Squaw Valley Conditions Report: Saturday 2/11/17 The rain finally turned to snow at Squaw Valley on Friday. After several days of rain it barely turned to snow enough at the base that it started to collect. The peaks actually got a surprising amount of snow, though basically all of it was wet gloppy sierra cement. Bevan Waite | February 14, 2017 2 Comments
Sierra at Tahoe Conditions Report: Deepest I’ve ever skied Obviously, all of Lake Tahoe has been getting completely buried in snow this January. In fact, these last few weeks have been the most consecutive pow days I think I’ve ever skied, period. Not to mention Monday at Sierra at Tahoe which was the deepest pow day I have ever skied. Before Monday I had never been to Sierra at Tahoe, but I decided to meet up with some tele friends that were skiing there. I left my place at Squaw and drove through a wild blizzard on the east side of the lake all the way to south lake before passing out and waking up to three feet of new snow on the mountain. Bevan Waite | January 26, 2017 2 Comments
Alpine Meadows Conditions Report: Bluebird Pow Alpine Meadows was incredible today. It was the first time I’d seen it bluebird there in weeks and the coverage was unbelievable. Things that never hold enough snow to ski were good to go. Many of the lines in Wolverine and Beaver bowl were so filled in they weren’t even steep. The Keyhole was open and skiing very well. There were so many creative lines to pick from. Hands down most fun day I’ve ever had at Alpine Meadows. Bevan Waite | January 25, 2017 1 Comment
The Guide To Learning Your Next Trick In The Backcountry: You’ve never done a backflip on skis, but you’ve been itching to get an inverted aerial under your belt. Maybe you’re even racing your friend to who can land their first backflip. Due to your competitive need to be the first of your friends to nail it, you find yourself scared shitless standing above a medium sized park jump wondering… Is the jump big enough? Will I over rotate? what will happen if I catch my tips and face plant? Should I even try this? What if I break something? Is it worth it? Breaking into the world of aerial skiing can be a daunting task even if you’re not shooting for a triple cork. Park jumps are typically shaped well and good for learning basics like simple spins and switch landings or practicing what you already know. The problem with park jumps is that they are made of packed, hard snow that can have menacing consequences when graduating to learning more difficult tricks off large jumps. Backcountry Bevan Waite | January 24, 2017 0 Comments
Squaw Valley Conditions Report: Steep and Deep Squaw is insane right now. There is so much snow. Atmospheric river after atmospheric river keep dumping monumental amounts of snow in Tahoe and the skiing is amazing. The best thing about today was the lack of crowds. Based on how crowded it was last Friday, I was certain that today was going to be the same. It was quite the opposite, however. I lined up at KT at around 8:10AM expecting to be in the middle of the pack. We were 7th in line! After the first hour, the concentration of people greatly decreased and wait times might have been no longer than 10 minutes. Bevan Waite | January 21, 2017 2 Comments
Squaw Valley Conditions Report: Red Dog and KT Squaw gave the locals a gift today. Red dog opened at about 10:40 and was ripping for a few runs. KT opened around 12 and was also amazing. Everything is so filled in. The fingers race was on today and it was suer fun not only to ski them, but also to see all the other people huck themselves off massive rocks. It was pretty bad visibility all day, so pics and vids don’t do the awesome conditions justice. Bevan Waite | January 12, 2017 0 Comments
Squaw Valley Conditions Report: House-Hucking Tahoe has received 13 feet of snow since the beginning of january. It snowed a bit, then it dumped 7 feet, then rained like hell, and finally nuked another 5 feet. Its been blowing up… but strangely, there hasnt been much skiing going on the past couple days. Due to the extreme loading of the snowpack over a relatively short period of time, the backcountry is far too unstable to even consider venturing out into. Also, many of the resorts are closed due to getting TOO MUCH SNOW! what an awesome problem to have, right? Well, out of anticipation and creative boredom, a friend of mine (John) and I decided to have a little fun off some low angle roofs. Bevan Waite | January 12, 2017 1 Comment
Squaw Valley Conditions Report: Calm before the Rain Squaw Valley was all time on Friday January 6th 2017. For the first time this season they opened KT-22 arguably the sickest chair lift on the west coast. It snowed heavy wet snow two days before, but got very cold Thursday night which seemed to suck a lot of the moisture out of the snow. After a quick run down broken arrow, we went down to line up at KT-22, but the line was so long it didn’t seem worth the wait (thats saying something considering the awesomeness of KT). we decided to ski the funnel a few times and then head down to Shirley/Granite. While we were down by Shirley we got word granite was opening in 2 hours and decided to wait at granite literally first in line. It was rad. Bevan Waite | January 9, 2017 2 Comments
Squaw Valley Conditions Report: 7+ feet of new snow Aside from the ever growing line at red dog being a 45 minute wait at times, the skiing was fantastic. As the day progressed, patrol was able to get the Funitel open around 12:30pm. As soon as you could glimpse the upper mountain from the gondola, it was very clear why the rest of the mountain had not opened before despite the long lines. HUGE avalanches had ripped slopes everywhere. Bigger avalanches than I have ever seen at squaw. The area under Siberia lift ripped a 6-10′ crown from under the lift all the way out through mainline pocket. Enormous. Conditions Report Bevan Waite | January 5, 2017 1 Comment
Kirkwood, CA Conditions Report: Chalky Fun. Wednesday at Kirkwood was as good as it gets for conditions between storms. Kirkwood got a bit more snow from the last few warm storms that rolled in compared to a lot of resorts in the area. It is very clearly still early conditions however. Everything at Kirkwood is about 2-3 time bigger and scarier than it is during the normal season. Conditions Report Bevan Waite | December 22, 2016 0 Comments
