Here’s what our partner Steve Casimiro at The Adventure Life had to say. Definitely check out his entire post so you can see the sweet ski jumping pic.

• raiders of the lost ark movie

Thanks for playing!

From Steve:

download high school musical 2 Hello, people of Earth, iPhone junkies, and readers of this website. If you followed the Cloudveil/Adventure Life Ski Jump App iPhone contest, you know it ended a few days ago, with the top spot nabbed by Tobias Pecival, who has requested professional assistance as he leaves the game behind and ramps back into regular life. Tobias’s jump was a remarkable 166.286 meters and for his incredible athletic achievement Cloudveil is rewarding him with the $500 Gore-Tex Hoback jacket.

Second place saw an amazing three-way tie between Creeper, Miller, and Carvalho at 161.759 meters, and Cloudveil has very generously volunteered to reward all three with Inertia Peak softshell jacket worth $160. Creeper and Carvalho, you need to get in touch…

Bronze was won with a jump of 161.343 meters. Congrats, Muxul. Drop a line to claim the $125 Run Don’t Walk 1/2-zip jacket.

Kevin Pazirandeh, who wrote the ingenious little app, noted that he has quite a few measures in place to prevent cheating, so the gap between first and second was earned fair and square. Also, just so you know, the maximum possible jump in beginner mode is 170 meters. Well done, Tobias!

Read more here.

Bill spends a lot of time in the thin air: sitting on planes, climbing on mountains.

Crouse guiding Everest (5th Summit)

Bill rarely knows what time zone he is in – but still manages to sneak in quick mountain missions in between trips to Asia, Russia, Oz and locally.

Last summer, I saw Bill in Switzerland, Germany, Salt Lake City and then at the Lower Saddle on the Grand Teton all in the span of three weeks.

Bill on Elbrus – his 7th Summit last week

In the last three days, I’ve gotten a couple of pics from Bill’s phone.

Summit of Elbrus with Black Diamond’s CEO Peter Metcalf, Kolin Powlick, Ryan Gellert and BD’s Russian distributor Oleg Banar and at the Freidrichshafen OutDoor Show checking in on the new Award Winning Contact crampon.

Friedrichshafen today – BD Contact crampon wins OutDoor Gold Award

Life is tough for Bill’s phone.

Between now and July 13, download the free iPhone application Ski Jump Lite and start practicing.

If you log the longest jump, you could win a free Cloudveil ski jacket worth up to $450 bucks.

HOW TO PLAY

See more rules and hints at Steve Casimiro’s TheAdventureLife.org

1. Using iTunes or your iPhone, download Ski Jump Lite (the free version). If you already have the paid version, play the game in Beginner mode.

2. Launch the game. Create a user name that begins with “TAL” (no quotes), which will tell our automatic scorekeeping system that you’re in the contest. Examples: TALijumplong, TALeddietheeagle, TALkellyslater, etc.

3. Jump!

That’s all you need to do. Scores are automatically uploaded to skijumpapp.com and the 15 highest scores will be updated live and posted on the home page of The Adventure Life. The winners will be announced here shortly after the contest ends.

Warning: This game is highly addictive and Cloudveil takes no responsibility for the decreased work productivity that may result from downloading this app.

Plastered all over the Internets yesterday: The slowest motion camera Captured Never Before Shot (And Never Before Seen With The Naked Human eye) Intricacies of Ocean Waves. Shot as a teaser for the BBC’s upcoming South Pacific series, the clip features surfer Dylan Longbottom in a 12-foot monster barrel wave.

Bloggers repeatedly called the video, shot with the $100,000 Typhoon HD4, “psychedelically radical.”

Our only question here at Cloudveil: How psych-rad will it perform in powder?

Got this idea from Penn Newhard, who wrote me the following:

With the 5 Point Film Festival here in Carbondale, Colo. this weekend – it is readily apparent that there are many people who are fired up to get after it and push their limits. Climbing, skiing, surfing, kayaking, biking – it doesn’t really matter. All of these sports share a baseline in common of constant evolution.

