Mammoth Manoeuvres (or 8 go mad in Mammoth)

Back in the UK

2006-03-09T20:37:00.000Z

Well we all finally made it back to the UK on Sunday afternoon after a turbulent flight from LA, that said I think the journey Jools and I had back to Chelmsford had more ups and downs than the flight did.

When we all arrived back at Heathrow everyone went their separate ways, picked up by parents/loved ones or heading back by train. Jools and I had planned on hiring a car but with my drivers license and his credit card we couldn't hire one, cash wasn't an option apparently and being a Sunday they couldn't check with the DVLA that J had a license too......so next stop was the Piccadilly Line to catch the tube to Liverpool St station (having dumped all our kit in left baggage), but no that wasn't going to work either due to engineering work, so a 10 minute walk later we managed to get on the Heathrow Express train to Paddington. Here we bumped into Joe on his way to Kings Cross so we all hopped on the Circle Line. This part of the journey worked fine and Jools and I were soon at Liverpool Street where we hopped on the train.

So now we have the next problem, Jools was traveling on the "free weekend pass" part of my ticket but when checked by the conductor we found out that it hadn't been valid for 6 months (despite us having used it about 10 times in that period and having had it checked as we boarded the train) so we had to pay another Â£6 for a ticket to get him home. It's a good job we had English money at this point otherwise we'd have been looking at a hefty fine and possible arrest due to a change in train ownership and sloppy platform staff.

Still we made it home eventually and due to lack of transport, Tesco being closed and an empty fridge we headed out for Indian..Alll I can say is it was a pleasure to be home after being up for 24 hours and curry has never tasted better!

Anyway, that's it for this blog, we're home, safe & sound and won't be posting anymore.....hope you've enjoyed it!

Best Bloody Day!!!!

2006-03-02T04:10:00.000Z

Ben, Steve, Joe and myself woke up to blue bird skies so decided to leave pretty early. We were out the house by 9.30 so we were well up for a full day.
When we got up to the park (as we decided as the last good weather day predicted we would ride the park) we were pretty dissappointed because none of the rails were shaped and it looked like none of the jumps were either. After a couple of laps we thought we would hit the jumps anyway and see how they were - turned out they were great.
Joe had a great day - he managed to land Frontside 5's and hit the big jump which he says was the biggest he's ever hit - good work!!!
Steve had a good day on the boxes doing some 180 on 180 offs and generally being steezy but unfortunatley took a nasty slam to the chest/chin early on hitting one of the jumps so he didnt hit many jumps after that.
I had a good day which I was stoked on - I managed to get over my fear and spin on the jumps doing some Front 3's and Back 1's. I was pretty stoked on that and was even more stoked after getting 270 on, 270 along, 270 off on the box as well as some good hits on the big jump and the hips. Unfortunately my day got a bit worse late on as I managed to wind myself and later on I landed weirdly and we think I popped my little finger out of place. I was stoked on the day anyway.
As for Ben - he was on fire. He was hitting the boxes with so much steez also getting some sick frontside out fakies on the down rails which were sick! Best of all Ben got some sweet Backside 3's on the jumps and on the big kicker got a few sick Backside 1's. He had the sickest day and was totally stoked.
We're all knackered now as we rode for 6 hours almost non stop but I'm glad (and I think everyone else is too) that we did it as it turned out to be the most fun and best bloody day!!!!

Nearly the end...

2006-03-02T01:54:00.000Z

....apologies first of all for not posting for so long, I haven't meant to worry anyone but I've had a few connection issues and I'm the only person who seems to get a signal (and can type at 40+ wpm).....anyway quite a lot has been going on, for me anyway. Last Friday I sessioned the pipe again, I was definitely feeling more settled than previously and when we bumped into Pete again we seemed to notice an improvement from the day before as well, so I must have been doing something right. Feeling tired and sore on Saturday Jools and I had a chill at home day and just wandered round the town and shops, it was nice just to do nothing and let me get mentally ready for the tough day I had on Sunday.

Sunday was supposed to be a sunny day for the most part with a snow storm coming in in the late afternoon, it did look a bit on the chilly side though so taking my light jacket and my super-feather jacket Jools and I headed up the hill for the 9am registration for the Vans Unbound Pipe competition (part of the USASA freestyle circuit which seems to be the equivalent of the AIM series).....me to register, him to be supportive, get pictures and generally put up with my "I'm in a competition so I'm stressed" bitching!

