Shred Up: Still Skiing, Lindsey Law & Order + Pipeline POV

A-Basin, Colo. (Shred White and Blue)-Fear not, fair shredders, for the lift-served season is not over yet – at least not as long as Colorado and Utah can keep riding on those ridiculous late May snows.

According to www.skiinfo.co.uk, “There are four areas still open in the US, all on the Western side of the country.  Mammoth Mountain in California has a 7.5 – 12 foot (2.3 – 3.6m) base and reports a fresh dusting of snow in the past few days. The near-year-round Timberline ski area on Mt Hood in Oregon has a 148 inch (4.5m) base.  Arapahoe Basin in Colorado is looking good with about half of its lifts and terrain open with a 45 inch (112cm) base and yet another three inches (7cm) of new snow in the past few days.”

And Snowbird just went over the 600-inch mark for this season! The ‘bird also announced that they’re going to keep the lifts running up to June 20th, marking a 199-day season at the Utah resort. Check it out: www.snowbird.com.

Lindsey Vonn Helps Close Out Law and Order

New York (Shred White and Blue)- On Monday, May 24 Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn accomplished a life goal of appearing on the final episode of NBC’s legendary drama “Law & Order.”

Early in her career, Vonn began a guerilla lobbying effort to become a character on the program, commonly telling reporters that she’d play a “stiff” just to be included in one episode. 

Vonn was able to visit the set and meet with a number of cast members last year during a New York City media swing, then following her inspiring gold and bronze medal performances in Vancouver, show creator Dick Wolf took notice and invited her to film and episode in early spring.

”I was completely shaking, but I had a grin from ear-to-ear” said Vonn, who plays an administrative assistant at a teachers’ union and tries to help Detectives Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto) and Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson) find an anonymous blogger who threatens to blow up a school.

Check out Lindsey (looking just a little Sarah Palinesque), right here.

Pipeline and GoPro

Hawaii (Shred White and Blue)-And for everybody that’s still waiting for spring to start, here’s a little footage of Kalani Robb hitting Pipeline with a GoPro Camera on the nose of his board – looks like some new kind of art!

American Made – The Legendary ‘Birdos’ of Switzerland

Andermatt, Switzerland (Shred White and Blue)—On a recent trip to Switzerland with longtime SWB friend Chris Denny and Matt Hansen of Powder Magazine, we drove up to Andermatt in the dark and snow.

On the switchbacks our headlights would beam out onto sheer faces and hanging fields of blue ice; onto those dreams of untracked powder and tomorrow and the tram in the light, and that fear of just how big it really could be.

“Damn,” CD said. “I thought we were going to have to drive out on that cliff.”

We went through a tunnel, crossed a bridge and then we were there, in the little town of Andermatt of four roads and a co-op, a train station and a post office and couple of sports shops, a couple of bars, a pizza place and a couple hotels. There was heavy snow on the roofs and snow on the roads, white-walls and wood-framed windows, and the lights all sparkling white and gold.

“Beautiful.”

At the Hotel Kroner we had big plates of rosti with an egg on top like Swiss Heuvos and grand bulbed glasses of wiesse bier. And we met the legendary Birdos himself, ski maker Dan Lauterle, formerly of Boston and now gone native and married to a Swiss woman, Heidi, with a baby on the way.

“Where are you from?” CD asked, because at first we all thought that he was Swiss, too.

Birdos had slept on a landing between two floors when he first moved to Andermatt in 2004. And every day he rode the tram up to ski the giant relief of the Gemsstock, the thigh-shaped powder faces and plummeting ridgelines of almost 6,000 vertical feet per run. Then he met his future mother-in-law. Then his wife. And then he started building skis.

“It’s something that’s in direct response to skiing here – to skiing mountains this big,” says Birdos as we drink more beer, and he sips tea. “The wood is so resilient, and the edges are the biggest I could find, so that they match up to what people here are going to ski.”

