Mont Cascades Revolution Park - Big park starts with small skills

2009-01-05 22:36:08

This weekend was a big one at my home mountain of Mont Cascades; it saw the opening of the big park. This is an exciting development for the hill, and a perfect book-end to four solid days of riding.

Since an epic New Year's day, complete with partying and riding, I've been up at Cascades every day. Most of my time was spent in the park. It's been icy since Christmas and there hasn't been any new snow. A perfect time for some park laps.

These park days have had multiple purposes. Besides the obvious reasons of fun and progression, Dana and I were working on developing tactics to teach people basic freestyle skills. This progression of tactics for teaching freestyle skills is a requirement for when I'll be going for my level three certification later this season. We were also working on these tactics because there will be freestyle clinics available at the hill starting this season.

While Dana and I have been trying to figure out tactics to teach people park skills, however, Mike has been hard at work setting up the features of the big park. Dana got a ride on the groomer to get a sneak peak and made a video of the set up.

This park is a big deal for Mont Cascades. We've had terrain parks in the past, but never anything of this magnitude. The freestyle skills clinic is a new program as well. This was an initiative headed by Dana himself (the alpha snowboarder at Mont Cascades). The idea is to help people step up to the bigger features. The clinics will be run primarily by Dana, Yeti (the purple wearing two plank rail destroyer) and yours truly.

I've been fortunate enough to be on snow every day so far this new year. I'm also happy to have taken the time to bone up on my park skills, and excited to try out the new tactics we have developed for sharing these skills with others. If you happen to be in the area, stop by Mont Cascades to check out the Revolution Park. If you're not up to that yet, Dana, Yeti or I would be more than happy to help you out. Maybe we'll see you in the park.

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Happy New Year - Mont Cascades 2009-01-01

2009-01-01 21:44:37

Unless you live in a cave with neither clocks, televisions, calendars, radios or internet, you're probably aware that today was the first day of the new year. Typically, people throw big parties for new year's eve to celebrate with as many friends as possible and, as per tradition, champagne is popped at midnight to mark the new year. Since Dana, the alpha snowboarder at Mont Cascades recently became my roommate, we decided that we could throw a big party to celebrate both the new year and his new living arrangements. The bulk of the Cascades locals crew was invited. The plan was to party hard all night then go shred the gnar (read ice) at Cascades on the first. I'm sure bets were placed as to whether or not we would actually get onto the hill in the morning.

The party got started around 7PM on December 31st. The arrival of the Cascades crew was fairly coordinated. Even a few faces we don't see very often showed up. The first beer was officially spilled around 8PM when Dana introduced some friends to his tiny slot machine that electrocutes the player when it is activated. It seems as though this was going to be a pretty messy night.

The next event in the festivities was Drinking Jenga. A game which involves a standard Jenga game with instructions written on each block which must be followed when the player pulls that block from the pile. Examples of instructions include: all guys drink, everyone talks like Borat (or else you drink), and sociable (where everyone drinks). The first game lasted much longer and resulted in Dana having to drink from the communal cup which at this point consisted of a mixture of whiskey, beer, and wine.

By the time the countdown came around, much of the company was so drunk they wouldn't remember it the next day. My friend Katie in particular blacked out sometime before midnight and does not remember much up until the next morning. I spent the beginning of the new year checking on her every ten minutes or so to make sure she was still breathing. The amazing part is that she never lost her smile.

This new years party was epic, perhaps even worthy of the notorious Wildcats, except our party had more girls. Being the only sober guy at the party though, I hardly got any sleep because I was making sure the drunkards were not getting themselves into mortal danger. By 9:30 AM the next morning we were all up watching Afterlame by Robot Food and were discussing the plan for riding that day. I was quite impressed with the group of lushes who were all pretty much game for riding.

