well well well. back again. holy smokes this is like 2 in less than a month. madness abounds!!!
im not real into some writin right now, so you get a short one and a bunch of images to marinate with. … ra ra ra.
did the highwood. 9th annual? 10th? 7th? who knows, but this one was pretty great. last year we got rained out a bit, still went for one bomb which was slow, then saw hank 3 in the city. fine fine. this time it was perfect. weather was great, crew was too, and took place on the solstice! MOONFISH!! we did the south side twice, the north once, when the sun was going down. was quite beautiful really. saw a grizzly, some elk, deer and one cranky hag that tried real hard to let us know that what we were doing was “ILLEGAL!!!” . when your maybe 65km/hr on a tiny piece of wood trying not to peel your face on the pavement its really only the lip reading that makes any sense, no sounds from those judging lips. apparently the hag was dedicated about this, and at the bottom of the north side we were treated to a visit by one of k countries finest, and she sniffed out the booze likkety split. dang! actually was one of the more civil encounters with the fuzz ive been through in my time, and after a few booze tikkies, she gladly posed with us for our annual highwood sk8 photo, as long as there were no rude gestures(see photo for proof). we did not get any tiks for the actually skating, only the booze, so soon as she split, we bombed the rest of the north side, and got a great view of the sunset on the first day of summer. quite a great time. blah blah blah, heres the photos.
these are the 2011 highwood space monkies
benny
the grand poobah hefe
punks
headin up to top of the south side
denny! already bleeding..
more punks
x man and me were pretty much days of thundering the hell outa the first run
benny goin for the evr dangerous but completely radical mid shred high 5!
its kinda gnarly turning around and shooting photos of the lads while im on my skate in front of them, goin the same speed. im kinda confused how my camera isnt in a million pieces yet…
denny ate shit right behind me. i was turning around to take a photo just when he got inflicted with a terrible case of the speed wobbles and tried to execute a flying elbow into the concrete. atta boy. got right back on his skate and finished the run.
f n rights
shuttle back up
coupla pops, to the apparent disapproval of the hag and the fuzz
i remember this happening, cant remember takin the photo, but plenty glad i did. this is effing hilarious
sagey. ocha!
we had some very experienced first aid aboard the ship thank god
laura your hair is sweet
piss paint
hefe. concerned.
denny tuck knee speed demon
i seem to have gotten a few good ones of denny. what a handsome lad
this is jon koltais brother fyi
sunset beaming
benny getting wikked
i took this photo of ben from inside the truck. apparently he was having an epiphany and explaining to everyone how awesome the valley was and how lucky we all were and we could go to hell if we thought differently. agreed totally.
ben obviously skates for the devil
tristan and x man on the north side. whats that weird thing on you head tristan? kidding. good for you
lauras hands were cold
i dont even know
and the circus comes to town…
despite the fact that we were all a bunch of wise asses, the cop was pretty mellow bout the whole thing, i think she had a crush on koltais brother which helped. he was the only one with a beer in hand when she showed up, and im the one that got a beer ticket?!? explain that one! anyways, when she was done all the writing she took 5 minutes to ice her writing hand and pose for a very pretty photo with bunch of happy assholes.
the cop left, we finished the north side
i think laura took this one of me. crooked jesus christ pose
so thats the stuff. happy days of summer. moonfish til death. get forked and eat yer greens. chow mein…
the soundtrack to this one was kyuss albumn- blues for the red sun. they are touring hopefully we get to see them denver or montreal.
