Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Some more winter time entertainment
Andrew put out another video from his mid-season adventures around Jackson.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Poppin' Bottles!
Happy St. Patrick's Day! Today marked my 100th day skiing at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort this season. BOOM!
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Morning adventures to No Name Peak
This post was delayed due to last week's happenings.
March 28, 2011
I woke up early this morning to get some solid shred adventuring accomplished. Mel, Mike, and I woke up early to catch the first tram at 9:00. The new tram holds 100 people... we were 98, 99, and 100 to get on. Our goal was to hike Cody Peak, Powder 8's, and No Name Peak before Mel had to be at work at noon.
We got off the tram at 9:11. It was 12 degrees at the top of Rendezvous Mountain with howling winds. We made our way to the base of the Cody hike and spent a few minutes discussing the high winds and low visibility. We decided to go for it.
I should have used the GoPro during the early part of the hike. There is some pretty crazy rock scrambling in the beginning of the Cody bootpack. A narrow ridge with drops on either side. It can be a little scary in high winds.
We were the first people to the top of Cody Peak this morning. It was a good feeling. Due to the wind, the top of No Shadows was mostly a large cornice, but we scoped a small spot that was a rollover. The snow was softer than expected.
From No Shadows we traversed over to the Powder 8 bootpack. We were breaking trail up to the ridge. At this point we had about an hour and twenty minutes left. Normally, this wouldn't be a concern, but the fact that we were breaking trail added a lot of time and energy to the route. We didn't get as far as we would have liked, but we'll save the rest for next time.
The side-step around to No Name Peak was completely blown in. We were breaking trail. We were traversing across a steep slope with very flat light. I was punching hand holds into the wall and trying my hardest to keep my footing. It was probably one of the most stressful hikes I have done. Once we were under the cliffs in a protected area it was a huge relief. We used so much energy just concentrating on getting across the open face. The turns down No Name were incredible.
We hiked out and dropped into Pinedale Canyon, leap frogging to save time. Mel made it to work just on time. I feel exhausted from breaking trail all morning, but it was definitely worth all the effort. Tomorrow is another day for another adventure!
March 28, 2011
I woke up early this morning to get some solid shred adventuring accomplished. Mel, Mike, and I woke up early to catch the first tram at 9:00. The new tram holds 100 people... we were 98, 99, and 100 to get on. Our goal was to hike Cody Peak, Powder 8's, and No Name Peak before Mel had to be at work at noon.
We got off the tram at 9:11. It was 12 degrees at the top of Rendezvous Mountain with howling winds. We made our way to the base of the Cody hike and spent a few minutes discussing the high winds and low visibility. We decided to go for it.
I should have used the GoPro during the early part of the hike. There is some pretty crazy rock scrambling in the beginning of the Cody bootpack. A narrow ridge with drops on either side. It can be a little scary in high winds.
We were the first people to the top of Cody Peak this morning. It was a good feeling. Due to the wind, the top of No Shadows was mostly a large cornice, but we scoped a small spot that was a rollover. The snow was softer than expected.
From No Shadows we traversed over to the Powder 8 bootpack. We were breaking trail up to the ridge. At this point we had about an hour and twenty minutes left. Normally, this wouldn't be a concern, but the fact that we were breaking trail added a lot of time and energy to the route. We didn't get as far as we would have liked, but we'll save the rest for next time.
The side-step around to No Name Peak was completely blown in. We were breaking trail. We were traversing across a steep slope with very flat light. I was punching hand holds into the wall and trying my hardest to keep my footing. It was probably one of the most stressful hikes I have done. Once we were under the cliffs in a protected area it was a huge relief. We used so much energy just concentrating on getting across the open face. The turns down No Name were incredible.
We hiked out and dropped into Pinedale Canyon, leap frogging to save time. Mel made it to work just on time. I feel exhausted from breaking trail all morning, but it was definitely worth all the effort. Tomorrow is another day for another adventure!