Dana and I got to the hill around 12:30 after a quick stop at Tim Horton's for some bagels (I know, late, gimme a break it was a wild party). We were to meet Clay and Yeti at the hill whenever they showed up. It was bluebird skies and cold out. It hasn't snowed much since Christmas so we were expecting it ot be icy. I brought my park board thinking this would be a park day for sure.

We did a few laps before Clay finally showed up. The conditions were pretty icy and since I was riding my park board, edge hold was going to be an issue. This would be a perfect test of my use of angulation. If I'm not blowing out too severely on the ice, I'm doing something right. I also took this opportunity to work on my switch riding. Dana also found a neat cutout beneath a snow gun which launched us a heck of a lot farther than we expected. We had some fun throwing some canadian bacons and monster shifties.

Besides finding fun features on the runs themselves to ride, we did spend some time in the park. Both Dana and I decided to try the down-bar hand rail today. I'm not gonna lie, handrails scare the crap out of me but I only had one near miss where I nearly tore myself a new butt hole. I was also owning the battleship box all day which was a good feeling. All in all considering how much partying had taken place the night before, this turned out to be a pretty good day riding and a great way to start the season.

Now I'm back at home, after having cleaned the party mess from last night (mostly), feeling pretty tired. I'd like to take this opportunity, however, to wish you all a happy and prosperous new year.

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Happy Feet - The dryer the happier.

2008-12-31 17:51:29

Anyone who has been snowboarding for any amount of time will have encountered, at some point, the dreaded wet boots. Especially while traveling, you may be getting suited up to ride one day and realize that your boots are still wet from the previous day's riding. There's a solution, however, that allows you to keep those tootsies toasty and dry on the shred. It's a simple solution really: boot dryers.

Wet boots are bad for many reasons, not least of which is that they are unpleasant to wear. On cold days, moisture inside your snowboarding boots will likely mean cold feet. Damp footwear can also cause blisters which could lead to a really bad day of riding. I dare you to find a moderately sane person who prefers to ride with blisters than without. Additionally, damp footwear is an ideal place for fungus to grow which can cause foot irritation like athletes foot. It can also encourage staph infections -- if you happen to have an sore or a cut on your feet -- and harbor other germs. All these are very good reasons to want to have dry boots when you ride.

If you live in a place that is heated via a forced air furnace (i.e. you have air vents throughout your abode), then drying your gear is a simple matter of setting it up over one of these vents. This has two notable disadvantages, however, the air coming out of the vents is not forced into the item being dried, and this solution is not entirely portable when you travel. These disadvantages can be mitigated by using a specially molded cover for a floor vent onto which gloves or boots can be placed to ensure that warm air gets inside. These covers are also generally pretty portable and can be brought along and used in other places to. If they are not heated using a forced air furnace, however, you're pretty much out of luck. A better solution is to use a specially designed boot dryer. PEET Dryer and Dryguy offer such devices for home use.

The Original PEET Dryer model uses convection to dry your gear. Air is drawn in through vents, warmed and channeled into the your boots to get them dry. This system does not use a fan so it is very energy efficient. I currently own and have been using the original PEET dryer at home since last year. It keeps my boots nice and dry and mostly odor free which is amazing. It makes me wish I had this device for a certain pair of smelly gloves I had in Whistler a few years ago.

The Dryguy Sweet 16^TM model, on the other hand, uses forced air to get your boots toasty and dry. The disadvantage to this is that it is more energy hungry (it takes energy to turn the fan). However, drying time is very short, about one to two hours on average, so the total time that the dryer needs to be turned on is shortened. The other advantage to this model is that it allows you to dry a pair of gloves and a pair of boots simultaneously.

The only problem with the previously mentioned boot dryers is that they are not entirely portable. I'd really like to be able to bring my dryer with me, especially when I'm in Whistler in the late spring. Slushy conditions often means soaking snowboard gear. Fortunately both PEET and Dryguy offer portable models of their boot dryers. The Go! PEET and the Circulator both offer effective boot drying in a small package. Both models can even be plugged into a car's DC out (also known as a cigarette lighter) for drying on the go.

