that looked like bottle service. And then we headed off to get back to some skiing!

Dude. Kaylin is riiiiiiidiculously amazing at skiing! I’m pretty sure every guy on the mountain had a crush on her. Shit. I have a crush on her! I thought I knew what good “girl skiing” looked like. Haha. Nope. She just raised that about 10 levels above what I thought I knew. She was so friendly and so cool and normal I guess if I can use that word. In other words, she felt like she was just a super fun friend to ski with (who happened to rip the shit out of skiing).

We had a lot of fun playing around in the soft sunshine snow, and we did some shots of us skiing powder 8s as a group, although Kaylin was such a good skier she kinda made everyone looked bad (in a fun good way!)

We called it a day with Eric and Kaylin because we needed to head over to La Tania to finish up our checklist over there. I’ve got to say, it was pretty damn fun getting to ski with a super fun, cool, and rad Olympic skier for a few hours! Hell ya Kaylin!

As soon as we dropped in over to La Tania it got super shady and cold and kinda icy :/ Maybe that place rocks in the morning if they have sunshine but by the afternoon it was all in the shade and not much was going on. So we made our visit quick and headed back up to get our final shot of the day at the top of Les Dous Lanches, which is at one of he highest peaks overlooking everything at the resort. Hydle is still concerned with me being fast because my normal leisurely pace is pretty slow, so as we were getting off a gondola he said “ok we need to practice our speed, everyone needs to race off this gondola to the next lift.” So we all charged it and made it to the next lift at the same time and rode it up. So freaking pretty up there!

We were pushing time at this point because we had to make it back to Meribel, so we cruised back to another lift, and then the huge tram, and then dropped back down into the Meribel village.

We ran into more epic racers at the top of the final run into the village, and we all cruise down the final run which was pretty icy, back to our place.

Once we got back, we all decided to check out Brides Les Baines and Les Allues because we hadn’t seen them yet, so we headed out just to explore.

We ended up having dinner at the cutest little French place run by an adorable husband and wife team, with a lot of woodwork inside the small restaurant, and a cute little bar and fireplace. We all had steak and hamburgers which has been hard to come by so far, considering most meals have primarily consisted of ham and sausage for some reason out here! We were stoked on the food, the service and the ambiance at this little place in Les Allues called L’Arbe. Loved it!

Now we are just gonna call it a night as we’ve got a big next two days ahead of us in the home stretch of the race!


Rhinehart’s Video – La Tania
Hydle’s Video – La Tania
Cooley’s Video – Courcheval
Cooley’s Video – La Tania

Epic Race Mountains 15 & 16 – St Christoph & St Anton, Arlberg, Austria

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This morning we all kind of struggled to get up and moving – except for Rhinehart who is always first and ready to go, so he made us breakfast – eggs, cheese and prosciutto – while we all got ready.

We thought the buses ran every 10 minutes, so we didn’t pay much attention to what time we were leaving, so at around 10:10 am, we realized the buses only come once an hour, so Francis had to drive us the short distance into town.

We got our stamps done at the tourist office in St Anton, and then parked the car and crossed over a “closed” bridge (not sure why it was closed though) to get into the village. We jumped on the brand new Ganzig Bahn gondola which is ridiculous – it’s huge, high tech, brand new, and has these humongous wheels that rotate the gondola up like an elevator before it takes off up the mountain.

Today was a perfect bluebird day, no clouds anywhere so the views were amazing. From the top we dropped into the village of St Christoph and ran into a couple other fellow epic racers again (we are roughly on the same schedule as it seems maybe 20 other racers so we run into them periodically at the photo/video spots at each resort).

The information office at St Christoph was super old and historic “hospice” hotel there that offers amazing ambience and fine dining, and is a 5 star hotel. The history of St Christoph dates back 600 years ago when a shepherd founded a shelter for wary travelers making their way through the Alps. History is so much greater in Europe!

From St Christoph, we made our way up the St Chrisophobahn lift, which takes you to the center point of the St Christoph and St Anton lifts, and you can see down from up there into either valley (a village on each side). It’s so hard to describe how grand this mountain range is, especially when you’re at the top overlooking everything from a 360 view.

We had some really fun runs after that, and kind of kept getting lost so we actually rode probably most of the lifts at the resort, which turned out to be pretty fun. It’s crazy how long the runs are here, and how steep even a normal groomer tends to be at these mountains.

The gnarliest lift I’ve ever seen was shooting up from the St Christoph area to a mountain peak that seemed like it wouldn’t really be skiable because of how intense the terrain was, but apparently they don’t give a crap here in Austria and will put a lift on anything. There was also a tram, which I believe is was one of the first trams ever built taking you almost to the top of the super gnarly mountain peak also. Neither were open but if they would have been, I know the guys would have wanted to ride it, and I’m not completely sure if I would have done it. The lift was a two or three person lift, shooting straight up to the top, and the terrain down from there looked pretty insane, probably would have been the steepest run I’d ever had access to, so as much fun as it would have been, I’m also a little relieved it wasn’t open!