Saturday, March 5, 2011
South Burlington freeskier 'knew the risks,' father says
An article published this morning by the Burlington Free Press. Wish I could be in Vermont today.
Peter Hawks smiles and remembers his son, Ryan, as he says "Ryan is not looking for the pain, he is focused on the smiles. He was totally focused on the joy of living and to honor him we will focus on celebrating his life."
Freeskiers form a tight-knit community, bound together by lines: the ones that whiz past on the road during their many shared hours on tour, and the ones they carve down the faces of mountains around the world.
Today, those lines will converge in Burlington, where a sizeable chunk of the freeskiing community is expected at the First Congregational Church to pay its respects to Ryan Hawks, a professional skier who died earlier this week following an accident during a California competition. Services for the 25-year-old South Burlington native will take place at 11 a.m. at the church, followed by a mountaintop tribute at Mad River Glen Ski Area in Fayston at 8 a.m. Sunday.
Hawks died early Tuesday from internal injuries suffered upon landing a backflip during the fifth stop on this season’s Subaru Freeskiing World Tour in Kirkwood, Calif., last Sunday. Hawks was airlifted to a Reno, Nev., hospital following the crash, and several dozen of his fellow competitors followed to offer their support.
“There were about 40 skiers assembled in the waiting room at the ICU, trying to help him through his struggle to live,” said Hawks’ father, Peter, who is an outback guide at Sugarbush Resort. “After he passed away, the whole caravan went up into the mountains to Donner Pass, above Lake Tahoe, to celebrate his life in the kind of place he’d want to be. It was very moving.”
Many of those people are expected to attend this weekend’s services. The trip marks a sort of homecoming for Adam Comey, president of Mountain Sports International, the company that hosts the Freeskiing World Tour; his company’s offices are in Salt Lake City, but he attended Green Mountain Valley School and grew up skiing at Okemo.
“It is tough for the freeskiing community to lose a part of itself, especially one that represents the spirit of the sport so well,” Comey said. “There is certainly an element of friendship, travel and adventure in freeskiing, a sense of exploration, together. I think a lot of times, the competitions are just an excuse to get together and spend time with one another, doing what they love.
“Ryan certainly embodied that, and I think you see a thread that runs through to (today’s service).”
A rising star
Hawks was a rising star in freeskiing, a form of alpine skiing that involves frequent jumping and aerial tricks in either natural environments or those enhanced with man-made obstacles. Settings for freeskiing competitions range from terrain parks (slopestyle) to the upper reaches of 10,000-foot peaks (big mountain), where competitors negotiate steep, rock- and tree-laden lines and propel themselves off cliffs in order to earn points from judges.
The competitive element of the sport was essentially born in 1991, when New England native Doug Coombs won the first World Extreme Skiing Championships in Valdez, Alaska.
As the name implies, freeskiing is about self-expression. The athletes earn points from judges based on their individual abilities to assess the terrain, choose their own lines of descent and incorporate tricks and other maneuvers to inject style into their runs. It differs from alpine ski racing in that there is no predetermined route to follow, and no running clock to beat.
And whereas halfpipe and freestyle skiers must often pull off the latest, cutting-edge tricks in order to top the competition, freeskiers are judged more on their creative artistry across a proverbial blank canvas of terrain than on the number of spins they can incorporate into a single air.
“There is a start gate and a finish gate, and in-between you are free to put your signature on the mountain,” Peter Hawks said.
The prize pools at even the highest-level freeskiing competitions are modest in comparison to many other sports. The men’s winner at the Kirkwood competition was local Josh Daiek, who received $5,000 — exactly one-fifth of the total prize money handed out at the event.
Freeskiing’s popularity is growing, so much so that MSI has to impose limits on the size of the field at its contests.The field at Kirkwood comprised 69 men and 27 women, with 39 total athletes making the cut for the finals on day two. Those numbers may have actually been a contributing factor in the accident that took Ryan Hawks’ life.
