johnasmo

Parting shots. Lunch at Hellroaring. View from Skijoring.

Some shots of Whitefish Lake from yesterday (Thursday):

Sorry I missed you guys in the morning. The sky opened up after 2:00 and made for fun carving despite the piles. The fresh snow was cold and dry enough that you could just carve through the piles. Thought I'd have to switch to softies today, but carved to last chair instead.

Didn't get up while the sky was blue, but relatively good visibility even after clouds moved in. Rode Nirvana XXX 170 before lunch, then Skwal-ed in the afternoon. Tuesday Photo Gallery riding with Kram, Cuban, and West:

Their daughter wants to go swimming this morning. Should be up riding solo before noon though. Hope to see you guys then.

I'm back. Will be up the around 10:00 AM. But will pry be soft booting it with my guests until after lunch. Their daughter is just learning to board and I want to ride with her.

Johnasmo sighting! That's from Saturday. Like West said, it was a good carving day. Today not so much - powder, powder hounds, fog... Had to park at the base lodge. Steve, I'll be gone 19th and 20th, but otherwise will catch as many WTF days as I can. Did you do tee shirts?

Johnasmo sighting! In that pixilated onesie I'm hard to miss. Sorry, I haven't been reading the boards lately. Busy with work and house guests, but I have been getting out on the snow. My shoulder seems strong enough to withstand the season; now I'm more worried about tweaking muscles in my back than the shoulder. One more physical therapy visit scheduled then I'll wait 'til spring to decide on more. West is right, the last two days were great carving days -- chalky hardpack, but not ice. Fast and firm, with clear skys. Woo Hoo! I was switching boards to compare my latest Bruce builds so I can give him feedback on the Nirvana Triple-X 170. Ian (Fliersmith), sorry, my old boots are too big, and I already sold most of my non-Coiler boards to angry Rick. Don't need all the ones I have, but what's left are mostly customs built just for me and my weight (175 - 180). Though I do have a 157 Factory Prime I found at a pawn shop that I keep around for no good reason (I should trade that to West for something). Anyway, if you do line up some gear (I got my first stuff on eBay, boots and all), wave down the guy in the POC full-face helmet and colorful onesie and I can share riding tips. I'm up most days for a couple hours when I'm in town.

Darn, darn, darn, darny, darn. Even though I bought a Sky Card in hopes of being there this weekend, social commitments had me drive through to MN instead. With 15 fresh in the last 48 hours and a sunny forecast for Saturday, it looks like its going to be an awesome closing weekend. Enjoy!

A double bend-it moment at Big Mountain:

An oldie but a goodie. I uploaded a 1080p version of my my SES 2013 slow-motion reel now that YouTube supports higher bitrates and my upload speeds aren't so anemic. These clips are still timely since Gary and Jasen haven't been back since! Be sure to watch this full screen. See how many BOL members you can recognize.

Closing day today at Big Mountain. The last few days have been sunny and warm; fantastic spring skiing, even though a bit soft. Picked up some last day corn slarving photos from the bowl. West might have some to post too.

I do a lot of both hard and soft booting. I get hit more often when carving. Ergo, carving is part of the problem. We don't like to say it that way, but we all know that carving puts us at more risk of collision. Of all my collisions, only one seemed to result from a skier showing animosity. It happened about 8 years ago. I was carving down a bowl at Big Mountain, when I heard a skier slide out behind me. I looked back at him and went on with my business as he collected himself. Further down the run, the same guy took me out from behind and was super angry at me for being in his way. I think he felt I cut him off from straight-lining the bowl, so in his road rage he was going to strafe me at speed, but he still didn't have the skill to time it right and instead took us both for a tumble and yard-saled himself. Idiot. Coincidentally, just a week and half ago I got taken out by a snowboarder. Last thing I wanted to happen while my shoulder recovers from surgery; it happened within a week of returning to hard boots. I entered a run from a cat track, checked uphill, no one, checked downhill, no one, got no more than two turns in before this guy takes me out like a bullet train. Slams me hard in the chest as I come off toe side and am about to transition to heel. He had to have come off the same cat track at mach speed and just turned down the run on top of me. At least 40 yards wide and only the two of us on it. Idiot. But at least he was very apologetic. He hit me very hard, and I think he was genuinely scared that he might have seriously injured someone. Wish he would have thought about that beforehand. My good shoulder became my bad shoulder for the next week, and my sternum wasn't too happy... Don't like chest pains at my age; never know what to think... Anyway, seems like I average getting taken out from behind every 200 or so ski days. Close calls maybe every 100. When soft booting though, not enough data points to even make an average. Ergo, carving is part of the problem. It's not at fault, the idiots hitting us are, but they wouldn't be hitting us if we weren't carving, by and large.

25 Weeks Post-Op: Not my video, but also found this video shot by a skier the following day. He had one of those integrated goggle cameras; results are better than I expected from one of those. Redman and Rick can be seen at the start, but then it's only me going down the New Cut side of Ptarmigan Bowl and then back on Bench Run to Corkscrew. It was pretty icy from the Bench down, and he finally lost me on Corkscrew when he caught an edge:

West, looks to me like WTF 2014 is showing again. Google renegotiates deals with the music rights holders from time to time, so some of my stuff will wink in and out over time. I might as well add my injury saga to this thread. They are not all about carving, but they are still Whitefish Mountain Resort videos: Injury: 16 Weeks Post-Op:

Finally clicking in with hard boots 25 weeks post-op. Conditions just too good to miss. Of course I did a video... https://youtu.be/lzD1iuFme6w Strength is only 50 - 60 percent, but PT has got passive range of motion looking pretty good at this point. Good to be back carving with a little season still left. Will see my surgeon again tomorrow, March 21, and hope to finally get cleared for return to activity. :)

Welcome WTF 2016! I suggest you bring a pow board if you've got room. We've been getting snow this week, and I bet it continues. Rain in the valleys, snow in the mountains. Should be a good WTF. I'm not hardbooting yet, but I should be up riding softies and am game for apres ski outings.

