Thierry is the artist behind my graphics, the web blog banner, my stickers and this great little holiday snowskate card. He also set up Ralston with a cool logo. He’s definitely helping us look professional. Thanks so much man!!

We had a great backcountry day but of course I forgot the camera. Really haven’t filmed anything yet this season, just kinda taking a break from constantly documenting our every move. I did snap some more backyard shots. The yard has been kinda sketchy after the rain then freezing temperatures. Kinda the way it is with low elevation snow. But with the recent couple of inches we are back in business.

Just got my season truck hardware in and things look great. I’m back to the 3 hole aluminum bases for the lib and fps inserts and will use the 2 hole uhmw plastic pucks for my 2″ inserts. Next week we are down south in McCall, hopefully some good pics will come of it but no post next week. Expect a longer one the first week of January which reminds me, Mission Ridge out of Wenatchee will have a night snowskate event from 6-10 on January 8.

Vacuum press at work on another 51 big.

51 standard and 51 big side by side. You can see the obvious dimension and side cut differences.  The waist and tail of the big is about 1″ wider then the standard.

Brain Wilson printed me up some new stickers of just the right colors.  Big rode great today thanks to the conditions being perfect. Even though its wide it carves well, not as easily as the 51 standard but considering its wide waist today was better then I could have hoped for. Since I carry the camera there are no shots of me. Maybe Eric or Cole will slow down a bit next time and snap some pics.

Today was epic, about 6 inches of soft cold snow on top of a crazy crust of small hail balls. It was a perfect day to explore some steep in bounds terrain. We got first tracks all over today, thanks to the main quad being shut down. You had to ride two old style chairs to get the the north bowls plus the fact that it was a Thursday made for an pretty empty mountain. Here’s a shot of Eric on our last run.

This early grab was a make but just barely.

I picked up a base grinder this fall. Went in on it with another local who is pressing skis. We’re storing it at my shop, which is nice, but the things messy. Lots of water with that green fluid in it splattering all over. Oh well, it will make base grinding more convenient.

This last week has brought a ton of snow to our area. The mountain is slowly opening terrain and it is sick. Thursday we hiked, as usual, but the difference was the mountain was closed for the mid week period. Jordan and Katie joined us this time.

I had a great plan in mind, we would hike up and access terrain which was still closed and since the mountain wasn’t running we shouldn’t have any problem with patrol.

We hiked to the base of my intended destination when the bombs started going off. Patrol was working the south bowl ridge and I knew our trip was about to get cut short. Sure enough a cat messed on up and told us to head back down the mountain. Ugh! Oh well we got some nice turns on the way back.

I made this powder single two winters ago and really haven’t had a chance to ride it until last week.

It was really fun to mess around on and floated great for its short length. Pasha my neighbor just happened to be passing by and grabbed a turn on her.

I want to make a bigger one now.

Snow in the backyard, finally!!  My new planet snowtools rake is amazing, thanks Cory!! The dirt mound promises lots of lines. Here’s a shot of Teig.

This shot of Max was taken before the big dump we got this weekend. There is now about a foot of light fluffy snow over a solidly frozen ground, which kinda hurts sometimes.

I’ve been wanting to try a deck mounted directly to the sub. This isn’t a new idea, lots of people have tried this but I wanted to see how different it would feel. There are 1/4 inch pads between the deck and truck. It pops surprisingly well and it actually carves hardpack ok on mellow slope. In powder there wasn’t much difference in the float but the low center of gravity is pretty fun and it is light. The top deck is only three plys thick which helps cut down the weight. I guess I was trying to simulate Wolle‘s set up a bit.

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I’m having a lot of fun with the powdersurfs but I do miss the concave and tail that you have with bi-decks. Wolle‘s surfs have the channels on the sides which serve as concave. You still  don’t get the pop from the tail of the top deck which I kinda like. I’ll be messing around with it some more this season I’m sure.

It snowed pretty hard wednesday night, about 16 inches where we were hiking. Almost too deep for the slope we were one and the steeper terrain didn’t quite have enough coverage. The powdersurf ruled the day although I had taken a new proto up for a test ride. Its intended to be a deep resort board. Fat at the waist and a short length I’m hoping it will be fairly manageable on the groomers but still have a powder skate feel off piste. It did good on the steep stuff but bogged if it was on mellower slope.

The back yard is taking shape and its actually snowing as I type. Still a few storms away from being rideable though.

Our early season dump kinda melted off. More snow in the forcast though. Southern Idaho still has some pretty good coverage. Check out what Jeff and Cory found. Hit the link to view the video > Early season launch!

It won’t be long now and the excitement level seems to be very high for the upcoming season. Just pressed a new, fatter 51″. Only a proto but should be able to accomodate deep conditions. Strapless just released a teaser. Man the Tahoe area has some STRONG riders. Can’t wait for this video to hit the masses.