He is mountain climber thin and bright-eyed with a thin mustache and beard like a kind of red-haired George Harrison on skis. He shows us the map of the Gurstchen-gletscher off the peak, the yellow marked ‘Descent/Freeride route’ on one side, and the B-Russi-Run, the ‘Pista Dificile’ besides.

It makes me a little nervous without any reference point as to how exposed we will be. “Are those the only ways down?”

We wake to bells in the morning, every half an hour until 7 am when they suddenly ring more than 100 times, and CD and I wonder if the bellringer has lost his mind.

“Dude.”

We drink espresso and eat meat and bread and cheese, then meet Birdos in his shop to see the Fat Bird, the famed Puder Luder (‘powder whore’) and the Ghetto Chicken skis, with the 132mm tips which are what Hansen and I ride.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go fatter?” Birdos asks.

“Maybe after lunch,” I say.

There is a space heater and red walls like a little art studio, the river out the window that rages with run-off in the spring but is quiet as ice, and the pizza place right across the road. There is the tram where we rise up into the peaks through the clouds to the top of the world.

“Are you kidding me?”

It hasn’t snowed in a week and there is still plenty of powder everywhere to see. Plenty of peaks that seem unclimbable except for angels and goats, mountains after mountains that roll away in great waves, and that stomach floppy thrill of vertigo.

“Wow.”

In three runs we burn half a day. We are thrilled and terrified from moment to moment, exhilarated and exhausted, sweating through our base layers as we traverse over ‘Pucker Ridge’ to the giant bowl of snow, to the couloirs and chutes as steep as skyscrapers, then linking turns down the ‘Fitness Gully’ to our long traverse back to town, over the river and past all the white hay houses waiting for the summer cows.

We are in the little Birdos factory down the street, with ski presses, a wall of cores, and the outlines for customization of each ski. We are in the pizza place, the River House for more wiesse bier, and waking up in the morning again to the bells. We drive the car onto the train and go over the mountains, trying to remember and point to everything we got to ski.

Thanks, Birdos, for being Shred White and Blue’s expat American guide.

Birdos Skis: www.birdos.com
All sorts of Wiki scoops on Andermatt, its whopping 1,200 locals, and even a photo of the church from whence we heard the bells: Wikipedia
The lovely Activ Kronen Hotel
The River House
And keep an eye on Powder Mag online for Matt Hansen’s video interview with the Birdos himself.

Sunday Shout Out: Squaw Named West’s ‘Greenest’ Resort

Squaw Valley, Calif. (Shred White and Blue)—The 2010 Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition ski resort environmental score card, just released, ranked Squaw Valley USA as the highest scoring Western ski resort for environmental initiatives.

This is the third consecutive year Squaw Valley USA received an ‘A’ grade from the Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition, a third party group that supplies a comprehensive analysis of ski area environmental efforts.  This year the coalition grouped the criteria for which the ski resorts were evaluated into four categories – Habitat Protection, Protection of Watersheds, Addressing Global Climate change, and Environmental Policies and Practices.  Report card data is obtained from an annual survey and public records from government and environmental agencies. Freedom of Information Act and Public Records Act requests are filed with appropriate land managers to identify ski area development projects and management plans each spring. All document sources and detailed information about the grading criteria can be found on-line at www.skiareacitizens.com.

“The environment is our asset,” said Chairman and CEO Nancy Cushing. “A beautiful and pristine mountain experience brings guests and employees to Squaw Valley. It is our duty to make every effort to protect that experience.”

From the geothermal heat pump that heats the entire Squaw Kids Children’s facility, to the multimillion dollar water run off filtration system in the parking lot, the state-of-the-art heat exchange system at High Camp’s Ice Pavilion and Lagoon & Spa, and comprehensive forest re-vegetation projects that help to preserve Squaw Valley’s natural eco system – aspects of the conscious environmental commitment are ingrained in Squaw Valley’s culture.

Squaw Valley USA’s exemplary work in 35 categories in regards to preservation of sensitive areas within ski resort boundaries, water conservation and commitment to recycling and alternative energy rendered the resort the highest score of the 83 resorts evaluated.

