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If you asked what the most fun ski trip I had ever been on was, I would tell you right away it was my trip to Mt. Hood last July. That would also be filed under: craziest trip, scariest thing that ever happened to me, and would immediately do again. The big snag on last years trip though, was I came home with a $600 credit card bill. At $52 a day in the summer or $800+ for a summer pass, Timberline isn’t a cheap place to ski (It’s $54 a day this summer). I heard about the spring pass that Timberline offers when it came time to plan a sequel to the trip, it’s only $99. The price of a pass is the same as two lift tickets? Well shit, let’s go!

I made the trip with Erik Ringsmuth, Jack Stephenson, and a kid we met on Newschoolers from Illinois, Kyle Gipper. I meet a lot of my friends via Newschoolers, Erik for one, but I still thought it was weird, more stupid that a someone would want to go on a two and a half week road trip with three perfect strangers. Actually, Jack and Erik didn’t know each other at the start of the trip either. It ended up exactly like last year, planned to the last minute with mostly strangers.

We all loaded into Erik’s old family van and set off on the incredibly exciting 30 hour drive. Now, I’d been checking the weather for a week straight, 47 times a day, and all I saw was a forecast of rain. I try to be optimistic most of the time, but all indictions pointed to the possibility of the trip being a total fuck. I didn’t fully accept that that was our fate until we pulled into Government Camp, the town (cough) at the base of Mt. Hood, where it was pissing rain. We had stayed at our camp at the Old Airstrip for only long enough to stake a tent and tie up a tarp in a pathetic attempt to keep some potential firewood dry before running for the dry shelter that was the porch of the general store. All would soon be well though, we were about to go skiing the next day.

Just kidding. We walked into the Wy’East Day Lodge to find that the lifts were closed because of poor visibility. One of three days all year that lifts had been closed. What are the chances? We fled to the nearby city of Sandy for the first time. Armed with duct tape, more tarp, rope, and a hatchet, we constructed a gypsy base camp to keep us dry. There were two pillars propping this 20 foot long tarp up and drainage ditches to channel water away from the tent and fire, it was a masterpiece. Well, until rain accumulated on top of it and wrecked it. Daily. Alcohol makes everything better, and we indulged in quite a bit of whiskey that night. Me and Kyle channeled som Bear Grylls and set up snares and traps all around the airstrip using chunks of ramen as bait. They got increasingly elaborate, our best ones were a pit with a leaf covering, and a stick propping up a large rock that would surely kill a small unsuspecting animal. This is when Kyle discovers he loves whiskey.

Our first day of skiing was perfect. It was windy, foggy, cold, and rainy. Our second day of skiing, it snowed and the park was closed. Erik was not happy, he needs rails to survive. He sheltered inside on his iPhone while the rest of us lapped ankle deep freshies with our neighbors from across the airstrip, two guys from Utah name Trever and Mike. We met them the night before, but being the awful human beings we are, we didn’t remember their names until later, and usually referred to them collectively as Utah. The only chair that was open was the regular season park chair, which meant that it serviced three mostly flat runs. They had moved the park from that chair up to the late season location off of the Magic Mile not long before we had all gotten there. All that was left was a line of rollers that before were presumably, awesome jumps. Following Utah around though, we lapped the chair until close, finding small drops and gaps in the trees. An amazing day. I goggle tanned in the 45 minutes of sun we got.

We fled from the snow to Portland that night, to crash with Erik’s aunt and uncle. Five days into our trip, and we were broken and miserable. The rain, snow, and skiing situation had us completely dejected. We stopped in Sandy on the way there so Jack could replace his broken phone, and that’s where I met my first love of the trip. Her name was Verizon Girl, and I’m pretty sure she was hot. I don’t actually remember what she looks like, but after five days of no female contact, we all thought she was hot. We were chatting it up real nice, and on our way out, she said she was going to the Lake near our camp with her friend who was also female, and said how crazy it would be if she saw us there. Well, we’re all retards, and told her we were going to Portland to hide from the rain. Idiots. The Verizon store is where we discover that Kyle loves parkour. See Video.

Our night in Portland was amazing. We had hot food, showers, TV, and a dry place to sleep. Erik’s uncle even bought us beer, a cool local micro, because he spied a 30 rack of Keystone we had procured for Utah in the back of the Van. We wandered the downtown area afterward, and in the span of an hour, Kyle got shot down and called 14 years old by a girl on the street, practiced martial arts with a bum, and got his ass kicked by some nerds LARPing in the street. He was knocked over into a puddle. My friends are retarded.