I figured I'd give the comp a shot, really just as a warm up for the Brits the week after next, lets face it any practice is good practice so when I was registering and found out they had 2 comps that day rather than one I registered for both. Heading up the hill for warm up it all seemed fine the pipe was in good condition as normal, if a little icey but hey at 9:30am you can't really expect anything else. According to Jools my runs were looking settled and I was getting a good rhythm, so I relaxed a bit and started to have fun. Of course by the time the comp was due to start at 11am the storm had started to move in, the wind was picking up and the light flattened (so no photos I'm afraid). So there I was with about 50 other competitors at the top of the pipe, all of us in the wrong goggles for the light and the comp started.....I have to say that I'm pleased I wasn't getting height out of the pipe on this occasion, the wind was bad enough just riding up to the lip without getting blown over but for those getting air it could be a real struggle, especially when the snow flurries meant they couldn't spot the landings, it really was spin and pray.

So it was cold, windy and there was quite a bit of time between runs (50 mins or so) but I managed to hold my head together, stop myself freezing (feather jackets rule!) and do some good runs. In fact I was really pleased with how I rode.....even more pleased when it came to the prize giving and I'd won both comps in the Masters category! Yay! (Sorry Doc, still no sponsors though). So after receiving my 2 gold medals and some beanies, stickers and other goodies in the entrant raffle I headed home for a well earned rest)

Since then the weather has been a bit hit and miss, the storm came in and we had a storm total of 3 feet of snow, so there hasn't been much riding going on....with winds of 160mph and the snow being "Sierra Cement" rather than fluffy powder it hasn't been safe or really worth the effort of riding. Still we have had a blue-bird day today.....Stu and Lee hiked a bit and got some good lines before stopping by to see Jools and I hit up Forest Trail again where although I haven't worked up the courage to spin I was clearing the knuckle on the 3 main kickers there and getting different grabs on each. Jools has been getting used to some new boots and bindings and was definitely starting to get more tweakage on his grabs in his new softer stuff....so it's all looking good for when we head to Norwich with the Euroboys' Airbag!

Whether we'll ride again before we come home on Saturday remains to be seen, a new storm should hit tonight and this is supposed to be the fluffy stuff so if the winds ease off we should get some freshies, if not it'll be more shopping!

I'll try and keep you updated but may have signal probs again if the storms a biggy, so don't panic if you don't hear from us until I'm back home on Sunday.

I ache so much...

2006-02-23T02:37:00.001Z

....but it is so worth it!

Today I have had the best day, I started off on the kickers on Forest Trail, getting a few grabs in and working on my speed and height then after an hour or so we moved down to the pipe. Jools was on filming duty today so I could try and get some of my faults sorted, I'd had a few runs through already while hitting the kickers so I'd got my legs used to it...anyway I had a run through with J filming and did pretty well by my standards, then by the time I'd caught the lift back up Jools had started talking to some guy named Pete.

Pete was coaching some kids up there and having chatted to Jools started giving me some advice and pointers on how to get better in the pipe. He was a really nice guy and was able to explain really well what I should be doing and how to improve on where I was already. Jools reckons that I started looking pretty comfortable on both walls (even the evil-ice wall) and Pete was really encouraging, giving me more pointers each time. He reckons that I've now got the basics pretty much sorted and it's just a matter of confidence and practice so I'm heading back up again tomorrow. Hopefully a good nights sleep and the hour I spent in the hot tub will sort out my aching muscles, having lapped the park and pipe for around 4 hours without a break I certainly feel like I had a good work out.

Oh the bonus of it all is that Pete Del Giudice is not just any coach, he's the ex-US Olympic Coach who won the US Snowboard Association Coach of the Year award following the Salt Lake City Olympics...oh and Jools got to meet Danny Kass & Tommy Czeschin as well, they stopped by the pipe to say hi to Pete whilst he and J were chatting!

When tricks go bad!!!!!!!!!

2006-02-22T06:46:00.000Z

Dont worry,it's not any of our gang,but just a warning to be very careful out there!!.
This is not very nice,and we hope the boarder recovered after this nasty slam.

