I spent a few hours tuning skis last weekend. Who else is getting ready? Here’s a quickie from last winter at an undisclosed location deep in the New England Backcountry…
Soundtrack:
I spent a few hours tuning skis last weekend. Who else is getting ready? Here’s a quickie from last winter at an undisclosed location deep in the New England Backcountry…
Soundtrack:
For everyone who has ever asked, “Didn’t you just go [hiking|skiing|biking|rafting|kayaking|insert outdoors sport of choice here]?” Well here is my response. And you may (in fact I encourage you to) quote me on this.
This represents the first ‘lengthy’ video I’ve done in quite a while. After roughly a year of considerable slacking, and the associated accumulation of interesting footage, I decided enough was enough. No point in owning two GoPros and two expensive point-and-shoots without ever doing anything cool with the footage. In the end, this video uses on the the Hero 3 Black and HD Hero footage – the rest of the stills I’m saving for subsequent projects.
One of my goals for this project was to collect up all of the clips which were cool but did not really warrant a standalone treatment. Additionally, I really wanted to focus on quality over quantity. I settled on a thematically appropriate soundtrack which was only moderately long and lent itself to the ‘story’ being told. With the intent of producing what is essentially a mashup of miscellaneous old footage, a moderately long soundtrack should let me cram in a lot of random stuff without feeling the need to add filler or fade out the music after I’ve run our of exciting footage. The numerous ‘false endings’ provide the ability to naturally segment the clips and offer some periodic changes in tempo. Also, it’s Motorhead. Seriously, there is not enough classic heavy metal in action sports or pop culture, or really anywhere…
Over the weekend Karma payed dividends in the form of the ol’ white gold! It all started with getting Xterrible stuck in a ditch on a snowy roadside somewhere in Vermont…
…As we arrived at the trail head, as described by a friend of a friend, we attempted to pull onto the shoulder and out of the road. I flipped on the 4WD and crept into the half foot or so of fluff on the edge of the road…only to be promptly pulled into a ditch immediately beside the road. Strongly suspecting I’d just sabotaged our day, Kelly and I exchanged dubious glances as I threw it into reverse and vainly tried to pull out of the snow. No dice. We shoveled a bit. Also not helpful. In a last-ditch effort, Kelly took the wheel while I pushed. The notion of me pushing a 5000 lb car is pretty ridiculous, but the idea of three of me pushing a 5000 lb car begins to sound plausible. If only there were two more of me…
Right on cue, two burly snowmobilers emerged at the trail and took notice of our plight. They strolled over and with one big heave between the bunch of us, we had the car back on the road. We thanked them profusely, cleared out a proper parking area, and started getting our gear ready for the tour.
As we concluded our gear harmonizing, a jovial ski-bum looking fellow rolled up in an old Toyota T-100 truck and introduced himself. Turns out this guy was also here to explore the unknown stashes that were thought to lay somewhere in the woods beyond. We teamed up with out new touring partner Zach, and the blind led the blind into the woods.
We followed the snowmobile trail into the forest; an easy skin after maybe a dozen snow machines packed it out for us. After 30 minutes or so we came around a corner to find a couple of sledders trying to drag a their machine back onto the trail, where it had apparently slid off. Sympathetic to their plight, Zach and I put our backs into it, and between the four of us had the sled back on the trail in a jiffy.
Having balanced our pool of Karma we traveled deeper into the woods in search of the elusive powder stashes. After a series of fortuitous educated guesses we happened across the elicit goods! We set a skin track up one of the best looking pitches and indulged in several laps of powdery euphoria.
Update: video now available here.
Gear List
Sweeney managed to book a trip to visit me out in Seattle and experience the skiing, hiking, climbing and whatever else we could squeeze into four days.
Day one, last Friday, involved heading up to Steven’s Pass for a ski tour at Yodelin. There we were introduced to our new friend Claudio, visiting from Switzerland, and together we enjoyed some excellent powder skiing.
Claudio and I enjoying the view.
The authors of this site together in the West for the first time in years.
We did a few laps up top in a thinly treed, fairly mellow zone, all having a ball. During a short stop for lunch Claudio shared Swiss specialties and we basked in the views. Descending we found a slightly steeper slope and opened up the throttle a bit.
I compiled some footage below. Sweeney’s goPro was unfortunately having some issues.
Yodelin was a fairly short tour, but a good introduction to the PNW and only the first adventure of the trip. Stay tuned for climbing, hiking and more ski touring, we packed it in.