Reno is a special kind of ski town. In fact, I bet many of the inhabitants of its casino and pawn shop lined streets would be surprised to hear it referred to as such. “Bowler’s paradise,” now that’s a name the locals could get behind. We saw a few snowboard bags being dragged through Harrah’s, but shredders were desperately outnumbered by mustachioed men in bowling attire. They’re a jolly bunch, and were all too happy to point us to the National Bowling Stadium just two blocks from our hotel. We expected raucous drunken crowds a la Kingpin (which was filmed there), but what we found was an empty grandstand that overlooked more lanes than our eyes had ever beheld. We did the only natural thing, picked a team and chanted their names until they noticed us.

With entertainment on lock, our stomachs were the next concern. Based on several recommendations, we made sure to hit up the Awful Awful burger at the Nugget. The diner is as sketchy and greasy as we’ve come to expect from Reno, but the burger is a kickass reward after a long flight or a full day of shred. If you find yourself in Reno you won’t have to ask too many people for culinary advice before the Awful Awful is mentioned. The thing is cheap as dirt and leaves you feeling like kicked shit.

Regardless of how appetizing that all sounds, what draws us to Reno isn’t its kitschy charm, it’s the cheap skiing. Casino rooms are cheap in winter, and the free shuttles run seven days a week to Squaw and Northstar with weekend service to Alpine Meadows. It’s hard to beat the price, and I’d argue that having those three resorts within an hour gives you some of the most diverse shred options you can get in one place.

We shot a bunch of footage at N’Star to highlight some locals, but what you can’t really see in a video is how damn cool the scene is. In addition to the coveted title of minishred paradise, I’d give N’Star the award for friendliest park vibe. We took some laps with local shred Kevin Sellon, who absolutely threw down, but unfortunately I didn’t bring the camera skills to match (I missed more shots than I got). Later in the day we ran into the Happypro crew from Norway; you couldn’t ask for a more stoked crew of skiers and snowboarders. Now I’d be shitting you if I didn’t mention the epicness of the liftline fashion show, but at least these fashionistas are friendly.

The Tahoe region had a pretty nice snow year, and on the advice of Luke at Moment we took our crew to Alpine Meadows for a powder day. The place offers a massive amount of terrain, and a less “resorty” vibe than its neighbor Squaw. The ticket office made me feel like I was back at a PA mountain where every employee is somehow related to the manager. The crowds weren’t bad at all for a weekend. When the easy stuff got tracked, a patroller with Pennsylvania roots shared some local knowledge and pointed us towards a traverse that accessed unlimited powder. East Coast legs were burning and shins were banging, but the smiles didn’t stop.

Big thanks to Jessica VanPernis at Northstar and the staff at Alpine Meadows for being so damn accommodating! Enjoy the edit.

Through all of this, the most begrudged of all equipment, boots have stayed largely the same. There are lace-up liners; two, three, or four buckles; shock-absorbers; adjustable flex; and other bells/whistles, but the core concept is the same. We’re still sliding in a hard-plastic shell with a soft liner stuffed into it. I don’t pretend to be an expert on ski boots, but I’m pretty sure I can get an “amen” from the congregation on this one.

The most memorable recent modifications on the standard model have been of the DIY variety. Allen Lam came up with a system for V-cutting SPK’s and possibly Full Tilts for more mobility. I’m sure many of you are familiar, but here’s a shot of the finished product:

Like most things Allen does, this has garnered its fair share of hate, but I think it’s promising. I’ll probably pay the $20 he asks and send my old SPK’s to him to try it out. Nonetheless, it’s still just a modification of the existing technology. DIY will never get us truly new technology.

Here is where I introduce you, maybe for the first time, to Apex ski boots. They’ve developed a relatively thin version of a BOA snowboard boot and a carbon casing that gives it rigidity like a normal boot.

After trying them on, I discovered a few points that would have to be altered if this boot were to work for street/park skiing. First, someone else would have to make them. We spoke with the owner and reps, and they were completely oblivious to freestyle skiing. They described their ideal customer in marketing speak as someone who drives a Mercedes and owns a second home in Aspen. It’s no surprise, because the price tag is the second thing they’d have to change: they’re asking $1295 for a pair. Insane, I know, but I can’t see a reason why the carbon couldn’t be replaced with hard plastic and the entire price tag be brought back to earth.