Ps, I was told to stick this on here!!!!!Im not a sick person......honest!!!!!!

click on the link to view the vid,

http://www.break.com/index/snowboardhead19.html

Presidents Day is a Park Day

2006-02-21T05:36:00.000Z

This morning Jools and I had a lay in ( well 8:30am is a lay in as far as I'm concerned). In fact Jools wasn't even going to ride today, I think after me making him get up at 7am on Saturday and Sunday he wanted a day off. Still he changed his mind once everyone was up and ready to ride and did a quick 5 minute change from PJs to boarding gear in 5 minutes before we headed out the door with Laura and Stu on our way to South Park.

It was the first time Jools and I had ridden South for a week and unfortunately after 3 runs through we decided to leave the rest of the guys there and head back to to Forest Trail. I'm just starting to build my confidence on kickers at the moment and the kickers in South are either too small or way too big, at this stage in my riding I can't afford to take a slam on a huge kicker as I know it'd knock my confidence (plus I hate spending 20 minutes in a lift queue to get one kicker hit in a run) so Jools and I headed back to Main (lift queue 1 minute) so I could keep practising jumps there and also get back on the pipe now there isn't powder clogging it up. We were joined in the early afternoon by Steve who played in the pipe as well. He did really well and managed a few runs without stacking and he was getting pretty near the lip on a couple of hits as well. I was stoked that on my final run of the day I actually got pretty much out of the pipe, ok so it was on my first hit where the wall is a bit lower but I still did it....roll on tomorrow, I'm going to get Jools to get a shot of me in the air above the lip!

Heading home about 2:30pm Jools and Steve managed to talk me into a bit of back yard jibbing, so far I've managed to avoid these little trips but today I figured why not.....I'll tell you why not...crashing into a large wooden log with your shins hurts! Still after a proper non-collapsible kicker had been built I managed to do some jibbing with the rest of them! Yay me! So here are some pics of us all, including Bezza modelling the up coming 2006/7 fashions. (apologies they aren't showing in the post but the web was playing up and I'm too tired to manually sort it out)

Saturday & Sunday saw more snow!

2006-02-21T05:15:00.000Z

Saturday was the first day of the holiday weekend and we were expecting it to be pretty busy, to be honest all weekend was supposed to be busy but in reflection it's only been busy for Mammoth busy as opposed to normal for Europe busy! The longest I had to queue has been for about 15 minutes today (Monday) at the bottom of South Park. In order to avoid the queues (and get some freshies) Jools and I headed up to Main Lodge first thing in the morning, we actually made it in plenty of time to be the first two riders up the hill on lift 6! Yay for us!

Now it has to be said that I am more of a park monkey than a powder hound, but Jools and I did have fun hitting up some kickers and carving our way through knee deep powder. One of the benefits of powder has to be the fact that it doesn't hurt when you stack as I ably proved when I caught a heel edge during a huge carve, I didn't see a large bank of snow left by a Sno-Cat and ended up flying through the air and burying myself.....it's pretty odd lying in the snow buried with no real idea how deep you are (I'd hate to be caught in an avalanche because a powder slam is disorienting enough). Jools played around trying front flips off the Forest Trail kickers (so the airbag does have it's uses) and we generally messed around for a few hours.

Then the LA punters came out to play and it started to get messy....picture a bad day at MK Xscape and you'll be half way there, the scariest thing we saw was “Skier Dad” taking his two skier kids though the Main Unbound Park, riding over the monster kickers and generally looking like a major danger, no change from MK there then ;o)

So we headed down for a restful afternoon of sleep and eating. Oh and in the case of Joe, step jibbing!

Sunday saw more of the same, up for first lift and our first negative encounter with a liftie in Mammoth...yes it's been two weeks and we've only just had a negative liftie experience, not like Europe eh?! Jools and I headed into the lift line ropes, the lifts were running and no one was checking passes, the entrance to the lift mounting point wasn't blocked off (like it had been pre-lift opening the day before) so we rode forward and were about to be picked up by the lift when a screaming harpie ran out of the hut shouting “The lifts aren't open, what do you think you're doing?” Get off, get back” Obviously she'd got out of bed on the wrong side with a hangover. Lets face it if she'd done her job properly and put out the sign and rope across the entrance saying “LIFT CLOSED” then we wouldn't have been put in potential danger....good job we're not American or I might have sued!

Still we didn't let it ruin the morning and Jools and I had another couple of hours hitting kickers in powder, shredding the trees and then heading off home before the crowds .

