Loving the trip report, follow your exploits every year and just makes me want to do the same!

Olympic Speed Skater training.

Damn thats cool, what did they have going on in the middle of the rink? Looks like some kind of racket sports? Cold weather training lol?

just randoms playing tennis

After watching the Broncos game and seeing it was 65 and sunny there today, how are the conditions around there? I never been out there, but damn, there wasn't snow anywhere on the ground.

Denver can be a lot different than the mountains. The city of Breckenridge is at 9600 ft. They've been getting good snow since the holidays I think.

Tahoe is struggling bad though. I am planning on visiting someone there in Feb or march but may skip it if it doesn't start dumping. Some of the pics I've seen there are bad. Heavenly has had bears out of hibernation on the hill lol.

Thanks for the explanation. Would love to take my son and wife out there. She will be at the pool.

Yeah the resorts are a good 70 miles out of denver up into the mountains. Closest is winter park. I lived in breck for a bit and had friends who lived in winter park in the late 90s - early 2000s.

If there's a crack at the top and there's a bulge on the base, the board hit something hard. No edge damage? Did your board get knocked over?

Not that I am aware of. There isn't any edge damage either. I still have a 99 or 2000 Burton FL Project that I rode for years and that thing is beat to hell from hitting trees and rocks and other things and never cracked so I wasn't sure what this crack was about. I emailed them with a pic and am waiting to hear back.

Was just up in Breckenridge.

Hadn't gone skiing in like 8 years before this weekend, was taking on the blue runs by an hour or so in, just like riding a bike.

Did Breckenridge on Friday and Keystone on Saturday. Keystone def had much steeper runs than Breckenridge did. No fresh powder at all during the weekend but still an awesome 2 days, plus returning down the mountain to Denver and to 60 degree temps wasn't bad either!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MsfU...ature=youtu.be

discovered a little gem while driving around the shiretoko peninsula yesterday. who knows how many foreigners have ever skied it. we havent seen a white person in 3 days now.

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Expecting buckets of snow in dolomites on Thursday and Friday, ready for me to ski on Monday!

It's pretty sad that after today's storm, Connecticut will have better conditions than Vermont. I guess I'll go hit the tiny ass mountain tomorrow. FML.

Skleice.... How bad is killington?

checked out another two unknown small resorts, abashiri and northern arc. seems these places survive from schoolkids. foreigners very rarely ski them, everyone stares at me and my white gf everywhere we go, its been 5 days since we last saw another white person.

I've avoided it because all reports I've seen say it's a giant glacier. Seems to be really bad ATM. It's not their fault, but that whole area is pretty terrible which sucks for me cuz Stratton, okemo, killington, etc are all reasonably close. I had 2 good days at Stratton and a 1 decent day at Okemo. Now I'm just twiddling my thumbs cuz I'm not interested in 'loose granular' boarding.

HAHA,, I know what you mean. Thanks for the update. Someday I want to go back there. I was like 15 or so, and seemed like it took 20min or so to get down to the bottom. Not like around my area. 3 min. down. 20 min. up.

Just got back from Colorado. Rode Breck thursday for my first time. They supposedly had 7 feet of snow in the first 2 weeks. Was able to find some fresh tracks off the main runs. All the hike to terrain was closed because they were non stop blasting for avalanches. The new peak 6 is pretty cool for mellower high alpine terrain but was fairly busy.

Rode Fri, Sat and Sun at Steamboat Springs. Even almost a week after the last snow I was able to find fresh tracks. Steamboat has a lot of really good tree skiing and isn't real crowded. It's a bit further than Breck, Key, Vail etc. but def worth it.

mouthtoilet,
Which monopod do you use? I bought the quickpod and it seems a bit heavy.

i use my mountain bike handlebar mount with one of my retractable backcountry ski poles. its not light but im just making use of what i already have.

