Pow Day!

So Jan 7th after skiing and wing night at cop, Audrey and I headed to Banff for the weekend. Saturday was cold and not great conditions out so we opted to hang out relax and explore banff a little bit. But Saturday around mid to late after noon it started snowing and Sunday we scored a pow day at Sunshine. It was super cold out that day, we had to go in and warm up every few runs, but it was super fun. It was also Audrey's first powder day since hurting her knee last season!

In this picture I had just dropped the cliffs behind me and am setting up to enter a treed section just out of frame!

New Years Day Surf!

After waking up a little on the late side, as is understandable on New Years day, Jakko, Matt, Dillion and myself piled in to Matt's surf-mobile and headed for Terrace Bay. Swell was forcasted at 14 feet and from the highway on the way into town we could see that it was probably right!

We decided to try the surf spot called Pump House as the beach faced around 90 degrees to the swell direction. This forced the waves to wrap into the bay, cleaning them up and knocking them down in size (Jakko originally wanted to surf that right way in the background of the picture but it was out of my ability level and I like living). It also gave us a nice barrier of trees to dampen the 40km/h winds.

Jakko paddle out first follwed by me. Once out, we discovered a crazy longshore current carrying us down the bay to where bigger and more inconsistant sets were coming in. But after catching a wave in each and a long walk down the beach I found a sweet little riptide. The rip not only made getting out a breeze, but if you stayed to surfers left of it there was no other currents, so staying in place was easy. After that we ended up surfing this sick right (its out of from to the right of the picture) for a few hours before bigger and bigger waves snuck in. This culminated in a monster set taking all four of us out at once as we got caught inside. It was hardest i've been owned in awhile, including numerous slams off the bottom and just enough time to catch one breath before the second wave pretty much took me the rest of the way to shore! We all looked at each other and decided that was a wrap. Which was a good thing as the 2.5 hour drive took about 5 as a winter storm had just starting pushing it's way into the area.

Yay Old Footage!

Okay, so last season I did what never happends, I had my best riding days of the season coincide with filming days! I know it's rare, but I had some unreal footage! I had follow cam jump lines with sw right 7's to sw left 10's. I had all four 720s, I corks and sw corks, and I had sick rail shots like 50/50's on an urban set up park rail, and sw ups to sw 50/50s. It was amazing...then the even more rare, a Macintosh computer crashed! On the Mac's hard drive was all that footage, and since the footy was taken off a hard drive camera (damn that technology to hell) there was no hard copies since the camera had been long cleared to make way for new footage.

So here is the best of the minor amount of footage that I had on my camera from last year. It's more of a joke edit, but you'll like it, enjoy!

December Surf

So no big deal December 28th, snow on the ground, surfing Lake Superior. Mike (my little bro) and I drove from Thunder Bay, to Terrace Bay for his virgin surf experience.

I had kind of convinced Mike earlier in the week to come out with me on the next decent day so he could try some surfing for the first time. I think we where supposed to leave at like 8 in the morning. We didn't end up leaving until around 11, but that was okay because the weather wasn\t that nice and as we were suiting up the sky went blue bird and it warmed up! There ended up being 5 of us in total and the session was pretty sick. Mike did really well and got some experience under his belt, I figured out that fancy looking wax jobs are not always functional and big ups to Chris for the hot shower and hot food!

(in the picture is Mike starting to paddle out for the first time)

First Hand Rail Of The Season!

So what you see above, is my first hand rail of the season. It was boxing day and it was just Van Bailey and myself seshing the most hit urban in Thunder Bay, the Sir John A School down bar; more commonely known as SJAM. It was a sick, warm, (high was -7.5 according to a weather site) blue bird day and no box store super deal could keep me from riding that day.

For the session we used a bungee for speed. One of us was filming or taking pictures and whoever was dropping in was left to pull the bungee back on their own, which was not easy. At the end of the day I felt like I had just gone wake boarding for the first time of the season.

It didn't take long to start greasing the rail, then moving in to 2 out's. Once we were comfy we started toying around. Van, got it unnatty, which I have always wanted to do but after watching him drop the bungee in between his legs on the first try and eating it, I decided I would wait for a drop in ramp. I didn't even realize that was possible at that point! He also went for the 2 on, trying to be (to the best of my knowledge) the first person to get a 2 onto that rail. As for me I worked into a sweet nose press I'm super proud of (seen above). I was realing hoping for a front side switch up to front 2 out, but with time running out and family functions to go to we agreed to come back another day.

Late Post, But Merry Xmas!

So I hope everyone had a merry Christmas. I know this is a couple weeks late as I was a little all over the place this holidays (drove over 5000 kms in a few weeks), and am just getting back to the computer!

The holidays were sweet, spent time with friends and fam and came back to Calgary for a sick weekend in Banff with Audrey! I have 4 more blog posts coming up over the next few days with some of the stuff I did during Xmas. I figured the best way to do it was update my blog every second day.

As for this update, I just wanted to say a belated Merry Christmas and happy holidays hope everyone had fun.

I aslo want to thank Rossignol, and Denis Leclaire and Maire Allaire for the gear, support and being just plain awesome. In this picture I am wearing new Rossi hoodie, gloves, touque, head band and neck warmer they gave me as well as holding on to a new pair of S4's with FKS bindings on them. Also thank you Ski Hause for mounting them for me! I'm also standing behind a wall of some of the skis I've aquired through my years of sponsorship with Rossi if you didn't notice!