classic lines, good times and lost tourists in the backcountry

After an utterly epic start to the season we got hit with a little rain on wednesday in the mountains. not expecting much on thursday we went up to check out blackcomb mtn's opening day. Surprise! the clouds parted and the alpine was awesome. We spent the day lapping Spanky's ladder. For today, knowing that the snow was quite good in the alpine, Dave Basterechea, eric soucy and myself grabbed our avi gear and went out for a casual day of hiking a few of blackcomb's classic backcountry lines. Eric had only enough time for a quick (relatively) lap so we started off we D.O.A. It's fun tight chute that runs off the side of blackcomb peak. It tends to get a little wind hammered and with a handful of people having done it yesterday it was a little more chewed than we had hoped for but fun nonetheless and held some good turns. And as a usual occurance from the wind, a rocky exit.
Having left eric dave and i went on to do usueme. as we grabbed a bite to eat on top of the chute, we heard a voice cry up "Please wait for me! I'm all alone and pretty scared!" what? "yeah sure. we'll wait for you" As it turns out, he was a tourist from the states who had met some people, who were going to take him to another line in the area.
Somehow this fellow ended up getting seperated, on his own, lost, with no avalanche gear, at sunset in the backcountry. As we were the closest people to him, he followed our line. So Dave and i waited for him to make his way to the top. Then with the sun setting in behind the mtns, we enjoyed our pow turns down to the valley below.
another awesome day in whistler.

Dave B. dropping into the top of D.O.A.

Eric Soucy, DOA

dave B.

View towards Black tusk and Tantalus range


Me, spicing up my life, riding the bottom section of DOA switch

common sight looking back up DOA, rocks.

blackcomb peak

wedge mountain

myself and Dave, on top of usueme just prior to sunset

usueme

it's been a good start to the year!

Whistler has just been getting smashed with snow recently. We're well over the 5m mark for november. Which makes for the snowiest november on record. I've been back from Hawaii for 2 weeks now and have ridden powder 13 of those 14 days. the one missing day was right before the hill opened and i helped a friend move. It's been the best start to a season i've ever had. Just never seen anything like this in november. been amazing.
I was supposed to be on a plane right now headed down to Copper colorado to go ride pipe, but they're pipe isn't quite ready yet, they don't have much natural snow and we've got lots here. So that plane ride has been postponed for a little bit.

winter's here! get out there and ride.
jl

Today, 3rd day of Whistler mtn 09/10 season.

Unreal

Whistler opening day!

Had an awesome time in hawaii. Met up with skiers sarah burke and rory bushfield for some surf sessions. super fun. Waves were pretty much epic the whole time. Loved it.
Came home on the overnight flight tuesday night, arrived in vancouver at 5am, and was hiking in the squamish backcountry a few hours later!
Hiked Paul's ridge both wed and thursday this week to ride some powder and get some no-boarding in. Amazing to have surfed the north shore of hawaii one day and be riding BC powder the next! There's about 140cm just below treeline around squamish which is a fair amount for this time of year.
And whistler opened today. Epic. super good opening. I'm pretty sure everyone for miles around was there. Rolled around with photographers Jeff patterson and john Scarth, and met up with tons of friends everywhere. was an awesome opening day on the hill. Played around with my new little cameraand made a video of the day. the version on youtube has better video quality, and since they killed the zepplin song i switched it to trouble andrew.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2AZgvIGuLs

hawaii

Slowly making my way home from NZ. small stopover in hawaii for a few weeks to get some surfing in. It's been pretty big for last week. This weekend was insane, double triple overhead at most break on the north shore. So we went to go watch pipeline do it's thing..

last day of riding for 08/09

well, little late on this one. had my last day of my 08/09 season last saturday in New Zealand. was pretty much the day we were hoping for. weather was amazing, no wind, and the pipe was, uhhh, ok. little undervert and got pretty slushy pretty fast, but it was pretty decent for sure.

With the wind finally dying down, good weather and my ankle finally back to 100% I got around to trying the tricks i was wanting to do. I've been working on several different double corks through last season and this summer. It's how i hurt my ankle in august. Was pretty pumped on being able to do them in the pipe again. So was working on one for abit then the pipe got too slushy so i decided to try some front double cork 10s. i thought the pipe was a little slow but took a few warm up hits, was feeling the wall and went for it. All felt good but i was a little short on the rotation so i tried to jam my front foot in the wall and spin my board around it, but my binding had other ideas. SNAP! day over.So with that my 08/09 season is over.
09/10 coming up in a few weeks!



later
jl