Friday Fun!

2006-02-21T05:09:00.000Z

It's been a busy weekend, the storm came in as expected and the weekend total of snow came to around 2 feet. After riding briefly on the hill on Friday (cold, windy, cold) we came home and Jools, Joe & Steve set up a “bin jib” in our driveway. Now these weren't your normal wheelie bins like we have at home, these are proper metal bear-proof bins! It was snowing pretty heavily so there was plenty of fresh snow on the drive to build a kicker/ramp from.....then it was just a matter of towing in the guys and taking the shot. Of course towing someone in fresh snow is easier said than done, especially when you're in trainers, this was demonstrated by Ben and Stu who both ended up falling over, Stu face first into the drive 2 steps into the tow and then Ben crashed past the bin into the fence resulting in a blood blister to the palm of his hand. Here are a couple of shots, check out how much it's snowing!

Steve looking cool (& Ben with his hurt hand).

Steve & the bear-proof bin

Steve jibs the bin

Joe jibbing the bin

Hole in the wall

2006-02-21T03:50:00.000Z

After a few laps in the south park I met up with Vicci (Miller) and she offered me to go powder riding. I didn't think there would be any left but Vicci has been living here for 5 years so I thought she might know some stashes so I agreed.
After asking Ben and Steve if they wanted to come Ben said yes and Steve went off over to main park. Vicci, Ben and myself headed up towards the top where Vicci took us off to some secret spots where we made a few good turns, got stuck in some tree wells and then followed Vicci onto the 'hole in the wall'.
Thought I'd post some pictures of the views and the hole in the wall for you all to look at although I can't tell you how to get to them ;-)

Me at the top of the 'hole in the wall

Ben at the bottom of the 'hole in the wall'

Our view

Looking back to the cliff face we dropped down from - the circle is where the 'hole in the wall' was

Fun day

2006-02-19T20:49:00.000Z

Well yesterday Stu, Lee and myself went out for a shred in the pow. Steve would've been joining us but we met up with a guy called Ed from www.snowboard-revolution.com and Steve decided to go riding the pow with him. Pretty cool as Ed managed to convert Steve and now he loves the pow! Good work.
Stu, Lee and myself were just shredding the pow which in some places was around 2 foot deep. We rode all around The Mill and Eagle Lodge. We took some footage but it's pretty jerky so not worth posting.
Basically we had a right good day blasting around the trees.
Everyone is taking a day off today just to give the legs a rest then we'll be shredding again tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get a bit of sunshine to shred to.

Snow's here!

2006-02-18T00:39:00.000Z

After an excellent breakfast of pancakes cooked by "Chef Joe", Jools and I headed up the hill, we weren't expecting much after yesterday's icy winds...especially with snow forecast this afternoon.

Having invested in a toasty warm face mask this morning after having a frozen nose yesterday and the day before I was all set for what was a very snowy day! It was snowing when we made it up to Main Lodge, and we were unsure how long we'd ride for......in the end we were up there for about 5 hours. It really is insane how different the snow is here in comparison to the UK.....it's so much lighter, proper powder snow rather than soggy wet stuff. Luckily it wasn't windy, so even though it was snowing pretty heavily you could still see where you were going.

It really has been the funnest day so far, Jools and I were hitting up laps of Forest Trail again but with softer, powdery run-ins and outs we were feeling a bit braver on the kickers. Jools was getting some huge boned mutes off the big kickers, and then frontside 1s off the smaller big kickers, while I was messing around with some tail grabs of the big kicker. It has to be said though that the highlight of my session was hitting the three small roller kickers and doing a cab1 off each of them in turn...yay me! Of course Jools has to step up the anti and on his final run of the day very nearly nailed a frontside 360, considering he's never really tried one at home I was pretty impressed that he gave it a go in the dodgy conditions. We also had loads of fun just bombing down the piste, riding switch at speed and just having a laugh in the powder.......here's hoping tomorrow is another fairly wind-free snowy day...bring on the fun! Here are a few pictures from around where we're staying so you can see the dumpage (8 inches so far on the hill):

Our house

Icicles

Anyone fancy an ice cold beer?

Duck & cover!