I obviously didn’t ride on them, but just strapping in revealed a couple other problems. The buckle across the instep would need to be wider and more thickly padded. This is a minor change, and the parts already exist in most snowboard bindings. Otherwise some thicker foam padding would solve most other issues. I’m sure flex is on your mind, so check out the photo below. The black band and colored spacers are supposed to adjust the degree of flex. I wasn’t able to test them out, but the boot flexed a bit like original SPK’s without any adjustments.

I would encourage you to write them to show that the freestyle movement represents a serious market share, but these guys are so oblivious that I doubt it’d do any good. Maybe someone can pool some of that trust fund money everybody’s dumping into tall-sweatshirt companies and make us some comfy boots!

The “all my TGR buddies went to Alta and I’m stuck at home with my Dynastar XXLs” spot: Magic Mountain

The Word: The recently un-shuttered Magic Mountain is about as straightforward as you can get: one red double-chair, completely open boundaries, and no stakes blocking off those tempting cliffs East Coast resorts always rope off to keep the joeys from airing into icy mogul fields and blowing their ACL’s. Magic is only open Friday-Monday and during the week if there’s a powder day (6”+), so trails and the woods stay pretty fresh. If you snag Redline first run with fresh snow you can send it off a bunch of cliffs, drops, and catdrops that sit right under the lift line, earning you double points from the AT-sporting TGR crowd that swear by their GoPros that Magic is the goods. As a bonus, you can see all the idiots at Okemo and Stratton waiting in line while you hot lap trees. If pulling out a knife and fake-wrestling in ski boots on the deck with your buddy after you’ve slammed four beers is your thing, you’ll find plenty of that quirky Vermont humor here.

The Deal: Mid-week tickets are $39, or weekends for $59.

The “all my rich buddies went to Breck and I’m stuck at home with mom’s car” spot: Mount Snow

The Word: The East Coast’s answer to Bear Mountain + Dew Tour course. The Nitro Express at Carinthia gets you top-to-bottom jibs, jumps, polejams, etc., etc. etc. on every trail off the lift, with the highlight being Nitro, the small/medium park that runs the length of the liftline with 20+ options to hit in a row. The wood park is nasty if you’ve figured out how to slide wood on skis or are Garret Russell. If you are indeed as hard as the “underground” hip-hop playing from your Skullcandy’s, the original Dew Tour course is open every day. If you’re the kind of guy that’s pissed Level 1 doesn’t just do park segments anymore, or are ripping off the tongues from your old basketball shoes and duct-taping them to your Salomon boots so you can afterbang like T-Fresh, Mt. Snow is your new kingdom. Any jibber worth their weight in tall tees needs to check this park out.

The Deal: If you pick up the March issue of Transworld Snowboarding, on page 36 there is a coupon for a free lift ticket after the purchase of a first one. That gets you two days of jibbing for $75 and yes, BroBomb looked that hard for deals for you. Lift tickets on St. Patty’s Day (the 17th) are also only $17. If your buddy’s got a pass, he/she can bring you on Fridays for $45, or $36 for you nerds still studying pre-algebra in high school.

The “I have to work to pay off student loans or buy an Xbox” spot: Ski Bradford

The Word: hidden in the murk between 95 and 495 north of Boston, Ski Bradford remains so hidden because it’s probably wider than it is tall: the vert tops out at 218 feet. But with a jibbable park, a mini-pipe ripe for handplants, and lights that stay on until 10, Ski Bradford guarantees you a setup to keep you entertained after you’ve gotten off of work shipping boxes or whatever shit job you found for spring break.

The Deal: During weekdays, 3-7 pm for $19, 3-10 for $30, or 6-10 for $26. Take the early shift and you’ll be able to get a full day in after you’ve clocked out.

Sundown Express, scene of literary & spiritual investigation for the duration of the stay.

In my four days at Steamboat, it was obvious that skiing as the 90’s knew it is still very well supported here. Steamboat is to the Olympic disciplines what Breck is to the X Games. An Olympic-level bumps course and freestyle jump were just about to be completed. A separate hill, lit up at night, hosts a pitch for gate-slappers and two serious ski jumps (the ones you do for distance).  Instructors from the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club, which outdates even the ski resort itself, could be seen everywhere in their blue suits escorting herds of little shred goblins around the mountain.  All this adds up to more winter Olympians than any other town in the United States; 10-15 of them will be in Vancouver this year toting some hideous Roots berets and fighting for athletic fame in their chosen discipline.

