Your Next Air to Fakie Might Kill a Marmot

I’m serious. According to New Scientist, snowboarding tricks can freak out alpine wildlife:
“Snowboarders and skiers are encroaching on the habitats of alpine
fauna, including ptarmigan, black grouse, deer and chamois, and their
presence is causing the animals’ stress levels to soar.”
Okay, so the article (and my title) make a few small exaggerations. Animals do get freaked out, [...]

Spring Conditions at Blue Mountain

As you can probably tell from my previous post, I hit Blue Mountain today (for daytime riding this time). The weather was phenomenal: it was a sunny, spring-like day. All the vents were open on my coat and pants, the goggles were replaced by sunglasses, and the flaps on the helmet stayed off. The snow [...]

Financial Damage From Today’s Snowboarding Excursion

Cost of renting a V-8 Ford Explorer from National Car Rental (Loss Damage Waiver declined, personal insurance accepted, first 200km free): $113
Cost to refill that sucker with gas after driving from Yonge/401 to Blue Mountain and back: $51
Divide car costs by 3: $53 each
Cost of a daytime lift ticket at Blue Mountain: $52
Tim Hortons Coffee [...]

Random Question

Do ’snowbladers’ piss you off? For some reason, they seem to annoy me. I think it’s because it’s not skiing, nor is it snowboarding; it looks kind of effortless and useless on a powder day.

A Different Kind of Snowboarding World Record

According to the WeLoveSnow newsletter that just arrived in my inbox, that wacky team of guides in Japan is going to attempt to break quite the interesting record:
“In 1996, Dennis Woods of the USA broke the world record for riding
the most different ski lifts in 24 hours. In Vail and Breckenridge,
Colorado, he rode 42 lifts [...]

The 10 Best Halfpipes In America

Confession: I have only dipped into a halfpipe once. The experience was a letdown; for some reason, I thought it would be really easy to fly in the air, turn around, land and keep going. After all, I knew how to snowboard. And on television it looked easy. So why should it be different in [...]

A Follow-Up to the Bad Conditions in Ontario

As you may recall, November, December and early January were an absolute disaster for ski hill operators here in Ontario. Extremely warm and rainy conditions decimated most ski resorts, forcing them to operate well below capacity and in some cases even close down temporarily.
Since then, business and conditions have improved significantly. In fact, I don’t [...]

I Didn’t Realize…

… that Intrawest had bought Steamboat. One day, I will make it to Colorado. They also own Copper and Winter Park in the area.
Click here for a full list of their resorts.

Want to Board Over ANY Terrain?

Check out the Scarpar, which even rides over dirt and grass!

If I could get one of those and a Freebord, the summer would go by much faster.