Blog: 2011

Kinda got busy there and a month flew by. Hasn't really snowed since my last posting, so not so much touring going on. Just one little exploration mission where we crossed some creeks, got lost in the maze and found some crazy huge hoar frost. But now the snow is back, Whistler is getting hammered and we're heading out for some storm split boarding tomorrow.

With the long dry spell and no pow kicking around I went down to Colorado for the US grand prix. It was an interesting comp since I'd only ridden 1 day on hardpack prior to being there and had 2 days to practice. The crew at Copper did a really good job on the pipe this year and I was super happy to ride a sick pipe. We only had a few hours of official training of each of the days prior to the comp. And I forgot they were running a ski comp too so we had way less practice time. And half of that time is at the wrong time since you need to take turns of having the skiers in the good light and the snowboarders in the good light.

Qualification day was of course cloudy and bad light. When we'd been riding in sunlit perfection all week (minus the bad practise times). During my few practice sessions I'd focused on getting in tune with the pipe and feeling my edges on hardpack again. And during the 25 minutes practice prior to the comp, I couldn't land a thing. haha. Which a handful of years ago used to freak me out, and now I laugh about it. I almost prefer it now which is a little weird. Anyhow, I landed my first run with a few mistakes but it was enough to put me in the top 4 in the heat and keep me qualified for the finals. By the time my second run came around I was in fourth and knew i needed to land my run clean. Which I did, but the judges gave me a lower score. I don't usually bitch about judging ( I used too when i was younger; they have a hard job), but it sucks when you know you landed a better run and a few judges agree and score you higher and a few don't and score you lower. But you KNOW it was a better run, and you end up with a lower score than your first run, and you get 18th and top 16 got to finals. So I missed finals by 1.2 out of 100. Sucked. I just wanted to keep riding the pipe.

So went and spent a day riding breckenridge with the Frends crew, hitting jumps and laughing all day long. Then came home early and ended up on a splitboard recon...

Steady! kimmie balancing on icy logs

chuck 'em

giant hoar frost

this was our objective for the day but the maze of roads slowed us down and we only got to the bottom of the line. BOOOOOOOO

that's one giant crystal

testing a new camera, skins and taking the splitboard for another glorious day.

Pretty much every year I'm in New Zealand I make my way up to Raglan on the north Island. It's one of my favorite places to go surfing. If you surf, you should probably go sometime in your life and get some of the longest waves of your life. 3 awesome point breaks lined up one after the other. But there's not always waves and there's not always good weather to snowboard, so here's some surf photos and some of cruising around New Zealand.

This is why I go to Raglan. Indicators going off at low tide.

Life is a little different in New Zealand.

Tried to go caving at Waitomo caves last year but they were flooded out. Not this year. Into the abyss!

Down the Tomo. 30 feet down from the previous photo and after a pretty tight pich, this is what you're rappelling down.

Our guide challenged us to boulder around the this pond with claims of no customer ever making it. While a little slick, the bouldering in Squamish is tougher.

Jump!

cave life.

When I arrive in Christchurch every year and make my way down to Wanaka, I'm always looking for this wave to work. A few hours off the plane and I'm paddling out into an overhead solo session at Magnet Bay, with only sheep to keep me company.

making the trek to Milford Sound on a day off from snowboarding.

Great scenery with great company.

Milford Sound.

Mitre peak in milford sound.

I know what you did last summer!

Supposedly the trout fishing is amazing in New Zealand. With creek water this clear it seems like cheating.

The Kea. It's an alpine parrot, famous for ripping apart cars at Treble Cone. Very curious birds and have an amazing orange patch under their wings.

My Raglan slashing. Point and shoot cameras are a little tough to shoot surfing with.

I'm in that Barrel somewhere!

Waiting for the 'Valley' section on indicators to wall up and start racing.

Raglan golf course. The sheep are a lot tougher to hit than you think.

The area around Rotorua is famous for hot springs and thermal zones. This little guy is spitting out sulphur and is hot enough to cook your hand

kimmies in the mist.

The world's best natural hot spring. Waterfall, perfect temperature, perfect depth.
It's amazing and this photo does it zero justice since we went at night.

I'm out of NZ! awesome trip!

-Snowpark. Pretty much the reason everyone goes to new Zealand in august.

I managed to get 3 weeks of riding in New Zealand this summer. I showed up the day before the Burton NZ Open started (which was kinda stupid on my part) and left the south island right after a world cup a few weeks later.

This year the weather was pretty good. Pretty much sunny the whole time. Lots of wind, but at least we could see. After last year's club field experience I was definitely hoping for some good storms in the Canterbury Mountains to go back up there but it just didn't happen while I was there.

The last few years in NZ were pretty pipe heavy and I was looking forward to mostly hitting jumps at Snowpark. I did the 2 pipe comps that were going on and just missed the cut offs for both of them, but I didn't really ride pipe too much and all my boards were shorter than i usually ride. And they were all different boards that I was testing and didn't know which one I liked the most so I kept switching boards all the time.

-Production line tuning. K2, Ride and Unity boards

In the end I was super happy to just ride and hit jumps. My wife also was able to come down for the last week on the south island and check it out finally. So it was great to show her around. We headed up to Raglan on the North Island to get some waves for a few weeks afterwards. I'll get some north island photos up sometime soon.

Here's a few windy runs from the world cup. Being 6'2" tall, the wind always gets me. First run is me messing around in practice and the other 2 are comp runs.
jl