johnasmo

Just can't master the last few inches. Keep trying though; this was from last Sunday in the bowl. Eric is really close, but the look on his face says, "chaffing!"

Friday. Cold, windy, dumping snow again.... But Oh Chalky Goodness on the groomers. Carvelicious. But I can't find anyone. Only seen Rick. Checked Summit House, Hellroaring. I'll keep looking. Just stopped at my car for a windproof balaclava and my boot gloves. (don't forget there's night skiing. Could be a few inches fresh by then.)

Buy all the photos of the day and you can make a movie! You can download your favorite high-res shots from here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bpwg5szjq4zweld/AABDrfDYTU6OJiRDAt4fIFQGa?dl=0 P.S. You can watch it in 4K!

Frabert! I'm at 'stube now.

Whitefish has about a half dozen pretty regular hardbooters. I'll hook up with one on hill or lift about 1/3 of days.

Feb 11 total snowfall to date at summit 256" (21'). Settled 127" (10"). Nothing spotty about our coverage this season. Wishing you (and me) hero snow, but be prepared for powder or ice; The Big can be anything but consistent.

WTF 2018, Thursday, Feb 1. Best day ever... or not. Fog down to mid mountain most of the day. Smooth groomers underneath, but with a few inches of chopped pow on top. It was a ghost town out there, but Aaron, Ed (Slopetool), and I ripped a few holes in the fog. Highly recommend the ginger teriyaki chicken at the summit house for lunch!

Wednesday still life: Brush with fame. Steve with 1988 Olympic Ski Jumper Eddie the Eagle at Hellroaring.

Wednesday's action shots:

The 2004 Violator 188 came out today to meet its maker (designed by Shred, made by Bruce). That's it's shadow from years ago in my avatar. Coilerama. These are just the ones we three Montucky boys brought to the hill today. There were more; Aaron, Steve, Greg were on Coilers too. We didn't plan this photo ahead of time. That's seriously just what we brought to the hill today. I rode 3 of the 6 I brought up.

Action Shots, WTF 2018, Tuesday:

Break out the sunscreen! Whoo Who! Surf's Up onesie and a Coiler Skinny. Life is good. Good Morning, Dave! Dave, Steve, Other Dave, Rick... Colorful bunch, even without me in the shot. Alex and Dave... Shred Groomer sighting! Van life, Montucky style.

Some pics from Sunday. Aaron, Allee, and James on upper Big Ravine. Allee on Lower Big Ravine The Softboot carvers, Aaron and James, on Toni Matt. James is on a RK inspired 31cm waist Donek Sabre.

Not exactly an ideal carving day, but stayed in hardboots until after 1:00. Carl from Golden BC when bell to bell in hardboots, on a board he made. Then dinner downtown at the Bulldog, followed by final final at the Northern, then secondsies, then... old story. Ended up grooving to the band.

Look Ma, no fog! Yee Olde Toni Matt. The sun even came out in the afternoon. Been so long I didn't have my sunglasses in the car.

I've been taking time off to heal a sprained ankle (damn soft booting), but will be out to ride with you guys. Text me when you are in town. Will your first day riding be Friday?

Scenes from a single day of the Whitefish Trench Festival (WTF) in January: And some post-season fun a few weeks after closing:

Better late than never? I shot some video one day during WTF 2017, and finally got around to doing something with it. Ralph was elsewhere, and Kram had already come and gone, but I got some clips of Steve and Aaron.

Hope that doesn't bump up against ATC; we need two travel days to drive to Aspen. I'm still working on this season. Was up yesterday. It's supposed to snow tonight (May 16th). Not a lot of sunny days this spring, but got this from a week and a half ago:

I ride a lot of soft afternoon crud. Once I show up, I'm there to last chair. Coiler NFC Balanced -- no "energy" or "torsion plus" options -- and the narrower the better. The NFCB performs great in most conditions, but especially when the going gets rough. What makes a *bad* crud board? Too soft in the nose and you might high side. Too stiff mid or tail and bumps disturb the board too much. Too wide and you feel the bumps leveraging against your legs too much. Lots of boards may still work, but if they're harsh and uncomfortable to ride in those conditions, you're not going to be having fun and probably won't be carving well. What makes a good crud board is one that doesn't have the features that make it a bad crud board. Your favorite race board is probably too stiff mid-to-tail. The EC board is probably too wide. Longer boards can be too much work to toss around if the bumps are on their way to being moguls. So the field narrows to all-mountain boards. The NFCB is basically an all-mountain core profile in a free-carving shape. If you don't stiffen the mid and tail with the "energy" flavor, or similarly stiffen between the bindings as a side effect of a large carbon butterfly, you get a good fit for crud busting. That is what motivated the design in the first place -- something not too soft up front, and not too stiff out back, for spring conditions. I have several Coilers that qualify as flavors of NFC Balanced, and can highly recommend them for sloppy snow. My go-to boards this season were a 17.5 cm wide 170 NFCB XXX (a one-off custom carbon layout), and a 14.5 cm wide 174 NFCB Skinny (a Skwal). Sometimes when it got really really loose I went with a 19.5 cm 160 Angry and rode it more like I was soft booting... in hard boots, but that's adapting in a different way.

The Onsies of Whitefish, Montana: From left to right, top to bottom: Burton One-Piece Strafe Sickbird Norrona Lofoten Tipsy Elves Americana North Face Haines Tuxedo Tipsy Elves Powder Blaster Airblaster Freedom Rossignol Orage Implement LTD

Videos shown at Banquet. I have more clips, so may do a better edit later. Between a new laptop, Windows 10, and a new GoPro, it took a while to sort out my approach to video production this year. I had a blast. It was really fun hanging out and riding with new folks all week. Let this serve as couch carving fuel in the summer, or incentive to attend one of these events in the future. Long vid, featuring some of the usual suspects -- Gary, Jasen, Paul, Dave. But also featured this year are Eric (SkwalGuy), Max, Andrei, and Renat ("the Russians"), Mario, James (Revelstoke), other Andre (Whistler), Mark Kress and Tom (carving in his Aspen work attire), and Celene (skiing). And more...

Videos shown at banquet. I have more clips so may do better edits later.

That board is a 2011 Coiler 175 that was a Nirvana Balanced pre-cursor. It has over 2.7 million vertical feet on it now from 142 days on snow. That represents 16% of total vertical since 2011. Still going strong. It has been my most versatile alpine board in a wide range of conditions until this year, when we may have finally come close with another equally capable design. Since having Ron tune my boards in Aspen, I have purchased all the necessary tools to do it myself and have started cleaning up the edges when I wax. :) But that's only once or twice a season. :( P.S. Ron, it still has the checkered duct tape racing stripe you put on when you tuned it. I liked the look so I left it on. Might add that to my next custom topsheet.

Returning to Montucky Land. 1) There are 20 snowboards in the back of that truck. 2) Stopped in Rawlins to share Dave's king prick. Which of those two statements will generate the most comments?