We spent the morning ripping around chutes and trees.

A few of us got bored and decided to take a nature walk, see:
(I added a tune here, its the same thing I always sing every time we hike: press play!)
Dropkick Murphys – The Rocky Road to Dublin

These are the chronological pictures from that hike and those epic lines we each got. Click through any of them to get to the Flickr feed where there are more; we hit huge fields, dropped waterfalls and tight chutes all in between near perfect glades and it couldnt have been done with a better crew. We dropped into Highway 2 and picked up a ride from our man, Chuck.

We dropped into the road and crossed over here, this is our walrus slide.

Stevens Pass catches up to the future with their new website, linked at the image>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

*Modern and sleek with webcams dialed in on the homepage, 3 historically long clicks have been deleted there alone, the webcam page by itself is even faster and more attractive againts a darker background.

*The Facebook widget is nice because it rotates everyones’ profile, if you happen to like that sort of thing. If you wait long enough, you will see your mug flash across the website of your favorite ski hill. Nice touch.
Defiantly naming the plugin Facepile is funny to me however it definitely confuses some people who cant quite do the math. My only tweak to that would be change it and just call it what it is: Facebook.

*The weather widget in the top center header is awesome, I love the weather graphic and its easy to read function. The hours of operations widget is as slick as it gets, no more loading heavy pages to get what you need, just click and you get a fast, good looking, simple to use widget that pop-ups. Talk about lightweight, this place just got dialed in bigtime!

*The Twitter panel is a good addition and I really like the title: Chatter.
Stevens Pass has never had a good twitter feed, back in the beginning they just followed pro’s and local chics, which means only one thing, a local bro was planted somewhere in sales “tweeting” for the mountain. Over the years he has expanded his base somewhat but its been sub-standard at best, it’s still very much like a personal account with selective replies only to homies and industry. Ive never been impressed at all until I found this feed (linked below), which really should be the official feed. Relevant shots of killer sessions, weather updates that are personable and realistic and just plain cool to peruse, follow this guy for the real deal. Anytime I login to twitter I always head there first for updates. We all know what it means to ride the lower elevations of the PACNW and we still come back year after year, whats’ superlative about this feed is it’s pragmatic realism: Here youve got a guy who runs a mountain yet has no compunction telling the world what we already know on those warm days: if you want the goods you gotta hike, or get your session in before it rains today or even better: huge storm last night, the snow is perfect so get out and ride!
I like it and I give him 5 stars for it: a well played account thats real-deal and chock full of mountain pics/stats that you need to know. Joel Matinez’ twitter feed punches the weather in the face every day and he doesnt care, he is going to ski it and then tell you about it. You gotta love it.

*The Snaps section is a great addition to the site but I think it can be greater. Setup a member based Flickr pool and user-source the plug from that pool. Every submission to the pool is Mountain reviewed and approved before display and every user understands that submission to said pool may result in usage on the site in that section. There are some serious photographers up there that are relatively unknown and it would be a smash hit for sure.

Bottom line is this: The site is fun to look at with the giant background of rotating pics, it’s easy to read/navigate with the layout and content placement. Full-on carbon fiber popups, it feels light as air when your’e there. The Park and Pipe site is new to me and again I am impressed with it. Its a sidebar that Ive never noticed before but I typically don’t ride park until late at night when hunting off-sides freshies with my crew so I never have paid attention to anything “park” on the site. I like the way its built and the content is good. I don’t know if that’s new or old but all that matters is I found it through the new layout. Good work.
Stevens Pass gets 5 stars out of 5 for hurtling themselves into the Octagon of Style and 4 stars for Ease of Use. Great work rebuilding the site, making it more attractive while increasing the features and decreasing the navigation.

*Get Some! Stevens Pass.

Back into the City; a few weeks deep in the Mountains has done its work: Im fully charged and ready for the new year. Over 550 photos have yet to be processed, alot them will be discarded but there are a few gems waiting to be polished and published.
Here is a 12 pack teaser:

oh and then there is this: This beauty made my night, first thing I saw when I came home. Thank you again, internet.

Nick Porter on what it means to drop anchor in the upper motorhome lot of Stevens Pass Ski Resort:

Daniel its not bad at all, if you dont mind a couple bulls like us running around your china shop.

Season has begun!
We rode mostly grooms all weekend and true to form, Tye Mill (frontside) was the best for hot laps and random freshies. We did play around the GunTower area and that was ok, the real surprise though was secret stash above the Lots. I nimbly dodged two serious creekholes that I didnt see until I was right on top of them but otherwise that area is totally ready, we had fun back there.
I didnt break out the NeverSummer yet, I want my sea legs back on fully before I strap into that beast. I did ride last years Custom X to its capacity though. Fresh wax and that thing screams down anything I point it towards, a totally sweet ride. I wiped out in the trees pretty bad below the gun shack this weekend but really I had no business being back there where the cliffs are. It is what it is, I rode out alive.
About the near legendary vodka tap: 3.5 gallons of vodka flowed through that thing in 3 days. I think the problem is obvious! At least in a bottle you can measure your cosumption, but it is legendary and thats kinda fun.
Im headed back out Wednesday night and wont be in Seattle til sometime after the first of the year. Its gonna be really quiet around the blog, watch twitter I guess, or come up and ride?