Burton Freestyle Camp at Tamworth Snowdome

Well, it's been an offensive amount of time since I last blogged - not good :(

Anyway...
Looks like Burton snowboards will be doing a freestyle camp at Tamworth Snowdome! Check out the details here: http://whitelines.mpora.com/ne​ws/burton-freestyle-camps-hit-​tamworth-month.html

Will hopefully be checking it out...

Snowboarding Footage from Les Deux Alpes - March 2011

It takes so long to put videos together - it's sole destroying. None the less, I showed commitment and did this one. It's quite long (about 20 minutes), so be prepared to be bored ;) hehehe!

It was all shot on a GoPro (SD). Board mounted, facing the rider or to the front and hand held also. You don't get a real good reflection of the speed - hit 45 mph at one point - looks like 10.

Due to YowTube limits, I have had to do it 2 parts (a playlist), so expect a brief break in between the parts...

Maps and My Tracks

As I said here, I used a wicked app on my phone called My Tracks while we were in Les Deux Alpes recently. An added bit of niftyness about it is that you can upload the maps to Google maps. The last point has the various stats about the route (max/avg speed, etc) which is also quite nifty :)

Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6

Last Few Days in Les Deux Alpes

Over the last few days of the session I didn't really get time to do a day by day blow of what was going on. Needless to say, it was ace :) The sun stayed shiny and the conditions held.

It was so crazy hot! At the top of the glacier (3600m!) it was 10 degrees and 24 degrees in the town. I was amazed at how well the snow kept. It so often is hard and icy in the morning and then dead slushy in the afternoon. It only really got slushy on Thursday and Friday and even then wasn't particularly bad.

The other peeps staying in the hotel were dead good. There was the obligatory annoying couple, but they were suitably ignored. We played poker, drunk beer and generally had a laugh.

Nic continued to produce the goods on the mountain and for the first time there were moments when I had to ride at a good pace to keep up with her. We spent an afternoon with a couple of lads who were in our hotel (Martin and Gabs), so I did a bit of GoPro videoing of them. Gabs pulled off a superb face plant, so there could be a £250 from YBF on it's way ;)

We had such a great time. Although the mountain isn't that big, it is high and we would almost certainly go there again.

Roll on next season! Well, at least after a bit of surfing first ;)

I've got a video coming soon - more likely to be YouTube than Vimeo ;)

Day 2 in Les Deux Alpes

So following on from day 1, day 2 was much the same. Great sunny weather with good snow and superb visibility. There were a lot of red faces about from the day before and some major money had been had been invested in sun cream!!

I managed to rig up the GoPro on the front of the board and got some cunning footage. I'll get some put up on YowTube, when I can be arsed to edit it ;) I was a bit worried about it falling off - and it did a couple of times. It came of the first time when I landed a jump and the second when I was motoring on a  bit. No damage though!

I used a wicked app on my phone called My Tracks. Takes a GPS reading and shows where you've been, speed, distance, etc. The novelty of this ace! And I couldn't believe that in half a day we covered 28km! So I'm going to set it going hopefully for the full day today (although we're starting late today).

There was ace boarder cross track that was being used for a race. So we didn't get to go on that (maybe today), but the training cross track was open and Nic was well loving that! Rock 'n' roll :)

Day 1 in Les Deux Alpes

Had a really good day today :) The sun has been shining and our initial worries of lack of snow were quickly put to bed when we took the lift up the mountain. Although there wasn't  really enough snow to easily make it back down to the town, there was plenty higher up

Nic has done amazingly well today - probably the best she has ever done. Confidence was good and with it an improvement in skill.

I took a massive stack on one of the first few runs. Ouch! Bruised my chest and jaw. My right shoulder could be better - starting to really stiffen up now - a bit more stretching I think ;)

Only managed two piccies today which was a shame as the weather was so brilliant - batteries weren't charged! But planning on taking the GoPro tomorrow.

Oh and I have done a super job on waxing my board. Possibly the best ever! It ran better than it ever has. Sweeet.

Standard New Year Post

I haven't blogged in ages - it's shocking and odd feeling really. I suppose the crux of it is that nothing too crazy/interesting has been happening or has it??

Seemed to have had a pretty busy December (got me new board!) and took a trip to La Plagne snowboarding in France :) Well, sort of. In so much as I will ill in bed for most of it boo :( It dumped massively for a couple of days, so some of the guys were having a proper ace time in the "puff". Nic was loving the new snowboard after a slow start and I performed the worlds best crash. Managed to land upside down in a tree - eek! Quite funny :)

Christmas day was spent with Nic's family and then headed down to my lot in Hereford for Boxing Day. After a wine spilt New Years eve with Alex and Caz we headed to Cornwall to stay with Jo, Andy and Nina and I got to finally to try out the new longboard and what a little beaut it was :)

Back to work now - boo!

I don't do New Year resolutions, but maybe this year should be more surfing, kiting, snowboarding and find a job that's fun...

Moving On With Snowboarding

We're officially saying goodbye to the summer now, what with the clocks going back. Here I am sat looking out the window and seeing a dull, rainy and dark 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

This isn't all bad. For sure, I'll be missing the sun and light evenings, but this darkness does mean that the snowy season is finally getting here :)

Having been on Twitter now for a few months now I thought I'd follow the whitelines snowboard mag. They've not long put up an article saying Terje Haakonsen might be pushing to have slopstyle added to the 2014 winter Olympics.

I can't believe how snowboarding has changed over the years. When I was a lad, snowboarding being in the Olympics encompassed everything that snowboarding was not about. Couple that with it being managed and controlled by the FIS - outright offensive.

Oh how things change...

How Could We Be Thinking of Snow?

Summer seems to be here in force (certainly his weekend!) - what a scorcher :) But as mentioned previously Nic had spotted a snowboard she liked. We headed to the dome and made the purchase. Bargain :)

It's a Rome Vinyl 152. We're pretty sure it's exactly what she's after. Roll on winter!! (Well sort of - if ya know what I mean!!!)

Snowboarding in Tignes (Feb 2010)

We (me & the Mrs) decided to do a last minute dart over to Tignes in France for a snowboard session in Feb. Mixed sort of affair really this time. The first couple of days we had stunning sunny weather and the snow and mountains were sweet!

From there on in, it went downhill. An almost constant white-out and one day we had about 1m of snow fall. The snow fall was superb - the fact that we couldn't see our feet was not so hot! Got to be fair though, in all the years it's the first time we have been away and had so much bad weather...

We stayed in an apartment block called Homeau de Borsat - needless to say, that was quickly renamed to Homo de Borat. Pretty basic but fine. Although the cheeky gits did charge for any extras, towels 'n' all that stuff...

A nice view:

Me :)

And the Nickers!

Nic managed to successfully make her way down the Olympic downhill run in Val d'Isere as well - hell, some of that was very steep!

Would we go back? Yeah probably. It's pretty spenny but loads of mountain and loads of very accessible off-piste :)