Rockin our new Tees

In my recent travels to Idaho for a friend’s bachelor party, I managed to be sleeping each time we happened to pass within proximity of my hometown of Ketchum. With 2,000 miles under our belts upon returning to Aspen, its no surprise that my road-weariness cast me into dreamland whenever my hands weren’t gripping the steering wheel. As is, my dad – the only person in Idaho who I would have figured to see during my visit – was also on his own Odyssey to a little backwoods town 80 miles off the paved highway.

Yellowpine, Idaho, in recent years, has played host to a gathering of harmonica enthusiasts, my dad being one of them. His quiver of Hohner harmonicas in tow, my dad makes the trek with his two huskys in a well-travelled Ford Explorer with enough snacks, clothes and car-camping gear to easily carry him months into the surrounding Frank Church Wilderness. A couple of years ago, our dog Lobo was bitten by a rattler (we suppose), with the remote setting proving too long a distance from help and an antivenom, sealing his early demise. As luck would have it for our little family of ski bums, I was arriving for my annual visit just as my dad pulled in from his most emotionally excruciating and physically painful slog home. Lobo, the best dog a boy ever owned, didn’t survive the trip. I hugged his white furred body, wrapping my arms around his bloated midsection – a sign of the venom’s ghastly work – and said my goodbyes to a good friend. We buried him with our other family pets, tucked away under a stand of pine.

As grief should never impede the process of finding joy through journey, my dad has continued his participation in the event, even so far as to design the event t-shirts for this year’s festival. The passing of the original artist made available the opportunity for my dad to place his stamp on a festival that will be forever intertwined with Idaho and our family.

For information on the annual Yellowpine Harmonica Fest, visit:

www.harmonicacontest.com

August has arrived, and with it the weather has only continued to spike higher, the sun’s rays seeming so much stronger and threatening heat stroke and sunburn.  The rafting business is in full swing, and people are flocking to rivers and waterholes wherever they can escape the heat wave.  While the rest of the freeskiing world is down in South America yukking it up on pisco sours and Chilean and Argentine powder, I found myself gorging myself on gourmet food and grasping both hands ’round cans of beer.  The last eight days of my life included driving upwards of two-thousand miles through the Rocky Mountain west and rafting 175 miles down the Lower Fork of Idaho’s Salmon River into the confluence with the Snake River.  A group of six from Aspen rallied Ed’s big red van up to Boise, ID to meet up with the other six in our crew for some mountain beach debauchery.  Forget the strippers, we brought glow sticks, fireworks, and a potato cannon to launch Idaho’s famous spuds, much to the delight of the booze hounds on the trip.  With enough beer to fill almost every cooler on the rafts, we were prepared for a trip almost double in length.  So, we did as any good bachelor party would do and got to drinking.  With class II and III rapids in a pool-drop succession each day, there was some great rafting with some 70F degree water for swimming between wave trains.  Add in a ducky and two paddleboards, and you can bet there was some awesome floating being had.

I’m working on editing some video footage from the trip, but here are some photos to drool over in the mean time.

0

Recently, I had the pleasure of joining Angel Collinson, Re Wikstrom, Grant Gunderson and some homies from the Backcountry.com media team on a road trip through the Southern Utah desert.  We rallied the TatsVan, packed full of gear from the Backcountry.com warehouse, and after a few pit stops for photos and pie, we set up camp outside Boulder, UT.  The next few days included hikes to waterfalls and slot canyons, where we posed like really good-looking monkeys for the multitude of camera lenses all vying for the shot.  Our nights consisted on pass-the-whiskey-handle and jokes around the campfire; one night was a little rainy, so the TatsVan hosted one its most epic parties as the desert monsoon drizzled out the campsite.  All in all, it was a solid trip, and I have to thank Angel, Re, Grant, Sam, Josh, and Brenda for such a memorable experience.

The whole trip was filmed, so there will be a series of road-trip, back-to-school videos posted in the Backcountry.com email letters over the next month.  Click the picture below to visit the website and add your name to the email newsletter.  Cheers!

I have been a team rider for Tecnica/Blizzard for over three years now.  While the freeride market is still building, the ski engineers over at Blizzard have been focusing on the racing side of the sport the past few seasons.  A really solid product has been developed for the speed demons of the world, and now I share a spot on the team with World Cup champions and Olympic hopefuls.  However, all the attention to the race program was leaving us freeriders with fat skis that ride like race skis – all the speed and double the stiffness than any other freeride ski on the market.  With promises to devote more R&D to our freeride line in years to come, the engineers cranked out the best race skis the World Cup has seen, and now they are switching gears and channeling the ‘freemountain’ aesthetic of our freeride team.  Add a little Arne Backstrom ingenuity and the team in Europe and our lead designer from the US – Jed Duke – have come up with a revolutionary ski design that has had the ski world drooling since the tradeshows: flipcore.  I was lucky enough to score an early sample of the Freemountain Cochise ski this last season, and I have been absolutely amazed at how much my freeriding has progressed.  I am more confident in my turns and better suited to tackle all the variable conditions we freeriders constantly seek out, and now it’s your turn to feel the freedom of a sweet pair of Blizzard Freemountain skis.

With options from the Cochise to the Bodacious and the Black Pearl, everyone has a ski that will suit their style and home mountain.  If you want to learn more about the skis and what makes them different from any other skis on the racks, visit our company website.  The video below is a sneak peek of what our team athletes were doing on their Freemountain skis, and if you want to enter for a chance to win your own pair of Blizzard flipcore skis, add our TecBlizz fan page by clicking here.