Clean and ready for more, we left the next morning ready to ski. No such luck. As we re-entered Sandy from Portland, the battery gauge in the van started dropping. Does your car even have a battery gauge? Mine doesn’t, but this ‘95 Ford Aerostar did. We pulled over and let the van die after the headlights, wipers, and speedometer stopped working. The battery and alternator were toast. Cue $300+ spent and and an entire day wasted walking across town. In the waiting room of a repair shop, Kyle discovers he loves coffee. This day is also when our spree of petty theft begins. We left Sandy with a fixed van and dozens of packets of tea, hot chocolate, and saltine crackers. We are so good at roadtrip.

Our luck shaped up somewhat after that, it didn’t seem like anything else could go wrong at the point. We met some new neighbors and tossed a couple beers back around their fire. Actually, Kyle had already met one of them the night we set up snares. We were sleeping in the van to escape the rain, and Kyle, upon seeing a new truck pull into the camp, ran out of the van to meet them before they even got a chance to park. Allegedly, he wasn’t wearing pants, unsuccessfully offered them applesauce, and was very drunk. Eventually, it is revealed that me and Kyle were retards who propped up a rock with a chunk of ramen tied to it. Our neighbors think we are retarded.

Over a week into our trip, we finally get a sunny day. We dubbed it Magical Monday on the Magical Mile. Pretty soon after that though, Utah decides its time to call the trip off, it just wasn’t going to be worth it for them with the weather how it was. Mike blew most of his remaining cash of a handle of rum and an 18 pack of beer at the general store and we proceeded to go from sober to blackout in under an hour. We invited over some new neighbors, Idaho Dan the Man, Idaho Pete, and Idaho Pete’s girlfriend. We made asses of ourselves. There was puke and piss everywhere. Our neighbors think we are retarded.

A few days after that, I met my second love of the trip. Her name was Hot Chocolate Girl and she was hot. I actually don’t remember what she looks like either. As you can tell, I’m really bad with names, and most of the girls I saw were put in the ‘hot’ category because when you are camping in the woods with three other dudes for two and a half weeks, every girl is hot if she’s under 250 pounds. She was worth three points, I talked to her several times, and got a hug. I should probably explain the game we play on ski trips now. It’s the talking to girls game. Every girl you talk to is worth one point. Hugs are worth two points, you get the idea, the points reset every day. Well, I thought I was doing pretty good. Then I saw the braces. Abort mission. She keeps running into me the next couple days and talking to me. Jesus, how old did she think I was? All my friends have beards. My friends now think I will shortly end up in jail.

The trip was mostly uneventful until our last night, we passed the time by drinking in the van, off-roading and almost flipping the van, poaching wifi in the van, sitting in the rain in the van, stealing shopping baskets from chain retailers, going to Jack in the Box and stealing sauce packets, stealing logs, plates, and plastic forks from the lodge, and playing card games in the van. Our routine was skiing until 2:30, sitting in the lodge until we got kicked out at 5, then failing to make a fire until 10. The on and off rain meant that it took pretty much a full can of lighter fluid to start a fire on any given day. On our last night though, Kyle acquires some gasoline in a five gallon can. He proceeds to be a moron by making gas trails, lighting rocks on fire, and pouring it on our pile of soggy wood in our fire pit we are attempting to burn. Eventually we get some flames going, but Kyle keeps hosing it with the gas can. It happened pretty quick, the flames shot back up the stream into the can. Kyle drops it and we all hide behind trees, staring at our flaming gas can. Kyle is freaking out and we are all yelling at him to douse it with some water bottles. He’s practically crying in fear at this point, and he tries to splash the gas can from ten feet away. There is also a tree in between him and the gas can. At this point, I am resigned to the fact that I will shortly die in a fiery, gassy explosion because of my inept friends. I guess I’m not doing anything either, except for yelling at Kyle to stop sucking at putting out gas fires. Somehow, Kyle finds his balls and puts out the fire. My friends are retarded.

See you in five weeks to do it all again T-Line.

The Edit

Circle 13: My Friends are Retarded

After spending three weeks couch bumming with LINE MC Tony Seyffer in January, I knew I had to go back and do it again over spring break. We started rounding up a crew and soon my car filled and we needed more spots. So, Tony has this girlfriend, Whitney, who has this mom, who has this guy who rents the basement from her. Well this guy has some awesome creeper vans that he isn’t using. One reason for the non-use being that he brought a running chainsaw into a bar. He didn’t kill anyone, but he’s chillin’ in jail. So, we’ve also got this friend, Colten Welch, his mom served jury duty on that. Add 9 rider Austin Torvinen and girl skier #2 Kendelle and you have our van crew. All rocking LINE skis except that 9thward duder. Hella LINE skis.

