Steamboat 1/2/10

It feels really good to have a 3 day weekend in town where I can leisurely relax and make my way to the mountain when I want to.  I made a couple calls but most people had gone in for the day so I ended up spending the afternoon alone riding the mountain.  We received a couple inches last night so today offered up another powder day on the mountain.  I headed to the back of the mountain, Morningside area to get my turns in.

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This year I wanted to try a Burton setup to see how well it would hold up throughout the season (since I’ve only ridden ICS/EST during demo days) and I picked out my powder setup to be entirely Burton with a 158 Burton Malolo and Burton Scribe EST bindings.  I finally was able to take it out today and try it in the new snow…so I’ll be updating the review soon with how it handled in powder.

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Morningside at Steamboat reminds me of Washington but without the pitch, it’s actually really flat which makes it very dangerous on heavy snow years because of the combination of tree wells with skiers/riders who aren’t familiar with tree wells.  The snowfall and flat terrain makes it so you need to keep your speed and know where to ride to enjoy some of the goods that are waiting back there.  The top of it has the steeper pitches, drops and fun parts of the backside which today was plenty of fun.

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I ended up just listening to tunes and lapping my favorite run which had few other people on it, so every lap meant some powder turns for myself.  The one reason I picked this area to ride the powder is because I’m very familiar with it and comfortable riding alone here.

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I won’t lie but today had some good turns that I could really try out my Malolo in, here’s a shot I took pointing the camera at the nose of the board while riding through the powder

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To get to where I wanted to make some turns, meant dropping a rock drop that’s a couple feet high (probably 5 feet at the most).  When you come over it, it doesn’t look like much until your on the other side and look back.  I felt really comfortable dropping it and it’s awesome that my knee feels this good, really happy that I’m not afraid of drops anymore.  I know 5 feet isn’t much but for me, it’s more than I’ve done in the past.

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I ended the day before the mountain closed so I could drop off my prototype at The Click to get some core shots fixed, it definitely took some beating from the early season conditions here and at Silverton.

Tomorrow looks like another powder day on the mountain so I might be up early for my first day of pressing glass.