You might be saying “Cowboys?  Ski jumps?  Moguls?  The Olympics?  What does this have to do with freeskiing?’  For the purpose of maintaining the cohesiveness of this article, very little.  And that’s the point.  Steamboat “suffers” from what I will call “The Little Cottonwood Shadow.” While everyone guns up to Alta/Bird on a pow day so they can traverse like a sprinter and snake people for first tracks, Solitude remains empty the next canyon over.  Steamboat, 2.5-3 hours from Denver, gets none of the crowds and few of the TGR-posting rippers that Summit County and Vail swallow up every weekend. This leaves the copious amount of trees, ignored by visiting Texans drawn to Steamboat’s family programs, untouched.

After taking a very quick, quiet, and friendly Go Alpine shuttle from Silverthorne to Steamboat (goalpine.com), I got my lift tickets from Loryn Kasten, Steamboat’s PR Manager (yeah girl!), and then it was on to the gondola.  While Steamboat averages 350” a year, and saw 400” the past two seasons, it was suffering through the same drought as Central and Northern Colorado. It still didn’t look nearly as bad as Summit did.  With most of the top section including Christmas Tree Bowl & the Three Chutes closed due to the lack of snow, we spent most the three days skiing off of the Sundown Express and Sunshine quads.   The groomers were quickly getting scraped down to the bone, and were miserable to negotiate on my Czars. We quickly took the party to the woods, and damn were those woods were fun.  While the first day we slogged through a lot of atypically wet Colorado snow, a clear cold night sucked out all the moisture and for the next two days it was on.  The trees were almost all untracked thanks to the people who wanted to keep their bases intact, and as long as you were willing to scrape a few rocks and ollie a few logs on the way down, you were well rewarded with empty sections of boot-to-knee deep pow.  We found ourselves alone, the weekend before Christmas, in runs like 2:30 & 1:30 trees, Closet, and by far the best- Shadows.  Sitting skier’s right of the Sunnyside liftline, Shadows is the best Steamboat had to offer (with Christmas Tree Bowl closed). Top-to-bottom consistent, steep pitch, with sections that narrow and open back up again and mixed stands of Aspens and pines.  This run is incredibly wide and I don’t think I crossed a track the whole time we skied it.  Not to mention that the notable lack of the party patrol kept things casual.  Steamboat lacks a plethora of cliffs or wide-open terrain (the whole resort is below the tree line), but the resort is built for storm cycles where a week of snowy, grey skies make the trees an essential tool in establishing depth perception, and the extent of the ‘Boat’s tree options mean you won’t be suffering from an intense competition for tracks that will affect your safety meeting-induced mellow.

BroBomb homie, Riley Maddox, gets casual in 2:30 trees.

My legs were a little too beat to explore Steamboat’s single up-and-running park on the way back down at the end of the day. Unfortunate, because while not on a PCMR/Keystone/Breck level, Steamboat’s jib scene can compete.  They made some noise a couple years back when they put together a 600’ foot superpipe that was unfortunately not up during my stay, but Loryn informed me that Steamboat convinced Nick Roma, a Sunday River vet and one of the builders of Dumont’s record-breaking quarterpipe, to head up their park division.  Nick is the only American that has been asked to help with the Olympic skiercross course, so it’s clear he knows how to use a cat to build big bumps out of snow.   Steamboat’s three parks are also separated by level, which means no gapers eating shit off the knoll while you’re trying to put down your seven.

The author gets radical (read: frontseat/ rolls the windows down) near the Sunshine Express.

Steamboat’s Main St. has that real old-ass West feel, more so than Breck or Aspen, and prices are cheaper than both.  We ate well at the Ale House, including a couple pitchers of craft brews, for about twenty bucks.  The Alehouse also has a pretty high-tech trivia set-up, and we even managed to beat a bunch of nerds from U. Chicago med school. If only the UGA sorority had decided to sit in front of me instead of forcing me to make a complete 180 degree back stretch every ten minutes, it would have been perfect.

Other spots like the Tap House cover the dive bar variety, and for accommodations, it’s best to check out the infamous Rabbit Ears Motel.  Sitting on rent-controlled property at the top of Main St., you and three of your buddies can crash there for $105 a night, or a little over $25/person; a true bum’s chalet.  You won’t need a rental car either; town is right there and the mountain is a free shuttle ride away.  The best time to visit is April, when the spring break crowd has cleared out but the skies are barfing that light, dry “Champagne Powder” Steamboat has worked so hard to sue people over for trademark infringement. Package deals from April 4^th-11^th offer free tickets when you buy three nights of lodging, or you can stay at the Rabbit Ears and be forced to cough up about $300 for four days of tickets ($76 for day tickets).  Flights to nearby Hayden airport from metro areas like LA, Chicago, Boston, and New York will run you about $350-$400 (plus the shuttle ride to and from Hayden), or you can get a cheap flight to Denver and take the $170 roundtrip shuttle to Steamboat.  This option will definitely be cheaper if you’re booking last-minute.

