steeno

i'll have to hook up with you boys next season for some powder feasting on two sticks. saucer boy...was a farse played by shayne McConkey in one of TGR's films a couple years back. he was the one 'trolling an AK heli launch lot wearing a ghetto outfit, ropes, and a bottle of jack daniels. he is someone we should all aspire to be at one point in our lives.

my bad, thought it was talk on beacons (avy transceivers) and not radios. regardless...here are some good sites to shop for all kinds of gear www.telemark-pyrenees.com/e_index.htm www.backcountrystore.com

how about if we look at this thread from a different perspective. when you do ride with others do you ride with the same snow gender (i.e. all snowboarders, all skiers, all freeheelers, or all saucer boy's). my friends tend to be a mix of both boarders and freeheelers (all alpiners i know turned to tele) but i actually find it more enjoyable to ride with my own kind (tele). not cuz i don't like boarders but because we ride the mountain totally differently. on tele we are much more prone to traverse or sniff out stuff because it is really easy to do so without a heel attached. my bor

ocean11 - once you have flipped the bill for a transceiver it will only cost the price of your batteries to operate it. and the batteries tend to last an entire season. i usually change mine out at least once during the season just to make sure it is fully juiced, nothing would suck more then to loose battery life on the day you get buried. i saw an ad this weekend in the march edition of powder magazine from backcountrystore.com (i'll have to look up the exact url and post later). they were offering a backcountry package for something like USD $375. it included the ortovox m2 transceiver,

resorts in the states are definitely making a boat load of money. but they are also providing some serious bang for your buck. the facilities are top notch, you have trams, gangolas, high speed lifts, world class lodges (base, mid mountain, and top), some of the best parks, open boundries, and patrol safety. Now, the majority of the people who ride these places are gapers in their bogner designer suits and are pulling in over six figures. so in essence they get what they pay for. for the weekend warriors and locals there is always a way around it with serious discounts or bro-deals. and

i hear ya. it's just kind of frustrating that it would be off limits when it really shouldn't be. but starting somewhere is better than no where. that states are really starting to push the boundry issue as well. jackson has a great gate program that allows you to assess and decide and many other places are doing something similar...safety through education.

alpined for about 23 years, tried boarding, and then settled on tele. the free heel sensation does it for me. been 3 years on those and haven't looked back.

you bring up an interesting point about family.... a friend of mine was on rainer last summer getting some summer turns becuase there was a late june storm that dropped about a foot of fresh. he got completely buried in a freak slide that was not that big but button holed so he was completely covered. he was under for abot 8-10 minutes and said that the entire time all he could think about was his wife and two kids. when he made it out he said he nearly puked from the incident and said that it really put things in perspective. it is always tougher on those you leave behind

this sounds like a big marketing scheme to me?! i have to pay money to join a "special" club only to ski something not "very-special" actually the more i think of it the more i think it's absolutely brilliant. resorts are there to make money and what better way than to create a "special" area for "special" people... it's a "special" idea.

powder magazine ran a spread on fear a couple years back and they had a pretty interesting approach to it. there was some great imagery accompanied with each articale and it gave you a better sense of what they were talking about. they basically came to the conclusion that fear is subjective. it is whatever you make it to be and it is whatever you allow it to do to you. some of the best athletes in the world (nobis on skis for instance) can see beyond the fear and actually nail everything. it is because they look beyond the fear that they are able to control their actions and thus hurtle

it always varies on who is going but we usually have a black lab, golden retriever, a huskie, and a complete mutt. oddly enough the mutt, who has virtually no winter coat and no hair on his ears, kicks all the other dogs butts. the huskie never listens to his master and is always off doing his own thing. the goldens get bad ball up under their feet and can't travel for too long. and the lab can get too cold and is actually a chicken shiat when it comes to the steeps. i had a buddy who also had a malamut and was trying to teach him how to pull but he we found out he had hip displacement so

we usually travel in the bc with our dogs and at one point we were actually planning on equiping them with transceivers.