‘What is Ski Music?’ Part 1: The 8-Track Years

The Parking Lot (Shred White and Blue)—So there’s this ongoing conversation about what the heck ski music is anyway. Does it even exist? Is someone actively creating it somewhere? Or is it just whatever’s on the car stereo when you’re driving to the hill?

It seems as if there’s always been surf music, with its sunny guitar and that drum roll like a crashing wave. And skateboard thrash with its repetitive angst of insistent bass and strangled chords. And always the multi-sport friendly anthemic rock of Springsteen/Queen/Zeppelin and even Jersey pulp like Bon Jovi or whatever kind of hair metal you still get a secret charge from listening to.

But I couldn’t really tell you what defines ski music – now, or ever. Which is what got me searching my own CD (‘album’) collection, across the Internet and on the ever-indispensable YouTube, where it finally occurred to me, that like music technology (the aural delivery service, if you will), since 1970, what may or may not be considered ski music has undergone four distinctly different eras – encompassing 8-Track, cassette (oh lord, it’s the mixed tape), CD and i-Pod.

And you know what? There are a lot of great arguments for what American ski music just may be about. Here’s a little sample of the early years.

The 8-Track Years

Take it to the Limit: The Eagles
‘Cosmic American Music’s’ greatest progenitors, and the all-time gods of American album rock (because ABBA still kicks their asses in Europe), The Eagles were that perfect pairing of country plaid and blue-eyed soul. And out of all their hits, this was the one that let every skier feel as if every heartache could be burned out by a heavier foot on the accelerator – “You know I’ve always been a dreamer.”

Rock, Stein and the Bird
I don’t know Mark Johnson and have only once got to shake the hand of the great Stein Eriksen (who my father still claims as the greatest race and powder and bird-hunting – wink, wink – skier ever), but this film Mark made of Stein and buddies powder skiing in Alta is video proof of the truth that ‘the powder was always deeper in the early years.’ Powder on, ski gods!
January 5th, 1974, Mark, Stein and the Bird:

Hot Dog and the Return of Mitch Ryder
I will never be able to explain how Mitch Ryder of ‘Mony Mony’ and ‘Devil Blue Dress’ fame suddenly singing a Prince written song in a ski movie happened, but this one hits me every time. The video montage of Squaw Valley steeps and easy descending rhythm of this Hot Dog classic is what I still sing to myself on those bluebird days when I want to match a little mojo to my turn (especially as I wonder which local ski-skiing double is under all those hats and sunglasses ripping those local lines): Hot Dog/Mitch Ryder

Next, Ski Music: Cassettes and The Mixed Tape Years

//photo by Colin O’Brien

American Made: Telluride’s Wagner Custom Skis

Telluride, Colo. (Shred White and Blue)—High in the Colorado mountains in the storybook shred town of Telluride, Colorado, Pete Wagner is quickly building his own legend with a bomber brand of custom-built skis and snowboards.

In a craftsman-centered workshop powered completely by wind, sun and soul, Wagner Custom Skis and Snowboards are built to be tough, fun, and customer-centric in that every ride is built to the exact needs of the buyer. With fresh snow falling across the Rockies and the stoke starting to steamroll for the season just begun, we caught up with Pete to talk about his own personal mission to create a uniquely American ski and snowboard brand.

Shred White and Blue: So how did this whole custom ski idea get started?

Pete Wagner: While working as an engineer in the golf industry, I developed a custom-fitting system and software platform for designing, analyzing, manufacturing high-tech golf equipment. During this time, I bought a new pair of skis which received great reviews from various ski buyer’s guides, but never worked well for me. With so many choices when buying skis, how does one know that they’re buying the right product? I realized that I could apply my fitting system knowledge and design insight to help skiers find their perfect equipment.

SWB: With the big brands putting so many great skis on the market, why would I want a custom-built pair of boards?

PW: You want a custom-fit pair of skis because, like custom-fit ski boots, you’ll be more comfortable. This translates into skiing with better balance, control, power, and efficiency. Wagner Custom skis are ultimately about skiing your best and having more fun on the snow.

