“What?!”

That was how the day was shaping up. I was standing on top of a 35-foot SnowFlex ramp in Copper Mountain’s new indoor jumping facility called Woodward. The young guy who just gave me the instructions, which I was really having trouble doing, had just walked me and my kids through an hour-and-a-half lesson on how to fall and jump into a foam pit. The part he left out was the part about this ramp. Now don’t get me wrong, I was all about doing these jumps, but I guess I thought we would kind of step our way up to it, not start there as our first jump.

The day started chill enough. We started by learning to tumble on a padded floor. The whole idea at Woodward is safety, and pushing your limits in the air. As we stretched and talked, they went through all the ways to fall correctly on the pits and floors. The funny thing is, tumbling at this altitude, 9,800 feet, kept making me feel like I was on a roller coaster, and I kept having to get drinks of water to settle my stomach. My kids thought that was funny. We went through the ways to land in the pits, and the swim to get out of the foam pit. I don’t think I ever really thought about it much; I thought you just got up and walked out.

No.

You have to sorta kinda swim – like getting out of deep pow when you don’t have poles and it keeps moving. The first flip I landed from the bounce floor put me under the foam, which I was not expecting, and resulted in my crawl-swim-flop technique to get out. Believe me when I say, it’s more work than I thought.

Once we got that all down, it was on to the tramps.

There we learned proper body position in landing and how to work on keeping our bodies under control as we shoot through space. I was looking for more control in flight with my skis. I tend to overshoot landings, smacking hard when I come down. Also, I tend to lean back, which at certain times can be a really bad thing to do. I don’t want to launch a 50-footer, but I do want to style the jumps I do hit. Whether it’s a rock in the backcountry or a kicker at the resort, I want to feel like I’m in some type of control.

After the tramps we headed for the SnowFlex Ramps.

The SnowFlex are ramps made out of a fake lawn-type of material. They feel a lot like riding on a groomer of hardpack. You can’t carve it, but you get the feeling like you’re on snow. Of course I was in shorts and T-shirt, but hey, I did have my skis in right!

We started with a really gentle hill that ended with a halfpipe. The roll in was about a 10-foot drop, but very gentle. Mayah and Will passed the first time, stopping a few feet short, but by the third time, they were dropping into the pipe and really having fun.

Next step was a higher ramp into the same terrain park and halfpipe. Again, they both passed, watching me twice, then jumping in and really having a blast.

Then came the biggie …

They decided to sit out, but I figured that’s the whole reason I was there. On my first drop, the instructor asked that I sideslip it to get the feeling. I didn’t argue with him in the least. Sliding my skis over felt like dropping into a super-fast elevator, but also super-cool.

Then it was back up, and the simple command I mentioned at the top.

“Do I really need to point the whole way???”

The smile and nod told me everything I needed, and with a grin and a prayer, point ‘em I did. In a second I was into the transition, and then launching the kicker over the pit. I even managed a sucked-up, hands-forward charge, then, poof. I was in. And man, I was hooked!

It was awesome.

To fly out over that stuff, knowing you won’t get hurt, is amazing and fun. I felt like a little kid again, and can’t wait to head back.

Greetings from Snowmass Village, Colo. After a long shoulder season here, fall has given way to winter in the Roaring Fork Valley. The snow guns are fired up to add to the nearly 30 inches we have received from the skies in the last few weeks.

While the lifts don’t open for another 10 days, those who trekked to the top of High Alpine were rewarded with thigh-deep turns and face shots! Today is bluebird, and I got a few shots of the lower mountain at the end of my street. It should be a great opening day on Thanksgiving with a good portion of the mountain open for skiing and riding.

Women’s World Cup ski racing returns to Aspen on Nov. 28 and 29, with giant slalom and slalom events. For more on the 2009 Aspen Winternational and the U.S. Ski Team, click here.

Reed Lewis is an Inspired Mountain Ambassador.

It’s not easy to get motivated some days to do anything. Even living where I live, in beautiful Colorado, it can be tough. With all the heavy trauma I went through after a climbing accident seven years ago, some days my body is just not psyched to climb or mountain bike.

