Category — Snowboarding

So I guess I’ve been working way too much as I finally got around to watching DC Mountain Lab for the first time.  Yes, I know DC Mountain Lab 1.5 is already out and the one I just watched was shot in ‘05 but does it really matter?  A great video is a great video, right?  I still love popping in Simple Pleasures or Stomping Ground from time to time (by the way, I had the opportunity to meet Mike McEntire – founder of Mack Dawg Productions – at a RED event at NAB last year . . . one of the coolest guys I’ve ever met).

Anyhow, DC Mountain Lab was a great flick and made me realize two things . . .

1. I need to ride more

2. I’m seriously jealous of Ken Block

Dude has a full on park and mountain at his beck and call.  How sick would that be?  I guess when you create a company as cool as DC, life presents a few perks.  The film features some of the best riders you’ll see – Todd Richards, Bjorn Leines, Devun Walsh, Travis Parker and of course, Travis Rice.  Also worth noting is that it was Produced, Edited and partially shot by Pierre Wikberg from the Robot Food series.  I’ve exchanged emails with Pierre a few times and am still waiting for him to take out one of our RED Cameras . . . C’mon Pierre – imagine what you could do with 4k . . .

Go get DC Mountain Lab HERE.

TB

While browsing around the App Store the other day I came across this little gem . . .  it’s called Ski Lodge and it’s a great tool to have for any Snowboarder or Skier out there.  AND while it’s regularly $4.99 it’s on sale for a limited time for only 99¢!  

The “All Resorts” tab lets you browse through over 380 ski resorts in the US and Canada.  Each resort has a decent amount of information available for it, including temperature, snow totals for the last 24to 48 hours, current weather, and snow base.

When the desired location is selected, you get even more information. It’s then when you can view the difficulty of a mountain in graphical form, the trail map, photos, the website (Safari does load for this), a map of where the resort is (Maps loads), and the phone number for the mountain, which dials directly from an iPhone.

While it’s not the perfect app, no app is, it’s pretty cool and I’m looking forward to future feature upgrades.  Maybe GPS on the trial map to tell you exactly where you are on the mountain – of course you probably wouldn’t have the signal strength for GPS up there so it wouldn’t make a difference but still . . . a nice thought.  Anyhow, I would recommend grabbing this while it’s still just 99¢.  Click HERE for the direct link.

TB

Prop’s to my cousin Steve for telling me to go check out Travis Rice’s new flick That’s It, That’s All.  I’m a huge fan of Mack Dawg Productions and thought that anything else was pretty much 2nd best but the guys at Brain Farm took things to a whole other level.  I’m not sure what they shot on but they gave it a very cinematic look that I love.  Hit the link above to check out the Trailer.  I downloaded it from iTunes for $7.99 but I have to get my hands on an HD version.  Seriously, go check it out!

TB

A couple of weeks ago we had the chance to hang out with some guys from Gizmodo, one of our favorite tech blogs.  They get like 2 million hits a day and pretty much every geek on the planet reads it daily.  One of their editors, Brian Lam set the event up and there was a pretty good showing.   Nokia gave out some cool stuff, so did Smith . . . our good friends at Microsoft (not quite) even gave out some Zunes.  It was a great day to shoot and we got some great shots.  We haven’t had a chance to assemble any of it yet but I’ll post some when we do.  

Here’s a shot of Torrey setting up for some time lapse stuff (which turned out really cool by the way).  Our good friend Erik Maddox had the other RED cam and got some great time lapse too.

Here is a shot of me with the RED camera.

Oh – and speaking of RED, probably would have been a good idea to grab some sunscreen . . .  Do I have a Beanie line???  

Even though I got fried I had a great time and they invited us back next year.  

