On Las Vegas and Snowboarding

I feel that with the exception of the hardcore fans of Vegas, everyone else shares a love hate relationship with the city. In this small area of the world you can do just about anything. The hate comes from the cost of this convenience, both financial and facing the crowds. I feel that overall I like Vegas, despite my hate of crowds and the pain I feel in my wallet when its time to leave. Its good seem to outweigh the bad. Where else could you gorge yourself at a buffet, before skiing, rock climb on your way back to the city, where you enjoy dinner from a Michelin Star chef, shoot machine guns spanning the last 100 years and then watch the most talented fighters in the world beat each other for sport? Nowhere that I know of.

I'm sure there are very few people who consider Vegas to be a ski town, but less than an hour from downtown they have a small resort that is pretty decent. Situated above 8,500 feet on mount Charleston, it actually receives a fair amount of real snow. At the time I went on Christmas Eve it had received more snow than any of the Souther California or Arizona resorts that are within a weekends trip away from me.

As long as you avoided the bunny hill, there were no lift lines and nicely groomed slopes. The bunny hill was crowded, barely steep enough to slide on, and full of tourist form all over the world. They didn't have nearly as many terrain features as Big Bear had, but there were a few jumps and sliders scattered along one of the runs.

With a new GoPro arrangement and a little editing I put together the video below.

-James

Lele Kawa

Early season snowboarding at Big Bear, CA

The worst part about early season snow is only two runs being open and lift lines. The best part is all the snow bunnies in tank tops as the day heated up.

It had been a while since I spent any time on a snowboard, so I was happy to get up to Big Bear, CA for the long weekend. Plenty of fake snow on the two open slopes, one beginner and one intermediate. The good thing was the intermediate trail had a bunch of man made terrain scattered all over it.

Normally I shy away from terrain parks in favor of glades or side country, but for early season you have to take what you can get. They had a good variety, which was nice. They had rails, boxes, small table tops, larger kickers, and some large pipes.

-James

Lele Kawa

Ice and Fire

Since before I ever got to Hawaii it was a goal of mine to go from snow to beach in the same day. I really wanted to snowboard and surf in the same day, but that didn't quite happen.

In one day I managed to go visit the top of Mauna Kea and play in the snow, and then drive down to Volcanos National Park and see flowing lava in the afternoon, an stopped at the beach inbetween. While both of these things are relitively close, it still took most of the day.Because I started in Kona, Hawaii, the day involved about 10 hours of driving.

I don't have too much to say on this adventure, so I will let the video and pictures speak for themselves.

Lava

Hot lava

Hawaiian Snow

View from the top of the world

Flaine, France Skiing

Flaine, France is a tiny little ski town in the shadow of Mont Blanc. I went down there with three friends for some fun in the snow. We got a little ski in ski out condo and spent the week doing nothing but spending time on the mountain or drinking. That is the beauty of small towns like Flaine.

Mont Blanc

Our timing couldn't have been much better. There was already a good amount of snow in the mountain when we got there. Our first day was spent warming up and learning the mountain on the groomers, which was nice since all of us had not rode for at least a year.

Shopping for supplies with the smallest shopping cart ever

Just as we were heading in for the night, the snow started coming down. It continued almost all night. In the morning we got up early to find about 9 inches of fresh powder. We spent the whole day on the side-country floating over all the fresh powder.

Day three I took the day off from snowboarding to ski and get my board tuned. There was still a little powder to play on, but most of the day was spent on the back side of the mountain, which wasn't very steep.

Day four it was back to the board and sticking to the steeps. I tried to seek out some cliff jumps, and found a few small ones.