bartron

Check out findyourspot.com It's a great site that asks you a bunch of questions and then gives you a list of 25 towns in the U.S. that best suit your needs.

I noticed the same thing. Also, I noticed more and more "auctions" don't allow bidding -- you can only purchase it for the BuyItNow price. Sucks. 'later...

Here's a breakdown of the places worth while for carving: Regions 1. Quebec City -- Le Massif, Mont Sainte Anne, Stoneham, Le Relais 2. Laurentians (north of Montreal) -- Tremblant, Mont Blanc, Mont Saint Sauveur, Mont Avila 3. Eastern Townships (south east of Montreal ) -- Orford, Bromont. Quebec City -- coldest weather of the 3 regions and the most snow. Laurentians -- almost as cold as Quebec. The windiest of the 3 regions and has the iciest conditions. Eastern Townships -- the warmest of the 3 regions. Gets more snow than the Laurentians but not as much as Quebec City. Has the softest conditions of the 3 regions. Resorts Le Massif and Mont Sainte Anne have already been described so I won't do so here. Mont Sainte Anne has lost of hardbooters. Stoneham is smaller than Le Massif, but one of the few places where there are far more boarders than skiiers. The 3rd mountain is great for carving. They used to have the ISF world cups there. I haven't been to Le Relais, but it looks pretty decent for carving. It's hosting the world cup alpine comp from Dec. 17-18. Check their site for more info. Tremblant is obvious. :-) Mont Blanc is near Tremblant, but quite a bit cheaper, smaller and less crowded. I go there often. The runs near the park are the best ones for carving. You're right about the Eastern Townships. Sutton has the narrowest trails and is not an option for carving. Owl's Head has 2 runs that are good for carving, the rest are too narrow. But Orford is decent and Bromont is not bad. The problem with Orford is that the bottom is pretty flat. Orford is also very windy (almost as much as Tremblant) and one their best runs (the one where the hold races) is closed for the ski school just about every Saturday. The problem with Bromont is crowding. The grooming at Bromont is really good and the conditions are softer than Orford. That's about it. You'll probably want to check out the Quebec Association of Ski Resorts's site . It's pretty good and lots of useful info and a summary of all the resorts.

Worked for me. Thanks Pat.

Some airlines allow heavier baggage if they contain sports equipment. Several of my SCUBA buddies and I have to declare our check-in baggage as sporting equipment. In that case we get an allowance of 70lbs instead of 50lbs. So far I've only flown with U.S. Air for my SCUBA trips, but other airlines may have the same kind of policy. BTW, my check-in baggage (which contains all my clothing as well) on those trips wieghs in at 50.8lbs. I can bring it under 50lbs by simply taking all the batteries (and there are quite a few of them) in my carry on. :D Check well ahead of time to make sure.

I heard of that before as well. We already have that. It's called a car stereo blasting with the windows rolled down. We've had it in Montreal for many years ! :) I dread the sounds some clowns will come up with. Hopefully they'll market and price it so that only families would buy one. But then again, given how many kids love to hear the Barney songs... Here's one: the sound of a guy yelling "Get the hell outta the way !!" at the top of his lungs. Actually, it that would be more suitable for the horn sound. I honestly think that after a while people will start praying for silence, believing it would be worth the risk of getting run over.

Here's a good map of the Denver Area

For those in or near Quebec, Jerome Sylvestre is trying to organize some night-time race training sessions at Bromont this season. It's expected to cost around $10-$15 per session. For more info, visit the Quebec Snowboard Association's forum. Here's the thread (in French only): Race Training Session Thread For those who don't know, Jerome competed on Canadian national team for several years and raced in the 2002 SLC Olympics. He was the guy racing with the Coiler. :)

Sounds like you guys need a monorail. :D If they ever stop voting on the monorail project in Seattle, you might be able to buy their's at a good price. Of course, they'll hold at least 5 votes to decide the price, so it could take a while.

