More edits

Since the last weekend I rode was Mother’s day, I’ve had a little time to edit some videos that have been piling up.  This is footage from 4/21 at Mammoth.  This was the week right after the surprise April storm.  The snow was still pretty soft and it was a fun park day.  It was also the last weekend that Eagle and Canyon were open, but the area around there was severely lacking in snow or there were puddles everywhere.

Enjoy!

It’s a rental weekend edit

Here’s one of the first edits out of the Mammoth meat up weekend.  Enjoy!

A little bit of pow in mid April?

Mt High was scheduled to close 4/8…last day being Easter.  However, they reopened when a storm dropped at least a foot the following Friday.  That meant a pow day in mid April in socal!  I woke up super early knowing I had to be in the lot before the resort opened because I knew a lot of people were waiting for conditions like this.  I got into the upper lot, but when I walked to the lift, I saw a huge line already forming at the gate.  I quickly chose to go on the beginner lift and make it over to conquest chair which turned out to be a good choice.  I was probably the first 10 people on the lift and was able to enjoy a relatively untouched conquest run.  Here is the vid I took that day.  Sorry for the first person POV…I was riding solo so I was filming myself or filming where I was going.  Apologies ahead of time if it gives you motion sickness or whatnot.

Hope you enjoy!

EL Meatup…It’s a rental!!!!!!

Last year, I was able to meet a lot of people from EasyLoungin when people in California decided to meet in the middle at Mammoth Mountain.  We rented a baller condo for all of us to stay at and had slushy park laps.  This year we decided to do it all over again!

We got more people to come as we met more people through EL during the past season.  I think at the end we had 18 people sign up for the event and 2 condos booked to accommodate all of us.  Of course some people from last year’s meatup couldn’t make it due to work, injury, or travel restrictions and we missed them (Ben, Mike, and Greg).  Props to Ben for finding and booking the condo and figuring out the logistics.  We missed you at the meat up   Without Ben’s organizational skills, these meat ups would definitely not happen.

Day 1: Travel to Mammoth Mountain.  Most of us made it to the mountain no problem with some people arriving early to ride a half day and others arriving late at 1am.  As per tradition, someone has to be stopped by chp…which happened to Christophe’s crew from Tahoe.  Since all of us trickled in that day, we didn’t get to do much except try to figure out where everyone would be sleeping and making sure no one would be without a comfy place to sleep.

Day 2: Slushy park laps! The day started with us on the mountain by 10 in the morning.   Gopros in hand (I think we had a total of 4 gopros between all of us), we rode through the park, nonstop.  It was so much fun!  We were cheering each other on, taking jumps and features with progression happening in the process.  The filmer for the day was Adam and he didn’t realize that I changed the backing of the case so that sound could be recorded more clearly.  His comments during the run became catchphrases for the weekend.  There’s a line forming! (while all of us are scoping out the jump and people waiting behind us)  Good one Yuka! (telling me this while I ate it)  He was a demanding filmer which we never realized until we heard his comments

We had method trains, spins, backflips, and tame dogs off of jumps.  With 12 of us riding together in the park, we were definitely a sizeable crowd there.  We were having so much fun, we ended up riding until they closed the mountain at 4.

Afterwards was apres, with tons of alchie, burgers, tri tip, and more alchie.  We ended up going out at 11pm to lakanuki’s and forming a dance circle there.  Shot some lifestyle footie at the bar.  Came back at 1am and some of the guys decided to go to the other condo where everyone there went to sleep early.  They probably woke everyone up with their laughing and their quest to find food.  Apparently they bbqed more burgers at 2 in the morning because they were hungry.

Day 3:  With people hung over and sleep deprived, we definitely had a harder time getting up and getting onto the mountain, but we made it.  Another day of fun slushy park laps.  We mobbed a small jump, changed filmers so we could get fresh commentary, and just had an awesome time riding with everyone.  By 1 though everyone had run out of steam and sadly it was time for everyone to go home.

This will definitely become a tradition for the cali people on EL.

We took a lot of vids and I have at least 40 clips to sort through to make a vid.  I’m thinking of compiling it into a mini movie type format instead of a 3min vid since it was so much fun just riding with everyone and we got a lot of footage.  Good crew, good snow, just fun times all around.  After every run, everyone was just laughing and smiling.

To film or to ride?

I haven’t written a blog post in almost a month!  For the last couple of weekends I had been enjoying the last few days of the 11/12 season.  My local resort closed almost 2 weeks ago, but they reopened when they were hit with that storm a while back.  I enjoyed a pow day in socal, in mid April which was unbelievable.  I will be putting together a short 1 min vid of that day since I was riding solo in the early morning when I was trying my best to find untracked pow.

