Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Summer in Oregon

 

06.10.12    Jumps in June!


06.19.12     This was no ordinary day of running handle tows, instead this became more of a team-building/dig-till-your-arms-fall-off kind of day. 

06.19.12      Overnight we received over a foot of snow, but extremely high winds can make 1ft become 4ft in places. Everything was coated in multiple inches of ice, not the greatest start for Session 1 at Windells.


06.19.12     (Top left/right) the waist high cables on some of the tows were buried under 2-3ft of snow. (Bottom left) It's a good thing we knew where we left the control box! This paleontology expedition took a solid day, and in the days following many things were still found as the snow melted. Without this crew, camps would have been postponed for weeks!


07.02.12     Mad props to the Windells Diggers who kept the park on point all summer!


07.08.12   Session 4: Day 2, groomer making his final passes on his way down the hill. 


07.08.12     Classic Lake Trillium shot, great view but definitely not one of the cleanest lakes in the area. 


07.13.12     Use caution when hitchhiking!!! Even though hitchhiking through this area is extremely common, and socially acceptable it is apparently illegal to hitchhike on a highway in the state of Oregon. I hitchhiked up the mountain from Government Camp for almost 2 years and not once have I heard of anyone getting in trouble for it. But this summer my roommate Chris showed up to work with a ticket for over $100 for hitchhiking from the bottom of the road. Even though most call it Timberline Road, I looked it up online and it is actually called Timberline "Highway." So if you continue to hitchhike up to the mountain (because its awesome, easy, better for the environment) keep your eye out for cops, only put your thumb up when cars are coming past you, and put your thumb down when you see em. If they do stop and ask if your hitching a great answer would be "No officer, just waiting for my friend _______ to pick me up."  


07.18.12        Above and below the clouds. 


07.21.12        Bonfire Pipe 2 Pipe! A free event that is by far one of the raddest out there. Stoked to have qualified for finals, mainly because I got another 30 minutes in this snow bowl! Congrats to Erik Leon for slaying it and taking home 1st in Pro!


07.28.12      Got my wheels back after donating it to my mom for a couple years, time to make some trips! Tahoe? Utah? Colorado?


07.29.12     Took a wrong turn looking for a lake and came up on this great view of the Southeast side of the mountain


07.30.12     Tamanawas Falls is an easy 4 mile hike off of HWY 35 between Mt.Hood and Hood river. One of my favorite waterfalls out there simply because....


07.30.12      You can walk behind it!


07.30.12       Truly incredible to be able to get this close to the hundred foot raging body of water


08.03.12      Lake Timothy is one of the best lakes around hood, so many great places to camp


08.03.12    Dear America.. get off your computers, tablets, and asses! Go outside and camp! 

Thank you Topher for convincing me it was a great idea to float the lake on an air mattress at night. One of the best views i've ever had of the night sky.


08.07.12     The crew thats awake before the sun is up and clocking in as the sun rises. These extremely under appreciated dudes are here to keep the lifts running! So whether your at Hood to shred or your a tourist, try thanking and talking to these dudes more often they're extremely bored and they all wanna snowboard just like you!


08.13.12      Back to Seattle to visit for the weekend! We picked up a few ride shares to come with us to save some money on gas. Maxime, who was visiting from Belgium, was making his way up north from California to Canada. Always stoked to be a part of someones first experience to a new land. We took him to Alki Beach to get a better view of the city, man you shoulda seen his face.


08.15.12       6 A.M. sunrise, always a great reminder of why I love my job.


08.16.12    Mt.Hood in August, is a beautiful place to be.


08.16.12    Forest fires were raging down by Mt.Jefferson... where's the rain!


08.17.12   Parked between these two cars chronologically


08.17.12    As snow recedes up the mountain the ride down becomes increasingly dangerous, with sink holes appearing everywhere, and the hike to the parking lot becoming further away day by day.


08.18.12   Wild Huckleberries as far as the eye can see!


08.18.12   mmm edible wild berries. 


08.24.12   Forest service roads are fun to drive on


08.24.12   Onward to Devil's Peak!


08.24.12   This awesome hike is graced by one of the few forest lookouts not destroyed by the Forest Service in the 1960's and 70's, as they shifted toward aerial surveillance. Today, the historic 360 degree lookout tower is maintained by volunteers and open to the public.


08.24.12   Found this awesome cliff to really soak in that high country. Got to see an American Eagle soar through the valley below and its scream echoed for miles.


08.24.12   All afternoon Mt.Hood was just teasing us as small sections would peek through the clouds... and then right before sunset... BOOM!



08.24.12   Haha just kidding. thats a cloud, but it sure does look like it was starting to erupt. 



08.25.12  Who cares what time it is, the stars are out and the moon is orange and red!



08.25.12  This lookout tower was pretty rad, equipped with two beds, a wood stove, jenga, 360 degrees of windows and much more!



08.26.12  After dropping the Palmer draw bridge to the cave Mt.Jefferson and the three sisters caught my eye through the cable opening.


09.01.12  Overlooking the Gorge/Columbia River from the Vista House. Washington on the Left, Oregon on the right!


09.01.12  This short hike in the Gorge (not to far East of Multnomah Falls) is extremely fun, starts out with this obstacle course of logs. 


09.01.12  Just keep following the water upstream.


09.01.12  Most of us had given up on staying dry except for Kevin, but once we reached this point there was no way around it. You'll want to tackle this hike earlier in the day so that once you reach this point the sun is on you, cause this waist deep mountain run off is freezing! (and the sun doesn't stay in this tall valley for long.)


09.01.12     Dead end! Oneonta Falls


09.21.12     All packed up! back to Washington for a couple weeks!




09.28.12     Well not exactly, we had to come back for a couple more days of work. What a welcoming sunset, man it's hard to leave this.