SWB: What role does Telluride play in the kind of skis you make?

PW: Telluride plays a big role in the durability and craftsmanship that is found in every pair of Wagner Custom skis. The terrain around Telluride is notoriously tough on skis because it’s steep and boney with lots of natural obstacles and features. In response, Wagner Custom skis are built by expert hands, in small batches, to precise tolerances from tough hardwood cores, oversized steel edges, and extra thick base material.  The results are incredibly durable, workhorse skis that can hold up to the abuse of the San Juan mountains, maintain their liveliness and energy over many seasons, and take more repairs and tunes.

SWB: Do you foresee a time when every major mountain or range has its own custom brand, as they seem to in Microbrews and often even apparel?

PW: My guess is that we’ll see a cycle similar to the shakedown of boutique snowboard factories in the 1990s. Many small custom companies will emerge and, overtime, the cream will rise to the top.  The best-managed companies will survive and the weaker operations will disappear.

SWB: By listening to what your customers are asking for, what have you learned about what skiers want most from a pair of skis right now?

PW: Simplicity is king right now. We talk to a lot of people who want one ski that can do it all over a broad range of terrain and conditions.  People don’t want to second-guess themselves about whether they’re on the right ski that day. People don’t want to travel with several pairs of skis. Many people are looking to simplify their quivers and fall in love with one ski that will work well in any situation.

SWB: What kind of boards do you build for yourself?

PW: I have 2 pairs of skis. My powder/AT skis are lightweight and floaty with a 172cm length and 110mm waist. My resort/hardsnow skis are versatile and nimble with a 175cm length and a 90mm waist.

SWB: What’s happening in the market right now that has you believing that you’re well positioned for the future?

PW: These days, people are being more thoughtful about the items they purchase. People want to be on equipment that will help them ski their best. People want to know where their products are coming from and they want to feel good about the companies they’re supporting.   Wagner Custom tries to be very transparent about who we are, what we do, and how we can help people have more fun skiing.

SWB: Bonus Question – Can I visit the factory?

PW: Yes! We’re proud of what we do and are happy to show it off. Because we don’t use molds, we truly create a new design for each customer (that’s a unique length, width, sidecut, tip/tail shape, camber, flex pattern , stiffness, materials layup, and graphic.) People are always impressed when they see our high-tech computer-controlled equipment, our ultra-premium grade raw materials, our solar-powered factory floor, and our precision-crafted products.

FOMO: Check out WagnerSkis.com

Chapter 1: The God of Skiing

The Sports Illustrated story was called, “In Search of Strau: What’s become of the daredevil king of collegiate skiing?” I was in high school when it ran. The photo on the page was the first time I ever saw him, standing on the stage at the NCAA Championships on the top podium.

He was golden and glowing like a statue in the sun. Like a movie star with his broad Swiss face, his white crooked smile and his wheat white hair blowing in the wind. His eyes were as blue as deep water and he stood out from the crowd like a sunflower he was so tall and tan.

He was the quarterback just come off the bench to win the game, except with something tattered and about to be broken. In the scar that cut from his right temple to his cheek. In the careless way he raised the silver trophy in his right hand. You wanted to be there to catch it for him. To tell him that his red speed suit was torn and his biceps showed through at the arm. To show him how his long black skis were both bent at the tips, and how the two other skiers on the stage, the posters, green, red and blue banners and people in the crowd were all falling out of focus in a swirl of color behind him.

The story counted up the long list of come-from-behind victories and heartbreaking wrecks in two columns right beside each other until they began to seem like the same thing: the stunning wins where he careened down the course and everybody forgot to breathe as he zipped by, or the quiet after the crash before the blood hits the snow and the skis are still sliding. From triumph to tragedy, one after another, they read like the made up rumors of some distant, crazy cousin.

