Opening tomorrow at Mammoth Mountain: the Katal Landing Pad – “Measuring at 50 feet wide by 90 feet long and 5 feet thick, the Katal Landing Pad covers the entire surface area of a jump after the takeoff allowing users to attempt new tricks without the consequences of crashing on an icy landing. Unlike traditional foam pits used for jumping, the Katal Landing Pad allows users to “ride-out” their landings to more closely simulate an actual jump landing. The Katal Landing Pad will be installed on a custom jump featuring three takeoffs ranging from 10-60 feet.”    Check it out here

30 ago today the mighty Mt. St. Helens blew its top and all hell broke loose. If you have never seen the massive destruction this volcano unleashed on the Northwest. Be sure to check out this St. Helens vid for some of the facts.

The vid below is Dan sitting in for Walter w/ an evening news report of the event’s aftermath.

The video below is a trip to Mt. Adams back in the Summer of 2006 w/ views of Mt. St. Helens steaming away AGAIN. Warning -this is part 5/5 of an old Snoqualmie Snow Trooper 2005/2006 compilation video on the LONG side.
Towards the end of the video as we ski the Southwest Chutes you can see St. Helens in the background.

Wanting to ski on this mountain ever since I took the route from Sister’s to Salem a bunch of years ago. It looked like a super modified Hyak, WA ( our home base) as far as a small vert mountain w/ good steep skiing. I was right! Always thought our home mountain of Hyak was the Biggest little mountain out there, but now Hoodoo has me re-thinking that one. The mountain is a cinder cone that skis all the way around and if the 35 deg 900 ft or so shots don’t do it for you just take a nice boot pack up the Hayrick Butte for some super steep manditory drop, triple black diamond runs (not me). It also looks like some of the cliff areas off the top of the Butte fill in to let guys like me have a Big rush w/ the skis on the snow. Put this one on your list for next year. AWESOME!!!

If you can’t watch in flash click here

Trip down for some sun and corn yielded one good day of warm Spring weather and great turns on May 13th. Met up w/ a bro from the home mountain Alpental. Chuck now lives down in beautiful Bend, OR taking advantage of all the outdoor fun to be had in this high desert zone and working of his HumanCar.com project. If you are a big time park rider, or a ski racer this mountain could be the place for you, but if your passion is BIG mountain lines or just good steep double diamond runs you might want to fit Hoodoo ski area into your Central Oregon trip or hit one of the many surrounding volcanos. The surrounding volcanos from Hood to Broken Top are SICK but you will need a sled to access the super long approach. The weather became cloudy the next day w/ much pastier snow than the day before w/ the weather experts calling for a good chance of rain over the weekend so we decided to move on to the next ski.

If you can’t watch in flash click here

Take a POV ride w/ Robert Jarlenas from Sweeden as he rips on his Moment Night Train skis up at Revlestoke, BC, Canada. Robert is off to the next continent next week to chase more snow. Final destination Stryn, Norway where they shut down ops when they run out of snow, usually early to mid august.

Want to give a shout out to one of our North of the boarder Bros, Andy Traslin. Andy traveled down to Mt. Bachelor a couple weekends ago to compete in the King of the Cone where he kicked ass once again and made the podium. The event was won by a former US Cross Country two-time Olympian, Lars Flora. Andy is not your typical randonnee racer that might spend a lot of training hours doing other disciplines this guy is a true mountaineer that not only skis big lines after he blazes a gnarly accent, HE rips the BIG lines. Take a top to bottom ride w/ Andy down one of Mt. Seymour’s steep chutes.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you moms out there!

Here is an old one from back on Mother’s Day in ‘06 when my Bro Robert Bolton and myself hit a line we had been looking at for a bunch of years. The Zipper Chute is a super steep line that is back in the Silver Peak zone that skis just down stream of the lower Twin Lake. Warning – vid is 2 chapters of the ‘05-’06 movie so kind of long, 2nd chapter is a trip out to Silver Peak.

Trip up to Mt. Margaret on Cinco de Mayo ( May 5th, 2010) in search of what might be the last of our fresh POW for the season. Met up w/ 5 others and 3 sleds at the Gold Creek sno park lot ready for some sled serviced laps mixed in w/ a little climb for some long runs off the Summit of Mt. Margaret. We were able to drive in w/ the trailers to about 2,300′ then parked at the snow line and off we went. Once on top of margaret our ski started w/ about 6″ of fresh near the summit and a little less in the trees thinning out to about two inches at the end of our ski. Good times once again for Cinco de Mayo in the Central Cascades.

Check out some pics here

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Trip to the Home Stompin’ grounds w/ the gang and have to say conditions couldn’t have been better for April 25th. The day started out w/ some cloud cover but when it was time to rip the skins off and click back in, the sun was out and the lines were fine. Good times w/ good friends.

If you can’t watch in flash click here

This is about as far from a mountain sport report that we will get on The Snow Troopers site, but it does contain Central Cascade “recylcled snow”. Just resting the legs for a couple days doing some editing in a lower zone just 35 minutes to the West of Snoquamie Pass on Lake Sammamish. Well, just like the Mountain there are lots of distractions.

The Snow Troopers are all hitting the fresh today in the Snoqualmie Pass area so maybe we will see you out there!

Live to Ski Another Day!
TNT

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