That’s when I lean on my partners. Most of my climbing partners are younger than me and ready to get out whenever they can. I usually can round up one or two fellas to go boulder when I need to. But biking can be a bit of a chore. I ride because it’s a great way to cross-train my body for climbing. I like to ride, don’t get me wrong; it’s a blast to rip down a single track in the mountains, cross a stream. I even like climbing. It has a really nice quality of repeated movement that is soothing to me. Watching the chain rings turn with my head down, watching the hill slowly glide past, is some days sublime.

And then there are the other days …

The guys I was riding with were of two extremes.

They either kicked my ass into the ground, where all I saw was their butts, or I was in front and quite frankly, I don’t want people to look at my butt. I have too many scars on this body to have people looking at me.

I needed someone new.

Someone psyched, but at my level so we could push each other.

I’ll call her the Queen because she comes from Queensland, Australia.

And she rips on the trails.

At first we had that weird “get used to riding with each other thing,” but I was into the way she was psyched to get out. It didn’t matter if I gave no advance; just show up with my stuff on and she was ready to take off.

Once we were out, she would always take the lead. At first I let her, but as we got used to one another, I started trying to keep up. She can climb faster than me, but on downhills she holds back a little and I can rip past with a laugh. Even in the rain and cold, when I’m less than psyched to go out, there she is, literally chomping at the bit to hit the trail.

It’s not a perfect relationship by any means, as my wife keeps pointing out.

She likes to play with tennis balls in a really annoying way. She likes to eat her food really fast without ever looking at you and then wants more, no matter how much you serve. Of course with her activity level, she never gains weight.

She also has a nasty habit of chewing on her butt. I don’t mean yelling at herself; I mean she actually turns and fleabites the part by her spine.

It’s weird. And loud.

Her worst quality, by far, is her love of tires.

Now I love tires, too, but there is a limit to my love. I buy them, I put them on, and I enjoy the feel of them biting into the trail as I lean into a tight single-track turn. But I have never — I repeat, never — had the desire to turn on my riding partner and bite his damn tire! I mean, seriously, what the heck is that about? We’ll be ripping through a great area, and she is right next to me matching me stroke for stroke when suddenly she gets this look in her eye … and then turns and bites my front tire. This usually results in me hitting her with the bike and then a stern talking to. Not that she cares; she does it every time. I was riding with my buddy Andy last week when she did it in front of him, not to him, but in front of him. All he did was laugh, which I think eggs her on, and then it was done.

We’ve had lengthy talks about this, and all she does is gives me that faraway look in her eyes that says,”Yeah, yeah, I’m doing it again next time, too, buddy. Watch yourself.” I guess every relationship has problems, and really this is not that bad. Most of the time she is the most awesome riding partner I’ve ever had. We just have this one thing we need to work on, and I’m sure it will work out.

I mean, she is a new dog, and you can teach them new tricks, right?

What were you thinking?!

Behave!!

Craig DeMartino is one of Cloudveil’s Inspired Mountain Ambassadors.

I got the call we all dread while I was standing in a hotel in California at the beginning of a week-long pack trip. My friend Brad was choked up, his voice breaking, and I knew it was bad. One of our oldest friends had just died in the Cascades when he was hit by rockfall on a route he was climbing.

Craig Luebben was one of the first people I met when I moved to Colorado 15 years ago. He was open and giving of information, and even though he had grown up here and was super established in the climbing world, he took the time to take me under his wing and show me around. Already a good writer, he teamed up with me on an article about bouldering in Horsetooth Rez above our homes in Fort Collins. He could have taken the project on alone, but wanted to work together.

He also introduced me to off-width climbing. Don’t judge him for that; he actually liked it for some strange reason. Once when I was shooting him on a first ascent in the desert, he climbed to me and in a very un-hardman-esque show of reality, puked into the crack and announced the name to be “Ralph,” once he returned and sent. Which he did.

It’s really weird when someone you know dies, especially while climbing because it calls into check all the reasons we say we do what we do. Craig was safe. He wrote books on being safe, and as an AMGA guide, it was his job to be safe. Yet, there we were at the funeral.

It took a bit to go back out.

I finished the pack trip and returned to Colorado. Back to all my favorite places, but it always seemed too hot, or too cold. Too grey or too sunny. It just didn’t feel right.

