Packing for Hurricane Ridge

Tomorrow morning I load up and head out west. The van will be pretty full by the time we arrive on Friday. So far the roster includes, E2, Graham, Leavitt, FPS Adam, and Jake. We’ll be meeting up with Jordan, Katie and Allan at Snoqualmie then heading to Port Angeles on Fri via a couple of skatepark stops along the way, (as long as the weather cooperates.) Last year this trip worked out so perfectly it would be silly to expect the same this time around but who knows. The weather for Hurricane Ridge is forecast to snow 4-7 on Fri which is a pretty good start. I don’t think we’ll be getting the bluebird with the freshies like last time but that’s ok, just as long as it doesn’t rain like the year before. I’ll be demoing some of my stuff for next season. There will be three set ups of the 42 both with the 36″ top deck and 38″. Also I’m bringing a set up that I just pulled out of the press on fri. Its a brand new sub from a brand new form and I’ve only had a few days on it. I’m having a hard time describing it since it falls in between a snowskate sub and a powder sub. For the time being I’m calling it a mountain skate.

The mountain skate is a direct descendant of the 42″. It has the same side cut and taper although the width is about 3/8 wider. The insert locations and the deck mounting with respect to the tail are the same as is the sweep of the nose and tail.  The goal was to make a sub that would handle just like the 42 but with a larger nose for off piste riding. It comes in at 51″ long, 8 1/4″ nose, 5″ waist and 6″ tail. This is not intended to be a powder skate but instead a snowskate that can handle powder, and most importantly steep terrain. One thing I’ve found though is it doesn’t really matter what you want a sub to do, it will ride how IT wants to ride. Last Saturday was my first test ride and that was just on groomers which it handled great, especially steep stuff. Its very easy to turn and the extra edge in front really digs into the carve. Yesterday though we got to test it out in some fresh pow.

Now with a length of 51″ and a narrow 5″ waist I didn’t expect it to slay the lower angle deep stuff but it did a pretty good job. The area that I was most interested in was steep tight terrain and in those spots it handled great. A smaller sub in steep terrain is a great match. You take a bit of the speed off which slows things down just enough to make good turns with out the feeling that your right on the edge.

All in all it was a great day and I learned a bunch about the set up. Its definitely still in the experimental stage but I’m excited about the direction that I’m headed in. This deck will be free to demo at Hurricane along with the 42″s so if your up there give it a try and tell me what you think.

We did get some footage of its maiden powder voyage, check out how low it rides in the snow, it almost seems like the top deck is throwing out a spray too!!