i was from the city that rains...portland oregon. i called mt hood my home court advantage and the rest of the cascades my playground. a 3-6 hour drive would get me to either crystal, stevens, baker, or whistler. and our backcountry choices were vast and all year round. but now of course i get the pleasure of calling taichung my home. well, at least temporarily. that is until i find my way back to the pnw. fattwins - did you ever make it to a place called kicking horse. it probably had a different moniker back then but the place was off the hook nonetheless. the nelson are

i used to live in a rain town does that count. kind of like snow but just a little warmer. the pacific northwest in the states...pretty much rained from october to june. though the mountains were only 45 mins away and would receive about 450-500 inches (cm?) a year. you can ski clear into september. now i'm in pretty much neither. can't seem to find the local ski spot here in taiwan. although i'm thinking of investing in grass skis. i hear their making a come back. fattwins ... when you were bumming where were you bumming?

i grabbed an ipod this season and found it to be the perfect ticket. i actually got it for mountain biking so i could have something to motivate me through an hours slog up the single track and then unplug during the descent. oddly enough i get weirded out when i can't hear the forest whizzing by so i have to take it out. it gives me a strange vertigo feeling. the ipod translates well over to the snow and is great for those days when all your having are safety meetings (???) and working on stuff. it makes the lift ride up more enjoyable and those solo days on the hill more interesting

i do know that the avalung received extensive testing to prove it's theory and has been recorded once to actually work in a "real-life-in-the-field" situation. I have buddy who received one as a comp but have never actually seen him use it. i've tried it on and checked it out but found it too cumbersome and too difficult to use. I've alway felt that the best precaution is not to get into the situation in the first place. If the danger is to high you simply turn around. but of course life doesn't always unfold that way. I have also seen a new device that acts like a parachute. If yo

oops, i meant avy transceiver and not radio transceiver. although traveling with a radio, such as a motorola, is not a bad idea either. however, i'm curious as to the number of people who wear a transceiver/beacon while skiing. i pretty much wear mine all the time regardless of if i'm traveling in a high danger zone or not. just kind of habit. but i'm guessing that if the resorts are that anal about people in the trees there's probably not much of a worry for them to get caught in a slide or being in high risk zones. are they really that up tight about it? are they in the habit of pulli

does anyone ski with a transceiver? what kind of trees are we talking about here? Off piste like way beyond the ski area and mandatory skin or hike back or just in the trees between runs? I have been reading some of the threads on this board and get the feeling that the patrol wants people only on the trail and no where else. Is this true? Having never skied in Japan I am left scratching my head. That to me defeats the purpose of skiing. The goods are hidden and should require some effort to attain. They are away from the groomed runs and regular masses. They should take some ti

how long do the mountains around there hold snow? when do the resorts start to turn off the lifts? can't you just venture off piste once they do and get the goods? back home we would go clear into summer (july/august) but we also had glaciers to play on. anything like that around there? so, once the snow is gone is there good singletrack to ride the fat tire on? ....oh so many questions so little time.

yeah the illha formosa has some peaks that hold some snow. the peaks here are tall and i've been on some hikes in which snow was encountered. also, done some digging for imagery and have seen peaks with big open bowls, slightly filled. so i'm thinking it's possible to get it but it's not something i'm gonna call in sick for. all stashes will require a pretty hefty commitment to a) find and to get to. i left my quiver back in the states but will have it for next season. thus my inquiry on the island to my north as i'm scheming for next season's face shots. what's the offpiste polici

new to the area, live in taiwan but dying to find freshies in the land of the rising sun. been reading this post to keep up with the local happenings and to plan next years trip. Haven't seen or heard anything about freeheelers (no not freeskiers). What's the tele scene like? are there any backcountry huts to ski? any local tele shops, events, competitions? what's the haps up there? looking for fellow knee droppers.