Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday.

As for an update of what I've been up to, the last month of 2009 has been... epic? Yeah, epic pretty much sums it up - see also: legendary, grand, monumental. My coach and I decided that since the conditions are so good in Whistler, it made more sense to stay in Whistler to train rather than go to Colorado for the pipe camp/contest. Again this year, I'm focusing a lot more on my athletic/riding development than on competition results so this just seemed like the best thing to do. We have a really good program going this year, in addition to tons of on snow training, video review and photo shoots, we also have trampoline 2 nights/week and dryland with Eric Soucy one night/week.

Core training with Eric

Backflips all around! Ettore going large

Me laying one out

Louise helping Grame learn a backflip

The snow finally stopped around the start of the month and was replaced by some cold but sunny days. I've had some great days in the Black Park. I've got most of my tricks back that I was doing last year and a few new ones to add to my repertoire. I've been working with Rob on really dialing in my tricks this year. I'm trying different grabs and spins to try to stand out from the pack of talented riders that I compete against.

One of the riders in my club recently bought a new digital camera that takes really good slow motion video and we were playing around with that the other day. Check out the video edit below.

It's snowing like mad in Whistler again which made it tough to come home for the holidays. I had to change my flight to squeeze a few extra days in while the snow was awesome. As for now, I'm back home and enjoying the comforts of being home, seeing all my friends and nursing a frostbitten toe from last night's snowboarding session. I guess I'm not used to snowboarding at -20 anymore. I'm looking forward to snowboarding at some of the spots I grew up riding while I'm back so I better get used to the cold pretty quick.

Best wishes over the holidays,

Andrew

Climate Change Action Now

In a winter sport like snowboarding, I am especially concerned about the impacts that are already being seen from climate change. A report by the United Nations warned that downhill skiing could dissapear from resorts as early as 2030 (source: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/Projects/PlayItCool/play_it_cool_why.asp). The most recent scientific studies outline that the world needs to reduce our greenhouse gas emmisions by 40% below 1990 levels by the year 2020 and the global peak of greenhouse gas emissions needs to occur by 2015 in order to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change. We need action now.

The largest and most important conference (on climate change) to date will be starting on Monday. The United Nations Climate Change Conference starts on December 7th and goes until December 18th. This is a chance for world leaders to make an agreement to reduce emission and provide aid to developing countries. For more information about the conference, see the official website here.

Canada is stalling to commit to anything in line with current scientific targets. In past conferences, we have had a negative impact on moving forward with climate change action. Now we have the chance to make up for that. I have already sent a letter expressing my concern to Prime Minister Harper (along with Mr. Jim Prentice, the Environmental Minister, as well as others).  It is very easy to let the Prime Minister know that you care about the future of the environment and Canada's roll as a world leader in these issues. To sign and send a letter to the Prime Minister, follow this link to the David Suzuki Foundation site. It's easy!

Here's the first part of The Age Of Stupid. It's a pretty intense documentary that I saw at an event put on by Ecology North while I was back in Yellowknife. If you have time, I would recommend checking it out.

Age of Stupid: DVD: Copenhagen Kids from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

-A M

Record Snowfall!

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

Game On!

Today was opening day at Whistler, 12 days ahead of schedule! We've been getting tons of snow and they pretty much had to open it early or there would have been a riot. There already have a 100 cm base! That's more than they had until Christmas last year. It looks like this could be an amazing season if it keeps up.

This was my first opening day... ever! I've never been at a resort when it first opened and I wasn't sure what to expect. My friends told me that the lines would be crazy so we got up at 6:30 so that we would be at the lift an hour before they started spinning. With it being such an epic early season, I think everyone was stoked to get back on the mountain. The line when we arrived was "nuts" as my brother put it. It went all the way to the bus stop from the Whistler Gondola! After waiting in anticipation for a while (and the line moved from towards the bus stop to threw the village) I noticed that the line had grown so big that I couldn't even see the end of it!

Once the lifts started running we got up pretty quickly. There was a crazy energy in the air the entire day with everyone so pumped to be back on snow. I got to ride with some Yellowknifers, my brother and Joel Smith who is starting with the WVSC program for the weekends this year. Yellowknifers are always fun to ride with because we're pumped on any hill with a lift. We all had some great turns in the powder. It was a great start to a great season! Game on!

PS: Sorry that I don't have any pictures but I didn't think my camera would do so well in the powder. To make up for that, check out my newly acquired photos that I received from a spanish photographer that was in Whistler for the Grenade Games. These were taken during the warmup.

Backside 180 sequence

See ya on the slopes!

Andrew