My surgeon said pretty much the same when I saw him yesterday. He couldn't officially clear me for a return to activity, but understood where I was coming from and encouraged me to be very careful. My physical therapist helped me with how to configure the Sully shoulder support to help me resist some arm motions that I'm too weak to resist on my own, but it is not body armor by any means. They both understand there's a mental health versus physical health trade-off at play and that it's a personal decision. Snowboarding isn't supposed to be a contact sport, but my eyes are wide open (e.g. kipstar's incident). Like carvedog, my thinking at first was to stick with groomers in good visibility, but in retrospect my biggest risk may be getting hit by speeding skiers and snowboarders or letting myself go too fast. Playing around off-piste, in the trees, on limited visibility days, may be a better way to keep it slow and easy. You are right that I may have to write off carving on alpine gear for the whole season; keeping it slow and easy and out of harms way isn't really compatible with my alpine gear. I'll be sticking to softies. Thanks for the words of caution.

Welcome to team trees, Aaron. I'm going to be restricted to soft boots for a while yet, but good to finally be on the mountain again.

16 Weeks Post-Op from the shoulder surgery. Making good progress according to my PT. I ventured out in soft boots to give snowboard lessons to a beginner the last few weekends, and riding softies has felt fine. Using a "Sully" shoulder support, I finally ventured to the summit a few days ago. Might have got a little carried away with the fresh snow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaVqg-NrCzU. Having a follow-up with my surgeon later today. I'll fess up to being back on a board; hope he's ok with that, though it's my decision in the end. I don't know when I'll be back in the hard boots -- It's not ready for going fast with the arm and shoulder low to the ground. Still hopeful...

Big Sky offers some great carving, but it doesn't seem like there are many local carvers. You'll be explaining your equipment to a lot of people. The place is huge, but some some of the best carving is close to the village, right off the Ramcharger lift. It services some nice wide runs with good carving pitches. Lone Mountain has plenty of fun, scenic bowls for power days, but Andecite Mountain has the best carving runs in my experience. Even with a blown shoulder and sketchy prospects for the rest of my riding season, I still bought a Sky Card in hopes of being healed in time for their closing weekend. It's become sort of a tradition since they are always open longer than our local hill in Whitefish. See you in April! Last year's highlight reel video is here:

Update. Had shoulder surgery last Thursday, Sept 24th. Finally saw the operation report today. Diagnoses: Rotator cuff tear involving the subscapularis (tendon on the front of the shoulder) Greater tuberosity fractures superior and posteriorly migrated, greater then 5mm. (the rest of the cuff tendons intact but with the bone they're attached to fractured from the head of the humerus) Loose body, glenohumeral joint. (bone chip floating around) Biceps subluxation. (“grossly” subluxed, dislocated out of groove, biceps tendon) Bad, but not as bad as I first feared. It could have been even worse. Bone heals better than tendons, so fracturing was a good thing, and the cartilage and labrum of the socket in the shoulder blade were still intact. The reassembly surgical procedures were: Rotator cuff repair involving subscapularis (sew up torn tendon, typical rotator cuff repair ends here) Subacromial decompression (grind off bone from above the rotator cuff tendons to make more room for them to move freely) Biceps tenodesis (screwing biceps tendon to head of humerus just below the shoulder instead of where evolution put it) Greater tuberosity fixation (anchor bone fragments from head of humerus back where they belong) Loose body remove (remove the floating bone chip that came off somewhere unimportant) The doctor seems to think the outcome was good, so hoping for a speedy recovery. I only feel the ribs now when I sneeze. :)

One week post crash. Details... Day 25 on my summer bike pass. Bike was a Specialized Demo 7 (real DH bike). Was wearing Dainese Performance Jacket (forearm, elbow, shoulder, chest, back protection), knee/shin guards, full face helmet. Feature was a ramp to gap drop in the "drop park" at the start of the Overflow trail. Not X-games or Rampage stuff... just a gap to drop off a ramp. But I blew the landing and tanked hard at the bottom. I got help off the mountain; first thing I did after dragging my sorry self out of the landing zone was call ski/bike patrol. It was dislocated about 4 inches, and hurt like hell. Still hurts like hell one week later; all bound up to immobilize it because there are fragments off the humeral head - no moving the humerus. Surgery to tidy things up scheduled for next Thursday in Missoula with Dr. Larry Stayner. No MRI yet, but will get one day before surgery. ER CT scan alone was enough to justify scheduling. He set aside 2.5 hours for it. Dunno if that's good or bad. Hoping for a complete and strong recovery... Oh, and then there are the cracked ribs... joy, joy. Thanks for the well wishes. Ride On!

Since it did already snow at the summit, I guess this could be the first post to AIL of the 15/16 season. Happened last Friday, September 11th. Downhilling at Whitefish Mountain Resort. Reduced day of, but surgery not yet scheduled and less than 3 month 'til opening. Bad timing. This could affect my snowboarding season.

I'm pretty average, but I was impressed by the old FP this season. I found it in 2011 at a pawn shop for $20, with rat-trap bindings. I don't even know what year it is. I sold the bindings to Kinpa for $10, so now only $10 invested in the board. Late season this year had a lot of thin coverage, so it became one of my goto "rock" boards. I ended up putting 4 times the vertical on it this spring than all the previous seasons combined. It proved quite fun in the sloppy spring corn; kept me goofing around in hardboots on a lot of days that I would normally have gone soft.