Beer Camp!

We al traveled to Sierra Nevada to learn about the beer! Pretty impressive, they are great people to have sponsor the tour! Very sustainable and professional. Enjoy the video

http://sierrafreeski.com/videos.html

Jackson Hole open Wall to Wall in November!!!

Brooke Edwards Photos!!

For the first time and history Jackson Hole Mountain Resort opened the entire mountain including the hobacks and lower faces on November 27th. This is the highest snowpack ever recorded in history this early in the year! It was definitely a memorable day and one I will never forget. I have skied Jackson Hole ever since I was 2 years old and never remember skiing so much powder so early in the year. Also the entire day on Saturday there were no lines, which was also really very special. Everyone that was out skiing was locals and the energy on the hill was amazing! With our amazing tram, it shuttles 100 people up the mountain so it spread people out quickly. Also a lot of people were done skiing by 12, because of being tired. They needed their ski fitness! Ha ha! I did a lot of fast laps with no lines, I could not remember the last time that I had skied so much in bounds and gotten so many powder runs, that were not getting tracked. I definitely slept well that night, I was glad I had been strength training for

skiing, but the long and fast runs were still hard. I think this winter is shaping up to be amazing and I can't wait to be a part of it!

A few good turns.

Nov. 17th Skiing on Teton Pass, Wyoming from Brian Mulvihill on Vimeo.

Opening Day at the Village should be good!

Ski and Snowboard Fitness

This year has been a really successful year for me with ski/snowboard fitness, I sold out my two classes for my first session which was shocking. I have a great mix of skiers that do not like to workout in your typical gym setting, so Mountain Athlete has been the perfect place for everyone. Thanks Rob!! I can not emphasize how important it is to become strong for your recreational sport and in this instance skiing/snowboarding. The more you can strengthen your muscles independently the stronger you will be as a whole and you will be less susceptible to injury. The other key element in ski/snowboard fitness is helping people recover from an injury, when you leave physical therapy that does not mean that you are ready to ski or snowboard. There are still a lot of strengthening exercises that need to be done in preparation to be physically and mentally strong to return to skiing/snowboarding. My class focuses on injury prevention and strength through balance, stabilization, agility and flexibility. Also it is really nice to have someone to push you so the class setting is really great.
Check out my training blog here

I have not felt this strong for skiing in a long time, my body just feels better and overall I feel more confident with skiing. I have learned so much working with different athletes from your ski bum to young freeriders to older ski enthusiasts. It has been a great learnning experience and I can not emphasize the importance. If you have a chance to prevent injury and feel stronger skiing/snowboarding why would you not want to try? I am really excited for the upcoming season and hopefully Jackson Hole has a great year! We are already off to a great start.

First Turns of the Season!!!

Monday and Tuesday we had a huge storm sweep through Jackson depositing about 41 inches of snow! It was crazy because two days prior I was hiking Jackson peak and mountain biking. We hiked glory bowl and skied twin slides, which actually had really good coverage and I was able to ski more aggressively than I expected! We then skinned over and skied Avalanche Bowl, which was as good as it gets in my opinion, really light and fluffy snow! It felt great to get back on my skis again in Jackson Hole! I have been spending a lot of time at Mountain Athlete trying to get strong for the upcoming season. Doing a ton of strength and agility exercises. Also have been teaching about 4 ski fitness classes and hoping to get the rest of the ski bum community in shape for the season. I hope we have an amazing winter in Jackson!!!

No more women on the Freeride Tour!

No more women on the Freeride World Tour! Very disappointing, but for some reason not hard for me to believe. Last year was my first and only year on the tour and I thought it was one of the most amazing competition experiences I had ever had. The only problem was the lack of support that I felt with the women especially compared to the Subaru Freeskiing Tour. When I won that tour in 2009 Julien Lopez who won for the guys and I had the exact same amount of press and exposure it was so awesome to be treated equal with the guys champion. My first competition in Chamonix was exciting, nerve racking and intimidating. I definitely never felt completely welcome as a female and I already thought it was a little ridiculous that the men and women were skiing the same venue spending the same amount of money and the men won $8,000 for first and the women only won $2500. I do not think we should be completely equal with prize money, because there is more of the guys , but I think we should be a lot closer in earnings.
The women had to go second in Chamonix which at first I did not mind because there was a lot of slough management because of the temperature changes. I had picked an aesthetic line that I knew I had to do, but knew by the time the ladies ran it would not be the best snow. I went for it anyway and landed in hardened avy debris, I was bummed but excited I had skied that line. When the guys were running there was a helicopter flying and filming. Approximately a hundred journalist supposedly were just there for the men. When the women started all the press and helicopter left! It felt so weird to me like I was not really competing. I know we do not ski like the guys, but we are all pushing ourselves and the level for women. In Squaw this year it was some of the most amazing women skiing I had ever seen. Everyone was throwing down on the same guys lines. The winning girls line was the same as the guys. The women had to go second again on a small venue that we should have at least been able to go first for one of the two runs. I crashed twice and the second run the air I had taken had been so bombed out by the men that I landed one leg in one of their bomb holes one out and knocked myself out for second and definitely could not walk for 3 days after. The point is this is regressing our sport as women when last year I thought our sport had taken such a huge step on both tours. The Subaru tour still has amazing amount of competition and I hope women will still continue to push themselves and want to try or continue competing!

Termas De Chillan Part 2!!!

My last day at Termas was a little more of a challenge, but still a great adventure. I decided I wanted to skin up another volcano, this one was just to the right of the first one and opened up to a valley of more great terrain. I was told I could ski down and then be able to hike up the back side of another volcano and ski back into the resort. As I got to the top of Volcano Viejo the clouds started to come in with a thick fog. I waited for it to clear a bit and then had an awesome long run down the volcano proper. I decided to keep going into the valley hoping to be able to find my way out to the side. As I kept going further down, I knew I was on the backside of a lot of terrain called the fingers, I had skied in the resort, but I was not seeing how I could get out of the valley I was in! I followed some tracks (never a good idea) and found myself cliffed out by two canyons with a beautiful stream running through. I definitely was not getting across, so my only choice was to skin back out of the valley I had skied down, which was about 3,000 vertical feet. It was pretty socked in with fog at this point and I could see the track from the cat so started to head for that and followed the track up. 2 hours later I was back in the resort and had done about 3 hours of skinning so had gotten some good exercise for the day! I took a few more runs and then went and had a beer with my new friend at the Iglu, she likes dance music and speaks English so we bonded!! ha! ha! I then packed up and left Termas and took a 7 am bus to Santiago and then a night bus to Mendoza! I loved Termas and will definitely go back soon, hopefully I can learn some Spanish by then!