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Back in the day before there were snowboard parks everywhere, i lived up at Alpental with my bro Eli.  Every morning before shred we’d get hyped to a little known video called 1999 from Justin Hostynek.  We’d always crank the opening segment because it started with this heavy Korn song.  I don’t even like Korn…but that shiz always got me pumped to ride.

Here’s the video: (more…)

Snowboard videos these days are predictable. Same tricks, same jumps, same shit. Any geek with a camera can make a video. It takes a lot to stand out from the crowd now.

(Image courtesy of this guy.)

Alas, there are some dudes out there standing out. Absinthe Films has pretty much got it right since day one. Travis Rice’s Community Project a couple years ago was rad. Now he’s gone ballz out on a new flick with some heavy $$ backing by Red Balls and Quiksilver.

That’s It, That’s All, Rice’s second movie is (more…)

Back when i was a kid growing up in Everett, my friends and i found this big sandy hill in the woods. After building forts, rope swings and chopping down 200 foot alder trees for no reason this was a pretty good find.  But what were we gonna do with it?  We couldn’t skateboard down it.  Ah, i know.  Let’s get those Black Snow snowboards that we got from Target for 20 dollars and “sandboard” down them!  This will be rad!

The radness lasted only a few days.  After strapping in atop the 5 foot cliff at the top and bomb dropping to a complete stop followed by multiple cartwheels, or attempting to turn once gaining speed only to fall straight to your grill and receive a mouthful of sand, or actually making it down the hill only to hit grass, rocks and sticks at 20 mph to a complete stop followed by multiple cartwheels—we called it.

Picture Central (aka Ski Acres) on the stickiest day last spring.  Like the kind where after an hour your base looks like you rode through an oil slick.  Well sand boarding is stickier than that.  Or at least it was on the Black Snow snowboard from Target.

Nowadays the woods that i grew up playing in have been replaced by apartments, roads, and light industrial buildings.  But if you’ve never experienced the joy of snowboarding in sand don’t sweat it. Oregon has it’s own sandboarding park!  Complete with rails and boxes for all you jibbers out there. Located just north of Florence on the Oregon coast the Sand Master Park has everything you need for sandboarding–sand board rental, rails, boxes and sand.  They even have contests!

Wow.

Thanks to my man Mike C. for forwarding this little gem.

Tuesday i woke up and checked my email on my iPhone (i have an iPhone). The little ding sound i set to notify me when i got a new message was going off. Over and over and over…

When all was said and done, i had like 150 new emails piped from my Gmail account to my iPhone.

They ended up all coming from YouTube. WTF? I just assumed i got some weird spam bull shiz. Which is partly true.

Backup 1 month: I started uploading a few vids to YouTube to take the traffic/bandwidth dent off my site and figuring it’d drive some new traffic here.

One of the videos i put up was of Harstad riding the dude-tube at Ski Acres (more…)

I had the insane opportunity to go on a “work trip” for VholdR Cameras to the Sierras and do some snow camping with Snowboarder Mag and Leeward Cinemas during their shooting of “My Own Two Feet”, a full length feature snowboard film. It’s a Eco conscience film that doesn’t use snowmobiles, chairlifts or heli’s, hence the name ‘My Own Two Feet’. Check out their latest teaser at -http://leewardcinema.com/2feet/. We covered about 28mi in 6 days, all on foot, base camps were usually around a 10,000ft elevation.

Most of the 12 doods were on Splitboards and a few on snowshoes. Splitboards vs. snowshoes is

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Skiing has gotten more popular over the last 12 years. This translates to more people on the hill, bigger lift lines, more traffic, longer waits, etc. Those of us who ride Alpental have seen this happen first hand over the last few years. I’ve only been riding since 96/97 and i’ve seen the lines grow in that time. Most of the people i ride with have been around for way longer and could second this.

The Summit at Snoqualmie submitted a Master Development Plan (MDP) to the US Forest Service (USFS) in Dec 2005. The Alpental part of that plan has a few improvements that aim to improve skier circulation.

A ski area’s capacity is largely dictated by it’s (more…)

Gillis, JR and Wagner went log jibbing the other day. Get your mind out of the gutter, what i mean is they were jibbing a tree log with their snowboards. At Alpental.

At the run out of Trash Can there’s a large tree that mother nature decided would be a perfect jib for snowboarders. So she knocked it over and wedged it between two other trees. Good lookin out!

There were some pretty rad manuvers thrown down. 50-50 to front 3 out, Method/Sombrero removal combo, 15 foot-to-flat StompPad tea-baggers and of course some epic wrecks. On the gnarliness scale i’d give this maybe a 4.5. I mean it’s no 50footer or anything…but there was definetly some branches, twigs and other trees to get wrapped around if you botched it.

I wonder if they could get arrested for tearing apart a tree that was once old growth on USFS land? That would be funny.

Here’s a shot of Gillis.

Josh Becker took a bunch of pics. Ki took a bunch of pics.

Please, make it stop.

Alpental is open again this coming weekend.

http://www.summitatsnoqualmie.com/info/winter/spring_schedule.asp