Photo by: Erik Gustafsson

With a current snow base of 258cm (101-inches) there are some pretty great snow conditions happening right now. There also is 10-15cm of more snow in the forecast with it tapering off during the weekend.  Who has their gear ready for some crazy pow days up at Whistler?

Whistler Tweetup

Are you into Twitter? Are you going to be in Whistler for the full-opening on November 26th? There is an après-ski event happening at the GLC (Garibaldi Lift Co.) from 2pm to 5pm. Come by, say hi, win some prizes (such as an EDGE card, Sapient Snowboard and more) and help celebrate the full opening of Whistler/Blackcomb!

Now I am not going to bore you with the finer details of the Vancouver Snow Show, so here is short summary along with some photos. The Vancouver Snow Show was held in Canada Place this year and it consists of a nice gathering of ski and snowboard enthusiasts to find out some of the latest happening around the various ski resorts, gear manufacturers as well as a great place to get some deals on new and used gear.

In attendance this year of course were not only the local NorthShore Mountains such as Cypress, Grouse and Seymour but other interior resorts such as SunPeaks, Big Red, Apex, Big White and others were showing their stuff and talking about deals for the upcoming 2009/2010 Winter Season.

Grouse Mountain was having a great deal too, a 1-day flex season pass. It allows you to go once a week to Grouse Mountain catching the 3:45pm tram up to the snowy peak with one of the nicest views of Vancouver. We’re excited because this means we’ll get the opportunity to ski/snowboard for roughly the same amount as we go to last year. Let’s not hope they are too busy with the whole 2010 Olympic thing going down though.

Another large portion of the Snow Show, is the ski/board swap area. Here you can pick up new/used gear ranging from skis, boots, boards, and bindings. Local shops also set up booths to sell off any overstock of winter gear they might have.

Goggles and gloves were going for like $25 a pair, bindings for snowboards were dirt cheap, and even winter outter gear had some decent prices. It’s a pretty interesting place to check out for an hour or two.

You can also enter yourself into multiple contests that booths were having. Majority of the contests for for ski packages at the resorts. I am hoping to win at least one of them. I also entered to win a brand new Mazda CX-7 which could come in handy during those snowy times. There was even a Hummer that was pimped out you could win, it would drive me insane to drive around in a Hummer that had neon lights on the inside which would sync up with the massive sound system it had.

There was a lot to see and it was more enjoyable this time around. I also liked how it was set at Canada Place as opposed to BC Place like last year.

Did you manage to get up to the Snow Snow on either Saturday or Sunday?

Tomorrow also counts the 1 month until Whistler/Blackcomb are open too!

I personally would love to go and pick up some new snowboard boots, but it doesn’t look like this year I’ll be able to financially do it. Last year we would have gone except we were in Minneapolis for a wedding.

Are you heading to the Turkey Sale up at Whistler this year? What will you be looking for?

Now I know that this post is a bit late (about a week) but I’ve been busy with other items and have not had time. Though for those who are interested I had the opportunity to be an accredited photographer not only at the LG FIS WorldCup 2009 Boardercross but I also was able to attend the Half-Pipe event which was held on the following Saturday (February 14th). A snowboard Half-Pipe event is usually the most exciting and most popular out of all the snowboarding events, or at least in my opinion.

What Is A Half-Pipe?

A Snowboard Half-Pipe is a pretty large structure and in the case of the LG FIS WorldCup 2009 event it was a monster 170 metres in length with a crazy height of 22 feet. Not to mention it has the incline of an 18 degree angle. I definitely wouldn’t want to accidentally slip off the deck to drop down 22 feet on solid ice.

Snowboarders (or riders) perform aerobatic jumps, twist, and tricks on this massive half-cylinder structure as they make their way from the top to the bottom. Did I mention is is usually hard packed (like ice) type snow? Something I wouldn’t really want to fall onto after clearing the deck by like 15 feet!

Inverted Shaun White

The tricks that the riders perform can be pretty insane to watch as well. There is the straight-air, grabs, rotations (which can go up to 1080 or even higher!), switches, frontsides, backsides and even inverted. The riders have to put together a routine while traversing down the length of the Half-Pipe in order to score high with the judges. If the rider falls in the Half-Pipe during their run their points stop so any trick performed (if possible) is just mainly for fun.

LG FIS WorldCup 2009 Half-Pipe Finals

The way scoring works for the Men and Woman’s Half-Pipe Finals is the better of the two scores the riders could earn out of their two runs. A maximum score a rider could make on a single run would be 50 points. The best score of these two 50 point scores would determine where the rider was placed.