Danger lurking below
Last weekend’s competition was held in an area of Kirkwood known as The Cirque, which is off-limits to recreational skiers due to its pitch, natural obstacles and overall level of technical difficulty. As with every Tour stop, skiers were allowed to conduct a course inspection prior to the competition.
The first round of the event was postponed for two days due to heavy snow, and the conditions that existed once competition commenced Sunday proved a double-edged sword for skiers. The blanket of powder created a softer landing pad for big airs, but it also provided the course’s obstacles with a sort of natural camouflage that shifted shape with each of the day’s many runs.
“There were a lot of people skiing similar lines at Kirkwood,” said Lars Chickering-Ayers, Hawks’ teammate on Green Mountain Freeride. “There was some nice, fresh snow, but unfortunately it was covering up a lot of hidden rocks.”
The current men’s points leader on the World Freeskiing Tour, Chickering-Ayers had won the Tour’s two previous events, in Revelstoke, British Columbia, and Crested Butte, Colo., — but didn’t make the finals at Kirkwood after crashing on his first run.
According to Peter Hawks, his son was having “a really strong run” before his crash, which occurred immediately after he completed a full 360-degree backflip and landed on his skis.
“There was one, single rock in his landing area, and Ryan must have come right down on top of it,” Peter Hawks said. “I saw his ski afterward, and it was just crushed. All of the force of that landing went straight up through his body, and that is what caused his injuries.
“If he had landed eight to 10 inches ahead of where he did, or farther back, he’d be here talking about it right now. It was just a brutal, freak travesty of justice.”
Peter Hawks says that his son’s “signature move” in competitions was to perform backflips off cliffs, and Scott Seward of Burlington agreed. Seward, a design engineer for Burton Snowboards, was a lifelong friend of Ryan Hawks’ who traveled with him two winters ago to compete in North Face Masters of Snowboarding events held in conjunction with the Freeskiing Tour.
Seward is wary of outsiders blaming Hawks’ fatal accident on recklessness. He insists that his friend would have carefully analyzed the terrain features in The Cirque during his pre-competition course inspection, and only attempted maneuvers that were fully within his capabilities.
“If you know Ryan, you know that doing a backflip off a 40-foot cliff was like any Sunday morning for him,” Seward said. “That was what he did; he was just going to work. It was definitely not anything out of his realm.”
Peter Hawks agrees, saying there was “nothing remotely reckless” about the trick.
“It was a calculated, intended maneuver, totally within the boundaries of Ryan’s control,” he said. “He knew the risks of what he was doing; he understood them and accepted them.”
Toning down the extreme
In fact, Hawks was a proponent and even advocate for de-emphasizing the trademark aggressiveness of the sport’s “extreme” roots in favor of a more fluid, creative style, his father said. In addition to competing on the Tour, he served as a judge for the sport’s junior circuit, where he tried to impress his own philosophy of self-expression onto younger skiers.
“Ryan didn’t just try to launch himself off every cliff and jump he could,” Peter Hawks said. “There was an ebb and flow to his runs, an almost musical melody to the way he was able to find lines.”
The Tour’s organizers have also embraced that philosophy. Prior to this season, MSI made the first rule change in the Tour’s 12-year history, eliminating aggressiveness as a scoring category and replacing it with style and creativity.
“Honestly, it was always hard for me to understand exactly what aggressiveness meant in regard to freeskiing,” Comey said. “I think [the new categories] speak more clearly to what the sport is about.”
The rule change was also made in hopes that it would help attract more slopestyle and halfpipe skiers, and possibly put big-mountain freeskiing over the top in regard to popularity. Proponents of freeskiing are even making a push to have it included in the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
Peter Hawks expressed hope that his son’s death might help bring more positive attention to the sport. He said that a plan is in the works to turn greenmountainfreeride.com — the website for the team his son founded with Chickering-Ayers and Chuck Mumford — into a definitive forum for participants and fans of the sport to “share their love, passion and knowledge of the mountains.”