2006-02-17T00:49:00.000Z

Well I've just been checking on the Mammoth Mountain forum to see what the locals have to say about the in-coming storm and the weekend ahead....anyway I stumbled across this thread, it appears that just before 10am this morning we should have gone into "Duck & Cover" mode because there was an earthquake 26 miles from here measuring 4.3! I didn't feel anything but it's the closest I've ever been to a quake....pretty cool huh!

Actually looking at this map it seems there have been a few near here recently, I knew we were fairly near a fault line but hadn't really considered that there'd actually be any quakes while I was here.

Any parents reading this blog please note this is apparently normal out here so there's no need to worry about any of us unduly!

Big kids & Lassie

2006-02-16T02:30:00.000Z

Well because it was a white out on the hill today we all finished early, but the lure of fresh snow was just too much and we went for a bit of a play on the golf course next door......

Joe & Steve

It snowed here today

Joe steezing it up one footed

Then Lassie came to play

Lassie says "Hi" to the camera

Joe again

Steve and his new board

Jools shooting

Joe and Birthday Boy Lee

Bezza

Snow up your nose Stu?

I think Stu's pleased it snowed!

31 Today

2006-02-15T22:57:00.000Z

Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to meeeeeeee!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday Lee!

2006-02-15T22:51:00.000Z

That's it really.....except he's stoked that he's got snow on his birthday! Yay!

Eddie's dead!

2006-02-15T22:45:00.000Z

Following a run in with the knuckle of a kicker in South Park on Monday I'm sad to say the Eddie's dead.......in other news, Radders has a nicely bruised hip.

Poor Eddie...check the crack below the Mammoth sticker

Nice ass Radders.....ouch!

It's trying!

2006-02-15T16:44:00.000Z

Well I woke up this morning hoping for a nice fresh layer of snow, as yet the storm hasn't hit here properly so there wasn't anything new on the pathways but the mountain that I can usually see from our back decking has disappeared into the cloud and there are a few flurries of snow coming down as I type. Heavy winds are forecast for today so I'm undecided whether to ride, I'll have a chat with the others when they get up and see what they reckon. In the meantime I shall get back to my breakfast of toasty, buttery muffins.

There's a storm brewing!

2006-02-15T01:46:00.000Z

Jools and I were back up the hill on Monday after a weekend of rest and recuperation and spent most of the day playing on kickers, with me sessioning the pipe.....I've decided however that a 149 Broads with no edges might not be the best board for riding pipe on. It definitely felt a load more sketchy than my Black Widow. Anyway we did a few rails as well befoer heading home for a meal and an early night.

We headed up almost in time for the first lift this morning, hitting the slopes at 8:30am. The change in the weather was noticeable from the moment we set foot out of the front door, it was much colder and there was quite a breeze. When we got out at Main Lodge it was certainly much colder and windier than it had been last week. So cold in fact that we had to close the vents on our jackets. Whether it was high winds or just general crapness on my part I stacked at the top of the pipe wall and landed on my head (hurrah for helmets!) so decided to head back down and have a restful day at home.

Anyway, from reading the local sites and speaking to local people it looks like there's a storm heading this way, grey clouds are filling what has been a perfectly blue sky and apparently if the snow isn't here by tomorrow it'll certainly be here by the weekend. According to the daily email I get from the Mammoth Mountain info peeps it looks like we're due a couple of feet! Yay!

Whether we'll ride tomorrow or not depends on the weather I guess, I'm going to check with the locals for advice, no point risking it if the winds are going to be too high and visibility too poor...I'll keep you all updated though.

Popping on to rails...

2006-02-13T16:35:00.000Z

...and this video is why I'll be making sure I pop onto any rails I hit today!

Thanks to Lesley for sharing this with me this morning :o)

C-box pics

2006-02-13T05:17:00.000Z

OK then, here are some pics of the guys on the c-box featured in the vid...enjoy!
It's a new day tomorrow, and we'll see what gets hit when we get up the hill.

Stay tuned!!

The Hitchmeister

The Bezzatron

Stu

Steve

Lee

Joe

and then we fell a bit...

2006-02-12T10:00:00.000Z

......after the pyramid box we moved to the C-box, and here's what happened!

Wall Ride pics

2006-02-10T16:56:00.000Z

Here's a few pics from yesterday, hopefully have some more for you after today.