Gretchen Bleiler & Hannah Teter USA

Sitting, standing, kneeling on the deck was a pretty cool experience for me. Being so close to the riders pull off their tricks in front of me was pretty crazy. The photographers around me (not too many mind you) had some pretty awesome gear, and some spectators had better glass than I did. Though that didn’t really bother me, I was closer to the action with a great vantage point for taking photos of these amazing riders. Though we only had about 2 to 3 feet of room we could maneuver in and after a while the snow under our feet would harden to ice.

Iouri ‘iPod’ Podladtchikov

Ryoh Aono

There were so many good riders out that day entertaining the crowd with their gravity defying feats that I didn’t notice that the whole day went by so quickly. Sure trudging up the ski runs with just my snowboard boots and camera gear was really exhausting and then having to climb up the deck of the half-pipe too was as equally tiring but the end result was a great day of shooting these riders strut their stuff.

Standings

Woman

• 1: Kelly Clark USA
• 2: Jiayu Liu CHN
• 3: Hannah Teter USA
• 4: Gretchen Bleiler USA

Mens

• 1: Shaun White USA
• 2: Ryoh Aono JPN
• 3: Iouri ‘iPod’ Podladtchikov SUI
• 4: Kazuumi Fujita JPN

Overall for my first experience seeing professional riders hit the Half-Pipe during the LG FIS WorldCup 2009 I walked away with over 2000 photos and a great first experience as a media accredited photographer. The LG FIS WorldCup 2009 PGS event was unfortunatly cancel due to poor (soft) snow conditions. Though the whole weekend event was great and look forward to seeing how Cypress and the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics pan out when these riders come back next year.

You can check our some of the other photos I have uploaded from the LG FIS WorldCup 2009 event over on Flickr.

Snowboard Cross or boardercross as most people like to referrer to it as, is an event that challenges a rider’s abilities to maintain control throughout a down hill course. These courses contain turns, gaps, berms, drops, steep sections as well as flat areas which all ensure that the riders do not have the easiest of times speeding down the course. The riders also have to make sure they do no collide with each other as they traverse down the course to the finish line as fast as possible.

Cypress Mountain was host to the LG FIS WorldCup 2009 event which consists of 3 snowboarding events; Boardercross (SBX), Half-Pipe and PGS (Parallel Giant Slalom).

LG FIS WorldCup 2009 – Boardercross (SBX)

Friday (February 13th 2009) was the Boardercross Finals for both Men and Woman.

The action was pretty intense as the athletes maneuvered down the course at high speeds in groups of 4 riders per heat. There were a few collisions, but that is not unexpected in a Boardercross race. The groups usually stay closely packed together as they ride over jumps and berms. One wrong edge and you would easily drop to last place in your heat. The fastest 2 riders would continue on to the next race.

All of the riders were highly entertaining throughout the course, especially the last largest jump at the finish line. As the day progressed, the crowd got more and more into the action as the riders would entertain them just before the finish line.

When Robyn and I first talked about Boardercross and the 2010 Winter Olympics we were a bit hesitant on putting our names in for it as we did not think it would be much of a spectator event. Even though we did not win tickets for the boardercross, after watching the LG FIS WorldCup 2009 Boardercross event it would be something we would definitely recommend people trying to get out and seeing if they have an opportunity.

LG FIS WorldCup 2009 Final Standings

Womens

• 1: Lindsey Jacobellis USA
• 2: Olivia Nobs SUI
• 3: Helene Olafsen NOR
• 4: Maelle Ricker CAD

Mens

• 1: Markus Schairer AUT
• 2: Mike Robertson CAD
• 3: Seth Wescott USA
• 4: Francois Boivin CAD

A lot of the athletes who participated in this event will be competing during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics as well. It was a great opportunity to see the best at Bordercross compete on one of our local mountains. The spectators who will be attending the 2010 Winter Olympic Boardercross at Cypress Mountain will definitely love watching these riders race down the course for their chance at the Gold.

All Photos by: Tyler Ingram

Last night being a Tuesday means that Robyn and I get to use our Night Ski pass up at Cypress and we were both looking forward to the evening. With receiving 25cm of snow the previous day it should have been great conditions right?

The nice thing I find about night skiing is that the slopes are not as busy as the weekend is. There are no crazy lineups at the chairlifts and the snow can be somewhat decent. Well the snow depends really on the weather and in Vancouver we haven’t had the greatest snow so far this Winter.

When we arrived at the parking lot they were practicing for the Freestyle Aerial event, Canada Post Freestyle Grand Prix that Cypress is hosting. The event’s venue is actually where the 2010 Winter Olympic Aerial and Mogul event is being held. It was cool seeing a couple of the people launch off the snow ramps, but we thought we’d check it out after our time on the snow.