As the person with the gopro, I always have this dilemma of should I bring my gopro and my gopro stick to the hill?  If I do bring my gopro I can usually stick it inside my pouch in my jacket, but it wouldn’t be as a stable or near shot I can get with the gopro stick.  Also a lot of times, I’ve accidentally turned on the camera while it was in my pocket and filled up the SD card with just the inside of my pocket.  It is really annoying when you get home and realize why the SD card was full and you’re left with 30 minutes of pocket footage.  If I do bring the gopro stick, I’m stuck with carrying it around on the hill and I can’t do any features and I’m stuck just filming.  There’s nothing wrong with just filming, but when you’re only riding on the weekend, you just want to ride till your heart’s content.  Plus after filming, you’re left with footage that needs editing.  I have several videos lined up and when I can’t go every weekend which is after this weekend, I’ll be posting up vids.  Hopefully you’ll enjoy them!

The best way to get around this dilemma I found, was to get a significant other who wants to ride with you, but doesn’t like park.  My bf fits the bill perfectly so whenever he comes, he’s stuck with filming duties.  Still it’s a pain to be lugging around a stick on a mountain.

Here’s a link to how to make the gopro stick (which is the most popular post on my blog): http://wp.me/p1AHg4-3X

Bday pow day

I timed to go to Mammoth and to do OPS for my birthday so when the weather forecast called for the biggest storm of the season that weekend, I knew I would be getting at least one pow day in.  Fortunately the stars aligned and for my actual birthday, we got bluebird, 5ft of fresh pow day.  They opened up the top around 10am and we were able to make it there by 10:30am.  Unfortunately the front was already chewed up by the time we got up there so we decided to go to the backside since not many people have made it down there yet.  That was a great decision.  There were already tracks, but it was not chewed up to the point where there were moguls like on the front side of the mountain.  It felt so great going down with pow underneath you.  I flipped once since I dug my nose in (didn’t set back my bindings at all nor was I riding my reverse camber board).  After that one run down backside, we decided to go down paranoid flats and make it over to white bark bowl.  White bark bowl area wasn’t chewed up badly yet.  I kept my speed down it as much as possible, but I dug my nose in and flipped, laughed it off because it was like falling into pillows and kept going.

After those 2 runs, our legs were burning.  This was the 4th day in a row we were riding and 3 of them were riding in pow or consisted of me hiking.  My energy levels were drained.  Plus all the locals and anyone who wanted powder was out so in about an hour pretty much everything was ridden.  It was kind of crazy how the mountain thinned in an hour after the top opened since everything was chewed up.  We decided to head over to wonderland park in canyons and just ride park there.  By this point, I was so tired I was ok with just leisurely cruising and not struggling to keep my nose up in pow.  Did some back 1s off the jump they have there.  I think back 1s are my favorite spin out of the two I know haha.  I just find spinning backside so much more easier than front for some reason.

Hooray for pow!

Riding park on a stormy pow day…

Oakley Progression Session

The weekend of Oakley Progression Session finally arrived!  I was excited to go and get coaching at Mammoth Mountain.  A few days before OPS, I saw that the weather was calling for blizzard and tons of snow.  Great if I wanted to ride pow, but not so great for learning park and spins.  Still I was excited to see what kind of coaching I would receive and where the private park would be located.

On Friday afternoon I arrived in Mammoth to ride at least an hour or two to get my legs back.  I arrived to Main Lodge and I just saw blizzard conditions.  None of the lifts were running except for Discovery which is a bunny slope chair and most people have left the mountain.  My heart sank a little because if the same conditions presented itself the next day, I can see the camp being cancelled.  This has happened to me last year for the So-gnar camp.  The second day, the winds were so bad Mt High closed on Sunday at 10am and they kicked everyone off the mountain.  So on Friday I rode discovery chair until the lifts closed and went back to the condo.

The following morning I woke up to the snow still falling and reports of at least 2ft of pow on the mountain.  I arrived to Mammoth Mountain Inn for the yoga session to start and to get out there.  Due to the inclement weather, people were having a hard time getting to Main Lodge area on time so yoga wasn’t started until well past 8am.  I guess I didn’t need to arrive on time since I just sat around for quite some time.  The yoga instructor they had in honesty, wasn’t that great.  All she said was you can’t do yoga wrong, but I feel that if you don’t have the proper positioning you could possibly pinch a nerve or hurt something.  Not sure why she didn’t demonstrate how to do positions in the front.  I saw girls looking around not knowing exactly what to do.  After warming up with yoga, we were broken up into groups to go ride powder.   The pow was deep, but the visibility was bad.  I couldn’t see the snow so I was just relying on feel and hoping I didn’t accidentally flip.  Since we had such a late start, most of the runs and the areas in the trees were chewed up.  Also I haven’t had one pow day this season so when I saw an untouched pow area I went straight for it forgetting the rule of don’t go into pow areas when the run isn’t at least a blue.  I got stuck, bad.  I was literally digging myself out for 20-30min.  My group left me and I was by myself with the groomer being 20ft from me.  I finally got out and made it down to Mills hoping to see someone from the camp.  I was able to find one person since she was wearing a jersey and another coach next to her.  Apparently with the pow and the weather, groups were getting broken up with people going out to ride pow without the group or people getting stuck.  Organization was completely gone.  After riding pow with one other girl and the coach we went in for lunch.  After lunch, we could either go ride more pow, go to the kicker that people built in the pow, or go through the park.  For the stupidest reason I went for go through the park.  I should’ve gone for the pow kicker so I could just throw flips and spins with abandon, but I didn’t.  Probably because I was so tired from digging myself out of pow and walking in pow.  Visibility in the park was difficult and the coaches couldn’t do much since they couldn’t see.  One of the coaches had the approach of just hit it…when it’s like…ummm shouldn’t you break it down, give them advice of keep your board straight, no turns 3 ft in front, etc?  I wasn’t too happy with the coaching in the park.  After lapping through the park and my guy friends pretending to be one of the campers (with high pitched voices and jerseys and making some of the girls wonder are guys poaching our camp?!  how dare they!) we went back to Mammoth Mountain Inn for the afternoon yoga session which was pretty good.

Apres was at Lakanuki in the Village.  Free drinks and food, but there was a private party there at 6pm when most girls arrived at 5pm.  We were able to order food before the kitchen closed down and they cut off the bar at 5:30 and started kicking people out along with moving all the tables and chairs around.  Since we were a group of 20 girls, they let us stay making us wonder what this private party was.  Before long, the music changed and ripped guys in green booty shorts got up on the table and started dancing.  Apparently it was Elevation in Mammoth on St Patty’s day so a lot of the bars in the village was reserved for that.  It was fun hanging out with the girls and watching some of them stuff dollar bills down the guys pants.  But…we were kicked out in the end.

Sunday the weather let up a little and the park crew was able to dig out the private park for us to ride.  For reasons that make no sense to me, the private park was at Canyons, but the meet up point was at Mammoth Mountain Inn at Main Lodge.  It takes at least 20minutes to travel that distance if you know where you’re going.  They should’ve had the meet up point at Canyons because girls that were unfamiliar with the mountain got lost and it took them hours to find the private park.  Even coaches got lost and didn’t get there for an hour or two.   Also the day started off late with me arriving at 8am and wondering why did I even get here on time if we start so late?  I should’ve just gone out and rode.  The private park consisted of the usual park they have at wonderland park at canyons.  A jump, pipe, and jibs set up at the bottom.  Wasn’t feeling the jibs and I wanted to focus on spins so I just hiked the jump over and over.  Got my front and back 1s after getting the tip that I was spinning too early.  After spending the whole day in the park, we went back the MMI for the awards ceremony.

OPS was fun, but I’m having mixed feelings about whether I would do this camp again.  The organization wasn’t there and pros are sometimes not the best coaches.  Some of the coaches were great and knew how to break it down, others not so much…  Another thing which makes it difficult is, a lot of the girls arrived with their friends.  If you’re by yourself and not good at being overly social, it is difficult to feel like you belong.  Sometimes I felt like I was intruding on groups and I was making huge efforts to be friendly.

Pros of OPS : all women, pro coaches, apres included, private park, pretty nice goodie bag

Cons of OPS: pretty disorganized, coaching wasn’t that great (it was a hit or miss depending on who was coaching), a little too much estrogen for me, groups already formed

Here’s a pic of the custom Oakley goggles I got to make and keep.  Pink iridium lens.

 

Pic of the goodie bag with tons of stuff.  This bag itself pays for the amount of OPS.  Plus 2 days of lift tickets are included in the pass so if you don’t have a season pass, it’s a great deal.

 

Pic of the coaches during awards ceremony.

For more info (pics and vids of that weekend) visit their site: http://www.oakleyprogressionsessions.com/