Ben

Steve

Joe

Bezza

Kat

South Park Wall Ride session

2006-02-10T15:07:00.000Z

Yesterday was another blue bird day, the base is down to 10-12 feet now as it's been so sunny and the locals are hoping a storm will hit soon. As it was though we decided to make the best of it, with Jools and I heading up early to hit the kickers in Forest Trail ready to do some filming with the rest of the guys in the afternoon. Both of us were totally stoked to start hitting the bigger kickers in Forest Trail, we're both starting to get the hang of hitting stuff on the mountain now which is good, because earlier inthe week we were pretty daunted by the parks and wondered if we'd ever hit stuff in the parks. Still after shooting some footage on the kickers (vid coming soon) we headed over to South Park to do some jibbing, Joe and Laura had been there for most of the day so were ripping as ever. We decided to session the pyramid box for the rest of the afternoon, and I even got the courage to give it a go.....I haven't hit any rails out here so far, they all look a bit scary but I've decided Friday is rail day so I'm taking my jib board up later to give some more stuff a try. Anyway, here's a short vid of the wall ride session for you. Enjoy!

Is it fun??

2006-02-09T17:24:00.000Z

Yeah I think it's great times!

Wall Ride

2006-02-09T15:09:00.000Z

In addition to the catalogue poses I got yesterday, I also got some shots on the wall ride on Forest Trail...there would have been some video as well but Kat really shouldn't be allowed to use any cameras or videos that aren't point and shoot....anything requiring knob twiddling or adjustment just goes wrong in her hands. Some of it may be rescuable, if so I'll stick it up.

Anyhoo, here's some pics .....

The Wall Ride - Forest Trail

Joe - Hand plant or face plant? You decide

Styleee!

Littlewoods Catalogue Photo Shoot

2006-02-09T06:02:00.000Z

Today I have mostly been shooting for the next Littlewoods catalogue....

So far....

2006-02-09T04:36:00.000Z

Monday was a good day, it was a bit weird trying to find my legs, it's been two years since I rode a mountain. Good to be back!
It's been fun chasing the rest of the guys through the park, the most fun so far has been the Forest Trial with a run of 3 kickers, spine & Wall ride then being able to cut across to the quarter at the bottom...it's ace....like Tamworth but with vert!

I'm finally finding my kicker legs as well, following a shaky start in South.....backside 1's are the way forward but it's taking a while to get used to steep landings after the flat of Tam.

It's been good with riding with everyone, Ben & Lee have been pushing it. Both are spinning well off the kickers, hitting the quarter. Ben keeps hitting the Super Duper pipe along with Kat. Steve's blatantly gay having bought a purple AirBlaster leg bag/leash LOL

Sign off time, another sunny day in Mammoth tomorrow....hope it gets stormy soon.

Oh My God!!

2006-02-08T16:36:00.000Z

It`s just gone 08:30 in the A.M and everybody (except the Hitchmeister) is up and about.... This is truly a landmark event! Early in the park today.

Yah, it's great times.

Can we have one of these please?

2006-02-08T16:00:00.000Z

I rode past this little (ha!!) beast the other day and am defo gonna have a jib on this if my ankle is upto the strain... Neil, if you are reading this, can we make up one of these please? Only twice the size!

Credit (Ben Romo hits the pyramid in South Park. Photo by Bryan Beulin)

Arse!

2006-02-08T15:44:00.000Z

Well, it`s just typical. After having a blinding first day hitting the eight in-line kicker trail, the second day proved to be quite different. As Kat has said, the in-line kicker trail grew overnight, with some of the kickers developing rather nasty knuckles. Anyway, long story short kinda thing, I landed awkwardly on one of the bigger kickers, dug in a heel edge and span round, only my board span round and my leg didn`t....Hmmm Nice!

I sat out at the bottom of the park run, watching everybody else hitting the kickers and the rails (bugger). Then limped back to main lodge to rest up and sit in the sun.

Anyways, I`m up, and have popped a few painkillers and am hoping to be back up there today..Fingers crossed - touch wood.

The parks here are truly unbelievable. Big shouts for Joe and the Bezzatron for hitting up main and the gnarly C-boxes in south. Me, kat and the others will be hitting up the forest trail today, which has three lines of kickers - small, medium and large. I`ve swapped back to my softer board as well, cos I can`t handle being off a rail for this long!!!

Every rail I`ve seen so far is gap/jump-on or gap/jump-up, and I`ve only ever hit these once or twice, so it`s going to be a long day...

