Record snowfalls in November has made this a month to remember! I've had more powder days this season, in November, than I did during all of last season. There is already a snow base of 189 cm. Can you tell that I'm happy?! The riding has been SO sweet! Last night at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, I was trying to explain to Thomsen how it feels to ride powder. It's one of the best feelings in the world; floating over the snow, flying off pillow lines, snow spraying into your face. It makes all the time I spent doing physio and dry-land training for the season worth while without a doubt.
For the first couple of weeks that the mountain was open, the only way to get up was via the Whistler gondola. This (and 50+ cm snowfalls overnight) made for HUGE lines on several occasions. Check out the the photo below and imagine about 5 times that big, basically if you weren't there an hour before the lifts were supposed to open, you were anxiously waiting in this overwhelming line for a while. Once we got up the mountain, it was well worth the wait. In a word: epic.
Brendan: waiste + deep in snow and loving it!
I've spent the past few weeks transitioning from fall dry-land training to full on winter on snow training. I've been working on my freeride skills, which REALLY help overall riding. It's going well, I'm feeling a lot more confident riding natural terrain. We've been doing some hikes in search of deeper, untouched powder. One particular hike, my Italian roommate/teammate Ettore and I did a mission from the Gondola to the top of Whistler: a solid 1.5 hour trek. Needless to say, we were stoked when we got to the top and rode the fresh powder. The pictures are below.
Halfway point on hike
All for the powder!
Right after this Ettore said something along the lines of "Oh my god! Beautiful!"
Blackcomb Mountain is now open as well, complete with a nice park. We spent the day riding it today. I got the started to rebuild my confidence for hitting rails and jumps. Time to get back into the freestyle mentality and remember how to do those tricks! They also have the snow pushed into mounds for the halfpipe, so that could be done any day now.
It's pretty exciting to be here now with all of the snow as well as the Olympics coming soon.
On another note, I finally gave in and decided to start a Twitter account. This way I can post a lot more updates a lot quicker. I put a feed from it on my blog and website. You can also follow my account if you like at: www.twitter.com/andrewsnowboard.
Tweet ya later,
Andrew
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