Big Mountain 2006-parks/pow/discussion

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no, my friend sunni took it, but i saw brendan yesterday over in the middle of haskills w/ andrew, and he had some flashes set up for andrew to drop a cliff, should be a sick pic. ive been talking to brendan and he said he would go out w/ me and take some shots, but i just havent got to it yet, i also talked to him about going up to glacier- it be fun to have him around up there.
 
It was great everywhere, but better in the places many people weren't. If you are looking for cliff drops, check out the Greywolf cliffs, most are untouched. Or were untouched, before I went off them.
 
Me and some buds found the cliffs on big horn to be untouched, hit up window pane, not too bad a lil tracked out. The backside def has some nice untracked snow. Last few runs went to check out the pipe, which is possibly the most fun/scary thing in my life. I’m just in awe at anybody who can boost 5 plus feet out of the pipe, it scares the shit out of me. I have a new respect for girl half pipe skiers. The step down is pretty sick me and my buddy churd team hit that. Then some snowboarder in a yellow puffy volcom coat tossed a 7 over the hip which was sick. Today was probably the most ski terrain ive ever hit, from powder to hard pack to ice groomer to park; I’m definitely lookin forward to tomorrow.
 
if you hit right wall on the pipe as your first hit, it is undervert. i decked out pretty hard and saw some others do the same. but there has been some ridiculus snow for the past week or two
 
The pipe was bonerific this afternoon. I seshed the hell out of it, and learned 5s. Yay for vertical/soft pipe conditions.
 
You could just about ski anything you wanted today from untracked pow to soft pipe. It was a sick day.
 
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Here is a pow section picture from today, in an undisclosed location, I took this before I dropped in. Looks pretty nich eh? :) Been alot of good snow lately, but there have also been a ton of people.

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Heres a pic of the halfpipe, its dope as hell.

Although I didnt like the conditions of it at all today. It was good saturday and on wednesday too, It was just cold this weekend, and there was alot of powder still in the bottom making for a really odd transition. Im not really knocking it, just giving my opinion of the state its in right now.

The park landings are kind of bad right now in my opinion. The big stepdown looked good though. I didnt spend much time in the park though. I watched my boarder friend overshoot the second table in the small line and lol that sucked, he was hurting, David S saw it too hahah.
 
He overshot that thing by at least 10-15 ft into the flat, past any semblance of landing. Ouch, and I am glad I went down to make sure he was off the landing because if I hadn't, I would have hit him in all likelyhood.
 
Dear god, today would be a great ski day.

According to website 7" of freshies on top of all the fresh we have PLUS Sunshine, sigh, im stuck at work.

WOOT 98" BASE

And it sounds like the park has been changed, finally lol
 
i dunno about in the morning, but by this afternoon it actaulyl wasnt that good. a lot was skied out and the snow that wasnt was some weird pow. still pretty nice though over ni the mario land and green mile area. i didnt really go through the park, jsut hit the stepdown once and took that run to kandahar, but it looks like they made the first jump an actaul jump (still not very big) and added a flatbar option. i guess the s rail was also put in, but i didnt not see it. thatt's what i was informed of
 
http://www.freeskier.com/wiki/mediawiki/index.php/Big_Mountain

Guys & Gals, we need to fill out more info at Freeskiers Wiki site for Big mountain, click the link above and create a log in name and start adding to that shit, there is like nothing right now. I added the part about the park, feel free to add more, no one else is gonna do this shiz, so get on it. :)

I cant figure out how to add pictures though, yet.
 
I had a great session tonight with Andrew and Eric Johnson and Andrew Crawford. Thanks to Brendan Rohan for shooting it up, I will post pics soon. The hip in the park was primo today.
 
Some pictures of my adventures from the last two days...
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Here is a pic of my buddy and the jump we shaped the other day, located on the Ham off of Inspiration (a sick run). Unfortunately I didnt get a pic of someone hitting it that day, we got video footage but we really didnt stick anything lol, it was at the end of the day and we were pretty tired already, but we did huck our meat and try some fun stuff.