His fluid, aggressive style in the downhill and Super G was described as ‘angry,’ ‘feral,’ and even ‘pathologically transcendent.’ It shocked collegiate racing. He skied so close to the gates that they would explode from their moorings. They were left flopping in his wake. Sometimes it seemed he skied right through them.

For two years at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York – where Bob Parker of the 10^th Mountain Division had gone to college, and where I would go too – he built his own East Coast legend. He won races from way back in the field when the spectators were starting home and the courses were rutted and rotten. He ran from the top of the mountain all the way to the bottom on icy blue pavement like tilted frozen lakes through the trees where it’s only glory or ruin; where only because of their balls, their fear or their fuck-it-all that skiers first see if they can survive, then win. And Tack won downhills by a whole second sometimes, which is good as a mile in skiing. Or he crashed so spectacularly that a hush ran up the hill.

“Is he dead?” “Will he ski again?”

They would rush back to the orange fencing when they heard his split-time come over the PA system. Those early East Coast drunks, leaving their beers on the bar as they ran outside for that glimpse of a shooting star – the vapor trail of snow as he was passing. Shouts erupted from the finish line as the adrenaline went through someone. Or there was a collective gasp as he sailed into the woods like a car off the road and everybody waited for the explosion; the blue and red fiberglass poles burst like fireworks, the horse breaking its stable and the raceworkers standing dumbstruck as it happened.

“Tack ‘Tornado’ Strau,” the announcer would say. “Let’s hope he’s not hurt too bad, ladies and gentlemen.”

But he never missed a race. No matter how badly hurt he was, he was always back the next weekend. He hid the bulk of tape around his fractured ribs with an extra turtleneck and told his coaches he was cold. His broken wrist with bigger gloves. He took off an eye patch on the lift and stayed off the drugs to pass the piss test, choosing alcohol over Percodan.

Between his ribs, his arms, his legs and hands he broke 17 bones. But it said you would have to look to see where it slowed him. It said, “He smiles like a joke he shouldn’t tell, with perfect white teeth and thick Swiss lips that are always burned and cracking. He laughs like coffee, like some party or fistfight about to happen.”

He drank after races with his growing legion of fans, the “Scarecrows,” who took to making phony casts, wrapping themselves like mummies in toilet paper and blacking their teeth with markers and charcoal to cheer him. At the NCAA championships in Lake Placid, he annihilated the field in both his disciplines. Then, almost as a joke, he entered and won the slalom. In the post-race interviews he revealed to a reporter that a week before he had torn the medial collateral ligament in his right knee during a training run. He said the doctor told him he needed surgery and at least four months off before he could ski again.

“Why risk it?”

“It’s like being pocket rich,” he said. “You spend it when you can.”

And then that immortal quote: “If it weren’t for gravity, I’d probably be in Nebraska building engines.”

The ECAC coaches couldn’t believe the U.S. Ski Team had never heard of him. The good ones are discovered by the time they’re 14, on the company dime, traveling and training. To make it onto the World Cup from college was like being born again. Tack Strau was discovered when most college racers are playing out their scholarships, deciding whether to take a job pimping skis or to go into investment banking. He was in talks with a ski manufacturer for a two-year contract, lining up his summer training schedule with the U.S. team at the glacier on Mount Hood, then Portillo and Europe in the fall, when he crashed at Whiteface during an early morning practice run. He lost an edge on blue ice and went into the trees. It was almost shtick with him. Except the ambulance came, and the other racers who saw the crash went to wait for news at the bottom.

His helmet was cracked in two. There were more broken bones. Doctors worried his brain might start swelling. But by the time his parents drove up from Pennsylvania, search parties were forming to try and find him. No one saw him leave the hospital. No one saw him in town. It was as if he jumped off a bridge and kept falling.

His teammates drove along the frozen lakes and rivers in their Jeep Cherokees and wood-paneled station wagons, staring into the ice for a glimpse of his beat blue parka, or that blown white paper of hospital cotton. They stopped at the dark little North Country bars, drinking Cokes and Genny’s and pinning up pictures of him. The police interviewed the doctors and orderlies. They put out an All Points Bulletin. For two weeks in the bone-chilling cold, firemen, police and ski racers led search parties into the woods on snowshoes and cross-country skis, following the white-breath of the German Shepherds and Bloodhounds.