09.29.12     Timber tigers only want your food.    
oh and wearing one of these monkey suits is totally worth the pay. 



09.29.12     The sunsets are beginning to look more and more like winter sunsets! Time to start saving for a better camera, my phone just doesn't do these sunsets justice. 


Season edit revisited with some new footage from this winter at Snoqualmie as well as new footage from this summer at Mt.Hood! 


Tuesday, June 12, 2012

The Endless Winter

photo: Paul "Bagels" Stanley

11.18.11      I turned 21 and we got over a foot of pow for opening day at Crystal Mountain, WA. Josh Vester, Paul Stanley, & Garrett Read made it out for some epic turns to start off the new winter.


11.19.11      Back to back! Snoqualmie opens with a few feet of dry blower powder the next day! And it felt like from here on the winter just took off, one raging storm after the next.


12.28.11      and then it rained.. A LOT. So much that it shut us down. There were rivers flowing down the center of the terrain park. And so we spent our day off riding in the rain sliding around the hill on our stomachs. Ponchos & Carhart rain coats slide really good on the snow. 

 


01.17.12      Can't believe my eyes, I don't think I've ever seen this much snow in my life.


01.17.12      9' in a few days, and the Snoqualmie Pass was closed in both directions.


01.17.12      11:00AM and Alpental is just now opening, time to celebrate! Due to the pass closures there was hardly enough people there to make a mark, making it near impossible to stay afloat. From the Armstrong Express to the bottom of chair 2 the mountain was just absolutely buried in a waist to chest deep blanket of the driest snow we received all season. From the bottom of chair 2 to the top of Alpental we were up to our collarbone's in pow, well all except a few who were experiencing double overhead and face-shots the whole time (Four runs that is). After only a few laps I was so frozen over with ice and snow I had to take the shuttle home to change clothing for round 2.



01.18.12      These 15ft tall icicles hung from the shop, after a massive freezing storm came. On top of all of that snow... making avalanche danger incredibly high. 


01.26.12      The Jeep broke down, and Paul gets stranded for 6 days. After hours of digging cars out of snow and rebuilding the park, everyones was beat. 


02.03.12     Tube City build is starting to take shape! 


02.03.12     After 2 days of 14 hour shifts we made a skatepark of features including 16 of our tube jib features. Down flat down tube , A-Frame tube, 3 Propane tanks, Closeout tube, Down flat left tube, and much more. 


02.04.12      Event day, everyone is way stoked! Thankfully the storms held up for a solid week so we could keep this skatepark open to the public.


02.16.12      Unfortunately I took a slam on the day before we left on our trip, and ended up pretty damn hurt. But finally a vacation! Headed down south to Big Bear, CA to reconnect with our friends Kory Young, Cory Vitalo, Jessi Blackwell, Erik Leon, Barry Witicher & Robert Toaste! 


02.16.12      Good Times at Bear! The snow skatepark of the world, this place is endless. My first run down I could hardly hit anything I was so overwhelmed, features scattered across every end of a run, and runs branching off into multiple sections.



Trip Recap Shot by Cameron Weeg (The Melting Pot)


02.17.12      The Redbull Third Shift build was a long, tiring week long build where many worked 15-20 hour shifts. and then after a week or so of clear days it started nuking again. So much so that the jump event was cancelled, the fences were non existent, and all the features in the park were buried again. 


02.18.12      This crew was on point this season. 


02.18.12       The men who came and worked on the lighting system did one hell of a job. But then the lights came on, even though the colored LED's were rad, we all just had laugh. Ofcourse redbull uses colored lights (that were constantly changing color). Haha so much for the industrial theme they we're going for.


02.18.12      Oh and did I mention there was a snow-bar, with view outside of the window of one of the buildings, as well as 3 snow cave bar lounges in the snow wall of the jump landing. (The jump event was to take place behind these buildings. from the behind the left building, over the bar and to the landing behind building 3. and yes there was a chain link fence over the top of the bar)


02.19.12    Over it. The whole crew was just beat after trying to keep the fences up around the park.        Stupid fences.



02.26.12       Chest deep again and digging out features becomes more like paleontology. 
"Hey I found one over here!"


02.26.12      So much that our street light was buried!!! I came home to 3 park rebuilds in a week and a half, holy moly.



02.29.12     A week after the event and the snow bar is filled in above the bottom of the windows!


03.03.12     Northwest approved snowfall, comin' by the busload & then some! Literally! 


03.13.12         Roof Avalanche!


03.15.12     Dig, dig, dig. Sums up how we spent our time in February & March just to keep this place open.



03.21.12       3 Stories of snow preventing you from seeing our entire house from the street.




03.21.12     and somehow this this managed to stay up and get buried time and time again. Tits deep! 


03.22.12     Great Scott traverse into the Alpental Backcountry


03.22.12      Taking it all in before dropping into The Great Scott Bowl. 



03.22.12      Climb to 261/Pineapple Pass


03.23.12 Almost at the top of Pineapple Pass, overlooking the tooth (left), & The Great Scott Bowl  


03.23.12       Booyaaaa!!


03.23.12     261, down the backside. An incredible run with wide open terrain between tall trees


03.25.12      Then the weather finally took a turn for a while, and things got crazy in the park. Jumps and snow features as far as the eye can see, and a skatepark zone that included snow bowls, berms, spines, and bmx jumps. 



04.09.12     Now thats a lot of snow! No big deal, just hanging out in a streetlight heat well?



11.24.12      Cleaning through the garage I discovered I had more boards layin' around than I thought. Time to get creative. Broken boards = Art Canvas