Speaking of lifts, at the bottom of one of the runs on the St Christoph side, we were riding a 6 pack lift up – most of the high speed lifts here have lap bars, and then an additional plastic bubble cover that you can pull down in bad weather. Because of the bubble, I couldn’t put my arm around the back side of the chair like I normally do when I ride lifts on the scarier side, and um, all of the lifts here in Austria are pretty scary and way far off the ground. I kept asking the guys if I could put the bar down, and they kept insisting no way and that I needed to suck it up and that this was good practice for me since France is supposed to be scary also. But, we got to a point where I had a mild freak out and told the guys I didn’t give a shit what they thought, and I was putting the bar down. They all gave me crap and said I had to buy the first round at the bar because I wussed out, but I didn’t care, at least I wasn’t scared anymore! And, THANK god I did, because shortly after that, the lift stopped, and swung back and forth at a high point over the ground, ugh! And then, just to freak me out a little bit more, after the lift stopped, a guy came on the loud speaker in German and said something which we didn’t understand, and all I was hoping was that he wasn’t saying that the lift was broken and that we would all have to be rescued because we were pretty high up there!

After that, I started to realize that EVERYONE puts the bar down on lifts in Austria. It makes sense, they are a lot higher up than the lifts I’m used to in the states. So, I gave the guys crap back and said “hey guys look up, see that, every single lift that is going by has people with the bar down, bar down, bar down” so hopefully they will get the point and let me put the bar down the rest of this trip, or else I’m probably gonna be riding them alone on purpose!

We then headed over to the St Anton history of skiing museum (one of our epic race photo stops). What a cute little place! It had a beautiful historical style dining room downstairs, and upstairs was the ski museum. I’m so glad we went inside, it was cool to see some of the history of how skiing developed in St Anton, seems like this is where a lot of the history of skiing began!

And then, it was time to hit up the Mooserwirt – a world famous après ski bar that overlooks the Alps, is on the slopes (but within walking distance from the base if you want to hike up for a little bit). It was a trip to see this place – outside they had a stage, girls dancing, a DJ, live music, and it was so packed you couldn’t really walk unless you were trying to push your way through to get somewhere.

Inside was a little less crowded, but still very “club” like. We got a couple rounds of drinks (we had met up with Adam, fellow epic racer there also), and took it all in. I got hit on by a local Austrian guy who kept wanting to “make dance” with me and said “you good, I’m good, lets make dance” which was pretty funny. And of course, Hydle was “famous” throughout the club – people either were thinking he was Mc Fitti again, or high fiving him because he had the best beard they’d ever seen, or apparently he also got called out by a group of people thinking he looked like the guy from the hangover, not to mention every epic racer that was there knew who he was also!

After a couple drinks, we strapped on our skis, and skied down the hill to the base in the dark. Of course in Europe you can ski after the slopes have shut down, with no lights, after having a million drinks (if you choose to have a million drinks at the Mooserwirt). What a crazy place! Apparently it doesn’t even really get started until 10 pm or so, I can’t even imagine…insane!

Back at the room we worked on uploading our content, and had leftover spaghetti. The guys went out again late night tonight where I thik they are meeting up with Adam for a bit at Bar 37, and I stayed in to go to sleep! Tomorrow is Stuben, and then driving to Verbier, Switzerland!

Rhinehart’s Edit – St Anton
Hydles Video – St Christoph
Hydles Video – St Anton (Mooserwirt)
Cooley’s Video – St Christoph
Cooley’s Video – St Anton

Epic Europea Travel Day!

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We made it! We left yesterday, December 10 at 2 pm, and Nabor Ryan (Rhineharts Dad) drove us to the airport – thank you Nabor Ryan! After a successful early arrival to the airport (yes, early, and Hydle was not happy about it!) we boarded our sweet humongous double decker Lufthansa plane. Our flight attendant was smokin hot and super nice, and she killed it the whole flight.

Flying to Europe on Lufthansa was almost like flying first class minus the extra leg room – we got served dinner, hot towels, all we could drink wine and beer, snacks, and then breakfast in the morning, and we got to watch unlimited movies that were pretty sweet also. Hydle also drank three vodka OJ’s the next morning before breakfast!

We landed in Frankfurt which was an insanely huge airport, and proceeded to lose Rhinehart who was in total zombie mode because he took half an ambien on the flight. We cruised through the airport which also seemed to double as a super nice ass mall, and then eventually got to our gate where Rhinehart caught up with us.

We had one final flight on a small little prop plane from Frankfurt into Innsbrook that only took about an hour. This was probably the sweetest view I’ve ever seen from an airplane flying into Innsbrook. The plane basically dives in through these huge peaks of the Alps and then circles around the city before landing pretty much in the center of town.

When we landed, Hydle had a friend he had randomly met a year earlier on his last trip into Innsbrook who offered to pick us up and hang out with us for a few hours while we waited for his other buddy Francis to meet up with us.

Bine picked us up from the airport and we went back to her super cute little apartment in the city to drop off all of our stuff, and then we walked to the bus stop and hopped on to go to the top of the city overlooking everything to get a drink.