It was after Christmas when the reporter drove to Pennsylvania to piece together what might have happened. In the narrow winding roads and the unyielding cold he found the farm in an open field beneath a hill, cloaked in that emptiness of fast December: “January’s desolation.”

Romeo, “Rom,” was from Saas-Fe, in Switzerland. He was handsome, dark and serious as a young priest in his high-collared wool coat except for the gray at the temples, the blue-eyed worry and the places on his face where the sun had been. As a boy he and his brother took the train to Zurich to see Giant and East of Eden. They listened to Hank Williams. They sold the family hotel to move to America and buy a farm, but the brother moved home when the crops first failed. When the mountains didn’t live up to his expectations. “Can you blame him?”

There was a picture of the wooded hill behind the house, up into the trees where Rom built a tow with a cable and an old Ford engine. Each summer he cut and burned the thick brush and saplings. When Tack was born they would wrap him in blankets and pull him on a sled. He was on skis as soon as he could stand. Sometimes they would run the tow until it was out of gas and dinner was on the table. When there was a moon they would go hiking. His legs grew strong on the snow. He learned to be light on the ice and to wait in the trees until he saw the opening.

“Sometimes he would fall so hard, when the cold makes you so sick, and he would get up and be laughing,” his mother said. “You knew you were in trouble when he started laughing.”

Elsa was like the queen of a Norwegian fairy tale, “as blonde as a winter morning.” She was a Scandinavian model that came to America with a farm equipment convention. She was fondling black and orange handled chainsaws in a silver evening gown when a tall young man in a green wool jacket and worn black boots stepped from the crowd and asked in Italian where she was from. Romeo wanted to know if she would have dinner with him.

“I don’t know,” she said, when the reporter asked, writing on the wooden chair on the well-swept wooden floor in the room where all the red and blue ribbons were fluttering like curtains.

“He always said skiing in the summer ruined it for him.”

// photo by Graham Gephart

The God of Skiing: Introduction

Their stories are trapped like butterflies under ice. And their exploits and adventures disappear over the years in the wind. In the high mountain towns they gather the sun on their faces like poor playboys, drunk in the bars at night, never worrying about anything except when it will snow and when they might feel the warmth of someone else’s skin. They travel through blue air and black clouds across the cold peaks of Montana, Switzerland, the Himalayas and Patagonia, alone and unknown, up against the sky like lost angels looking for their broken wings. Read more

Sunday Shout – POW Gets the Nod Again

Truckee, Calif. (Shred White and Blue) — Was up at Graham “the man” Gephart’s wedding to the lovely Lulu Bael (congratulations again, you two!) in Fraser, Colorado, a couple weeks ago when presiding Justice of the Peace and filmmaker Josh “Bones” Murphy told me he had been working on a environmental movie with Protect Our Winters.

Then I home and got this note from Jeremy Jones, Chris Steinkamp and the good folks at POW:

“When The North Face came to us last year with an idea to produce a climate change film with them, we couldn’t wait to get started on such a cool project.

With additional help from Clif Bar and teaming up with Teton Gravity Research, we all wanted to create a visual piece that would bring the idea of “climate change” to life, giving the term some real-life context and inspiring everyone to get involved.

Available in October, “Generations” is a short film that discusses climate change through the perspectives of those for whom snowy winters have a deeper personal significance. Going beyond charts and numbers, Generations humanizes the debate on climate change by exploring the fragility of winter and the intrinsic value of snow to people across generations and cultures. The film poignantly captures cultural and personal responses from those to whom mountains and snow represent an irreplaceable way of life, ending with ways for everyone to take part in the solution.”

Sounds really cool. There’s your shout out. Here’s the trailer:

Sweetgrass Takes Signatures on Tour

Rocky Mountain West (Shred White and Blue) — Longtime Shred White and Blue friends Sweetgrass Productions, the Colorado-based film company, is tooling around the Rockies right now showing off Signatures, their super soulful new film.