Ahhh Mammoth..... I`m off to Starbucks for a coffee.

Flailing monkey

2006-02-08T03:18:00.000Z

Yesterday and today I have mostly been hitting kickers like a flailing monkey.....I've posted more about this on my blog so click here to read about my day today in more detail. Hopefully some of the others will post on here shortly once they have a net signal.

Which way's forward?

2006-02-08T02:31:00.000Z

Yesterday (Monday) was our first day on the hill and what was initially meant to be a cruisy day on the mountain ended up being a quick cruise followed by some kickers and rails in the parks. Of course no day on the hill can go completely smoothly as proved by Steve. Before we left for this trip Steve went to Sputnik snowboard shop for some binding screws and left with a brand new Eddie Wall snowboard (and no screws)....so you'd have thought that in the weeks leading up to the trip he'd have worked out which was the front of the board and which was the back. It seems not, after the second run Steve realised that he'd set his bindings up the wrong way round and was having to ride his directional board tail first.

On the bright side Mammoth is well equipped for these kind of issues......at the top of each chair lift you can find benches to sit on and strap in, and tied to these benches you'll find screwdrivers! Pretty impressive I think, especially when you consider how hard it is to find a screw driver at a UK slope. What I'm also highly impressed with is the way that they slow down the chairlifts as you get off, unlike France where they seem to take great delight in throwing you off the chair at 50mph into a steep icy shoot and then laugh as you one-footedly slide into random skiers.

We all had a good day anyway, hopefully there'll be many more to come.

Mammoth Madness - Back yard jibbing movie

2006-02-06T08:00:00.000Z

Well having spent the afternoon digging and filming and the evening editing together a short film for your viewing pleasure, I am pleased to present Mammoth Madness, a brief summary of Joe and Steve's afternoon.

Playing in the back yard

2006-02-06T00:42:00.000Z

I've just snapped these pics of Joe playing in our back yard, J's taking some video as well so hopefully we'll have some footage for you later

Building the rock jib

Joe jibbing

One footed jibbing

Starbucks and pictures

2006-02-05T17:35:00.000Z

Well it's the first day here and so far we've found Starbucks, Vons (the local supermarket) and we're taking it easy and settling in. The condo is amazing, certainly more than exceeding French rabbit hutch proportions!

So here are a few pictures to whet your appetite .....

Our living area...check out the leather sofas!

The view from our deck

The guys settling in...laptop central

Woohoo, we're here!

2006-02-05T14:54:00.000Z

We made it, after being up for more than 24 hours we are here. More once everyone is up, unpacked and moving. Still the journey was fairly good with only a small amount of turbulence coming into Reno airport. Oh and we had Subway on the drive down, if you can picture the chaos that 7 people ordering an array of sandwiches when only a couple know the concept of how Subway works then you'll feel sorry for the poor guys we descended on.

Bye for now

Sitting in departures

2006-02-04T10:29:00.000Z

Well we're all present and correct, everyone made it to
the airport on time and have cleared check in and
customs. We're boarding shortly so the next time we
post well be in the states! Try not to miss up too
much!

So do you ride back country?

2006-02-01T13:04:00.000Z

I've just found this interesting post on the Mammouth Mountain forum and figured I'd link it here for anyone who rides backcountry, especially without a guide, transceiver, probe etc

It's certainly made me think twice about the areas I'll be accessing in the coming month! Be careful out there people

Please do leave comments below if you fancy a bit of a debate on the subject

The Final Countdown...

2006-01-31T11:18:00.000Z

....cue dodgy 80's tune running through your mind

Well it's less than a week so here you go, the final countdown to departure

So this is where we're headed!

2006-01-31T09:37:00.000Z

A view of The Minarets, taken by Ken Zust and posted as a daily photo on the Mammoth Mountain website

Welcome!

2006-01-31T08:45:00.000Z

I've been wanting to go to Mammoth pretty much since I started freestyle riding and this year it's going to happen. Back in May 2005 a bunch of us bought cheap season tickets and started planning for the trip, more joined us and on Saturday 4th of February our group of 8 will be leaving Heathrow and descending on Mammoth for 4 weeks!

This blog will keep you updated as to what we've been up to and will hopefully provide a selection of pictures and videos to help you pass the time while you're stuck in the office.