The views in Innsbrook are unreal, the Alps are huge, and there are ski resorts everywhere leading into the town. I couldn’t believe how huge and steep some of the resort runs looked, it definitely made us all super stoked to ski!

After a drink at the top of town, we rode a bus back down into the town to go to the original place that Greg met Bine – the Stiftskeller! We had some beers and authentic Austrian food (sausages and pretzels and saurkrat and meat) and Bine had some other friends (including the other original friend that Hydle had met the year earlier, Ella) come meet up. Everyone was fun and friendly and spoke English so we had a good time, and then Francis who is gonna be our fourth wheel/local chauffer for the next few days also showed up.

Bine wanted to show us the Christmas Market in the downtown area so we all walked through the Christmas market which was so ridiculously cute and Christmasy in the village, and then we grabbed an authentic hot wine drink and took some pics. After that she talked us into meeting up with some friends for one more drink at the Mustache Bar – El Mustachio!

At El Mustachio there was a group of guys that saw Greg and then started kinda laughing and smiling, so one of Bine’s friends said “Oh we should probably let you guys know, Greg looks exactly like a famous rapper in Europe named Mc Fitti” (see video above, it’s hilarious how much Greg looks like him). The guys eventually came up to Greg to ask him if he was Mc Fitti, they chatted a bit and he high fived them. Greg’s doppleganger for sure, and turns out even though he raps in another language, he’s pretty damn good and his music video kicks ass, Mc Fitti FTW!

We headed back to Bine’s house and packed up our stuff into Francis’s car (thank you Francis!), and headed out toward St Anton since we are skiing two of the #epicrace resorts here tomorrow. Francis killed it driving while the three of us jetlagged out and passed out for the hour long drive.

We arrived at our hotel, which is adorable and really clean – it’s more like a condo/mini apartment really – called Apart Korona. The family that runs it lives here, and they were really nice and greeted us for check in and showed us around.

Now we are all doing computer stuff, I’m blogging, and just made three rounds of horrible microwaved popcorn. The microwave is struggling so we kept having bags full of half unpopped, half burned popcorn, and our room smells like smoky burned popcorn now! Hah!

Time to ski tomorrow, can’t wait, it is so gorgeous here, tomorrow should be fun! Epic European time!

Epic Race Mountain 12 Mt. Brighton, Michigan

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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!

Operation Elevation at Heavenly, #EpicRace

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On Tuesday, Heavenly was closed again due to winds, so Hydle and I took a day off to get caught up on things. Tuesday night I had asked Daryl and Jess (my local friends who are watching my dog for me on this epic trip) if I could take them to a nice dinner, so we ended upgoing to our local nice restaurant called Evan’s. It was snowing outside, and we basically had the restaurant to ourselves – it was cozy and fun and the food was great!

Wednesday Hydle and I decided to get our hotel and rental cars booked for Michigan and Minnesota, so we spent the morning planning that, and then finally got our act together and headed for Hydle’s first day at Heavenly!

It was bluebird and beautiful out – we got to the mountain about 2, and spent some time at the observation deck first where Hydle managed to pose for one of the most glorious pics of him and his beard overlooking Lake Tahoe!

We cruised around the mountain for a few runs, the snow was pretty damn fun and it wasn’t crowded at all so we actually got to turn it on for once on our skis!

Once we got nice and cold, we headed to Tamarack Lodge for a round of drinks and snacks. Hydle was impressed with the lodge, and kept referring to it as the equivalent of another lodge at Vail in Colorado.

We had some fun with our waitress Geneva, and then as we were starting to close up so we could make it on the gondola ride down to enjoy the sunset, a ski patrol guy named Chris walked up to our table.

He introduced himself, and said “how would you guys like to take a cat ride to the top to check out the sunset?” Um, are you kidding me? Hell ya! Obviously we said yes, and Hydle asked if we could bring a beer on the ride and Chris said “of course you can!”

The ski patrol crew helped us board the snowcat literally named “The Beast” and our driver, also named Chris was awesome.

We cruised up the run to the top of Heavenly while the sun was setting. I still can’t really believe this happened to us, but then again, Hydle pointed out that I’m a lucky person which is true, so I guess it makes sense!

At the top the views were unbelievable – the sun was setting and making the clouds and mountain tops glow pink and orange, and we took a bunch of pics and videos up there.

Hydle captured one of the most incredible panorama pics I’ve ever seen. We had such a good time up there! Hydle already was saying Heavenly was exceeding his expectations and this was before the cat ride! Way to kill it Heavenly – very impressive and I was stoked for him to have such a perfect day for his first time out at Heavenly! Obviously we can’t wait to come back and ski the mountain when everything is open and kicking ass!

The colors from the sunset were still fading away on our gondola ride down which finished off the day perfectly, and then we headed into the village to have dinner, before heading home for an early night!

Thank you to Heavenly, all of the ski patrol and cat guys named Chris, and Operation Elevation for making this one of the best day’s of all time on the mountain, what a rad day!

Today we are heading back to Colorado, then Minnesota and Michigan this weekend, and then Europe on Tuesday!!