Hanging on the edge - sketchy ski plane "landing"

I thought this was pretty impressive. A guy over on the TGR boards posted this thread and took this great picture. He was out flying somewhere near Talkeetna, Alaska (I believe) when he took this picture from the air.



If you look closely you can see the plane on the left, holy crap. The story as near I can tell goes something like this:

"these guys are way fucking lucky, they had intentions of skiing, but messed up the landing big time...Coming from the direction that they did, you land on a fairly steep incline and it kind of rolls over to the edge of this cliff, and as the picture shows, you cant really see the edge until it is too late, the plane is held there by the wing in the snow and one ski....A good stiff wind (like the one blowing last night) would send this thing 4,000ft straight down the cliff to the bottom...I still cant think of how they got out of there without tipping that thing off the mountain.....The pilot actually crawled back in the plane and radioed for help, this is just outside of town so a helo was dispatched pretty quickly..."

Freedom Riders

While I'm not quite sure my brain is fully accepting the fact that winter is over, I can say that I am ready for some warm weather. The forecast is calling for near 70 temps in Missoula by Sunday. Lower elevation trails are drying out for riding. My first mtb ride was last week up the Sentinel trail. I'll need to get my biking muscles back before I can truly enjoy it.

Anyway, I ran across this over at the backcountry.com blog, The Goat. KGB Productions is premiering their new mountain bike film, Freedom Riders, tonight at Sea Otter. It’s a true story of a core group of riders who formed an against-all-odds relationship with the Forest Service and created the first freeride specific trails on public lands in the lower 48.


HD High Def Freeride Mountain Bike Movie DVD Trailer from Freedom Riders The Movie Freerid on Vimeo.

Surpise attack - The Canyons

Last week we seized the day and made a last minute trip to The Canyons down in Utah. T's sister was taking her family on a spring break ski trip at The Canyons. Turns out it's much cheaper and easier for that matter to get from FL to UT rather than MT. Without her knowing we loaded up the babies, lots of gear, put in a DVD to distract the kids and headed out. Dry roads meant smooth sailing for the eight hours down I-15.

We arrived and tried to figure a way to surprise everyone. After all was said and done, my nephew was floored when we answered a knock at the door and found 2 little cuties standing at the door. T and I got a day to ski together with our nephew and we sampled some great snow. The Canyons had rec'd 11" the day before, 5" the day we skied and 5" more the second day we skied. It's a different world skiing swanky 6 pack high speed lifts when you are used to 30 year old slow ass Riblet chairlifts (see Snowbowl).

The second day I met up with a local shredder and got the ultimate tour of The Canyons. We headed up the hike off the 9990 chair and skied some great snow on the four runs we did. I had a binding malfunction on my 8 year old Fritchi Freerides on the first slackcountry run, so the rest of the day I busted crud on the Pro's.



Thanks to everyone! Thanks M and T, Toby, T, and Black Diamond for great customer service.

Slednecks highmarking set off huge avalanche

I came across this crazy video of a sledneck making a insanely stupid highmark somewhere in Canada. I'm not sure of the outcome, but it appears that he made it out. Watching the 'bilers at the bottom beating feet out of there is kind of comical in a scary sort of way. One thing I am sure of, that guys pants are stained with brown.