calgary world cup and washington

-23c with -33c wind chill. what a great day to run a contest!
welcome to calgary i guess. The world cup held in clagary was held in mildly cold and mildly icy conditions. When it's that cold you have a hard time getting any sort of speed going and mistakes cost you dearly. When the snow is like that it also burns the base of your board and effectively ruins a board for ever wanting to go fast again.

I've had board problems all year. My contest boards for the past little while have all been custom Bataleons. It was a blend of our project green and an old enemy model from 3 years ago (or so). and i loved them. However i only had a few left at the start of this year so they were prized boards. Bataleon recently changed factories and made every board in the line up softer. This was not working out for me at all. I've had to practice all year on boards that were messed up or too soft or trying other boards out that you're not used too. I haven't been happy with my results this season and i can directly relate it to how bad my practice sessions have been. It sucks to have to protect boards so you have a good one for a contest. then on the contest day you have to quickly get a run together cause you can finally ride how you want. But you didn't get any good practice so it's a bit of a catch 22.

Calgary was no exception to that trend this year. With it being my last major contest for this season (i'm taking a mellow contest year this winter) i was hoping to use my last custom board to practice but the cold snow stopped that idea dead as i didn't want to ruin the board. So in the end I just missed making finals again.

That evening i was on a plane to vancouver, spent a few hours in squamish then packed up the car and headed down to washington to spend a few days shooting down there with my good friends Will jackways and Abbey Lockheart.

We had a gorgeous day in the mt baker backcountry then followed that up with a good day hiking off from Stevens Pass with a few locals. The sun was in and out and by the end of the day it was PUKING. Unfortunately we had to drive home right away since my girl had to work today. Great 2 days down there and now the snow is back in BC and i'm pretty much at home all month ready to ride and get some shooting done. We'll see what happens. never had a march without a contest. pretty excited.

jl