Filmed last year in Hokkaido, Japan, this human-powered powder quest is a kind of poetic homage to the inherent beauty of winter and deep snow skiing. Seriously, the storytelling and cinematography are all top notch – way better than the action porn you’ll see in most shred flicks these days – and the overall feeling is one of timeless transience.

At the IF3 film festival in Montreal last week, Nick and the crew were honored with the Best Cinematography Award. Here’s the blurb Nick posted about the film – check out the trailer and the tour dates below:

“At the heart of this lovely tale of deep powder mystery: the seasons. In Japan there is a cultural connection to the different Signatures of our terrestrial home — a sense that the rhythm of fall, winter, spring, summer influences the rhythm of the person, their energy, their style, and the lines they choose. Niseko local photographer Yoichi Watanabe explains, “As a photographer, the change in season brings a change of subject. I have to be ahead of this change in nature, like I have to be thinking about flowers before they actually bloom in order to capture what really goes on. I can say the same about the snow as well.” Rooted in winter backcountry and mountain culture. We give our time to filming remote freeride lines, from snowsurf and noboard to alpine and tele. We focus on the riding, we focus on the art, we focus on blending the two into what we call film, both form and content.”

SEPTEMBER
30th  Crested Butte, CO The Majestic Theater 7pm $8

OCTOBER
1st  Salida, CO Benson’s Tavern 7:30pm $9
3rd  Colorado Springs, CO Colorado College Armstrong Hall 8pm $6 for students / $10
6th  Denver, CO The Oriental Theatre 7pm $12, Live music to follow from Paper Bird Band
7th  Boulder, CO The Boulder Theater 7pm $12
8th  Fort Collins, CO TBA
10th Telluride, CO The Nugget Theatre 8:30pm $9
13th Durango, CO The Abbey Theatre 7pm and 9pm $8
14th Golden, CO Bent Gate Community Night 8pm

Check out the site for more: http://www.sweetgrass-productions.com/

South America Bound

Santiago, Chile (Shred White and Blue)—Big storms are breaking down South America way, especially in Portillo, Valle Nevado and La Parva, Chile, where over the past week they’ve been counting the snow by the footload.

So the Shred White and Blue crew is taking a plane to Lima for a midnight changeover, and then to Santiago to see what we can ski. Termas de Chillan is on the menu, (not for the casino, but maybe for the spa), as is Portillo, and Valle Nevado, right next door to where the Subaru World Freeskiing Tour kicks off at La Parva on Sept. 3. (check out www.skipressworld.com for regular updates on that, as well as reports and photos on the trip overall). And please excuse us if we don’t answer your e-mail right away.

In the meantime, here are a couple Foam Bits for you:

How Clean is Your Beach?

Surfside, USA (SWB)—Our beaches are not enjoying the summer at all according to a report from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Across the country, they posted more than 20,000 closing or advisory days last year – and not because of dangerous waves!

Water quality the culprit, including everything from raw sewage to chemicals to nasty body eating bacteria. The NRDC rated how badly the most popular beaches bit it with a cool interactive feature that you can check out here.

Save the Waves and Mavericks Pitch Cool Tee

Half Moon Bay, Calif. (SWB)—Mavericks Surf Ventures, Inc. (Mavericks) and Save The Waves Coalition announced a special edition t-shirt – made from recycled PET plastic bottles.  The shirt is the result of a multi-year partnership between the two organizations with five dollars from the sale of each shirt going directly to Save The Waves, the non-profit dedicated to the preservation and defense of the world’s surf spots and their surrounding environments. Get one at www.savethewaves.org

Classic Utah Powder Video

Worldwide Web (SWB)—And then there’s this – some absolutely ridiculous old-time ski footage from Alta, Utah. Stein Eriksen is the legend in the flashy space pants. These guys kill it on old school longboards.

//photo by flickr/jcablarca

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