Christmas comes early in Utah

Christmas is still three days away, but Utahn's already have plenty to be thankful for. The snow is piling up on my ping-pong table almost as fast as it is in the Wasatch Mountains. There's been so much snow in the city Santa came down early to test some of Atomic's skis for his sleigh. Here he is blasting off my roof with a bag of toys. He wasn't thrilled with our cramped gas fireplace, lack of milk, and outdated advent calender, but he sure did love the Bentchetlers.

Jokes aside, the season is definitely in full swing here in Utah. Alta has a 62" base, and as a current storm is wrapping up another sizable one is set to hit us Christmas day (good thing Santa already stopped at my house).

Park City Mountain Resort has done a great job getting ample jibs and jumps built, with a ridiculously fun 5-pack jump line. If my roommate new how to take pictures I'd have a few action shots for this update, but his picture taking abilities are similar to those of a two year old. These are the last few jumps of the new park, with the superpipe slotted to open Tuesday.

I'm off to Alta tomorrow tomorrow to play in all the new snow, so I'm hopeful to get a few decent photos to make all you east coasters jealous (and yes, I realize there is a storm in New England).

On a different note, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and that Santa finds his way to your place too.

Some extra Rage Films footage

After much bantering I convinced Dan Norkunas at Rage Films to put together an edit from a bit of extra footage from this past season. Hope you all enjoy it and to anyone in the western part of the country, hope you guys are getting some of this much anticipated storm coming our way. Evryone needs it!

So until my roommate comes home and can teach me how to embed a video, click this link to enjoy a couple minutes of what winter should look like. It's slowly coming around here in Utah, as Park City has a small jump line and a lengthy jib line that is a blast, while Little Cottonwood and Big Cottonwood resorts have managed to open quite a bit of fun terrain. These next storms coming through should give me an excuse to give the new rockered skis a go.

Happy turkey day!

Even with the closest member of my family about 2000 miles away I still managed my fair share of Thanksgiving dinners. The last pie is out of the oven, the coffee is brewing, and I'm too stuffed to change the channel (my roommate loves The Hills).

Tonight marks the end of lengthy Thanksgiving feasting for me. This past Sunday kicked off the start of it, with 20 or so friends eating the night away. Today my work provided all the turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and sweets I could manage, and I just polished off another full plate of holiday tradition with my girlfriend, roommate, and cat.

On a different note, Park City Mountain Resort opens tomorrow,
so I'll finally sit on the my first chairlift of the season tomorrow morning. Hopefully it will look something like the picture to the right, but for some reason with the last snowfall being well over a week ago, I don't imagine it will be that deep, but I'm sure it will be fun either way.

Anyone living in SLC, hit me up if you're loooking to carpool; I'm always looking to take one less car off the road.

Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was filled with good food, friends, family, and more food.

The nitty gritty...

Earlier this fall I went home to Connecticut where I took off to the beach for a few days with old high-school buddies. One drink led to another and soon enough politics found its way to the table. Arguing politics after a few drinks (let alone with friends) is generally a lost cause; just a fruitless process that does nothing but work everyone up. So I shouldn’t have been surprised to find myself isolated, my back against a wall, arguing my side to ears that weren’t listening.

The one argument I continually went back to was to give global warming the benefit of the doubt. Even if one doesn’t believe in it, why not side with safety by acting responsibly and treading lightly just in case global warming is indeed caused by human activity?

I am implementing this carbon offsetting project not to simply play it safe, but because I think global warming is a human-caused phenomenon that individuals can influence in a positive manner. There are plenty of ways to reduce greenhouse gases, and any individual, family, or corporation can take steps to reduce their carbon emissions.

While this project will not turn my ski season into a carbon neutral winter, it will significantly reduce my carbon footprint and ease my mind. Starting Friday, November 28th I will begin tracking miles driven and gasoline burned to calculate how many pounds of carbon dioxide my vehicle and snowmobile emit.

According to the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency 19.4 pounds of carbon dioxide is created from burning one gallon of gasoline. While that seems impossible as one gallon of gasoline weighs just over six pounds, read this for an explanation.

Bring trees into the picture and 19.4 pounds is no longer just an arbitrary number. Trees need hundreds, and many times thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide to survive, a key component in photosynthesis. Trees undergo a constant process of carbon sequestration (absorbing and storing carbon dioxide over their lifetime), with different species absorbing different amounts of carbon dioxide. Longer living and faster growing trees tend to absorb more carbon dioxide than a short tenured or slow growing tree.

According to Reforest the Tropics, a non-profit Costa Rican organization, a Central American hardwood tree would absorb an average of about 80 pounds of carbon dioxide annually, and has a lifespan of over 25 years. Differently put, 25 hardwood trees have the potential to sequester about 2000 pounds of carbon dioxide annually. I’ll save more math for a later post as if you’ve read this far, chance is you’re losing interest.

While tree planting or reforestation is just one of many ways to offset carbon emissions, I chose to use this method for various reasons. Nica Dev, the nature reserve I will be working with has planted over 95,000 indigenous trees since 2006, giving it great experience in managing its land and caring for the trees. Studies have also shown that planting trees in tropical regions of the world may actually help slow global warming. And trees can provide countless more uses than simply absorbing carbon dioxide. They provide shade, oxygen, economic opportunities, yield fruit, offer habitats for animals, and many more uses.

The ski season is about to kick off so I’ll do my best to get a few pictures of both my modes of transportation, and hopefully some action shots one of these days. Thanks for the interest, and hope your home mountain is opening soon.

Carbon nuetral: halfway there?

It's about that time of year again, and for me that means significant travel for the next five to six months. For those who don't know me, my name is Dylan Natale and I do my best to put together a couple of movie segments each season (last year with Rage Films and Atomic Freeskiing/Kris Ostenss). To do so means hectic and sometimes obscure travelling to wherever the conditions are right.

While I jump at the opportunity to see new places, ski new terrain, and meet new people, there is a growing part of me that feels a sense of guilt in my lifestyle as well. With constant travel, many times in a full size truck towing a snowmobile, comes a large carbon footprint.

While some argue global warming is yet to be a factual truth, I can’t help but worry that frivolous carbon dioxide outputs (not excluding myself) will create milder, shorter, and drier winters in the years to come. I spend much of the winter traveling in search of unique terrain to ski, gaining access much of the time by snowmobile. I realize the conundrum I’ve created by snowmobiling so frequently yet still worrying about warming temperature trends and my personal carbon footprint.

However, during the summer months, I pride myself for my conservation efforts: I ride my bike, unplug electronics, shop locally, turn off my roommates lights, etc. etc. And for the past few years I justified my winter travels by my frugality come summer. But last May, during one of those agonizing stretches of flat, straight road I-80 offers through Nevada, I realized I could, and should, do more. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do something to offset all the miles I travel. What I came up with is a project that will offset the carbon emissions produced by my truck and snowmobile by implementing a tree planting program in a nature reserve in Nicaragua.

With ski areas opening here in Utah the project is about to kick off as I try to get my legs back under me. I will keep the updates coming as to both my whereabouts this season and to the success of the project, and probably a few random posts here and there.

Hope to see you out there,

Dylan