So we like LINE, a lot, so we decided to write LINE all over this janky van, because we do that (remember the Ullrfest float from episode 7?), with some window chalk. Austin wrote Ninthward on it too, and then wrote Free Candy on the hood. Tony drove straight through the night and had some absurd, unhealthy amount of 5 Hour Energy shots to do it. Oh, there were whiskey plates on them too.

It didn’t take long after arriving in Breckenridge for us to start laughing at how ridiculous our ride was. Every day, we rolled through Main Street traffic, honking at tourists, small children, their parents, everyone. Some people ignored us, some people laughed, some people were downright offended. The best was pulling into and out of free church dinner with it. The van was simply, awesome.

Other random thoughts: spring break crowds at Breck are retarded, Keystone was deserted, Keystone’s medium jumps are wack, In the four weeks total I spent in Summit County this season, I skied 0 real powder.

We didn’t do too much filming since we couldn’t link up with Jake Strassman, who did our LINE Midwest edit on our first trip. The MN Does CO edit was our shots from the week. Here’s the leftover shots from it:

It’s been a warm March so far. We kind of dove straight into spring skiing, and there’s no more snow in site. I’m being optimistic that there will be a spring dump, but the forecast is looking pretty bleak at the moment.

Park crews in Minnesota have never heard of salt. Well, maybe they have, but no park in this state gets anything salted. The rail kickers and jumplines are mush. Everything is mostly un-hittable now. The jibs are starting to melt out and wobble. Everything is mostly depressing.

The near future is going to be jam packed however, as we move into spring events like Midwest Superpark and Tyrol Spring Jam. We’ve got a full crew of six riding out in a creeper van to Summit County on Thursday. Can you taste the epic already? Stay tuned… gonna get un-boring real quick!

The last couple weeks have been pretty uneventful. Check out some Spirit hot laps, and a mini session at Chester Bowl for Freestyle Fridays. So here it is, droppin early, because god knows where we’ll be sleeping in Colorado.

Last year, on the way back from Marquette Mountain Superpark, Austin stopped at a gas station and got this ridiculously awesome tee shirt with an elephant on it. Wolf tees are going out, its all about the biggest land animal in the world now.

Summit Pro/Am finals went down on Friday. Me and Austin were in the 15 person field that qualified to compete for the big $1000 1st prize check. I did not make finals, which allowed me to take full advantage of the free PBR. Delicious. Everyone’s best friend Skier Steve Janisch won, and LINE Midwest rider, Matt Halverson picked up 3rd. Andreas White, decked in slim pants, no poles, and fat rockered skis threw down one of the most insane tricks on a down rail I have ever seen, lip 2 3 change 4 out. Wow.

Before the competition, me and Austin met up with super photographer Bill Hickey and Elan/Dalbello rider Willi Engelhart to shoot some pole bonker shenanigans which you can get a peep of at the end of the edit. The park we did it at is right by my parents house. It’s a sledding hill so there was unlimited in run and speed for what we needed to do. Perfect.

The tow rope shred madness tired us out to the extreme, so we decided to do it again the next day at Elm Creek. Elm Creek is a Three Rivers Park District park like Hyland is. Its main attraction is cross country skiing and tubing, at some point, some genius decided it would be an excellent idea to turn the above average sized sledding hill into a ski area. All the old rails from Hyland got tossed over, and a rope tow was put in. It’s possibly the most fun mini shred park, EVER. We lapped for around six hours and it never got old. Austin threw down all eight 270s onto the baby handrail and I tapped and nollied my heart out. David Wells had a credit card number he could use as much as he wanted, don’t ask, and we ordered about $45 worth of Domino’s to the chalet. It was a feast of delicious proportions.

By the way, I ditched the intro segment. I’m sure all you guys were getting sick of it too.

Welch Village is the home hill of some of the most talented park skiers in Minnesota. It doesn’t make sense how they came to be that way though, because Welch Village has one of the worst terrain parks in [relative] Twin Cities area. Every year, enormous claims are made and the result is laughable.

Five Welch locals made the trip up north to Duluth and crashed at my place to ski Spirit Mountain. We complain a lot about our park up here, but upon further evaluation, we might arguably have the best park in Minnesota. This day was the first day all but one of the Welch guys had hit a jump all season.

So, the guys down at Summit must have realized how much Wild Mountain’s King of the Hill Shop Wars sucked, especially for skiers, because they ripped the idea off pretty hard to create Crew Wars. Shop Wars let us [Team Ski Hut] take two runs as a team per round and there were absolutely NO prizes to be had for us, the winners, or swag to throw out for any of the competitors. Us skiers sat around for two hours while snowboarders lapped the course in a jam format that we definitely didn’t get. Lame.