With this in mind  - this is cool:

http://tinyurl.com/d5h5g7

This is cooler: http://tinyurl.com/d76kb6
CAMERA SPECS:

Using an advanced CMOS sensor with ultra high light sensitivity of 1000 ASA – colour 
Resolution 1280 X 1024 pixels 
HD res. 720p up to 1000 fps 
 Max. frame rates up to 200,000 fps

4 GB internal memory, storage 3500 frames (recording time e.g. 3.5sec at 1000 fps or 7 sec at 500fps / at 720p). Internal memory can be partitioned into 2, 4 or 8 partitions.

UW-housing: 
A live image is displayed on a LCD viewfinder. All camera functions can be operated while diving.

The recorded shot can be viewed immediately. Lens control via servo motors (iris, focus, zoom)
Lenses used: (F-mount) Nikon prime lenses 14mm and 17-35mm.

Among its dish on the internettiness of our facebooky-bloggy-image-crazed culture, Sunday’s New York Time Magazine The Screens Issue, featured a crazy genius multimedia project called Immersion.

Photographer Robbie Cooper shot video of kids’ faces as they played video games. According to the Times, Cooper is “particularly struck by the intensity of people’s experiences while interacting with digital realms.”

Watch the kids. They are so captured by the screen, it’s as if they’re playing the sport, fighting the war, driving the car themselves, which is, I guess, the point of games and gaming.

“It’s fascinating that a world that’s purely visual can have a physical effect,” Cooper told the Times.

He shot the project with the high-resolution RED camera (which TGR used for some footage in its new flick Under the Influence ), and then took stills from the footage.

To me, the still slideshow and the accompanying video (better on the Times’ site than YouTube) are at once genius (concept, shoting logistics, lighting) and a little sad (aggression, intensity and time spent staring at a screen…).

Dr. Paré’s Telemark Training and Timing Tips from Jed Zilla on Vimeo

The close of the Summer Olympics and the advent of cooler weather here in Missoula got me thinking of the timing equipment used at our weekly telemark ski races.

The Trail Head shop where I work in on occasion has been doing the Telemark race series for 25 consecutive years. I would say it is more of a beer drinking social that involves two competitive runs on an under lit course in the middle of winter. Go to: www.telerace.blogspot.com to see more photos and information. The races are held at Snowbowl Ski Area for about six Thursday evenings running from late January to March.

The timing equipment provided by Snowbowl is well….dated. I think Nixon was in office when this system was considered State of the Art. It is a cross between Apollo moon mission and Soviet cold war technology. The only person who has the knowledge (I should say intimate knowledge) is the reclusive Dr. Paré.

Dr. Paré is only seen in the winter on the slopes of western Montana ski areas or in the intermountain west backcountry. He is an expert on training and telemark equipment as well as timing for tele racing.
I have spent many long hours compiling the results of each weeks race and Dr. Paré always comes through during each event. I have heard that he has a twin or doppelganger that is only seen in the summers in and around the rivers of the west or swinging a hammer on any number of construction sites. It’s rumored that he also goes by “Karl,” but I don’t think I know or have ever heard Dr. Paré’s first name.

I have some video footage that should help all folks who want to improve their telemark racing skills for the upcoming season. Enjoy what Dr. Paré has to offer and get ready for the snow to fly!

JedZilla lives, works, fathers and husbands in Missoula.

It seems that the big brains down at Stanford University in California are building the next generation rope gun. A robot that gently balances it weight between it legs and arms to nail the crux of the climb! The thought is that technology like this might someday allow a robot to scale the cliffs on mars to reveal new things about planet. But who knows? Maybe the next time you and your friends are arguing who is going to lead that nasty off-width, you might turn to your good friend “Capuchin” to settle the matter.

Read more about this crazy project on newscientist.com.

Once again we’re back at writing about Google Earth. In the past, we’ve written about trip planning in Google Earth and getting Topo maps in Google (can’t forget NASA’s Google Earth like Tool World Wind either). Well, the folks at Google have been hard at work the past year adding more tools to their globe trotting program and one the tools they quietly added should bring delight to the diehard skiers. What could that tool be? Weather of course!