I would also like to mention that I was mistaken in my last post about thinking it was part of the WordCup event which is being held at Cypress too. The LG Snowboard WorldCup is being held this month as well. My favorite part of the mountain is closed as they set up the border cross course. The Skiing portion is for the FIS (International Ski Federation) and they are doing Aerials and Moguls.

We took to Panorama as our first run of the day. The sun had not quite set yet so I was hoping we’d be able to get some photos of Vancouver from the ridge.

Metro Vancouver from Cypress

It seems that we were in luck and managed to get a couple shots of Vancouver and the surrounding area with Robyn’s camera.

The Lions

The view is amazing from Cypress as not only does it show you the the city, but if you face the other way you can see the Sunshine Coast, Horseshoe Bay and even the Lions.

After the initial run on Panorama as a warm up we found the snow to be very icy. Luckily there were not many people on Panorama as it is the only run open on the Black Mountain side during night ski as the north runs are closed due to the WorldCup Cross course being set up.

Setting up for the LG WorldCup Snowboarder Cross Event

The runs for the PGS (Parallel Giant Slalom) and Boarder Cross are PGS as well as the Upper portion of Fork. Going up the Eagle Express Chair you can see the course marked out with blue paint as well as all the rollers they have created. It looks pretty sweet actually and fun too.

We headed back over to the Lions Express chair and tried out Collins. I had a bit of a spill at the beginning on a patch of ice and hurt my tail bone but the rest of the run was better than expected. We hit Collins a couple more times as we thought that the other runs were far too icy.

Black Mountain at Dusk

The view of the mountains and surrounding area as the sunset was pretty impressive. Seeing the FIS Grand Prix event lit up as the sun set was pretty cool too. We headed into the lodge after a few runs, ate our food and went back to the car to pack our gear.

After we got our gear in the car and on the rack we decide to head over to the aerials and check them out. We ’snuck’ in pretending we were part of the event and no one seemed to really care we were there. Yes I do wish I had brought my dSLR but I had fun using Robyn’s point and shoot camera to try and take photos.

FIS Grand Prix Aerials

I did manage to get one decent shot of an aerial. The others, the action was too fast for the camera to capture properly. We stayed there watching jump after jump. It was pretty cool seeing freestyle aerials in person. Jump after jump we both thought the landings were quite hard. We think about 95% of the aerials ended up falling when they hit the snow, which sounded hard and really icy.

We saw one person fall bad and ended up injuring his leg. He was moved into the tent behind us and looked at by the first aid attendents. I guess he twisted his knee as he had a huge ice pack wrapped around it when we left.

You can check out the rest of our Cypress photos from this night as well as others over at my Flickr Cypress Set.

Again we did enjoy our time up at Cypress even if the snow was icy and a bit nerve racking. We also really enjoyed watching the freestyle aerials. Robyn is glad she got to see part of the event as her work schedule will be interfering with some of the other events she would like to see such as the WorldCup Snowboard Halfpipe. If only I could get media accreditation for the event to take photos of such an event.

WordCamp Whistler Header

Things will be different this time. I’ve had more practice on icy runs and ensured I took a level 4 lesson on Cypress. The lesson 4 I did on Cypress allowed me to work on steeper terrain as well learnt how to deal with moguls while riding. I’m psyched up for this trip and I will do my best not to get discouraged as I did last time we went up to Whistler/Blackcomb. This will also be the first time up on Blackcomb this year too.

I assume we’re doing Blackcomb since the WordCamp Whistler event is being held at the Fairmont  Chateau Whistler. The Fairmont is at the base of Blackcomb in the Upper Village. If we don’t like the conditions on Whistler we could easily take the Peak 2 Peak chair over to Whistler too.

If you’re coming up to the WordCamp Whistler event be sure to come by and say hi to both Robyn and myself. If you are also going to be skiing or snowboarding on Sunday let us know too, it would be fun to do a run or two!

This is not the new Peak2Peak Gondola that carries people between Whistler and Blackcomb. The Excalibur Gondola takes people up from Whistler Village to Base 2 and up to the Excellerator Express chair on Blackcomb.

News Sources:

• CTV: Gondola tower leans, trapping passengers in B.C.
• Vancouver Sun: Whislter (Blackcomb) gondola tower collapses
• CBC: Whistler Blackcomb gondola tower splits, stranding passengers
• Twitter

Hopefully the trapped people will be rescued quickly without incident. Currently no one has been hurt.

**Photo by: Andrew Pengelly, Coast Mountain Photography