Summit’s shop team was conspicuously absent at Shop Wars, not that they missed out on anything. Instead, they put on a Star Wars themed comp open to ski crews, snowboard crews, and even mixed crews. 15 crews were registered, and a quick number crunch told us that we’d be up against 80 or more other people.

Practice was absolutely nuts with every crew trying to get hits in before the first heat. The action was slimmed down a bit with four crews taking the backyard park at a time in 20 minute heats. We took Team Tinga’s Hats all the way to the third and final round, going up against the snowboard crew from our first round heat that qualified alongside us.

After an indecisive final, they made us hike up for a final hit to decide the winner. Basically, we could have taken one run instead of going balls out the whole night, awesome! In the spirit of X Games, someone decided to implement an even more indecisive method of judging than txt to vote. The crowd cheered and yelled in a loudness match to decide the winner, rap battle style, until we were declared the winners.

I’ve seen blood drawn over skate decks thrown out in product tosses. I thought it was pure insanity to throw out a snowboard AND a pair of skis. Needless to say, it was messy. Summit threw another great event in their backyard park, fun times and excessive amounts of RedBull were had by all.

We walked away with a big backpack full of stuff and a lightsaber that Summit reportedly spent $150 on on eBay. It makes cool noises and stuff.

I spent the last three weeks living on couches in Breckenridge, how you say, ‘living the life?’ Me and trip buddy Tony Seyffer met up with fellow Minnesotan Andrew Featherstone and embarked on many a ski adventure.

A merciful [pitiful] four inch overnight snow at A Basin was one of only two powder [yawn] days we got over the course of our month long vacation. Whatever fell got windblown into the trees on the main face. For two days we skied probably 10% of the sad 30% of open terrain. What followed the temporary clouds and flakes was probably two weeks of straight sunshine and calm skies, which produced many a productive park film day.

We bounced back and forth between the parks of Breckenridge and Keystone getting clips with Minnesota native Jake Strassman on most days, and messing around with my camera on the down ones. The Christmas crowds were dreadful [suicide inducing] and left us hiking a handful of rails at Breck for the better part of the week. Sometime in the last week of our trip, the park finally got some rail flow and was a bit more fun.

Our first day at Keystone left us scratching our heads. The medium jumps could have been from Minnesota: they were flat in every way. There was ice everywhere, and the majority of the rails and boxes were in the, ‘barely long enough to be in a real park’ category. There were definitely some creative and unique features built though which made it worth lapping. The features were clearly skatepark influenced, and involved a lot of trannies and technical jibs, in my opinion, the direction parks should start going in. They were the best features I had ever skied, not because the jump was xxx amount of feet big, or because the rail had a xx foot gap onto it, or x number of kinks, but because you had to sit there and think, how do I ride this?

I feel like a lot of my best ideas come to me in fast food establishments. Something about grease and plastic chairs just really puts me in the mindset, and I’m sure many people are also the same way. It was about 9pm, and Featherstone was paging through a paper and came upon an ad for the Ullrfest parade on Mainstreet in Breckenridge. Wouldn’t it be funny if we turned Featherstone’s Buick into a parade float? Ha, let’s duct tape all our skis [LINE Skis] to his car. That’s literally how it happened. We were in Walmart 10 minutes later buying decorations [that we returned after the parade] and finished decorating the float in a gas station parking lot half an hour before the parade start the next day.. How does it feel to ride through a street with a couple thousand [inebriated] people chanting PBR at you? Pretty cool to say the least.

We were tipped off about these free dinner nights by a friend. A couple churches put them on every Sunday and Tuesday. We attended three of them and they were the best meals we ate on the entire trip, spaghetti, roast, chili, delicious. They didn’t even ask me if I had accepted Jesus as my savior, just if I had found a job yet.

We Headed back to Denver a couple nights early for our flight back home with the intent on checking out the Ruby Hill Railyard. Winter Park operates it next to a sledding hill. They’ve got a three foot base, seven boxes and rails, and a volunteer park crew. The best part, its free. We were skeptical, it was in the 60s in Denver and we had little recon of the place. It turned into one of the most fun sessions of the trip. Hiking at 11,000 feet in the mountains is murderous compared to sitting comfortably at sea level back in the land of flat. Getting back down to 5,000 was an amazing feeling. The Railyard has some great features and amazing lights. We’ll be coming back for sure.

