EarlyUps.com has a weekly series which features pro skiers and the music they jam to.  This is a great way to update your music selection and get in the head of your favorite shredder.  It’s interesting to hear what pumps people up for the big moves on snow, or to find out how skiers get their groove on in the off-hill part of their days.  I was honored to be included in this list of athletes, following none other than Julian Carr the snow yeti himself.  Click the picture below to link to the feature and listen along to the mix provided courtesy of Spotify.com.

Click above to view the feature and listen to some Talking Heads

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

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 think I passed a future version of myself on I-70 today en route to SLC for some spring skiing. I have always threatened my friends and family about buying a bus and retrofitting it to both live in and transport the nefarious ski bums and river rats I meet along the way. However, that dream has been placed on the back-burner, and the TatsVan has continued on as the road-trip vehicle of choice.

That is, until I saw this beauty on the open road.

There was a young woman driving the bus with her man standing and rocking out at 75mph down the highway. Awesome.

I sent this pic to my gf and her reaction?  ‘Can we live there?’ was her immediate reply. I love my life.

The lights of Glenwood Springs have been eclipsed by the towering walls of its neighboring canyon. Each dotted stripe on I-70′s eastward lanes whips by to the beat of the music blasting inside the van, as if acutely choreographed to the soundtrack of the road trip.  Hobbsie, at the wheel once again of his trusty van, is leaning forward, excitedly fidgeting from the herbal maté in his bloodstream. So fired up are we, our bodies are practically hovering above the van’s seats as we rapidly ramble on about all things skiing.  The Trew Gear bus, Harvey the GnarV, is somewhere ahead of us, with Pat Sewell, Casey VanDenbroek, Dersh, and MikeyH playing Tony Hawk on N64, while the Pew twins man the helm.  Well, I guess one of the two is steering that mad, mad landyacht of fools while the other is probably holding a bottle of whiskey or beer, or both, but definitely not driving.

Our mission? Well, beyond partying as only a good group of rafting, skiing, film-making buddies shall do once properly assembled on a road trip, we will be touring the nine Colorado Ski Country Gems resorts.  Resorts might be too heavy a word for these local ski areas.  Playgrounds for freeriders, more accurately. Freeskier and Snowboard magazines have asked us to go out and explore, by skis and snowboard, the best that these mom and pop areas have to offer.  The winter season here in Colorado has seen a deep snowpack and recent storms have only sweetened the deal. Add in some daffys and backscratchers, and one can only shake their head about the tom-foolery and shenanigans which will likely transpire. 

So, over the next week or so, follow along (Twitter: #COgemsrdtrip) as we sample the road less traveled and play in these rockiest of mountains. The holiday rush is over, minimum-wage jobs in the rear-view mirror, and these ski bums are ready for some brocial shred-working out in that fluffy white stuff, Colorado style. 

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