Orange is for Diggers

Photo courtesy of Mount Snow.By Matthias Boxler

Carinthia has just opened for business when a voice from above prompts two laborers dressed in orange to pause and squint up into the light. They can’t help but smile because the message they hear brings affirmation that their work is indeed most righteous.

“Seven … eight … nine. Yeah, it’s nine!”

The voice is that of a teenage snowboarder who, with his friend, has grabbed first chair aboard the Nitro Express on a Saturday morning at Carinthia. For the uninitiated, his declaration makes little sense. But the diggers quickly return their focus to the job at hand knowing exactly what it means: They’re running out of time.

(Read full story in Mount Snow Magazine)

Freeskiing 'fats' are reviving the industry

 
Sales of wide-waist skis are driving the market, turning New England resorts like Jay Peak into off-piste playgrounds (photo courtesy of Jay Peak).By Matthias Boxler

Next time you’re sucking air through that huge grin on your face because you just hucked off a  cliff, shmeared a perfect landing pillow to scrape off excess speed before ripping perfectly tight powder turns through a treeline that you dream about … thank a snowboarder.

They’ll probably look at you like you’ve lost your mind but do it anyway. Those fat skis you’re on with the rocker in the tips and tails? Those mixed cambers, mid-fats and twin tips everybody else is bringing to the mountain these days – even on the East coast? Snowboarding brought you those, thank you very much. It’s an industry evolution that has reenergized skiing after a period of stagnancy.

Yep, skiing is cool again and fat boards are driving the market. According to research by Leisure Trends Group and published by SnowSports Industries America, sales of skis with waist widths 95mm or wider increased 162 percent in 2010/2011 to 33,763 pairs sold. Reverse/mixed camber ski sales doubled in one season. In fact, alpine equipment sales across all categories jumped 17.6 percent compared to a scant 0.1 percent rise in snowboard equipment sold.

“I love it,” says John “Spoon” Witherspoon, ski instructor and head freeskiing coach at Jay Peak who is enjoying the resurgence first-hand. 

(Read full story) 

Smuggs debuts Riglet Park for youngest rippers

By Matthias Boxler

It’s that magical place where Romper Room meets Winter X, where Winnie the Pooh gears up in his treehouse for a day of ripping up New England slopes.

Where else but Smugglers’ Notch, Vt. – where a new park for kids ages 3-5 will debut this season and build on the resort’s award-winning focus to perfect the family experience. That’s right, kids as young as age 3 will be learning how to snowboard in the Riglet Park, an age most instructors had previously believed too young.

“When we launched our all-day snowboarding camp for 4- and 5-year-olds in 2002, we were one of the first resorts to begin teaching snowboarding at such a young age,” said Harley Johnson, director of Smugglers’ Snow Sport University.

(Read full story.)

Parks and reclamation: Sugarbush style

After a period of darkness, Sugarbush Parks! Is restoring freestyle credibility to the Mad River Valley (Matt Boxler photo).By Matthias Boxler   

When darkness settles into the Mad River Valley and lulls most who were out on the hill that day into a sound sleep, Trevor Borrelli finds himself obsessing with flaws.

Not his own flaws so much, but the flaws only an impassioned terrain parks crew leader sees. It could literally be three inches of snow in the wrong spot, pushed down the hill a bit below a jump.

“It drives me crazy … I mean crazy,” Borrelli says. “Everyone else comes into the park and says ‘this is amazing’ but all I’m thinking is ‘this is wrong … and this is wrong … and this needs to be better.”

A decade ago, no one in the Valley was losing much sleep over the Sugarbush terrain parks situation. It seems if snowboarding’s freestyle prime time had come to one of the East’s premier resorts in the early ’90s, it was mysteriously long gone less than a decade later.

(Read full story.) 

'Craig's' door opens to snowboarding's soul

Snowboarding legend Craig Kelly's spirit lives on in Burton's new proto-typing facility in Burlington, Vt. (photo courtesy of Burton Snowboards)By Matthias Boxler

If there were a magical door somewhere in the mountains that opened up into the pure soul of snowboarding, it would have Craig Kelly’s name on it.

Everyone who has ever strapped on a snowboard and – no matter how fleeting – experienced the harmonic union of cold mountain air, soft snow and the joyful freedom of dancing with earth’s gravitational forces has had the privilege of passing through this door.

Leave it to Burton Snowboards to honor this hallowed spiritual entrance by building a permanent physical tribute to everything Kelly represented. In January, next door to Burton’s global headquarters in Burlington, Vt., employees celebrated the grand opening of the most sophisticated snowboard proto-typing facility ever built.

The name on the front door, quite simply, is “Craig’s.”

(Read full story.)

The wonderful wizard of blogs

Run-ins with celebrities, such as Olympic gold medalist Shaun White, aren't uncommon for Luke Q. Stafford (photo: Photo courtesy of Luke Q. Stafford)By Matthias Boxler

Pay no attention to that man behind the Ride Vermont curtain.

He’s quite busy these days pulling all the levers and twisting all the knobs to construct an online snowboarding community with a digital pulse beating stronger than ever in Vermont – the sport’s birthplace where he hopes all yellow brick bandwidths will ultimately lead.

In managing the RideVermont.com brand, he adeptly monitors RSS feeds and keyword alerts, filters quality Twitter links and Facebook posts, maintains close contact with member resort PR personnel, and produces a boatload of creative and informative content across all the blogging channels – all with a laptop and an internet connection (and, of course, his trusted Kodak Zi8 HD camcorder).

Who is this modern day wizard, anyway, and how can he make so much work seem like so much fun? People of Oz, I give you Luke Q. Stafford.

(Read full story)

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