Skiing in Summit county for three weeks was an enlightening experience for me. Being my first real ‘out west’ experience, (I’m not counting glacier skiing at Mt. Hood) I had absorbed all the hype and was expecting perfection. I encountered a horde of high class tourists, long lines every day, massive commercialization, and a loss of feeling. I was happiest at Arapahoe, a resort that reminded me of the Midwest, a resort where you noticed how beautiful the mountains were instead of how absolutely retarded human beings are who pay $32 for lunch. Breckenridge made me really appreciate who I was as a skier and where I was from. That said, I’d do it again in a heartbeat, an unforgettable 21 days of amazing skiing, awful sleep, crappy food, worse water, and good friends.

Enjoy episode 7, 18 minutes of content.

Reunion 3. Our annual Christmas Eve sesh at Hyland. It’s supposed to be a big day for us to film and hang out in an empty park while all the kids are home with their families. The tradition might be dead now with just four of us old friends left. We skied a park that was as busy as ever. It had snowed probably about a foot the previous night and was still coming down, leaving conditions in the park piss poor. The name ‘Reunion’ really meant something this year. None of us call Hyland our home hill anymore, and all live in different cities. We didn’t get the best shots or do the best tricks, but we did get to ski together as a crew again and remember good times.

Summit Boardshop runs a damn good competition. The 2nd qualifier rail jam went down at Afton Alps with an hour long jam format. Couldn’t ask for a more chill vibe than hiking a few rails with all your friends.

January 27th, about 11pm, the mood is panic. Myself and fellow LINE MC Tony Seyffer are in a bit of a pickle. We are to fly out from Minneapolis in eight hours, and despite knowing dozens of people in the Denver or Summit County area, we have no ride from the airport. Reaching desperation, mentor/life coach Bill Hickey tells me to hitchhike to Summit County via Newschoolers.com. See thread. Approximately 45 minutes later, we have a generous Newschooler lined up to pick us up. Fearing the worst, including abduction, rape, death by axemurderer and the prospect of performing… favors… we got in the car. Turns out he was a way rad dude and we shredded with him at Breck the rest of the day. Newschoolers FTW.

We’ll be in Breck for two more weeks, filming and bumming on couches. Not too bad of a first trip out west, eh?

LINE Midwest Goes Outwest edit, coming soon. Here’s episode 6.

The past couple weeks have been mostly uneventful. Our local hill, Spirit Mountain failed to open with any semblance of a park despite all the begging we did. Most, if not all the hills around here have opened with several rails for all to enjoy. Spirit cited a ‘lack of space’ for their continued shortcomings. A funny, poignant, and poorly illustrated diagram of the dimensions of a modest rail was posted on their Facebook page in response. A few days after opening a small jib park, featuring two boxes and couple… things… that said Damage Boardshop on them, two more boxes were dug in. Sick right? Well, yeah, the placement of them was… interesting to say the least. The new boxes were dug in in a line on the main run. What happened to lack of space and trying to create a safe environment for all kinds of riders? This just in, Spirit Mountain management may or may not consist of cute little primates that may or may not also have feces in their hands with the intent to throw.

You can’t hate on Spirit too much though, apparently their blower water doesn’t draw from their own reservoir, but from the West side’s city water. Spirit isn’t too high on the totem pole for water priority apparently; they’ve been getting cut off at whim the past couple weeks which means they haven’t been able to blow at capacity which then translates to the main park opening being delayed even longer.

All this means that i’ve been hiking a 12 or 15 foot flat box at a slight downward angle for 11 consecutive days. Bangin.

Fall brings a certain anxiety for skiers. We start putting on our new outerwear to watch TV in the living room. We creep resort webcams and compulsively refresh the weather.com 10 day forecast. Everyone has their own preseason rituals. Here in the midwest, the one we all share is the wait for the temperatures to dip below that magical, almost unreachable number, 32.

This season, we were kept waiting a little longer than usual. The weather phenomenon el nino has proverbially screwed us in the ass, leaving minnesota skiers wondering if it was ever going to get cold. Mother nature at last felt a shred of pity for our time and again crapped on region. The midwest has always been forgotten. It’s always East and West, or rather West and East. Spoiled, elitist, and ungrateful west coast skiers looking down on the sad, rain sodden, east coasters that need more attention and sympathy.

Somewhere in the middle, between them, with no actual mountains to speak of, is the midwest. Here in the midwest you find a group of skiers who call two inch dusting of white fluff a blessing. All we know and live are hole in the ground excuses for ski resorts that would struggle to make an old man’s thighs burn. A season starting a month late is a slap in the face from the snow gods who already don’t care about us.

I’d rather not think about what kind of season we are in for at the moment. As of right now, we’re in a state of barely winter, and I’m content with that.