Word from PW

You are invited to come throw down at the show down! Alpine Meadows will be holding their annual Telemark Freeskiing Competition in a few weeks. Come test your skillz, meet and party with your fellow telewhackers.

There are few things that can compare to the atmosphere and energy of the freeskiing comps. PW actually sprung from the Alpine Meadows Tele Comp in the early 2000’s when I met Andy Jacobsen and Andy Rosenberg. We were all living in the SLC valley and getting into filming, but it took us meeting and competing in California to bring us together. Since then we have made many friends and almost every skier we film with has come from the competition series. These comps really aren’t about who wins, but providing an arena to push yourself, improve  your skills and meet others of a like mind. One of the coolest things is the support and camaraderie between competitors who are giving it there all for basically no $$ and no glory. Must be the love.

When the Andy’s and I were on the circuit there were usually 80-100 competitors. It seems like attendance has dropped off in the past few years and we don’t like to see that happen to such an important event in this small sport. PW has invited all our athlete’s to attend and try and spark some life back into one of the sport’s greatest events. If you have been toying with the idea of competing, Alp Meadows is a great venue to test it out. The terrain isn’t as rowdy and boney as Crested Butte and you don’t have to expend the coin to travel to AK. And as of right now they have a great snowpack.

Confirmed PW Crew and past results-

Megan Michelson-  1st place in Italy, 1st at Crested Butte, 1st in AK, 1st in Alpine Meadows, 2nd in AK

Will Cardamone-

Chris Erickson-  9th place and Sickbird Award, 5th in Alpine Meadows, 8th overall in 2005

Jake Sakson-

Noah Howell-   10th Brighton, 8th Alpine Meadows, 9th Crested Butte

Paul Kimbrough- 3rd in Ak, 3rd Alpine Meadows, 13th Crested Butte,

Paige Brady- Two 2nd place finishes at Crested Butte, 2nd place Alpine Meadows, 1st place Alyeska

Andy Jacobsen-  Multiple top 5 finishes

Nick DeVore will be competing with the big boys at the Crested Butte Alpine Extremes. Go get em Nick!

To register or gather more info visit Tough Guy Productions. See you at the start gate!

Once a year the outdoor industry drops into Salt Lake City to show off their latest and greatest gear, drink and ski (not necessarily in that order). And Jonah and I go to beg for money, drink beer and check out the latest and greatest gear (not necessarily in that order).

The new line of Avalung packs from Black Diamond

In an attempt to reduce our carbon footprint we may be riding Street Stiders up the canyon next season.

The new T-race with walk mode, new liners and new buckles.

The cliched line, ‘I’d like to thank my sponsors for making this possible’ is actually true for us. We could not produce our projects without the help of our great partners. Since the beginning we have laid out one simple rule in seeking sponsors. That is, we will only sign on with companies who make gear we use, or have used. Our wish is to keep some sort of continuity and integrity with what you see our skiers use and the logo’s on our box. A few years ago a company offered us a large sum to become our presenting sponsor and bump off Black Diamond. The refusal was easy to make, nobody wanted to use their equipment. Luckily we have been able to team up with some of the industry leaders and also some small up and coming companies that want to support the telemark community.

We are proud to announce the following companies who have signed on to provide funds for 2010.

Presenting the film once again is-

Our Title Sponsors are-

The best part about the show is that Jake Sakson, Chris Erickson, Paige Brady and Will Cardamone came to help us ski the 80″ inches of snow that fell over the week! But that is next weeks blog.

Posted by NH

Skiing in the Wasatch hasn’t been off to the best start, so we headed South to explore Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks. We have been talking with Jay Beyer about doing some reconnaissance for years and now seemed like the perfect time. The southern part of the state had just been hit pretty hard by 1-2′ of snow and Brianhead area was reporting a deeper base than Alta.

We weren’t able to recruit anybody besides myself, Jonah and Jay for this last minute excursion.

When entering a new area it’s always important to test the snowpacks stability. Jonah has developed a new and very unique method, he said it was ‘good’, so we skied it.

We arrived mid afternoon and Bryce was looking Nice!

Conditions were much better than expected, almost skiable even. The plan was for Jonah to capture video, Jay on the still camera and I would destroy my skis attempting to make it look deep.

It was mostly one turns for the camera, or ‘wearing high heels’ (modeling) as a good friend disparagingly puts it. Simply amazing place to be no matter what you’re doing here!

The snow settled QUICKLY as the day was warm at this latitude and low elevation. We made the Navajo Loop trail with only seeing two other folks, I doubt that’s possible in the summer season.

Cedar Breaks is only an hour away and faces west. Sounded like a good place to play around and catch the sunset. The road along the rim of Cedar Breaks is closed and unplowed, but a quick skin gets you right to it.

We toured around the rim in awe at the colorful contrasts.
Even found some patches of snow deep enough to turn in.

And some patches not quite deep enough. The thrill of the early season is you never really know until you commit.

I really like this fish eye shot. So did Jay, until I pointed out his jacket in the lower left corner.

We don’t often have a moral to the story besides ’ski as much powder as you can before you die’. But you do learn bits and pieces along the way sometimes. Never pass up a chance to watch the sunset. Never pass up a road trip to new locations. Never forget your helmet and knee pads.

And never pass up a hot spring on the way home!

As always, many thanks to Jay Beyer for the still images. He captured some amazing stuff and shared the B-roll with us.

Posted by NH

One of the original PW crew, Edward Arriola, married the lovely Amy Molsberry this past fall. In celebration of this event we have put together a short video of the lovely couple from a hut trip we took a few seasons ago.

View Here.