Any serious snowboarder should really consider getting one of these devices for their home or to keep in their wheelie snowboard bag. Not only will your feet be happier, but it will also be much easier to retain the affection of the admirers of the opposite sex you just impressed with your shred skills when they don't gag from the smell of your boots when you take them off. On the other hand, smelly boots are a good test of a potential mate's character; you probably don't want to expend too much effort courting the ones who actually like the smell of rancid snowboard boots; that's just weird. This still doesn't outweigh the confidence you'll have walking around as if your boots don't stink though. Now if we could only do something about those farts.

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Shredding in the rain - Mont Cascades 2008-12-27

2008-12-28 15:02:56

With the weather being pretty much crappy since Christmas eve, the slopes have become inclined skating rinks. However, when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade, so I decided head up to the mountain in hopes to get some spring riding conditions in the early winter.

Dana and I made our way to the hill in the late morning -- not extraordinarily motivated for some early morning shredding -- and met up with Clay and Yeti who had already done a few laps. It had been freezing rain all night and it was still misting when we arrived. We figured that, in light of the crappy conditions, today would be a park riding day. However, Yeti informed us that the park was closed. This was a bit disappointing since I had spent half an hour Saturday morning scraping and setting up my park board (a beat up old Option Kevin Sansalone). We figured that the park was closed mostly to keep groms from injuring themselves on the ice, but we thought we could convince Mike, the Cascades park guy, to let us session the park on our own under the guise of training.

Since Mike was currently grooming the pro park, which hasn't been open yet this season, we thought we'd go take a few runs before starting our "training". The slopes were, as I stated before, an inclined skating rink. The order of the day was descending in a straight line pivoting from toe-to-heel edge; turning was just not an option. We then decided to explore some of the runs along the edge, which are not typically groomed, hoping we could find a bit more traction.

We managed to find some fun riding on a run ironically named "fun run". It's not possible to groom it because it's basically a bunch of snow covered boulders so the snow conditions were soft beneath an ice crust. This lead to some humorous bails. At one point, Dana had taken a tumble and could not get back up because every time he tried to push himself up, he'd break through the ice crust and sink up to his elbow.

After a few more laps on fun run, the rain decided to do an encore. This pretty much killed any of the stoke we had left since we were now getting soaked and could not see more than a few feet in front of us, but we decided to persevere. Especially considering Shandon and Zoe had just showed up. This had really become a march of the hardcore. It didn't take long, however, before we decided to call it a day. Fortunately, Katie was hosting a party in the village that night so we decided to head to Katie's house early and eat all of her chocolate.

The walk up Katie's drive way was actually more treacherous than anything we had been riding on so far that day. The temperatures were near freezing and the rain made the roads pretty much beyond sketchy. In fact I almost fell twice in the fifty feet from the road to the house. This further fuels the image many of my friends have of me of a guy who can snowboard better than anyone they know but can't walk up the stairs without tripping. Snowboarding is more fun in my opinion anyway.

Following several hours of party games, rain and chocolate consumption, Dana and I decided to try and brave the icy roads and make our way back into town. The trick was getting up the 18% grade hill on the way out of the village. Once we were back on the main roads, however, it was smooth sailing since these roads are generally maintained much better.

Although the conditions this weekend were pretty much poop, a bad day on the slopes is better than a good day in an office. In the end, we did manage to find some fun riding in spite of the horrible weather (unfortunately my camera batteries were dead so I couldn't take any pictures to prove it). If someone were to ask me, in hindsight, if I would head to the slopes if I knew before hand what I know now, I would have to answer with an emphatic "yes". That being said, however, conditions on Sunday were looking to be even worse. In fact, there were some doubts as to whether the hill would open at all so a return trip is not really in the cards. I'm going to avoid emitting more useless carbon and clean my house instead. Hopefully this will encourage some colder temps in the days to come. I'll be doing my snow dance in the meantime in hopes that we'll get a good layer of snow to hide the ice.

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