Alpine Meadows Conditions Report: 7″ does the job. The rain finally tuned to snow on Friday morning at Alpine Meadows. The past week has been pretty painful to watch such huge amounts of unfrozen water fall from the sky and melt what little snow we had from late November. But finally after inches and inches of rain had created a bullet proof ice layer 10 inches thick, it began to snow. Friday Squaw was reporting 6″ on the upper mountain and alpine was reporting 7″. Bombs were echoing off mountain bowls teasing the few skiers waiting in line for the upper mountain to open. Due to bad vis, the neither resorts got their upper mountains open until about 10:30-11am. After that, however it was great. Alpine had fresh, soft turns wherever you looked until you hit a wind scoured unsuspecting ice bump. There were definitely a few sketchy wind scoured ice rinks scattered around ridges and such, but the majority of turns were soft and silent. Conditions Report Bevan Waite | December 17, 2016 1 Comment
Memoirs of a Competitive Skiing College Student Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be on a college freeride team that travels to 8 freeride world qualifier comps during the season? Or what it would be like to be continually pushed to your limits by your peers, coaches and competitors to go full-send 100% of the time? Well wonder no longer as you are about to see the result of all those things in Tucker Vollbrecht’s latest season edit. His progress in one year is astounding. We are impressed. Read about Tucker’s experience training and traveling in cramped quarters with his equally rowdy teammates below. Bevan Waite | April 13, 2016 1 Comment
Kirkwood, CA Conditions Report: Sendable Cement Kirkwood is getting caked with boat loads of snow and things just keep on getting better. To hit the break between storms, I drove up 88 early Friday morning in order to get first tracks on chair 6 from the 18″ of fresh that fell overnight. To my dismay, the spur section of 88 had been closed all night. There were several cars parked outside the gate that must have been there all night based on the foot and a half of snow on the roofs. Bevan Waite | January 21, 2016 3 Comments
Kirkwood, CA Conditions Report: Side Country Slaying The nice thing about Kirkwood is that it can be days after a storm has rolled through and you can still find fresh tracks… if you put a little bit of effort in. I warmed up on the main drag down Chair 6 and then promptly moved to the traverse from Sentinel bowl to the palisades. That’s where the real fun started. Surprisingly, even though el nino driven storms originate from the warmer central pacific, it had stayed cold (8 degrees when I arrived in the morning). This preserved the quality of the snow and made for fluffy rides through cut up pow in the early morning. Backcountry Bevan Waite | January 13, 2016 3 Comments
Kirkwood, CA Conditions Report: Epic Awesomeness It has been snowing at Kirkwood consistently since Thursday. A few inches here, a few inches there.. its adding up to some awesome days at the mountain. I arrived at 8am Saturday and got in line expecting the line to explode with people yearning for first tracks. Surprisingly, not many people showed up before the lifts opened. In fact not many people showed up at all on SATURDAY (Sunday was the same…). The place was empty. I barely waited in any line the whole day. Bevan Waite | December 21, 2015 0 Comments
Kirkwood, CA Conditions Report: Knee Deep But Rocky Tahoe had a killer weekend last week. 40” of snow fell from Thursday to Sunday on average around the area. Kirkwood was particularly amazing on Friday Dec. 11th. Low crowds, and copious amounts of snow were the defining features of the day. I arrived around 10 am and was on the mountain at 10:30. I thought I’d missed my chance to get first tracks anywhere, but I was fantastically mistaken. I followed some skiers on the traverse through Sentinel bowl into the Palisades and to my surprise, the Palisades were barely skied at that point. Bevan Waite | December 17, 2015 2 Comments
Bagging Peaks in the Aspen Snowmass Backcountry Morgan Boyles and Jake Sakson go big linking up two of Aspen’s big faces in one push. With over 20 miles and 10,000 feet of skiing the team tops it off by skiing each 3000 foot line top to bottom without stopping. This video represents the fusion of […] Backcountry Bevan Waite | February 16, 2015 0 Comments
Mt. Bachelor Conditions Report | A Bit Hard, A Bit Fun This last weekend started with high hopes of making some creamy spring turns from the top of Mt. Bachelor.From a distance, the mountain looked ready for prime shredding, yet little did we know that the looks we got from the car were completely, utterly deceiving.Our first run might have been one of the most disappointing I’ve had in a while; it was an ice rink.I might have been better off with speed skates than skis. Conditions Report Bevan Waite | February 3, 2015 1 Comment
Mt. Hood Conditions Report | Spring Day in “Juneuary” For the dedicated skiers in Oregon, January ( Juneuary ) never seems to be a good month. To wrap up the general trend, the Cascades are dumped on in mid-late december enough to hold a base to open the ski areas. When Juneuary finally comes around, the snow coverage on the 1st of the year is the best coverage the mountains will have for exactly one month, 31 days, or 744 hours. The conditions range in severity from ice-rink-hard to mashed potatoes, Cascade concrete, and slurpie slush. Does this suck? Yes and no. Yes because, well, skiing pow would certainly be much better. No because despite the sub par conditions, the […] Conditions Report Bevan Waite | January 27, 2015 0 Comments
Upcoming Telemark Freeride Camps Telemark professionals Paul Kimbrough and Jake Sakson, have dominated the telemark freeride scene for the past half-decade. These backcountry ski film stars, made famous in the Powderwhore movies, have dedicated themselves to developing telemark technique, avalanche awareness and backcountry travel skills. The two have hosted several Telemark freeride camps in the Rockies. This year, they are offering two camps, one […] Bevan Waite | January 23, 2015 0 Comments
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