Got a jump on the season Thursday. Pretty sketchy conditions but really fun. 10-14 inches over small rocks. More snow is forecast  for Sunday.

Pretty soon this spot will be very busy.

This is my sixth season blogging about snowskating and building snowskates.  I have no idea what the year holds but I’m looking forward to getting on with this winter. I should be posting every Fri or Sat. I will be getting a product page with pricing up soon. In the meantime feel free to shoot me an email and let me know your thoughts on the blog/snowskates/riding/whatever >  chillersnowskates@gmail.com

Snow in the mountains means its time to fire up the blog for the coming season. Here’s some snowless shots of the backyard set up.

This is the new dirt mound. There should be lots of ways to hit this thing.

Scored a couple of rail from a skate shop that went under.

Backyard riding is one of the reasons I got into snowskating, lets hope this winter brings some snow accumulation down low!!!

I am working hard in the shop on decks and subs. Will have some shop pics soon as well as a product page. But until then you can enjoy a short video of last seasons highlights.

Jeff from Boise called me a few weeks ago with the heads up about this little event called Maidenboise. Its a memorial to a good friend of theirs that passed away several years ago. The usually head up to a place called snowbank and build a huge quarter pipe, camp and hang out with friends. This year though the authorities said no way and the event was quickly moved to Brundage mountain resort. They just kinda showed up in mass and pleaded with the resort manager to let them camp and hike the snow fields. Amazingly enough the manager said ok.

The snow was pretty damm good for memorial weekend and while it had rained in the parking lot we wanted to head up to the top to look for fresh snow.

About three quarters of the way up we found a pile of snow. With a bit of work it kinda resembled a quarter pipe with a big gapping hole in it.

Big John goes over.

Jeff gives it a try.

Clarke makes it around.

We hiked to the top and got some pretty fun turns in the slushy 1″ that fell the night before. By the time we got back down to the event site they had constructed a little quarter pipe. Clarke put together a couple of nice tricks on it.

Clarke hit a bunch of great lines and in the end won the event, which made the five or so snowskaters pretty damm proud.  Thanks to Cory, Mac and all the other sponsers for inviting us down and putting on a great jam.

Last weekend we headed down to Anthony Lakes, a small resort in eastern Oregon. There’s only one chair and a smattering of runs but the top of the mountain is at 8000 ft so the snow is usually deep and light. Another great thing is they have free electrical hookups for rv’s. While the van isn’t exactly an rv we do have a small space heater and an electrical cord so we were able to squeeze in between a couple of bigger rigs.

We arrived late Thursday night and the storm started gaining speed around midnight with really viscous winds. The resort is only open Saturday and Sunday so the plan was to hike friday. The weather was a bit crazy but the pow was amazing. On Friday I pretty much just rode my new circuit powder surf which absolutely killed it as long as I stayed in the powder. They had groomed a couple of the runs and with the new snow it was hard to tell where the groom track was. Flying down, ripping off turns then slamming when I hit the groom track sucked so I learned pretty quickly where not to go. I’ll admit I wasn’t so sure about the powder single. It seems like I’m always needing a powskate that can handle both powder and groom plus how much different would it feel. I wasn’t exactly looking to learn a new sport.  Well it feels exactly the same to me except there is never a question of float. Your always  ripping the pow no matter how deep it is. I’m sure others will disagree but to me, everything I love about riding strapless, the freedom under foot and the pressure you apply to the skate, all those things have a very similar feel. I know that with more rides you could explore some areas that are unique to the powder surf and I’m looking forward to checking those out. The only thing I miss is concave and the bend in the tail. I find that on a bideck I always know where to put my feet, on the powder surf you have to play around a bit to find the sweet spot but it really wasn’t that big of deal.

On Saturday I rode my FPS 151. With all the snow they had gotten during the week we were riding some pretty deep conditions. In the trees it was waist deep and really light. I’ve missed that this season. It seems like we have mostly received small amounts of heavier snow. People kinda tripped out on the skate but there was no issues with the lift. They allow snowbikes there so its not much of a stretch for snowskates. In front of the camp we built a little gap. My kids were hitting it with the help of our bungee. I saved my spine by just hiking up the hill a bit. My son Teig is resting in the gap.

Being a small ski hill things are pretty low key. As we were hitting the jump after the lifts shut down the mountain manager was warming up the cat for a trip to the top. He asked if I wanted a ride up. Having never riden in the cab of a cat it was hard to refuse. I got a ride to the top and a tour of the major backcountry peeks that are all accessible from the area. It is a pretty amazing spot and the locals know what they have. We didn’t explore any of the backcountry terrain since the inbounds stuff was so sick but hopefully there will be another trip to Anthony Lakes next season.