It's that time again

Greetings all...

After a busy summer and fall was celebrated with a trip to Nicaragua and Costa Rica with friend Kyler Cooley I've spent the past week getting rid of the rust at Park City. Even with the lack of natural snow they opened with an impressive early-season park. With three jumps, ranging from 25 to 40, and 15 plus jibs, Park City is setting the bar high for the coming months. I am yet to snap any pictures of their setup but here is a link to an edit from Rage Films' Pretty Good footage and some pictures from Central America.

View of San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

Volcán Concepción, Isle de Ometepe

Home of the $2.00 breakfast in Nicaragua

View from future home in Nicaragua...

Monkeying around

The Alto getting it done in Costa Rica
Sunset in Nicaragua

Playa Samara, Costa Rica

Home sweet home

I know its been a few weeks since I last gave an update on my whereabouts, but its been a hectic month to say the least. I returned to Utah a couple of weeks ago to close on a house expecting to sign a few papers and then return to wherever the snow was good. Lucky for me though, the snow came with me. Alta reported 169 inches (over 14 feet) in 14 days; Brighton and the surrounding backcountry were close behind.

With most of Rage's athletes busy elsewhere, my roommate Kyler Cooley and I got to work in our backyard. We spent a few days of the snowy stretch shredding Alta, making bottomless turns and choking down snow. Another two day storm we went to Brighton, hitting cliff after cliff, rock after rock. We snowmobiled the rest of the days, from Logan to the Uinta's, getting face shots on both our sleds and skis.

The storms seem to be winding down just in time for park shoots to start. The Canyons is kicking things off for us this year with a three day superpark. I hope you enjoy the pictures below (thanks Hennie, and bare with the quality, my camera broke) and more importantly hope you all had great season.

Jump time

After a hectic trip to the west coast chasing snow I made a 10 hour stop at home and repacked my bags and headed to Idaho in search of more snow. AJ de Saint Phalle, Ian Cosco, Kyler Cooley, and I arrived to the trailhead mid-storm to find over a foot of snow. The snow didn't subside until the following evening, leaving us bottomless landings and incredibly fun snowmobiling.

We spent the next couple of days skiing powder and finding natural take-offs, waiting for blue skies. Once visibility improved, the four of us picked up our shovels and began shaping lips.

After all was said and done, we managed to hit our share of jumps, spending the majority of our digging hours on a gap (we named it the McCall Jump) that would have made Ostness proud. I hope the pictures do it justice, and I'll keep anyone who reads this updated on my whereabouts in the coming weeks.

Best chairlift ever!

Driving along in my automobile

After a long weekend with my mom and brother in Salt Lake City I said my fond farewells, dropped them at the airport, and promptly began my journey to the west coast. After forecasts of two to four feet in Oregon's Cascade Mountain Range I was excited to get out of Utah. While it was great to take some runs with my family, get fed delicious food, and play tour guide for a few days, Utah's conditions made it a no-brainer to get as far away from crust layers and ice as possible.

After nearly 700 miles in my truck I made it to Oregon to find an updated forecast calling for just less than foot of snow over the next few days. We tried our luck the next day and ended up hitting a jibby rock hoping the snow would pile up.

Later that day I was back in my truck driving to California. While Tahoe was getting hammered with a storm that shut ski resorts down we tried our luck four hours to the west, and hit the jackpot. We landed in a zone in the middle of nowhere, battled no crews (other than a group of partying slednecks), and found both great terrain and snow conditions.

As the wind and sun began to affect the snow, some of our crew went back to Oregon, while Cosco, Kyler Cooley, and myself made our 13 hour drive to Northern Utah just in time for another 18-30 inch storm.

While I ended up behind the wheel of my car far more than usual, this past trip turned out to be pretty successful by the time it wrapped up. I think we all bagged a few shots for Rage's new movie (insert movie name here) and I'm hoping to get a few more bangers in the coming days. And to put a positive spin on the almost 2000 miles I drove in the past week or so Nica Dev will be seeing a few more trees donated to their efforts of improving life in Nicaragua. Prior to this trip the whole Rage crew had been doing a great job making conscious efforts to reduce all of our carbon footprints.

I'll keep you all updated on as this trip pans out, but until then, enjoy the pictures below. I hope you're all getting plenty of good snow in your neck of the woods and that Spring takes it's time getting here.

Is that Chug on his new XP? In both pictures!?

I just realized how much I played out that volcano in every single pictures background.

And I promised my brother I'd put a shot of him in one of these blog updates. He's almost grabbing, but by the end of the weekend he had 720 mutes on lock (his rail game could use a little work though...)

The snow finally showed up

Its been a while since I've checked in with the Internet crowd, but the snow has taken a turn for the better here in Utah, allowing me to give an update with some adequate pictures and explanation.

As I was walking out my door to drive to Oregon February 6th I sent a last ditch phone call to Rage Films hoping to persuade them to send someone to Utah. Luckily it worked, and AJ de Saint Phalle packed his truck while I unloaded mine. After a few issues with heavy snow and his trailer tires, he showed up 16 hours later.

With my roommate still nursing a broken collar bone, AJ and I sledded around Utah's mountains looking for powder as building jumps isn't a whole lot of fun with two people. Mike Mertion showed up yesterday though so we pushed our pillow lines and powder turns to the back-burner and are busy building jumps in these last few sunny days before a few more storms hit Utah. I hope you enjoy the pictures and are getting plenty of good snow yourself.

And that's why Seo gets paid to take pictures and I dont. Shameless product plug...Thanks guys!

It's only funny because the hill was ten vertical feet, and he's actually good at sledding.


Just rediculous pillows everywhere, and the zone was huge.

And Mertion finally showed up and here's one of the jumps we built.

Middle of nowhere Idaho

My roommate and I left Utah's unusually high avalanche danger to meet up with AJ Burton, Mike Mertion, and Rage Films' Dan Norkunas in a safer Idaho backcountry earlier this month. We spent the first couple of days exploring the deserted rolling terrain and wide-open bowls, scoping lines and jump spots, and remembering just how unreliable snowmobiles can be. Dan's sled drank a few gallons of anti-freeze before he fixed it, and my roommate, Kyler Cooley, couldn't come up with a solution to his snowmobile's antics and took off two days into the trip.

With the unlimited backcountry access virtually all to ourselves, we kept busy for the remainder of the trip. With no ski or snowboard crews, or even sledneckers (we saw fewer than 25 snowmobilers the entire trip) anywhere close to us, we split our time between jumps, jibs, and lines without the worry of anything getting tracked up.

Once the kinks were worked out this trip couldn't have turned out better. With endless terrain accessible from our lodge's parking lot, we saved both commuting hours and gasoline by not driving to trailheads to snowmobile. The lodge provided everything we needed, from snowmobile gas to dinner (with the exception of coffee and cell phone service ) to a helpful staff.

After our last day of skiing I caught a ride with Dan back to Utah just in time for a soccer game (we won 1-0) and woke up to Kyler itching to ski Park City. With pretty much everyone who is anyone training pipe for the upcoming X-games PCMR's big park was as deserted as Idaho's mountains. I'll be in Utah for another few days, but am hoping to get back at it and head back into the backcountry once the conditions improve. Enjoy the pictures below, and I apologize ahead of time as we are better skiers than photographers as you'll soon see.