2013-14 Squampton Wrap-up
Well it's the end of July already, and I am nursing a broken ass from Canada Day on the Blackcomb glacier. As much as it hurts to do pretty well anything, and half my summer has been a write off, collecting short term disability while laying around flipping through Netflix and blogging about snowskating is pretty alright. Speaking of Netflix, I definitely spend as much, if not more time looking for something to watch than I do watching the actual shows or movies, and then half the time I end up bailing half way through what I'm watching to find something better, and as I already pointed out, that takes some pretty serious time. What a cycle.
As the season began we spent a lot of time skating the various parks WhistlerBlackcomb had to offer. First there was the Crabapple park on Whistler, which was perfect for snowskates for the most part, with ride on boxes everywhere and some small tables and hips. There were bigger rails as well, along with the crowds that small parks on Whistler tend to attract, and the overall layout was quite flowing if you could stomp all your tricks and snake the odd pack of snowboarders and skiers. You could argue that the features were too close together maybe, but hey, the more the merrier.
WhistlerBlackcomb opens early every year, they say what the date will be, approx. November 27 then they open at least one week earlier, this is all for marketing obviously it sounds great every year when you can open "early" because of "heavy snowfall". I am in no way hating on them for this, simply stating the facts. It is Whistler mountain that opens first, so for those of us that stick almost exclusively to Blackcomb all winter, the first week or two on Whistler is refreshing and painful all at the same time. This all boils down to exploring areas you usually wouldn't and not enough coverage, but it also means fresh features to skate.
During the second week of December, three days before my birthday and the day my paid vacation started (this timing could not have been worse I would later find), I fractured a rib and spent the next four weeks off of work on disability. This time away from work gave me plenty of time to watch Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy all over again from beginning to end almost uninterrupted. I realize this should have been the time to work on video edits, but my creative mind is blocked lately when it comes to editing video. Maybe it's the 15 years I have already put into editing video, from the blackout days @ Panorama Mountain Village with the PanoPunks where I edited with 2 VHS players and 2 hi-8 cam corders, to the heli-boarding and cat-boarding trips captured with my GoPro... Eventually I will get around to editing this years footage.
As the season progressed so did the features in the parks and so did Squampton's own Jesse Davidson... Oh boy! He will often ask, "what do I need to do to be really awesome?" and my answer is always the same... "Go Faster!" As you can see in the following pics he was listening!
Now the funny thing about going faster is that you go bigger, which usually means crashing bigger, and as we found out this year also means breaking shit. Me with a fractured rib and tailbone, and Jesse ended up injuring his heel/ankle and was in an airboot for the Canadian Open at Big White. In the end we still ended up making it to Cypress Mountain for the North Shore Open, Big White for the Canadian Open, Stevens Pass for the Roundup and we held the first Gathering at WhistlerBlackcomb and had a blast while doing it.
Through all of this we have also had a tonne of work to do, with building subs and working on a web-site etc... As far as subs go, we have ended up really enjoying the 104cm OG, it is more of a park sub with its twin shape and light weight hemp construction. At 104cm (41") this sub is long enough to crush the entire mountain, even on light powder or heavy slush days, yet short enough to ollie and flip around in the park. For bigger pow shredding and a more stable, all mountain, surfy feel there is the very popular Purple Powder Eater. At 150cm (59") this toboggan inspired slayer of the pow is a snowskaters dream. At first glance it looks like a monoski, but with the tip of the nose 12cm (4 3/4") higher than the 23cm (9") wide base of the nose, and aggressive sidecut all the way to the mellow swallow-tail, this eco-friendly hippy stick is gonna turn heads, not to mention stay afloat in the deep! All of our boards are proudly made in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, from our in-house handcrafted,eco-friendly subs to our custom pressed Squampton x Rayne Longboards top decks. All available on the site store here at SquamptonSnowskates.com.
Look out for fundraising efforts from us to try and get this ball rolling a little faster, through the site and through social media, we have Squampton Snowskates logo t-shirts in Black mens sizes S-XL for $24.99 on the site store right now, stay tuned for womens logo t-shirts along with other Squampton merchandise. See you next year - Jon Samborski {Squampton Snowskates}