This story appeared on page A1 of Saturday's Burlington Free Press
A memorial fund for Ryan Hawks has been set up online at http://www.ryanhawksmemorialfund.org/
Friday, March 4, 2011
No Name Peak - 3/1/11
More photos courtesy of Mel- Day two hiking out to No Name Peak.
This time we had sunshine and great visibility compared to the day before. Cody Peak to Powder 8's to No Name. It was a warm, beautiful day. We took our time and enjoyed the weather. We stopped to check out some small caves on the No Name traverse. There were some cool looking fossils on the walls and ceiling. The snow wasn't that good, but the adventure was great.
This time we had sunshine and great visibility compared to the day before. Cody Peak to Powder 8's to No Name. It was a warm, beautiful day. We took our time and enjoyed the weather. We stopped to check out some small caves on the No Name traverse. There were some cool looking fossils on the walls and ceiling. The snow wasn't that good, but the adventure was great.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Ryan Hawks, 1985-2011
An article posted by Powder Magazine earlier this week. The first day I met Chris Tatsuno was skiing with Ryan at Jackson Hole.
By Tim Mutrie
Vermont skier Ryan Hawks died this morning at a Reno, Nev., hospital following injuries sustained during the Freeskiing World Tour event at Kirkwood, Calif., on Sunday. Hawks, 25, died of internal injuries, according to friends familiar with the situation.
During his competition run, Hawks—a widely-loved fixture of a crew of skiers known as Green Mountain Freeride—back flipped off a cliff, estimated at 50 to 70 feet. He landed the air to his feet, but crumpled upon impact, apparently hitting hard set-up snow rather than soft powder, which had blanketed the venue from a recent storm.
Hawks’ injuries, according to friends, included a head injury, collapsed lung, lacerated kidney, a vertebrae fracture, and pelvis fracture. Hawks was immediately medevaced to a Reno hospital for treatment Sunday and his condition had seemed to stabilize yesterday. This morning, however, he died from internal bleeding, according to friends.
“Some of the other guys who hit the same air as Hawks, they landed right at the base of the cliff, so in deep snow,” Chris Tatsuno, a fellow competitor and friend who was in tears today, said. “And Hawks came in hot enough to throw a backflip and enough to get it around and land it to his feet. But from the photos I’ve seen, he was easily another 10 feet down from the other guys’ landings. So maybe it was harder snow there.”
Hawks, who grew up in South Burlington, Vt., was an engineering student at the University of Vermont. He studied during the summer and fall semesters in order to pursue skiing full-time by winter. Earlier this season, he signed a professional contract with the Blizzard/Technica pro team. This winter, he was living in a van traveling to all Freeskiing World Tour Stops with the Green Mountain Freeride crew.
“He had a good head about him as far as skiing was concerned. What he did at the comp wasn’t outside his limits. He had been training really hard this fall,” said Tatsuno. “And it wasn’t just the skiing that drove him—it was about the community and being part of that and living in a van with Lars and Silas [Chickering-Ayers] and going to the Freeskiing World Tour comps. … The Green Mountain Freeride crew built something basically out of nothing. They said, ‘Hey, we’re going to represent the east coast,’ and now Lars is basically now winning the Freeride World Tour and they’re all on the rise.”
“Frank Shine described a trip [to Portillo] where Hawks was sick as a dog for most of the trip,” continued Tatsuno. “But even though he was sick as he was, he was out everyday smiling and there was nothing that was going to bring him down. Because when you run into Ryan, you just feel welcome—then a bear hug.”
“The biggest loss is he cared so much for the community,” Tatsuno said. “He was judging the Junior Freeskiing Tour and he wanted to make it safe on the competitive side. That’s what he was working for.”
“I don’t know if anyone knows what to think about this one,” Tatsuno continued. “I wasn’t out there, but at the same time, everyone left the comp [at Kirkwood] and thought he was being taken care of. With Johnny Nicoletta’s fall, we saw him tumble through rocks. But I don’t know what to take away from this one. It was variable conditions. It wasn’t a five foot powder day—it was the day after a five foot powder day. And wind had been there. And to see what happened with that, either bonding the snow or sending it somewhere else… It’s crazy shit; intense, man. Those are the variables that make our sport so amazing. It’s what makes it feel so free. We’d all be in the park and pipe if we needed that consistency, but we don’t search for that—we look for the variables, and trying to figure it out.”