Yikes !! That's insane ! Are there busses that take you from the city to the resorts ? I'll be going down next weekend (Thu-Sun) to check out the area. I'll get to see the traffic in and around the city first hand...for better or for worse. :-)

Yeah, I saw that quite a while ago. I was quite suprised.

I hadn't come across that list of 18 best ski towns. Thanks for the link. Funny how Bozeman didn't make my findyourspot list, but Missoula and Great Falls did.

If you haven't already, you might want to check out findyourspot.com . I've used it a few times, and it's great ! You answer a bunch of questions about your lifestyle and what you're looking for in a neighbourhood and it will give you a list of the top 20 towns in the U.S. that are best suited to what you're looking for. My places were pretty much all in Colorado, Utah, Washington and Montana. Go figure. :)

I agree with Randy, although I'm not upset about it. :-) I think you should use your opportunity to go outside North America -- Munich, Turin, Geneva, etc. Once you graduate and you want to relocate, then include North America in your search. I'm currently in that situation, although I graduated years ago. I'm trying to get out of here by summer 2006. I've been looking at Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Montana (in particular, Missoula), and Alberta. I just went to Seattle this weekend for an interview. I found that Seattle is too big and would be a move sideways from Montreal. There aren't too many places on the planet were you can work in hitech and live by the mountains (there are several other factors that make my search difficult). I guess it's time to change careers. :-)

Hi, what's the carving scene in Seattle like ? How many carvers, where/when do they carve, hardboot-friendly shops, etc. Thanks.

I had my eye on that Hot 183 since I saw it at Oberson/Laval in April (it was selling for $500 at the time). I was going to go pick it up last Sunday, but got busy with other stuff, and decided to wait until another day. I didn't think they would actually sell that thing so early. :) Not a big deal. I'll go for a used Prior instead. But like Derf said, there isn't much place around Mtl to really use a big board like that. I'm looking for something more in the 175cm range.

"The Canadian Snowboard Federation is pleased to announce the addition of two-time Olympian MARK FAWCETT as Head Coach of the National Alpine Snowboard Team." Check out http://www.csf.ca/ for the full announcement.

Has anyone used the Suunto S6 wrist computer ? I'm curious about it's accuracy in measuring the degree of slope and speed. Looks like a cool gadget. :-) Thanks.

I've bought stuff from the U.S. in the past, and sometimes I paid taxes and sometimes I didn't. I didn't notice any pattern to it. Just last week I bought a bunch of SCUBA equipment from NY. It was shipped FedEx (I had no choice, even though I tried to have them ship it USPS) and I ended up paying GST and PST, which I'm sure will go to good waste. :D

Deeluxe Indy

I scanned image this from a newspaper last week before going on vacation.

I've ridden at all those places. I'd say that Orford is really the only one of the four I would recommend. It has many wide carver-friendly runs, it's not crowded and you can find several hard-booters that ride there regularly. Also, they have a hybrid lift (mix of gondola and 6-seater chairs). The bad thing with Orford is that it can get really windy and icy and one of the best runs (Jean d'Avignon) is usually closed on Saturdays for ski-race training. As for the rest: Bromont has a good mix of blues and blacks but it's way too crowded. Owl's Head has good vertical and is pretty challenging for free-riding, but the runs are pretty narrow and the one good wide carving run is usually closed for ski-race training. Sutton is a glades mountain. It has good snow conditions but the runs are narrow. If you go to this mountain, ditch the hardboots and put on your skis or softboot/freeride setup.

The wind was so strong that they couldn't operate the tram and the quad was swaying like crazy.

taken from http://www.csf.ca/english/ : "The Canadian Snowboard Federation is pleased to announce the addition of two-time Olympian Mark Fawcett to our coaching team in preparation for the 2005 World Snowboard Championships in Whistler, BC."

Orford (eastern townships): 5-10 Tremblant: too many to count. Well over 10. That's where the alpine coach for the Quebec team works and where almost all the alpine racers from Quebec train. Last season I attended some regular race trainning sessions that the Quebec alpine coach was running at a small resort (Mont Habitant) once a week. There were about 20 people there and I was the only guy not from Tremblant.