Finally one day, Cyn, my wife, agreed to come bouldering with me in the Rez. We walked up to the Piano Boulder, a place we knew well. A place we all climbed together many times, and for that day, at that time, it felt right again. I realize I can’t keep myself or family out of harm’s way, that I have to live my life every day. But seeing the veil between life and death as a paper-thin wafer, it makes you wonder.

We played in the sun all afternoon till we had to go pick up the kids at school. Later that week I headed to Eldo and did some routes, and I began to see that as we move into fall here, life moves forward, too. Not that we forget what has happened, but that we cherish things as they happen. To not wait.

I miss Craig, we all do, but I also know that our time is fleeting. We have to enjoy it while we can, and move through life with grace and hope.

If you would like to donate to a fund set up for his daughter, please go to www.nococlimbing.org.

Craig DeMartino is one of Cloudveil’s Inspired Mountain Ambassadors.

In Basalt, Colo., canvas is the clear choice over paper or plastic.

The small town of 2,681 residents at the confluence of the Roaring Fork and Frying Pan rivers is the winner of the Colorado Association of Ski Towns 2009 Reusable Bag Challenge. Basalt bested 30 other mountain towns in the West as its citizens used the most reusable grocery tote bags per capita between March 1 and Sept. 1. The town’s grocery stores recorded more than 153,000 uses of canvas or cloth bags during the six months of the challenge. Because each reusable sack can hold about 2.5 times the amount of groceries than a disposable plastic bag, that means Basalt saved nearly 383,000 plastic bags from being used.

Granby, Colo., which teamed with nearby Fraser and Winter Park for the challenge, placed second, while Summit County, Colo., (Dillon, Silverthorne, Frisco and Breckenridge) took third. Our home valley, Jackson Hole, placed eighth in the per-capita rankings.

In all, the 31 participating communities saved nearly 5.3 million plastic bags from being used. That’s more than 1 million kg of carbon dioxide that won’t be produced.

“The results are better then I projected, and the project has received some impressive attention,” said organizer David Allen of Telluride.

Basalt wins a $10,000 installation of solar panels for one of its schools, powerful enough to generate 1.5 kilowatts of electricity. Alpine Bank and PCL Construction put up the award money, with parts and labor provided at cost by Independent Power Systems of Boulder. The Granby-Fraser-Winter Park team will receive $1,000 from Safeway toward establishing a plastic bag recycling program.

Litter and degradation of resources were the primary reasons why Allen created the CAST challenge. In the United States alone, annual production of disposable grocery bags emits nearly 4 million tons of CO2-equivalent. An estimated 4 billion plastic bags worldwide end up as litter every year — enough that, tied end to end, the bags could circle the Earth 63 times.

The top finishers (based on per-capita bag usage, not the total number of bags saved):

When not editing The Mountain Culture, Jim Stanford can be found running the Snake River and publishing JH Underground.

The Aspen Ideal; it’s a concept first attributed to famed industrialist Walter Paepcke in the1940’s.

Paepcke saw the Rocky Mountain splendor of Aspen, Colorado as a place for people to revitalize their “mind, body and spirit.” In today’s vernacular, we’ve simplified the notion.  We just call it “Livin’ the Dream.”

If you’re one of the lucky ones who visited Aspen during this past ski season (2008-09), you know what I’m talking about. Aspen has natural beauty: four ski mountains, endless backcountry access, a thriving social scene and most of all deep POW POW.

We certainly received our share of sweet powder this year. Early season was especially siiiiiick as the storms kept socking in Fat City.  We had a bit of a dry-spell  mid-season, but ULLR blessed us with some great late season dumps too.  All in all it was a fantastic ski season in Aspen…..again.

Not too many on-mountain pics, but the guy in the yellow is Valentino.

I take my role as a ski bum and unofficial documentarian very seriously. My job as editor of www.AspenSpin.com keeps me on the slopes all day and partying all night. It’s not as easy as I make it look. This year, I fought through the aging process, some minor injuries, several killer hangovers and the Aspen “crud” to score 101 ski days and almost two million verts this season.