Here is a Photo Gallery of Ryan on the Powder Mag website
Vermont freeskier dies following injuries sustained at Kirkwood comp
Ryan Hawks in Portillo, in August. Photo: Frank Shine.
Vermont skier Ryan Hawks died this morning at a Reno, Nev., hospital following injuries sustained during the Freeskiing World Tour event at Kirkwood, Calif., on Sunday. Hawks, 25, died of internal injuries, according to friends familiar with the situation.
During his competition run, Hawks—a widely-loved fixture of a crew of skiers known as Green Mountain Freeride—back flipped off a cliff, estimated at 50 to 70 feet. He landed the air to his feet, but crumpled upon impact, apparently hitting hard set-up snow rather than soft powder, which had blanketed the venue from a recent storm.
Hawks’ injuries, according to friends, included a head injury, collapsed lung, lacerated kidney, a vertebrae fracture, and pelvis fracture. Hawks was immediately medevaced to a Reno hospital for treatment Sunday and his condition had seemed to stabilize yesterday. This morning, however, he died from internal bleeding, according to friends.
“Some of the other guys who hit the same air as Hawks, they landed right at the base of the cliff, so in deep snow,” Chris Tatsuno, a fellow competitor and friend who was in tears today, said. “And Hawks came in hot enough to throw a backflip and enough to get it around and land it to his feet. But from the photos I’ve seen, he was easily another 10 feet down from the other guys’ landings. So maybe it was harder snow there.”
Hawks, who grew up in South Burlington, Vt., was an engineering student at the University of Vermont. He studied during the summer and fall semesters in order to pursue skiing full-time by winter. Earlier this season, he signed a professional contract with the Blizzard/Technica pro team. This winter, he was living in a van traveling to all Freeskiing World Tour Stops with the Green Mountain Freeride crew.
“He had a good head about him as far as skiing was concerned. What he did at the comp wasn’t outside his limits. He had been training really hard this fall,” said Tatsuno. “And it wasn’t just the skiing that drove him—it was about the community and being part of that and living in a van with Lars and Silas [Chickering-Ayers] and going to the Freeskiing World Tour comps. … The Green Mountain Freeride crew built something basically out of nothing. They said, ‘Hey, we’re going to represent the east coast,’ and now Lars is basically now winning the Freeride World Tour and they’re all on the rise.”
“Frank Shine described a trip [to Portillo] where Hawks was sick as a dog for most of the trip,” continued Tatsuno. “But even though he was sick as he was, he was out everyday smiling and there was nothing that was going to bring him down. Because when you run into Ryan, you just feel welcome—then a bear hug.”
“The biggest loss is he cared so much for the community,” Tatsuno said. “He was judging the Junior Freeskiing Tour and he wanted to make it safe on the competitive side. That’s what he was working for.”
“I don’t know if anyone knows what to think about this one,” Tatsuno continued. “I wasn’t out there, but at the same time, everyone left the comp [at Kirkwood] and thought he was being taken care of. With Johnny Nicoletta’s fall, we saw him tumble through rocks. But I don’t know what to take away from this one. It was variable conditions. It wasn’t a five foot powder day—it was the day after a five foot powder day. And wind had been there. And to see what happened with that, either bonding the snow or sending it somewhere else… It’s crazy shit; intense, man. Those are the variables that make our sport so amazing. It’s what makes it feel so free. We’d all be in the park and pipe if we needed that consistency, but we don’t search for that—we look for the variables, and trying to figure it out.”
Here is a Photo Gallery of Ryan on the Powder Mag website
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
You will be missed.
From racing downhill bikes at UVM to skiing here in Jackson, I'm honored to have known you. You have been an inspiration- you will be missed Ryan Hawks.
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