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Here is a pic of me hitting it today, its just a straight air. The jump gives you great hangtime, but I would recommend straight airing it alot until you get the feel of the tranny cause Its really steep, but its sick, and please fix the landing if you see it fucked up guys, so we can keep hitting this safely and the lip too. :)

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Alex S. shiftie air over it, this was like his second try on it, the jump as really nice vert for a lip.

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The all famous bush/stump jump at the bottom of inspiration, Alex S. with a smooth ninja style liu kang mimicing air.

The halfpipe comp went down and it was sick. Dustin (guy who rides lines and has brown siver coat, white pants) won the pro division followed by his friend Luke and in third, yours truly, Dever Graham (me).

It was a pretty cold night, but everyone threw down and no one really wrecked hard. The landings seemed very hard so everyone was being mellow for the most part. I did not want to fall hard on the deck or the bottom so I was taking it easy. The pro division snowboard was sick for sure. That guy who is on the Spirit skate/snow team and is older (forgot his name atm) won, he threw down way harder than anyone else. He did some cool inverted shit.

Snow Conditions right now are sort of scary in the powder but still manageable. A crust layer formed from the warmth yesterday and then the cold night, but groomers and natural features are soft under the small crust layer. It was foggy today. Didnt hit the park, it looked aight. Natural jumps are where im having the most fun right now though and finding powder lines.

 
Yesterday me and my buds built a nice lil booter in hell roaring. We got footage of double backs, lincoln loops, and i even managed to do the slowest most corked out 7 of my life. The landing was so steep and the take off was a little janky but you flew for about 50 feet and got about 20 feet in the air. Hopefully ill put up some film soon, it was a little foggy. The ride back down in virgin powder was probably one of the better runs of my life, with all my close buds, oh and my lizzies.
 
The Canyon was super sick on Friday, but with this warm weather and crusty snow I would say it's done for the season unless we get another huge dump.
 
the park is pretty fun to sesh right now. it's in pretty good condition, but i expected much more of that s rail. its kinda lame. short, set up badly, and wide curves
 
The park is changing a little bit, as of today they remade the flat-down box setup. It looks pretty sick. They also moved the shotgun and put in the rainbow box. The pipe was prime today also. The walls softened up a bit in the afternoon. The s rail is fun. Unfortunately, when I left around 4:00 the wall ride was still sitting near the trees. Hopefully they get that up soon.
 
I think i'm headded up to the B.I.G. this weekend. How's the overall park looking. Jumps? I just wanna hit some bigger tables. I think one day i'll get a pass for the park and one day i'll be hiking the pipe. keep me informed if poss. Thanks Big Mountain fellows.
 
There is a medium sized step down and a decent sized hip that you can gap. The hip is the biggest jump in the park, but it has a pretty skinny landing.

On the day that you want to hike the pipe, don't bother hiking. Just take laps on the T bar. You'll find it pretty easy; the beginning is in between the Easy Rider chair and Chair 2. Take that up, then go left and follow the signs to the pipe. After shredding the pipe, stay left on a cat track, and take the T bar again. This is about a 4 or 5 minute shuttle, they never ever check passes at the T-bar, and it is most likely faster than hiking.
 
Considering that the temps have been way up, the pipe should be off the chain. A full report tomorrow, as we get out of school early.
 
didn't hit the pipe today, but im assumuing it was in great condition. today was a perfect park day warm, with soft landings and the snow was not slushy enough to be super slow or sticky, although there was a big rut in the lip of the stepdown due to the softness of the snow, causing me to do a switch cork five to landing on my back/side 3/4's of the way over the deck on a sw. 7 attempt. CJHski also got caught in it and ate it pretty hard becasue it threw him off
 
Looking forward to that report, hopefully the weather stays nice for the weekend. I'll pray to the sun god for an enjoyable spring sess out there.
 
Things were a little slow, and the pipe needs a cut to get the skiers left wall vert on the first 30-40 ft. The park was really soft, and I messed around with some five variations. However, things look good. We reset the S-rail, and once it is solidly in the ground, it works great.
 
I think there is a park comp on saturday and a pipe comp on sunday. (To Ricta88: This might screw up your plans, but you could still probably rock the pipe on saturday and park on sunday, or just enter the comps.)