its been a few days since the last blog, like a thousand or so… been super busy i guess. pffftt…
ive been at home frizzle frying my eyeballs on this computer screen for the last week and a bit. i got some surgery done to a stupid little hernia, so now i get to have 9 staples holding my guts in and wince in pain everytime i sneeze. the doc also said i need help with any heavy lifting, so i suppose i should call someone everytime i have to pee… haha ummm..(stolenjoke)
so heres the update. lots happened since the last post, but i guess you only get to know about the sunday brunch hike. just where the access road to sunshine ski hill meets the trans can highway, there is a mountain on the north side of the highway called mt corie. pasted right down the middle of mt corie is a chute called la corridor.(we renamed the chute “sunday brunch” as the french jew wanted us to have a nice relaxing sunday brunch meal before we started the hike. which would have put us at a start time of about 4pm, which put us to the top at about 9pm!?!) i been scopin this chute for plenty years now, and finally got the jam to go up there this spring. after some advice from friends kyle wooly and mr dan hudson, who shredded it some years back, myself and friends goldy and the french jew hit it up. to make a long story boring, the hike up was absolutely the worst thing ever! scratch that, maybe the shred down the chute was the worst thing. we post-holed up the mountain for about 4+ hours, inventing new hiking techniques and wishing we brought more water. whatever. we got to the top and setup camp, chopped down a tree for firewood, spent the next 3 hours trying to dry out our boots and instead effectively burnt them into napalm, then got horribly drunk. and when i mean horribly i mean it was pretty sweet. we had a great view to banff, a great fire, great friends. we stayed up pretty much all night, except for about 30 minutes in the morning where i fell asleep by the fire and woke up with my pants smoking and charred. note from the wise, a bottle of whiskey and good talk is a fine substitute for a sleeping bag, and fits way easier in your backpack.
enter the top of the sunday brunch chute. we had to do a mandatory 10-15ft cliff into the chute, which we all mastered horribly. then for the next 10 min or so we all had the worst snowboard experience of our lives. the snow was shit, thats all im gonna say. it was funny listening to us all coming down though, still brings a smile to my face…
all in all was a fine time indeed. would certainly do it again, except under better snow conditions, and maybe get a chopper to drop us at the top. hmm.
heres the evidence…
this is a picture of three very happy, very unknowing guys fools about to embark on some major bushwacking. stupid grins and all. at goldys feet is the only bottle of water we had with us. experts obviously
the start…
this is about 10 min in, and about the same time we were all wishing we were like legolas in the lord of the rings where they were all hiking in the snow and post-holing to all heck and legolas is just prancing on top of the snow all elfy like… yeah well we were wishing we were just like stupid legolas for sure.
a view of the bottom of the chute
hahaha. this is the boys thinking we were nearly to the top. not even
this is apparently how french jews hike sometimes when the goin gets rough. they throw their backpacks up the slope a few feet then proceed to hike up and retrieve the pack. then repeat, while the rest of us snicker like little girls watching this happen
summit. probably the best moment ive had so far in 2011. seriously.
fuel. im pretty certain we were out of the national park for arguments sake.
camp
the view to banff. the sky started hammering snow down on us just after this for 3 hours about. i think.
our setup. happy happy. jeeeezz.
ok. this is a picture i took of our fire. this became the pinnacle of our minds being completely blown that evening. we made it out to be merlyn the wizard getting screamed at by the evil bunny lady. we bugged out on this one for the good part of the rest of the night, constantly coming back to it and freaking out about it
maybe you had to be there im not sure
this is goldy. hydrating i suppose
goldy pretending to have a nap. who was he kidding?! just behind the yellow snowboard was the NO GO ZONE. a chute with the mandatory 10ft cliff we would all later have to fall over. im very surprised none of us fell down there during the night. on the right in the red bag is my useless sleeping bag. actually it made a good seat sometimes
the french jew can be a little too keen sometimes. especially when all we wanted to do at this moment was leave our poor carcasses as horizontal as possible
the only photo of the chute from the top. looks pretty sweet right? pffftt!
goldy quote: “im going right home and running myself a bubble bath!” actually a really great idea
HAHAHAHAHA! SUNDAY BRUNCH!!! HAHAHAHAHHAAH! poor little guy
the only action shot from the bottom. our friend yanni setup at the sunshine turnoff and took some snaps. there is actually someone in the middle of this. wheres waldo right?
that all for now. see you in 1000days. prolly sooner, i still got downtime from the hernia staples and will most likely post some more crud up here for you;s to peek at. spring is here, get me outa this house, stay tuned here and maybe on the new highlineonline site if they let me i may be doubletiming this blog thing to them aswell. thanks and remember in the words of that nutjob jr. sheen: “you’re a freakin hairy chicken with a corndog limp!”
?
oh ya and the soundtrack to this blog was female tribute to tom waits and the song right now is christmas card from a hooker sung by neko case. rock on
