Wheels and Waves

Pro Skier Dan Marion will be coming by our booth and signing autographs at the Eco Sports Festival at Laudholm Farm in Wells Maine on September 26th. We will be offering free Stand Up Paddleboard demos as well.

Should be a fun day for the whole family with everything from hot air balloon rides, beer and food vendors, product demos and a 5K fun run.

Dan is one of the worlds top halfpipe skiers, consistintly placing in the top 10 in the X Games and every other major contest around the world.  He’s also a great back country skier and absolutely destroys handrails as you can see in his part from last year’s Dynstar video below. He can also be seen in all the Meathead Ski videos and his recent trip to Chile got a lot of coverage on the ESPN website. Besides skiing, Dan is a ripping surfer and all around good guy. Contact the shop for more details.

Click to see Dan’s part from Dynastar’s Absolute Winter 2 video

The Body Glove RV came by the shop last week for an autograph signing and surf session. The crew consisted of Cheyne Magnusson, East Coast Team Manager Dan Hassett, Body Glove owners Ronnie and Shelly Meistrell and North East Rep Bruce Chrisner.
 

So here’s one from Colin that I never got around to posting. He’s been living in New Zealand product testing with the Burton crew and earlier in the season placed 2nd in the World Heli Challenge qualifier at Treble Cone in Wanaka New Zealand.
 

Lots of stuff to report on. Billy Woodward is finally back in Maine after an extended PR trip. Wescott is back from Alaska and Peru. Dan Marian is on the road but is keeping everyone posted on his adventures with his blog http://danmarionblog.com/
The shop got some good press the past few weeks. We had a nice blurb about our new website in the latest ESM. We also got some love from www.getinthevan.com The latest episode of the Dug Show starts at the shop.
Tons of new products last week from Nomis, Sanuk, Famous Stars and Straps, Circa, HIC and more. Loaded up with everything for your summer needs.

Here’s some pics Amy took at the Too Late The Hero show at the 103 Ultra Lounge in Orono, ME from 4/23/2010
 

The trip to the isolated island, Rishiri in the Sea of Japan was put on hold for a few days as another storm chased our tails from 6 AM from Niseko, down to Sapporo and north into Central Hokkaido.  It was a game of tag all day, as the storm clouds billowed through sending snow spirals around the van packed full of the crew.  This was the Black Diamond Guides trip after a hectic season bringing punters around the backcountry. This time it was our turn.  We passed Clayton along the way with his truck full of sleds.  Day 1’s Mission – head to a small closed ski resort, drop the sleds and proceed to shred with 4 snowmobiles in waist deep pow.  Yup it sounds too good to be true, but what an epic day.  The storm got full force as we ran doubles up to the top and back down.  Let me tell you, if you are a green sled rider, a closed ski resort is the best place to learn.  Headng back to the van to pick up 6 sets of snow shoes and poles, we ran one last lap to the top and sent a handful of the crew off into the backcountry as the light began to fade.  Three of us happily took the sleds for another power hour ripping every bank like we were snowboarding.  We didn’t pull out of there until well after dark but everyone was amping and the Black Mountain Lodge already had a crew warming it up.
The next day the heavy hitting locals crew went out and punished the local hill with no one in sight.  Pillows, drops, cliffs, and some VT style tree shredding was in the cards.  Another waist deep day made anything possible and we rode from 8:40 – 4:00.  The whiskey bottles came out in force that night and the stories began around our own personal bar.  Toshi ended up getting lucky with one of the cute lifties engraving him in Black Mountain History.  Anyway, the next day was a late start and the hangovers felt like getting pounded over and over and over at a Mexican beach.  We went up anyway for a big mission to explore some of the backcountry that was too appealing to be left alone.  An hour hike through heavy wind and snow almost had us turn at the peak, but we continued on, across the moon like rocky surface and wrapped down through the cloud into an epic gully, which funneled us down into a valley where the walls grew into towers on both sides.  One of the photos illustrates a gaping hole in the snow pack and a slab on top.  Nearly killed myself on that one, but lucky escaped alive…Found out later it was 30 meter waterfall!
Anyway, I’ll save the next day for another story, but within 4 days we shredded more terrain than your average punter gets in a season.  Japan – a place that gets better by the day.
 

After four jam packed days of heavy riding and sledding in Central Hokkaido, Japan, the blizzard was welcomed like a deep sleep.  For two days the local mountains were shut and we took the opportunity to fill up on pancakes, coffee and much needed down time.  As the storm began to clear on day two we stepped foot outside to assess the damage.  Overhanging most of the driveway was a fully developed nine foot cornice, and after an attempt at bashing through it with one vehicle we succumbed to shoveling our way out of the house.  In between shovel-fulls of snow Mt Yotei, the local volcano began to show its snow-covered flanks offering glimpses of how much snow had really fallen.  Toshi, my Japanese friend caught wind the mountain was opening late in the afternoon and a nighter was called to order.  If you haven’t heard, Grand Hirfau in Niseko probably has the best night shredding in the world and after being closed for two days the options were endless.  Traversing out of the night-lights we dropped into dark tree runs, waist deep drifts and pillow drops galore, we scored the best of a late March dump laughing all the way and of course for the local’s price – free.

The following day gave way to bluebird skies so we decided to hit the Niseko backcountry to put a couple lines down Iwanoit and some other zones behind the main resort.  A late start had us on the peak by 2:00 PM, enough time for three separate pitches, but as the sun began to set, so did the snow pack; by 5:00 PM the thick layer of sun-crust shut down any optimistic thoughts to drop any of the features littered on the slope.  Although the best features went untouched, we kept the boards on the ground and found some really steep and fun lines back down to the carpark where a round of ice-cold Sapporo’s awaited our arrival in the snow-bank.
 

A lot of our customers and friends know Colin as one of our surf instructors or just one of the guys out in the lineup.  Some of you might remember him as the kid who represented us by killing it at all the big New England snowboard events. Colin likes to surf, but he loves to snowboard. After some serious travel through Central and South America, he moved to New Zealand about a year ago. Since then he’s mixed surfing in with a pretty heavy snowboard schedule bouncing back and forth from New Zealand to Japan to wherever the snow is. I’ll be posting some stories and photos from his most recent trip to Japan in the coming weeks. The early stuff I already saw is amazing.  

Ralph Gustavsen built this website. He also takes good pictures. Here’s some of Ralph’s favorites from this past Fall and Winter.  If you like the pics or want a website as cool as this one contact him at his website or Facebook fan page.

http://www.gravit-design.com

Amy Lytle is a kid from Wells who we watched grow up to become a talented photographer. She’ll be contributing a wide range of photos from landscapes to the local music scene.  You can find her on twitter @amyHUGE or on her Facebook fan page. Here’s some of her shots of another talented kid from Wells named Ryan Peters AKA Spizzy Spose.