Properly gearing up is very important to me. Of course my vast quiver of skis allows me to select the perfect ride for the conditions at hand— fat? mid-fat? or fattest?  My ski boots are perfectly fitted to my mangled feet, so those are obviously super important. And, the only other piece of clothing I found indispensable this season was my Run Don’t Walk ½ Zip by Cloudveil.  I wore the same mid-layer top for each of my 101 ski days this past season. YES! I did launder it occasionally. The Cloudveil top kept me warm as toast on the cold days, and wicked away my moisture to keep me cool on the bluebird days. Aspen’s ever-changing funky weather hit us with some freezing mornings, followed by baking afternoons. The Walk Don’t Run ½ zip kept me regulated through it all and performed like a champ.  I’m going to spring for a new mid-layer for next season.  Also, the Walk Don’t Run Boxers— siiiiiiiiiiick, but that’s another story.

Call me crazy, but I’m livin’ the Dream in Aspen, and I’m doing it in Cloudveil.

Last weekend was blessed with cool temps and good climbing conditions. Saturday, I tried a variation on Fleshfest at the Satellite Boulders which diverts left and adds a hard upper crux. After falling from the upper move twice, I realized I had sprained my ankle (!) and so I called it a day.

Sunday I went out to the Millennium Boulder and was able to add a new line that goes between Ghost Dance and Moon Child.

I had to break a few twigs off a bush in order to climb it, but I think the bush will be okay. Be careful if you go there to not break too many more branches. The line is almost completely independent. … The only overlap is a single foothold which some people use as an intermediate handhold on Ghost Dance, but otherwise its a 100% stand-alone problem on great rock with a committing dyno at the top. Hard to think of anything that detracts from this problem… 5-stars? Okay, maybe 4. Real good though.

Unless it’s been done before I would suggest the name ‘Friend to Fanboy‘.

I believe there is only one more undone line on this boulder, the arete left of Ghost Dance. Climbing the arete by itself without diverting into Ghost Dance may make this problem more of a contrivance than a line, but time will tell.

In related news, Stephanie Marvez finally put Captain Hook to rest on Saturday. A great effort there and worthy of the nine points she took for the send. Kristen did Nadeer on Sunday, getting six points in the bag. Productivity was high this weekend and I think the guys in corporate are going to be excited with the output of the team.

Fryberger left for Austria on Wednesday to do a bunch of screenings of his film Pure. He says: “I cant wait to get the film in front of some more audiences. The film has been shown about a dozen times now and the response is great. Thanks to everyone who has attended a show!”

With Winter 08/09 already off to an auspicious start in terms of avalanche fatalities, this incident serves as a case study in evaluating terrain hazard and is remarkable that all three survived with one member of the group being buried 6 – 7 feet deep. And they did not use any beacons; each member of the party was recovered through voice communication.

Most of the quick accounts were off-base factually, so it’s helpful now to have this official report.

The party was near the red X when they triggered the avalanche. The avalanche carried Skier-1 and Boarder-2 downslope, and they were buried near the blue circle. Boarder 3 was swept into the trees near the yellow circle. buried in the cluster of trees at the center of the photo.

Avalung, anyone?

Penn Newhard is a partner at Backbone Media, which represents Cloudveil, Black Diamond and many many other outdoor-related companies and products.

Sunday, a few weeks back, was a perfect day of bouldering in the Flatirons. My friends Justin Jaeger, Andy Mann, Ben Scott, and TJ Burchfield came out and we went north from Eldorado Canyon to check out some boulders where there were some established lines as well as some projects to try.

The photo is from Andy Mann. It is of one of the projects I sent, which I named ‘David Bowie’ because I think this problem is a Pure, completing the assembly of the segments. I’ve started working on the trailer but that will go back on the shelf for a little while until the DVD is finished.

The night before the first ascent, I had a great workout with Dave Wahl, my strength coach at Athletik Spesifik. Jamie Emerson, the famous bouldering legend known for cutting edge first ascents such as ‘center route in my tennis shoes’ has started training with us and he is incredibly strong. It will be crazy to see what happens when Dave’s program takes him to the next level.

Have a great day!

Cloudveil ambassador Chuck Fryberger splits his time between mastering video editing and slaying the boulders of the world. The trailer from his new flick coming soon!