So I'm done day 4 of 5 in BC. Here are my general impressions so far

Day 1 Whistler Blackcomb

The Good:
-variety
-challenging terrain
-long runs

The Bad:
-not for beginners
-ignorant skiers
-too warm
-ice
-too busy
-catching edges
-girls wearing the brightest coats were all ugly

So for a Monday I expected it to be less insane. However, it was busier than any mountain I've ever gone to, including Christmas break. There were about 10 beginner groups with ski instructors on various spots. Really didn't make sense to see these kids on Blue runs going 5km/h and forcing everyone to slow way down. Also, Whistler Green runs are almost all equivalent to Blue runs, and almost all of their Blue runs should be rated as Blacks. Not a big issue for me, but I would never bring a novice snowboarder there because it would probably suck for them. This mountain would probably be better for skiers for sure. As far as the icy runs: I am very careful about not catching edges, and I can say I've only had it happen 5 times where I landed badly. 3 of those times were on Monday. One of them I was going about 30-40km/h tops, went over a spot that looked like fluffy snow, turned out to be a mound of ice. I fell backward and smoked the back of my head hard. It definitely rung my bell, and I'd say was about equivalent to a medium punch to the back of the head. More painful was the whiplash, which bothered me a bit the next day. Whistler also had a lot of rude people there. Got cut off by skiers ripping without realizing they were cutting through a Merge area. One time I was getting ready to turn a 180 to follow a trail, and a girl going straight cut through there and I ran over the back of her skis by accident lol. Whistler hasn't had snow in a week and it is 100% not worth going without powder. If they have powder, it's probably absolutely amazing.

Next time I am going to wait for powder and make a last minute trip there.

My experience 4/10. If it had powder, 8-9/10

Tuesday - Sun Peaks Kamloops

This mountain surprised me in a couple ways. For one, Kamloops is mostly hilly, so their mountains are very smooth. Unfortunately, they aren't very steep and even on the fastest run I couldn't hit 80 km/h. On the good side, their black diamond runs were powdery, they had a ton of runs and you could ski under the road to get to the mountains across the street. They also had a decent amount of variety, and their moguls were actually soft. I spent a decent amount of time learning to take jumps and landed a few so I was happy.

My experience 7/10 with powder 8/10

Wednesday - Big White

Still no powder, but even though it was snowing and foggy, the runs are very covered in the trees so visibility stays good. Of all the groomers this one didn't have any icy spots until almost the end of the day. There were a couple spots that stayed soft all day and it wasn't overly busy. They also had a back side of the mountain with pretty much nobody on it. They have a ton of variety, I found a bunch of fun trails through the woods and there were lots of jumps along the sides of runs. Another cool feature is that the mountain is built around the ski village so there's a bunch of places where you can ski right to your vehicle, which I like. Friendly crowd, people seem to pay better attention before cutting into lanes, and the ski instructors weren't clogging up the hill. Staff were great. I took a wrong turn after last chair, one of the lift attendants led me to the correct way, and they let me go up a different chair so that I could board right to my car. I was happy.
Great mountain.

My experience 8/10 With powder 9/10

Thursday - Revelstoke

Biggest vertical in North America. This mountain was steep! Again no damn powder, but with powder this one would be incredible. Lots of challenging runs, visibility was good at the very top, kinda foggy in the middle, and then clear at the bottom. It cleared up at about 2:30 so I got to blast a little bit more but by then the groomers were starting to turn to ice. With powder there was 3+ spots where I'd be able to hit 120. I spent a good deal of time on some tree runs because visibility was pretty good in there. This definitely improved my skills today and I did a bunch of runs where I was hitting untouched snow.

My experience 7/10 With powder 9/10

Tomorrow I hit Kicking Horse, which is supposed to have great champagne powder. Hopefully it doesn't disappoint. So far none of the hotels around here seem too packed so maybe it won't be crazy busy. I'll post my review of it soon.

The shred resumes, and I am in Nayoro Piyashiri, another resort where the Japanese Army trains.

nice report winner, thanks