I’m having surgery to repair my knee Wednesday, but Max, Wilson and Charlie went up Eddies on Saturday and Max returned with some footage. Enjoy.
video
Archived Posts from this Category
February 28, 2012
Living Vicariously Through My Friends
Posted by dongshow under backcountry, Skiing, Turnagain, video | Tags: Eddies |1 Comment
November 23, 2011
Snowing Again
Posted by dongshow under backcountry, Skiing, Turnagain, video | Tags: Cornbiscuit |Leave a Comment
Last week the wind blew and it got extremely cold and I was convinced all the snow had gone to shit. I didn’t even go out on saturday, opting to pass on a day of -17 F. temps, wind, and crust skiing. But sunday, neither Max nor I could resist and we wound up going up Cornbiscuit. Strangely it was cloudy and overcast everywhere but Turnagain Pass, and we actually had decent visibility, although very little direct sunshine. And the snow, was actually fantastic, the week long cold snap had dried it out and made it surprisingly fast, I was shocked how quick I got going before having a chance to throw a turn, and the wind seemed to have minimal effect on the northern lines in Davis Creek. So great times, and I’m thrilled to report that its currently dumping in Anchorage, and has been snowing hard down south since early yesterday. So whoohoo, more snow and more skiing to come. Video form the weekend bellow.
November 16, 2011
Max’s Video From Friday
Posted by dongshow under backcountry, Skiing, Turnagain, video | Tags: Eddies |Leave a Comment
Max on Eddies from Friday, a decent sample of the conditions in the trees.
November 6, 2011
Crack Fix
Posted by dongshow under backcountry, Skiing, Turnagain, video | Tags: Cornbiscuit, Superbowl |[3] Comments
Fall is an awful season, I’m so glad its over. As with every year, each fall season that I don’t leave the country my accomplishments consist of driving my self crazy over tedium, and boredom. The skiing has been pretty good the last couple of weeks though, and I’ve been feeling better, but today was absolutely fantastic, I feel like I got put back on my medicine. I went up to Goldpan with Andy this morning, and enjoyed a nice ridge walk along Magnum with the Viking before dropping in to Superbowl. Some other folks had beat us up there, but no one had skied the line I was planning on taking, so it was all good. A little wind affected up top, but absolute pow down bellow. I didn’t ski so well, as I’m not really in shape yet and embarassingly my legs were gassed halfway down. From there, Andy and I headed up Cornbiscuit and skied the corner-pocket chute before bushwhacking our way back to the road. Our run down Superbowl has had me in a permagrin since I got to the bottom. After last years horrible season it felt so so nice to finally ski something steep and interesting. Video bellow.
September 12, 2011
Jewel Glacier Skiing
Posted by dongshow under backcountry, Skiing, video | Tags: alaska skiing, Crow Pass, girdwood, Jewel Glacier |[2] Comments
Friday I was out in Eagle River with Graham to work on skis and was surprised by the amount of snow on the surrounding peaks. Tentative plans were made to go skiing on Sunday, but I had very little faith that things would actually work out. However, Sunday turned out to be gorgeous, easily the nicest day in weeks, and Graham called early that morning to let me know he was on his way. The parking lot at Crow Pass was packed, but we were the only skiers, and after a little over an hour of hiking, and some serious doubts as to if we’d find anything worth skiing, we eventually came around a corner to find the Jewel with covered with a healthy blanket of warm wet snow. Getting some turns in under the sunshine was fantastic, it feels so so good to be skiing again. A little video bellow, not really anything special, but I figured I might as well put something up to commemorate the beginning of a new year.
September 7, 2011
Wedding Activities Off All Sorts: 6 Mile Creek Rafting and Model Rocket Failures
Posted by dongshow under alcohol, mitigated disasters, video | Tags: 6 Mile Creek, Model Rockets, Whitewater Rafting |Leave a Comment
No actual pictures or video of last weekends wedding, but a couple videos of some of the weeks festivities have made it online so I might as well put them up as relief from the recent sailing theme around these parts. Above is a video Scott put together of our trip down 6 Mile Creek with Chugach Outdoor Center. Bellow are Wilsons’ attempts to break up our post wedding hangovers with some homemade model rockets (plastic water bottles and duct tape) which struggled to make it 100 feet in the air. Good times.
August 23, 2011
Alaska Cup Yacht Racing
Posted by dongshow under video, wind sports | Tags: Maniac, Seward, William H. Seward Yacht Club |1 Comment
I spent the weekend sailing aboard Gary’s boat Maniac down in Seward for the Alaska Cup Regatta this weekend. We had trouble finding crew as the weather on Saturday was nasty (don’t be fooled, the picture above is from Sunday) and people had work, girlfriend or school commitments that kept them elsewhere. We sailed all weekend slightly under manned, which kept us from flying our spinnaker the first day, and forced us to sail a race (which we won) with a somewhat improvised reef. We also sailed on saturday with a Columbian crew member who didn’t speak a word of English. On our second downwind leg our somewhat novice helmsman accidentally jibed the boat (minute 3:50 in the video bellow) while he was on the boom, pitching him into the life lines, how he avoided being tossed overboard still amazes me.