In the Montana Living magazine or somethin' like that there is a sick picture of Dave (Guddgulf) on the rainbow rail.
 
They screwed up the photo credit. Brendan Rohan took that, of stumptownphoto.com. But thanks for posting that.

Ricta88, just show up before the comp tomarrow and you can lap the park with us. If you are with the chill dudes, they won't even notiece.
 
Slopestyle went down today. Doug Nangle took the top spot, followed by Andrew Johnson and Travis Adams. A ton of tricks were thrown down, and the conditions were great.

Here's a little footy of the comp, sorry to those who didn't make it on the film. My dad only filmed my brother and I. It's a really sloppy edit, I just put a song to the clips and called that good. The first run scored third, and the last run scored fifth.

https://www.newschoolers.com/web/content/videos/id/126924/
 
Thoughts on the weekend:

Slope was sick. Alex and Travis Adams both threw down (Alex, you stomped the piss out of that bs switchup on the rainbowand your unatty 3), as well as Doug Nangle ( who won with a sw7 mute to the bottom of the step down and then sw5 cruton on the hip) and Andrew Johnson (Five saftey up top, and a huge 180 on the hip).

Pipe was a bit worse. The cut did not erase the kink in the left wall, but overall it was pretty well set up. Judging proved true to Big Mtn and was absolute shit. Billy Marcial proceeded to huck himself to a win, while doing most of it under the deck ( ie flair and cork 5). Andrew Johnson and Willy Pete Nelson cleaned up afterwards, and both had good amplitude on their runs. I am pretty disgusted with Billys win, amplitude is an important part of pipe and to put it bluntly, he did not have any.
 
^thanks

Big Mountain pic of the day from yesterday--soooo sick, to bad they didn't take it a quater of a second later

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I was there last month, lots of good snow until Friday it got really warm and crowded. I tried the flat down flat and bailed out after the top part because I'm a fag. Which is pretty stupid because I did a bigger one once I got home. Also the pipe was pretty killer. One of the best parks I've ridden this year.
 
Dude, thats sooooo hood man.

And on a related note, the Daily Mistake ( or Inter Lake) printed a picture of Dusty on the park crew in the sports section on Sunday, and said it was me. I then had to point out to the millions of people that "know" me that I don't snowboard.
 
Here are some pics from this past weekend, sorry didnt really get any of the competing cause I was competing, heh. It was alot of fun both days. Andrew Johnson absolutely boosts, he needs to stick an off axis trick and he could probably win every comp from now on. Apparently the judges liked Billys run for first, he is sick for sure. Peter did well, it was good to see him too, repping Missoula. David is just like a ball of progression and was throwing down a technical run and just being steezed out like he is, throwing sevens at the bottom, making up his run as he went which is sick! I entered the am 21+ category cause i knew the guys above me would destroy me. It was sick.

Slopestyle went down too on Saturday. It was actually sunny that day which was nice. The pro jumps were good for big mountain standards and alot of mayhem went down. There were like a total of 45 or so competitors including boarders/skiers. About 11 pro skiers including me, Andrew johnson once again killed it, he got second. I wish I could have got a sequence of his 180 on the hip, hopefully ill get him to do it again. :)

Billy Biollo threw down a major steezed out 9 and stomped it, i was stoked for him and the crowd was too cause he is a cool local. Dave's cork nose grab is sick. Doug is badass at park, damn, hard to beat that kid.

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A shot of Chair 5 stopped on a nice day.

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Erik Johnson doing a STRAIGHT AIR!! JEA

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A bluebird near the park, he was talking like crazy, dont know what he was saying though.

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Billy Biollo, steezing it out, this wasnt in the comp but while we were warming up for the slopestyle. Billy got 4th in the pro slope. I know, I cant believe hes still using saloman 1080s..hehe

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Peter from Missoula, another steezed out shot. This shot is from the day before the halfpipe comp when he was practicing, he ended up with 3rd, props!

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A pic of basically the best jib feature at Big right now, its easy to spin onto once you work the balls up to just do it. Its smooth. Yea I got a gaper on it now lol, this was from the chair and he was the only one hitting it.
 
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