I feel like there hasn’t been many pictures of riding in the blog posts. So for this thursday update we are letting anything in starting with a shot of the beacon check. As of this Thursday, everyone has a beacon, probe and shovel and all hoping we never have to use them.

Eric‘s new beacon

view from the top

ollie north’s free of  charge

you must hike up if you want to go down again

there are always diviersion on the hike up

See that rock up in the left hand corner of this shot of Eric? there’s a picture of that later

there’s that old hiking again

and another reason to take a break from hiking

these were all makes. Both Eric and Cole felt like the snow was perfect for landing hits. Especially the kind of hits that pop you up.

The boot gets steep in a couple of areas, which means it gets steep on the way down too.

Since the snow was so perfect for landings, Eric felt like today was a good day to send this rock. This wasn’t a make, but its a nice picture.

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.

Today was the first Thursday where we did not go into the backcountry. With the warm temps and rain yesterday, things were looking a bit on the crappy side as far as powder goes. Oh well, it was a good day to stay in bounds and goof around. Neither Cole nor I can ollie very well, but that didn’t stop us from trying. There is this flat spot at the top of the mountain that is on a hump. Most skiers and snowboarders never go up there cause its a little bit of a hike but the groomers pass through and its always buffed. There is a nice mellow incline for riding flatground and big long manuals. We built a little bump and practiced ollieing off it. I guess you could call it the snow version of a jump ramp.

A snowmobile came by and I got a tow into this snow mound.

We are planning a Snowskater cross for the 11th of April. It will be loads of fun and I’ll be posting more on it as the time gets closer. Also I’m just finishing up the last batch of boards for the season. I’ve got a bit of everything, FPS completes 151 and 152 and three of the new Morning wood’s as well as unmounted finished decks. I’ll post up a full list with prices first of the week… heck I might even put it on the Product page, wouldn’t that be nice?

When we set up the new blog with WordPress all the old content from the original blog was lost. This was not an accident. I look forward more to the season ahead then behind but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some stuff I wouldn’t want to revisit. The first winter of ChillerDecks was 05/06. What began as a way to use old snowboards to ride terrain around my yard morphed into a desire to always ride strapfree. The first year, I met Jordan who was also riding his own snowskate creations and he told me about “Shut Up and Snowskate.” He described it as a bideck comp where you wouldn’t see any single riding. Here are a few pics of that comp, to say it BLEW my mind is an understatement. I had no idea!

Although I was riding a really wide snowskate, the slushy terrain was kinda perfect and I was able to have fun on some of the smaller features.