187 Minutes - Feature Length Film

As promised in my previous post. Here is the film footage of our most excellent adventure of being stuck on a chair lift for 3 hours on our 15th wedding anniversary. Don't worry Solitude gave us each a free ski pass AND a $5 coupon that we can spend anywhere at the resort! As the minutes and hours ticked by we were yelling back and forth from chair to chair deciding what the resort was going to need to do to make us happy customers again. This wasn't what we had in mind. Maybe I'll use that $5 coupon to get a drink the next time I ski there.

I don't know if this will be entertaining to anyone other than the people stuck on the lift. You get pretty loopy after being up there for a while. After I went back and watched it, I thought it actually was pretty funny. You be the judge.



187 Minutes from Jon James on Vimeo.

187 Minutes - a true story

For those of you who haven't heard. Today Big Cottonwood Canyon had a tree break and fall taking out a power line that cut power to the entire canyon. It was a little before 1:00 and we had just made the decision to do one more run before heading over to the Stone Haus for lunch.

Here is the Trailer for the movie that will debut tomorrow. Its all true and yes it was our 15th wedding anniversary.  One we won't soon forget.

Crashing is Fun!

So after a long week and an exceptionally hectic and challenging week at work an early morning Dawn Patrol seemed like a good way to clear the mind and blow off some steam. So Mike and I made plans to meet up for a little pre-work powder festival.

When we pulled into the parking lot across the street from Alta we knew it was a big day when we had a tough time finding a place to park. We looked up onto Flagstaff and could see dozens of headlamps working their way up the mountain. Its kind of crazy to to see how popular backcountry skiing has become.

 After both Mike and I agreed it would be a nice change to take it easy on the way up, we called a truce and took it as easy as you can while climbing a mountain. Once we hit the ridge we checked the time and decided that if we hurried we could do a lap on the north side and get me to my 9 o'clock meeting.

The Snow was so good! I was trying out a new pair of BD Megawatts. Ya they are pretty good in the powder (Ben you are never getting these skiis back). I couldn't believe how that rockered tip just plowed through things. 

 After hiking out of the north side we hit the ridge and headed back toward the car. About half way down we dropped into a little gully for some fun. I was riding the ridge, popping in and out of the gully, when I decided to go back on top, pick up some speed and air back in. When I popped off the lip I was surprised at how much air I ended up grabbing, but was more surprised when I hit and had my bindings pre-release and send me tomahawking head over heals down to the bottom of the gully. Crashing is fun. Its like getting tossed into a washing machine on spin cycle!

When I stopped one of my skiis tagged me in the back of the helmet.  The other one was nowhere to be found. Mike was above me so he skied over to probe the snow. After about 10 minutes of not being able to find it I turned around and took a look down the gully and noticed a single ski track following the bottom of the gully. Mike skied down a couple hundred yards to see if he could see it. There it was sticking straight up. Too funny.

No I didn't make that 9 o'clock meeting but I did have a smirk on my face the rest of the day. Life is good in the Wasatch.

A little of this and a little of that

Over the Thanksgiving holiday there was a lot of skiing going on. A couple of tours in the backcountry, and a couple of days at Solitude with the kids. Here are a couple of photos to tell the story.

Thanksgiving morning we got up early for a quick tour. Turned out it wasn't so quick after we hit a sketchy spot on the top of Mount Superior and decided to back off it and take a detour. Good times either way.

Hitching a ride back up with hill to retrieve the cars.

 Friday it was just me and the girls for a day on the hill. They are getting really good and lots of fun to ski with.

We took P-diddy up the next day thinking we would schlep him around in the baby backpack. At the last minute I threw in a pair of skis and boots for him thinking he might like to slide around a bit. He liked it a lot and the baby backpack stayed in the car all day. We had a tough time convincing this guy to come off the hill. He told me on the lift ride up that we were both Batman. "We have capes and that's why we can fly up the mountain"!

Here he is in the lodge attacking that hamburger the same way he attacks his sisters with his Batman pajamas on. He says he likes to wear his hair "Fikey"!

I've got a new ski buddy!