2019 winter in the Colorado Rockies was monumental. It had been 62 years since a slide on the Disney avalanche path off Highway 40 had reached the road. The Disney slide path is first major avalanche slide path you reach on your way to Winter Park Resort. It is on the south side of the road just outside of Empire before you hit Berthoud Pass … and to say it lightly – this is a monster slide.
Here is another video that is equally interesting to watch from the Denver Copter 7 on the same day … just turn your volume down.
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.
Colorado is experiencing some insanely long summers around here … it’s time to express how we feel. More Snow, Less Hate. Props to these Steamboat standouts for finally expressing their concerns of grabbing that snow by the balls.
#MakeColoradoSnowAgain
Anything But Summer
Not My Season!
Powder To The People
More Snow – Less Hate
Making Awesomeness for the 2nd Annual High Fives Foundation Colorado Golf Tournament
Blackbox Case lasered up some awesomeness for the High Fives Foundation 2nd Annual Colorado Golf Tournament this past week! Pictured above is a 15″ Natural Bamboo Wood Case for and Apple MacBook Pro Retina, a 13″ Carbonized Apple MacBook Pro Retina Case in the middle, and a 12″ Natty MacBook Bamboo Blackbox Case on the bottom. As a team, we shot 20 under par at the super elevated Copper Creek Golf Course and only finished in 4th place overall … which didn’t result in any awards coming our way, but that doesn’t matter because it was all for a good cause and technically we made all the awards!
Blackbox Case is looking forward to releasing a High Fives Foundation + Blackbox Case partnership in the very near future, so you can get your own hands on a High Fives branded Blackbox Case while supporting such an amazing cause! If you take a minute or 10 to watch and learn about the awesome work Roy Tuscany and High Fives does with mountain sports inspired athletes, you will completely understand why we love their mission so much.
Just watch High Fives’ newly released video and go full screen on this masterpiece:
Thought it would be worth sharing a couple first time visitors experience at Kirkwood! January 22nd, 2016 was another fantastic powder day to enjoy the fresh that the Kirkwood has to offer. Nikki Peterson and Ryan Johnston – Come visit us in Tahoe more often!
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I need to get the skinny from TJ Fry on this end of season creative piece... but it's worth the share and the laugh on where and when skiers began turning.
***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.
Fifteen years of verite footage show the epic rivalry between half-pipe legends Shaun White and Kevin Pearce, childhood friends who become number one and two in the world leading up to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, pushing one another to ever more dangerous tricks, until Kevin crashes on a Park City half-pipe, barely surviving. As Kevin recovers from his injury, Shaun wins Gold. Now all Kevin wants to do is get on his snowboard again, even though medics and family fear this could kill him. We also celebrate Sarah Burke who crashed in Park City and died January 19, 2012.
I find it difficult to write about this film – simply because I strongly believe ‘the crash reel” is something everyone should just watch… and pay attention to. The soundtrack continues to get better with each viewing and the enjoyment of seeing other people finally learn about the severity of brain injuries and the consequences behind them is mind opening.
#loveyourbrain Tahiti Blue Tee Shirt
There are so many levels of integration as to why this documentary hits so close to home with me…
The world of skiing in the united states started with Sun Valley Idaho installing the first chairlift ever in 1936. Now K2 is trying to inspire a new generation into living their own adventures with the Powder Highway.
“There is nothing that can set you free like a good road trip.”
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As Bo Bridges would like to say… it is almost go time.
Winter X Games 2013 is now upon us. As usual – ESPN’s website is atrocious to find relevant information – but here is a direct link to the Schedule of Aired Events in Eastern Standard Time … calculate your own viewing experience.
If you are heading to Aspen to celebrate in the fun, here is the Schedule You Want To Look At which is the same link as above but you must click RESULTS on the secondary tab to see the event times (Only now in Mountain Standard Time). Makes a ton of sense right? Blah.
Wow – finally an in depth link at what happened during the Steven’s Pass Avalanche. This is a very in depth and thorough story using all forms of media. My heart goes out to the people involved in this tragedy and I can’t imagine the time it took to put such an incredible story together. Thank you for sharing – and be careful out there friends.
Warning – this will take some time to consume, but it is worth it.
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Forgot to post this last weekend when I was browsing trending videos on the Apple TV.
What does 2 years planning, 12 machines, 11 athletes, 4 RED digital cinema cameras, 45 GoPros and 3,422 man hours look like?
11 athletes:
Sean MacCormac – Red Bull Air Force
Joey Brezinski – Skate
Rickie Fowler – Golf
Danny MacAskill – Biking
Ryan Sheckler – Skate
Drew Bezanson – BMX
Bryce Menzies – Trophy Truck
Rhys Millen – Drift
Robbie Maddison – FMX
Lolo Jones – Track and Field
Pat Moore – Snowboarding
Notes:
Director of Photography – David G. Wilson
Project Manager – Ian Votteri
Director of Red Bull Media House – Nicholas Schrunk
Director of SYYN Labs – Adam Sadowsky
“It was a lifestyle. A totally undefined lifestyle. And you were not judged at all on what you had been, or where you went to school, or whether you had a nickel… or a million bucks. None of it mattered. Everybody was evaluated for what kind of person they were… what kind of sense of humor they had. And it was a given that everybody was there because they loved the mountains.”
– John McBride
Happy 50th anniversary to Vail. I can’t say it you are like nothing else on earth, but I can definitely say that you are unique and I have enjoyed skiing you. Not as much as I have enjoyed skiing and growing up at my home mountain of Winter Park, Colorado – which celebrates 73 years of awesomeness this year – But I certainly am excited to take it down your backside on a hefty powder day.