If you don’t have it already, download the newest version of Google Earth here. Google Earth now has a new content layer called Weather with three sub layers called “Clouds,” “Radar,” “Conditions and Forecasts” and one “Information” link that provides a summary of where the data comes from and brief overview of how to use it. Included on “Information” link summary are two links that allow you to download time animations for the last 24 hours of clouds data and the last 6 hours of radar data respectively. You should definitely give these a try, they give you a great animation of clouds swirling over the globe creating a more realistic representation of our great planet.

They get “Radar” and “Conditions and Forecasts” information from Weather.com, which is updated every 15 minutes. You can zoom in and see conditions and temps from numerous cities around the world, and clicking on the temps should bring up an information bubble that displays the local forecast along with some other useful information. For the information on the “Clouds” layer, they get it from the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey who are regarded as some of the foremost satellite meteorologists in the world. According to Google, the information is a few hours off so what you’re seeing is what the clouds were doing two or three hours ago. For visual effect with the “Clouds” layer selected, zoom in until you fly through and then below the clouds. Once below the clouds, tilt your view as flat as you can (so you can see the ground and sky) and you should be able to look up and see the cloud cover above. Pretty cool!

Any Readers found any other great uses for Google Earth in your travels? Let us know in the comments.

Here are a few additional resources for Google Earth stuff:

• Google Earth Blog Weather announcement
• Best Storm Tracking and Weather Tools for Google Earth
• Most current, near-global image of earth available
• Video Showing Storm Tracking Tools for Google Earth

Science has proven that the accumulated weight of National Geographics will eventually trigger Doomsday. Imagine how at risk that makes fault-ridden, adventure-reading loving Jackson Hole.

However, it may well be our collective accumulation of topological maps outweighs the valley’s NatGeos. But that’s not what bothers me. What bothers me is the time I could not find a topo to [REDACTED], a sublime and little-traveled spot in the Wind River Range. It was 10 at night and we were leaving in a few hours.

That was then.

If you think a plug for Google Earth is forthcoming you’re partly correct. I’m talking about something long overdue: downloadable and printable USGS topos.

First, download this zipped file: http://dierks.org/usgs.kmz

Launch Google Earth. Have it open the file “usgs.kml” which you’ll have if it unzipped properly.

Wait. And wait. Your computer isn’t hung. Google Earth merely is glomming onto a database of every 7.5-minute quadrangle in the United States.

Look at Places. Select any state. Click any named quadrangle. Google Earth points to that place with a popup. Click “TIFF.”

A hi-res scan of USGS’s finest Koh-I-Noor contour art will find a happy home on your hard drive.

David J. Swift is a photographer and writer based in Jackson Hole. Then again, who isn’t?

Although we don’t do a lot of self-congratulatory back slapping on The Mountain Culture, we’re very excited to announce that Cloudveil’s Koven Plus Jacket has received Outside Magazine’s Gear of the Year award in Storm Shells.

With 10 years in this business under our belt, we’ve won a lot of awards for various designs, but never the coveted Gear of the Year.

What makes this especially gratifying for the staff here is we’ve historically been known for our innovations in soft shells. To be acclaimed for our work on a hard shell is the proverbial gravy.

With over 50 jackets tested, the Koven Plus rose to the top due to its unique fabrication, versatility, styling and construction.

The original Koven, named for a fine alpine ascent on Mt Owen, broke some new ground when it was introduced in the late 1990s. Cloudveil built on the Koven Plus’ predecessor by applying new c-change technology from Schoeller at critical areas of the garment. Schoeller c-change is a water and windproof membrane that is able to adapt its moisture vapor permeability based on the user’s exertion. As soon as the ambient temperature rises, the polymer structure of the membrane opens and allows excess moisture to escape to the outside air. As the body cools, producing less heat energy, the membrane contracts again to keep the heat in.

Now that I’m starting to sound like a proud parent bragging about Junior’s first steps, I’ll let the testers from Outside sum it up:

“This is simply the most adaptable winter-specific storm shell we tested. … Credit the use of stretchy fabric in high-mobility areas, stitch-free construction, precision shaped body mapping on the back and collar, and a trim, athletic cut.”

Bartender: drinks all around!