Featuring Sage Kotsenburg, Tom Wallisch, and Ken Block, here’s a video I made for PCMR.  Amazing to live in a town with these guys. Amazing characters.

“Chinese Downhill… It is the Only Way”

For rules… there are none.  First man to cross the finish line and chug a beer wins.

This past weekend, Parkites gathered with their freshly waxed skis, finest neon spandex, and a chilled PBR at the base of Park City Mountain Resort.  The Corner Store, an après-ski bar (and my place of employment) held the 9th Annual Chinese Downhill.  For those who haven’t seen the movie Hot Dog (shame on you), Chinese Downhill is a ski race at its truest, rowdiest, and barbaric form.

The race starts at Jupiter Peak!  A twenty minute hike up a ridge that leads you to incredible views, steep lines, and adrenalin-hungry mongrels (or homies).

This was my first year competing and all I can say is I’m stoked to have survived.  Fifty skiers and boarders start at the same time, charging downhill… letting gravity, speed and luck take them to the midway station.   There, they have to chug a beer and then continue down the hill.  Once they arrive at the bottom, they sprint to the corner store (yes, ski school and tourists may be jeopardized) to chug a beer.  First one done, wins!  And the rest… are losers.

My start to the race wasn’t stellar.  I immediately entered a white room and realized the snow was moving faster than my skis.  After watching numerous bodies collide in front of me, I stopped to only be carried 30 feet in a ‘sluffalanche’.  I will admit, for a brief second the thought of ‘this is where I break every bone is my body’ occurred when I was headed toward rocks!   But alas, I caught my breath, gave a quick thank you to the mountain deities, and sent it down the rest of the peak…with no poles.  Yes… my sweet soul poles were buried, perhaps sacrificed.

I got to the bottom where beer, friends, and a mechanical bull awaited.  Then I had to throw on an apron, and serve the hooligans. 

Congratulations to my two friends, Kimmy Sharp and Harrison Holly for taking it down!

With the fresh pow in the Wasatch backcountry shredded and sun baked beyond recognition, as well as the minimal amount of snowfall in Utah throughout January, I thought it would be a great idea to head to Park City to ride some super-pipe. I hit the mountain solo which seems to be a trend for myself this season. I was excited right away to see my buddy (born and raised Park City local) Jayson Thiros a.k.a Shortbus, causally taking laps in the pipe with a few ladies. I hurried to catch up with them and our bluebird park day had begun!

Brett Hillyard from the new company Ello Gum was on the scene and managed to snap a few shots of our super pipe shred session.  At the end of the day I felt grateful for this gorgeous Utah afternoon.

Jayson and I were ripping the sunny pipe all day with small part of our day spent in Neff Land where Chris Shields was bumpin some music in the DJ booth for us to shred to. I almost forgot how fun snowboarding can be even when it doesn’t snow a substantial amount for weeks at a time. I felt really rejuvenated after this day, one that felt like there wasn’t enough time in the day; the kind of days I live for. Cheers!

Last week the Wasatch was pounded with a pretty awesome storm cycle that dropped 30+ inches on the Cottonwoods. Needless to say, skiing took priority over work, showers, laundry, emails, phones, internet, computers, and anything else that didn’t involve makin’ turns and drinking beer. My “get-shit-done” mentality walked right out on me and was replaced with an uncontrollable hedonistic alter-ego. To anyone that I blew off this last week – apologies (sorta). If you know me, then I’m sure you’ve already forgiven my powder induced flakiness and understand that when it snows, my ability to pick up my phone ain’t so hot! Water under the bridge baby!

My stupidly awesome week started with frantic texts from my sister at 1:45AM Thursday morning (aka Wednesday night for most of us)…

• @1:45am: IT’S NUKING OUTSIDE. CASE – WAKE UP!!!!
• @1:46am: DUDE – W A K E  U P !!! NUKEFEST … No, but seriously, go look out your window. We need to plot where we are going tomorrow. THOUGHTS???
• @ 1:48am: Getttttttinnnnnng Haaaaaaammmmmmmered! CALL ME!!!!!
• @1:50am: OK – Call me when you wake up!!!??? BIRD??? WHEN DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE?????!!!

I woke up with my window shaking from sounds of dynamite at 7-ish that morning and saw the panicked Tori-isms filling my phone screen. After a quickie 10 second call, we knew it was going to just get deeper as the day went on, so there wasn’t a rush to leave the house. I scooped her and Matt up at around 9am, grabbed some bagels and coffee, and headed down Parley’s Canyon towards Little Cottonwood.  The roads were snow covered, my subie was lovin’ life, and Snowbird was in view soon enough. We parked, cruised to the tram, and met up with some friends. Each lap kept getting deeper and deeper as the day went on as people were blown off the resort by the bazillion-MPH wind. It was a total sleeper pow day, and it did NOT disappoint!

At about 2pm, that’s when the magic happened. There were only a handful of people on the mountain and endless free refills, lap after lap! At about 3, we did a quickly hike up Baldy and I got to experience the deepest turns I’ve had in the last 3 years. The conditions were pretty sketchy as it was snowing way heavy and the wind was loading up the terrain so quickly that the 2-3 feet of snow was becoming pretty unstable to be on. But daaaaaaaamn was it good to be in snow that deep and that light. The white room was finally back in the Wasatch! We wrapped up the day at the Tram Club, cheers-ing our beers and enjoying the live band – then headed back to Park City.

Friday followed suit, with a little less snow, but the same amount of good times. Park City got about 6″ overnight on top of the previous day’s snowfall and I was pretty pumped to take it easy on my legs at PCMR. Kevin and I met up with my dad and spent the morning lapping super soft pow-blanketed bumps. Later in the afternoon, Jupe opened up and there were more freshies to be had. There is truly nothing in the world that makes me as happy as being in the mountains, skiing fresh snow, with my friends and family. It is a pretty simple happy life! I skied till the wind stopped the chairs from turning at about 3:30pm, grabbed a few pints with my dad, and we enjoyed the rest of the day talking about life while chilling in our base-layers.

Saturday was a day of rest, and then Sunday followed with more fresh snow, more face shots, some tequila shots (thanks Cindy & Jeff!!!!) and general Snowbird debauchery. Sunday, Kevin and I ran into a ton of different friends, co-workers, and fellow stoke-birds. The snow was deep and soft enough that I finally discovered the balls to jump my first lil cliff (and I do mean mini!). But I was pumped none-the-less and I loved learning more about the terrain as I still don’t know the resort that well. We then completely lost track of time while après-ing and at about 9PM, finally decided it was time to call it a day! On the walk out of El Chanate, we both realized that it had dumped the entire time since we stopped skiing and I knew that we had to return the next morning. Lake effect+Monday+unopened terrain from previous storm days???  Everything else I had planned slipped away. I texted Tori telling her that I’d pick her up bright and early and that she didn’t really have a choice, promising I’d have her back to work by 2PM.

Monday morning came fast and I scooped Tori to cruise back to Little Cottonwood. We had bottomless cirque turns, poked around perfectly filled in shoots, got gassed in the tram (brutal!), and then giggled wildly as we tried to squeeze in as many laps as possible within the 4 hours we had. GREAT…FREAKING…DAY! Shredding around with my sister and fav. ski buddy was a superior way to end the storm cycle! That, and one too many tacos at Lone Star. So delish!

So now it’s back to the waiting game. Here’s to hoping for more snow, a short-lived high pressure system, and working on my tele turns.