TB

I meant to post this a lot quicker but got backed up from the time off and just couldn’t get to it.  Oh well, better late than never.  So I just got back from almost a week of Snowboarding in Utah.  Ya, it was siiiiiiick!!!  My cousin Steve and I decided to make a road trip out of it and headed off around 6:30am on Thursday morning.  Poor guy had to work the night before and lives in Redding so didn’t get to my house till about 1:30am.  Needless to say he slept and I drove for the first part of the trip.  A little boring but I kept myself entertained with a little Armstrong & Getty and Rush Limbaugh – gotta love AM radio.  It was a surprisingly easy drive though and by 4pm we were pulling in to good ol’ West Jordan, Utah.

We got the serious hook up and got to stay with my wifes grandparents who just built a home out there.  It’s a nice place with plenty of room for us to stay in.  The cool thing about Utah is that everyone has basements.  They decided to put a Theater Room in theirs – 42” plasma, 5.1 surround, step up seating with Lazy Boy recliners and all the junk food you could ask for.  You can probably guess where we spent most of our time.  The other cool thing is that her grandma, Nancy, is a chef and insisted on cooking for us ever meal  =)  Home theater and gourmet food . . . . .not a bad gig! 

She’s coming out with a cookbook in the next few months and had me take a few shots with my video camera for the cover.  Here’s a shot that may be used (she made the dish). . . .

The next morning Steve and I met another cousin, Chad at the Salt Lake Airport and headed off to the first day of snowboarding.  The first day we decided to head to Brighton.  We were pretty excited because Brighton has been featured in some pretty prominent snowboard videos and we were expecting big things.  Unfortunately,  it wasn’t quite what we had anticipated.  Due to the amount of snow they had recently received they didn’t have their park up and running.  No big deal – just got hit some powder runs in all that new snow they had right?  Well, that would have been great except the weather was bad and due to high winds, all the lifts to the best powder runs were shut down.  Don’t get me wrong, we still had a great time but it could have been better. 

So check this out . . . . it’s our first run of the day and we’re stoked to be out riding the Utah snow.  Steve’s leading the way down the hill and we decided to make a tree run. I’m following him in and out of the trees when all of a sudden he disappears.  I come around the bend and see this:

Apparently he didn’t see the stump until it was too late.  They funny part was that he was completely stuck because the he was laying downhill and couldn’t lift his board high enough to get it over the stump.  Combine that with the deep snow he was in and the one branch on the entire stump that happened to be on the side his board was on and he was done!  Being the great guy that I am, instead of helping him out I reached for my iPhone to snap a few shots.  We eventually got him out but it was quite the ordeal.  Makes for a good story though  =)  Here’s a copy of the trail map (click on it for a better picture).  It’s a pretty big mountain so we were bummed that we could only ride a small part of it.

We were pretty much limited to the Majestic and Crest Express lifts the entire day.  Like I said, good time but could have been better.

The next day we were going to hit Snowbird but heard it was pretty windy so decided to head north to Snow Basin.  It was a gamble because Snow Basin was about an hour away and there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t be windy there too but we decided to give it a try. . . . man were we glad we did!  Weather was good and the place was amazing!  We took the gondola up to one peak and headed over to another gondola where we were among the first groups to head up.  That might have been the best run of the trip – completely untracked powder, everywhere!  One of the best runs I’ve ever had.  We spent all morning on that side and didn’t have to deal with anyone else’s tracks until early afternoon.  Here’s a trail map of the mountain (again, click for a better picture). . . 

The first day we spent most of our time on the east side of the mountain (at least I think it was the east side – left side of the map).  Took the Strawberry Express gondola most of the day (the pic at the top of this post is from inside the gondola).  The second day we discovered that a couple of Olympic events were held there during the Salt Lake Winter Olympics and there was an Olympic Tram on the other side of the mountain.  We took the John Paul Express to the top where you could catch the tram and discovered another lodge at the top.  These lodges were incredible!  Looked more like lobbies to 5 star hotels instead of ski lodges.  We decided that we’d grab some lunch up there before hitting the tram.  After lunch we headed over to the tram and made the ascent.  Another great move!  It took us to the very top of the mountain which felt like the top of the world.  Here’s a shot of Steve and Chad at the top . . .