Despite the challenges we got some incredibly lucky weather, and were able to play the tide to our advantage on a few occasions allowing us to eek out a victory. We took 2nd in the last race to clinch the win by less then half a boat length. Coming in to the windward finish on starboard we were completely overpowered, and Norm (our rookie helmsman) had the tiller in his chest trying to keep the boat from rounding up. Our closest rival barged in on port and fouled us just as we were crossing the line, making for a great finish to the regatta. All in all a fantastic weekend in Seward. The WHSYC is an amazing place, and through a fantastic party Saturday night, our crew ended up drinking for a little over 8 hours post race, and were all struggling with hangovers pre-race on Sunday. The only setback was my GoPro having no end of problems on Sunday, so I have next to no footage of any racing in the sunshine. That said, enjoy the cold gray racing in the rain from Sunday. Also, if your looking for any more sailing videos I highly suggest Gary’s Kite-cam footage of sailing around outside of Seward.
August 10, 2011
Kenai Lake Windsurfing
Posted by dongshow under video, wind sports | Tags: Cooper Landing, Kenai Lake |[2] Comments
Spent the weekend camping and Windsurfing down on Kenai Lake. We had some fantastic winds on saturday, but it was a little too light on sunday. Saturday we discovered the little bay at the Quartz Creek boat launch makes for some perfect windsurfing. A little peninsula just to our east kept a large area sheltered from most of the chop but didn’t kill the winds. Great times, the best windsurfing I’ve done to date, there was a good 15 minutes where Max and I were crossing back and forth cheering.
July 29, 2011
Arial Footage of a Giant Caribou Herd
Posted by dongshow under video | Tags: Canada, Caribou, Nunavut |Leave a Comment
Our Nunavut corespondent just sent in a little helicopter footage of a massive caribou herd. Looks to be plenty of animals up there in Canada.
July 27, 2011
Lazy Weekend Camping in the Rain
Posted by dongshow under Fish, mitigated disasters, Uncategorized, video, wind sports | Tags: dipnetting, kasilof |1 Comment
So, despite having caught all of our fish tuesday afternoon, Kim and I opted to head back down to Kasilof this weekend for some partying and windsurfing. We figured at the very least we could have fun taunting or friends about their lack of fish from the beach.
Traffic on friday evening was outrageous, and Kim and I only arrived because we avoided the highway closure by taking the Skilak Lake cutoff. Our friends that left a few hours later weren’t so lucky, and ended up camping on the highway. Friday evening was gorgeous, but by the time they all arrived early Saturday morning it began to rain, and didn’t quit until sometime Monday. Early that morning a game of Rye Bocce commenced, and moments after it finished Kim managed to roll Mikey’s four wheeler, impaling his calf, and requiring 19 stitches at the Soldotna Emergency Room.
The fishing was really slow, so very little fishing was done at all, and the rain forced us to spend most of our time beneath a tarp we strung between the trucks. Nonetheless a good time was had, Max and I even got a little Windsurfing done in the mouth of the river, despite less then co-operative winds. I managed to have all sorts of issues, and was forced to swim the board back to shore, whereupon I began throwing up. Great times for sure, and it certainly beats having to get rescued by the Coast Guard or floating out to sea. Anyway, video bellow, no footage of fish actually being caught, but plenty of the usual beach antics plus some Windsurfing.
July 14, 2011
More Sailboat Racing in Seward
Posted by dongshow under video, wind sports | Tags: Sailing, Seward, William H. Seward Yacht Club |Leave a Comment
Hunter, Matt the Cook and I went down to Seward last weekend for more sailing on Resurrection Bay with the William H. Seward Yacht Club. Where as on my one previous day down there Max and I both sailed on Williwaw, this time Hunter ended up on Cirrus, while Matt the Cook and I were racing with Gary on Maniac (a Beneteau FC10 for the boat nerds amongst the readers). It turned out to be another great day on the water with solid winds and the occasional spot of sunshine. I’ve got some video from the first part of the first race from both Cirrus and Maniac. I put both starts, and both of our first tacks (which were in response to one another) for a bit of comparison. You can see how on Maniac we managed to completely screw our start by failing to get the sails in and general chaos amongst the first time crew members. We recovered and managed to take a3rd place, but there is definitely room for improvement.
July 9, 2011
July Wet Wednesday Series
Posted by dongshow under video, wind sports | Tags: Alaska Sailing Club, Buccaneer 18 |Leave a Comment
More video from this past Wednesday’s races out in Big Lake at the Alaska Sailing Club. All the video is from Chris’s boat. I was sailing with Tim, and we won all three races so any video from our boat wouldn’t have contained much action. So far I only have the 1st and 3rd races, but the second race will be up added as soon as I get the chance. You’ll notice that Chris is at a serious disadvantage as the only boat on the water without a spinnaker but still manages to beat a couple boats each race. In other news, Max scored a mint condition Mistral Maui that has long been forgotten in the back of his employers warehouse, and if you are looking to buy a house, it would be hard to do much better then this beautiful property. Also Luc Mehl has some amazing pictures to go with a great story of an amazing bike, ski, raft Denali traverse from north to south.
Race 2:
Race 3:
