SunSurfer

4 car hire companies at Kalispell airport. Avis, Alamo/National, Budget and Hertz. Avis don't offer skierised vehicles, Alamo explicitly forbid chain use, Budget don't allow unsealed road use, leaving Hertz who offer skierised vehicles, but after their recent financial troubles, at eye watering prices for a 5 day hire. Hertz it will be.

Yeah, looks like my best bet is to actually talk to someone at the other end, rather than going on website info. Thanks.

Very familiar with chains use from winters here in NZ. Here, the hire companies make chains an explicit extra part of a winter hire so you know they're part of the equipment. The hire car websites I'm looking at make no mention of chains or winter tyres. Nor do they specify that a given SUV class is guaranteed 4WD.

Getting my vehicle hire sorted for our MCC 2023 trip. Flying in via Kalispell with 2 others and gear. Doing this via the Net from New Zealand so don't have local/USA knowledge others may have. Hertz/Avis/Budget/Alamo at Kalispell Int Airport. Budget have great deals currently but have T&Cs that say "no unsealed roads". On Google Earth the access road to Turner looks unsealed. Yes/No? Looking at hiring an SUV mostly for carrying capacity. Can I assume that a Montana based hire in winter will have all weather tyres? Do I need to get 4WD? Or even on a heavy snowfall day would the road be cleared fast enough to allow a 2WD up?

Staying in Snowmass, riding 28 Jan to 4 Feb 2023 inclusive, before heading to MCC. Hope to catch up with you. Will have a couple of skiers in tow.

USA air quality plummets as a result of wildfires made more likely by global heating. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/22/air-quality-wildfire-smoke-pollution-health-risks

Covid will likely be with us for a long time. Natural selection will continue to produce variants that will evade the relative immunity produced by current vaccination targets and previous variant Covid infection. While there may be a lull now, the world is not back to pre-Covid norms. There will likely be a new normal. Facemasks/coverings were very common on snow riders of all ages at Cardrona this NZ winter. The search will go on for effective Covid vaccines that target parts of the virus that have minimal variation. On other points, ethanol is a dose related carcinogen. So is sunshine. So is the radiation dose you receive every time you fly. Glucose is an essential fuel for your body, especially for your brain. The brain has very limited ability to utilise other fuels and low blood glucose levels will cause permanent brain damage or even death. The aim is moderation in all of these things. To end on a light note.... An alcoholic is someone who drinks more than their doctor.

Have read good things in other threads here about i-carve, the banner vendor at the top of the pages. Has worldwide shipping. I have had no direct dealing with the site.

The one Aussie store I knew about that has stocked alpine snowboard gear in the past, First Tracks, is out of stock for hardboot bindings.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/02/new-zealand-weather-warmest-wettest-winter-on-record-aotearoa Cold enough down south for about 6 weeks for much of that rain to fall as snow there. Farther north it fell as rain (see Allee's comments above). The cold enough window gets shorter, year by year.

Remember, medicine is better in the USA. While in most first world nations 80% of doctors are better than average, in the USA at least 90+% are the best in their field. Trust me, I'm a doctor!

Skill absolutely, and fun to watch, but a lot easier than following a free riding boarder that closely. Both are following a relatively gradual and constant slope slalom training course, so start & turning points are defined and speed is going to be much the same. Riders are likely well matched in their ability to run the course, and like many spectacular on line videos we don't see the "fails".

You need cardio-respiratory fitness, quads strength, plus good balance reflexes, and practice at analysing what's in front of you at speed (line choice and dealing with terrain change). Riding a non electric mountain bike as fast as you feel comfortable will tick every one of those boxes plus it's done outside and it's actually fun in its own right. Isolated quads exercise will strengthen your quads but should be part of what you do, not only what you do. PS: To get full value ride a hardtail! Then your quads (and calves) get a major shock absorbing, anaerobic active long travel suspension role with every descent, as well as the aerobic training in the uphill.

If it's only for private use, you can put whatever music you like to it and no-one is likely to be bothered, although some viewers may draw the line at Stockhausen . Doing your own editing means you get just what you want. I assume you and your mate aren't going to stop videoing your riding so this is a skill you would continue to use. Selecting some clips, stitching them together, and laying some music over the top was not particularly difficult in any of the editors I've used. But I also enjoy learning stuff and new skills, which is not everyone's taste. Having had some interesting experiences getting some old analogue video digitised I avoid getting other people to do this sort of stuff for me.

Be cautious with a return to concrete, a break through the thigh bone part of a hip replacement is a major problem. I suspect your surgeon's reaction to the idea of you on a skateboard might be entertaining to watch!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300669151/more-than-130-staff-made-redundant-at-mt-ruapehu--troa-skifield-closed Mt Ruapehu has 2 major ski areas on it, run by Ruapehu Alpine Lifts, a non-profit organisation that because of steadily declining visitor numbers was already in financial trouble before this year's disastrous snow season on Ruapehu. With Turoa now closed till further notice Whakapapa on the northern side of the mountain has only some lifts running. In contrast the ski areas in the South Island have had more snow this year than for 20 years. I suspect the contrast this year will accelerate the flight of skiers and boarders to the South Island. How much longer Ruapehu Alpine Lifts will remain in business is anyone's guess!

Any video editing software beyond the most simple will have a significant learning curve. The current GoPro Player didn't recognise my old GoPro Silver 3+ files, but did recognise my 8 Black. Have used a range of free editors over the years and they have steadily grown in sophistication. Currently using the free version of DaVinci Resolve which has an enormous feature set, including colour grading and stabilisation, and will render in 4k. Given that the free version is the generation behind the current commercial version I hope to be using DVR for quite a while yet. It is not the simplest out there, but it is basically a professional level feature set for free. As your needs grow you probably won't need to change software. Music can be troublesome if you plan to post on YouTube etc. During the upload process YouTube will recognise tracks and flag if there are copyright issues.

You may have more resource close to you than you know. Martin Drayton (linked in post above) may still ride Park City, carves softboots and hardboots, and if my memory serves me well is/was a snowboard instructor. Martin was also a World slalom skateboard champ at one time. https://www.youtube.com/user/emdee406 https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/athlete-biography.html?sector=SB&competitorid=14298&type=result https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2016/5/classics-fastest-time-to-skateboard-50-cones-slalom-430897

@Emdee406

Had an instructor ride the chair with me at Cardrona and recognise the carving setup as the same as he'd seen in the MCC section of this year's Warren Miller film. He thought MCC looked really cool!

Surface was reasonable for Cardrona, but watch the knees and board tip to see the bumps being soaked up. This is a few hours into the day, the morning groom is long gone and lumps of scuffed off snow are starting to form. The board is a P-tex topped Coiler Nirvana Energy T4 174cm and damps vibrations pretty effectively. This is Cardrona with a good surface.

This trip being cut short by an emergency at home. My first Covid infection, fortunately mild and with no obvious post Covid issues, took out last week. So Frankenboard hasn't been out for another play.

Arrived back where I'm staying in Wanaka on my current riding trip to Cardrona and was told about this Facebook post on Cardrona Snow Reports. https://www.facebook.com/groups/335106437170807/permalink/1033424770672300/ PS: Got in contact with the person who shot the video, and who posted it on Facebook, and got a copy of the posted file.

"What if...?" can take you to interesting places.

Beware summer's fevered dreams of snow, and it's probably not wise to try to bring them to fruition! Too much time spent watching snowboarding videos in the dark corners of the InterNet takes you to strange places. Exhibit 1: Boone Lennon - Portrait of a snowboarder (Vimeo won't allow embedding of this video) https://vimeo.com/7628238 Exhibit 2: Skwal riding with and without poles. Poles have their uses, especially in moguls. Exhibit 3: But skwal stance always looks so cramped! How could I open that up a bit? This years experiment puts all that and more together. It's an intersection between monoskiing, alpine snowboarding, & skwalling. Start with a Riot Supercarver 180cm x 18cm waist, SCR single radius approx 12m, circa mid 90's. Pimp the Riot with extended UPM inserts, add a 4mm Bomber Boiler Plate with extra holes drilled at each end for an interaxle distance 6cm longer than designed. Bomber TD3 stepins, custom toe blocks built with Dynel cloth and hot glue, because UPZ boot toes don't fit snugly up against the standard Bomber toe bail (whereas F2 toe bails are a neat fit). Set the bindings to a 56cm C-to-C stance, 80 Front, 78 Rear, 1cm off centre bias for a regular stance, with toe and heel lift, and approx 4 degrees of outward cant on both bindings. Build 4th iteration hand armour, creating a stubby bullet shape, and the Boone Lennon Glider effect. Try initially on normal length ski poles for height, then move to 10cm shorter after initial trials. (125cm to 115cm poles, rider 182cm tall). This bastard child of a miscegenated menage a trois, of a snowboard, a monoski, and a skwal (a very Gallic concept) had me scratching my head trying to answer the question of what it is, (definitely an experiment) but getting feedback that whatever it was, it looked "graceful". The stance is very comfortable, not all cramped, and allows easy fore/aft adjustment of weight distribution. It was easy to get up on edge and carve, and you could pole plant, or not, depending upon your momentary preference. The ride was super smooth, a combination of isocline plate and optimal angles for knees to absorb bumps. Skidded turns in traffic and hockey stops were major goals of these first few runs, control first and foremost, and weren't hard to achieve. The first session ended after 5 runs down the 1.2km beginner slope, when I needed to transfer the gliders/hand armour to the shorter poles, having found they worked better. I have a friend with a GoPro arriving end of next week, and hope to get some video of it in action, by whch time I hope be a little more familiar with its quirks and to have tried a range of terrain.