Midwinter Update

So, it has been some time here. There are a couple reasons for not having updated.
One being a Gnarly Rain event/crust that came in January, providing me with not much reason to write home.
Two, has been the inception of Rad Company, the best thing to hit Snowbird since the game of GNAR. Basically it is just a group of friends who go out, ski hard, and have more fun than you.

Since then we have received a whole boatload of storms, I have filmed some video, and generally been enjoying myself and working too much to have time to make an update.

Currently, I am staying on at Backcountry.com indefinitely in Customer Service full time, but am always looking for new and exciting career opportunities.

More recently, my good friends back in Vermont and around the Skiing community have been mourning the loss of Friend and all around Badass, Ryan Hawks.





Since hearing about this, my skiing has improved, and I have been trying to be like Ryan, always having a smile on my face, and being stoked on everyone having fun on skis. The world will be a better place if we all try to be a bit like Ryan. I only had the privilege of hanging out with Ryan a hand full of times the 5 years I knew him. He lived on the same floor as a girlfriend freshman year, and then was pretty good friends with one of my roommates the next 3 years. I have never met a person that always had such a big grin and was enjoying life as much as Ryan. This weekend is the US Freeskiing Finals at Snowbird, and I hope they will be doing something for him as I couldn't be home to support my friends in VT. RIP Bud.

That being said, here are a few video links from the past couple weeks, mostly February.
copy those and paste them into your browser.

http://vimeo.com/20256326
http://vimeo.com/19737187

Break time

So I hurt myself very slightly 2 weeks ago, and in the past 2 weeks have only gotten 3 days of skiing. Major bummer. Today looked great from the forecast, but the Avi danger did not allow the road to open until 1pm. Since I have to be at work at 1:30, that was not going to work.

Tomorrow leads me to the best job interview I have had to date, I will be interviewing for the Assistant Buyer-Bike Position at Backcountry.com. This is pretty much a dream job for me to date, and would be a great career move. Granted, it will cut into the skiing quite a bit, but I think I could take that with a grain of salt.

Stay tuned!

Utah winter, version 2.0.

Hello there.
It has been far too long.

First off, I want to say thank you to my loyal followers from my last winter at Alta. It was an amazing experience, and my blog kind of fell to the wayside due to the incredible amount of skiing I was doing, and the limited amount of time I had free to make updates. Hopefully this winter I will be able to make more consistant posts, with whats brewing with myself and my ski partners, Porter and Dwyer Haney, and many others, it will certainly be a winter for the record books.

Let me recap the last 8 months of my life. I will try to keep it brief, because, lets face it, 8 months is a lot of time to not have done an update.

So, the end of the winter was amazing. Basically, I skied plentiful pow. The Snowpine closed on April 5th ish, right as the monster storm of the winter hit the Wasatch. This was probably the best situation that could have happened, because we were interlogded for 36 straight hours due to the 6 feet of snow we received in such a short period of time. The sking was amazing.

It is pretty challenging to recall all the adventures that happened between the last update and the end of the season.

Anyways, Jon and I drove 36 hrs straight through on the way home, and it was quite nice to get back and start living with my pops. The summer was pretty good, saved some loot, and am now back out in Salt Lake City, working at Backcountry.com and waiting for the snow to fly.

I am hoping to make this a permanent living situation and Job, but as of right now, it is seasonal, and we will see where life takes me come February.

Catching up V2.0

Hello all, hope you have not stopped following, and that you all can see this. It has been quite busy month, and I am sorry I have not updated in a long time. After the last post, we got something to the tune of 70 inches in a week, which was amazing. Pow days every day for a week, cannot complain about that. Its been on and off high pressure and snow flurries, but nothing substantial since then. Besides skiing, I have been searching for Jobs in Burlington or Mass, and am still unsure as to where I will be living this summer.
Nothing much else going on in terms of life, just trying to save money to get back east, buy a downhill bike, and find some way to make a whole bunch of money this summer so I can be back in SLC, UT for next winter.

So, I will let the pictures and video of the past month do the talking!

More like it

so far we have received somewhere in the range of 2 feet or so since monday night, with another 3-5 over night tonight, and a storm total from midnight tonight through sunday of 15-36 more inches. Pics, video, and updates coming when i have more time to actually function besides a work/sleep/ski routine.

High Pressure and Low Morale, a short update

Well, not quite low morale, but not having a significant snowfall since December 30th has proved to be trying for people. The bar has been busy, work has slowed down from a full lodge of 47 to 27, and some peoples tempers have been shortened.

The skiing hasn't been terrible, but its been much easier to take days off and not need to ski every day. This coming week there are numerous storms moving in, hopefully providing us with a substantial snowfall to cover up those last rocks and get our base up closer to 100 % as we are only at 50-70 percent of normal for this point in the season.

I have started to think about what is going to happen this summer, and there are many options, but right now the most financially productive would be heading to Medfield, bartending for my pops country club, and potentially managing a bike shop as two of our guests own a shop in Boston and potentially offered me a job. The other options would be working in SLC and living out here, or anywhere else out west.

I had a good time down canyon last night hanging out with Luke, Adam, and Clayton, some friends from school, and today skied in the morning and now am relaxing with a glass of Buffalo Trace Burbon, trying to clear my head of some confusion and thinking I've been doing recently. Once the snow comes, that will help as well.

-Cheers

Blower.

This is more like it. Sick day today, Bluegrass concert/dance party tonight, sick day tomorrow, New Years, in that order. Should be awesome.


Photographer: Jon Tran