Steamboat is indeed a different kind of ski town.  My friend Ben had the pleasure of a lift ride with a little shred who asked him to hold his ski pole out as a surrogate lift bar.  Ben quickly found out that this little goblin, still not old enough to hold ski poles, had fallen off the lift last year from thirty feet and broken both his legs.  He seemed unaffected by the incident except for the fact that his parents had been “really mad.”  He promptly tore away from the top of the lift and ollied off a roller, double-ejecting into a faceplant.  Still unfazed, he ran back up the hill, clipped into his 100-centimeter skis, and took off again.  While the Steamboat vibe is decidedly mellow, I would suggest visiting before this kid is old enough to snake you.

Thanks again to Loryn Kasten for lift tickets & interview, and to Tracey at Go Alpine for hooking up the shuttle rides!

Ground Transportation

From Denver:

Go Alpine Shuttle: www.alpinetaxi.com, $170 roundtrip

From Hayden airport:

Go Alpine Shuttle: www.alpinetaxi.com, $52 roundtrip

Storm Mountain Express, www.stormmountainexpress.com, $52 roundtrip

Lodging

Rabbit Ear Motel:  www.rabbitearsmotel.com, $105/night for 4 people

Steamboat Central Reservations, www.steamboat.com, for package deals

I had no intentions of reviewing my pants, but then it rained all damn day. I rode increasingly soaked chairlifts in barely-liquid rain. My jacket fought the good fight for almost an hour before succumbing and soaking that water like a tall-t. My pants, however, held down the fort. When I got back to the car and peeled them off, my shorts and long underwear were dry as a bone.

If you’re reading this, you’re likely a skier. If you’re a skier who is interested in Holden pants, it’s likely because no ski company makes anything but balloon sizes. So are you really concerned about waterproofing? Doubt it. They’re better than your sister’s jeans, so that part of the review is over. On to the important stuff:

Tight-o-Meter (based on 5’9” 165lb male):

Holden Large: Slightly tapered knee, but plenty of sag all around. Likely choice for somebody over 25 who can’t get down with the shrink wrap, but still prefers human sized clothing.

Medium: You’re starting to show them knobby knees, but with some breathing room for a layer or two underneath. It’s likely that this is the last size where pockets remain operational.

Small: Chicken legs on display! Still plenty of sag to make it over your boots, but those scrawny ass vegan legs get full billing. Hope your flannel shirt has lots of pockets, because that pack of fashion-smokes ain’t making it in your pants.

Most of you can stop reading now, but here’s some other info: All the pockets are full-zip, which can save you from lost keys if you remember to close ‘em up. The zipper-pulls are little leather tassles that add some rock-n-roll to the equation, and add a little functionality if you’re in park gloves.

Fashion smoking kitty.

My two major qualms with these pants also involve zippers. First of all, the front pocket zippers feel like tiny razors if you’re reaching in there with a cold bare hand. Second, the zippers at the bottom of the pants don’t really grab enough to stay closed. This doesn’t really matter if you’re going for maximum boot coverage, but otherwise they won’t stay down.

I bought them for under $100 over the summer, so keep your eyes open and they’re pretty cheap too!

Greetings from Burlington! I’m on a bit of a fact finding mission in the epicenter of the east coast ski world. If you have any aspirations of making a living in “the industry” here on the right coast, then it’s likely you’re going to end up in Burlington. Always eager to help budding industry drones, I’m here to get a little feel for the city and a couple of the companies that might be getting your resume. Newly minted Vermont resident Mike Rogge, of Ski the East, is my tour guide so you know I’ll be all behind-the-scenes and whatnot.

I’m going to do some interviews and analyze the companies based on some highly scientific criteria, but I’m open to suggestions. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

-          Number of pros working there that you can go totally fanboy over on your first day.

-          Amount of free product laying around for five finger pro deals.

-          Office vibe: Are there dogs? Putting machines? Wall Street style screaming?

-         # of employees (the more the better for you, someone’s always getting fired).

Drop any further questions you’d like me to ask into the comments. I hope to visit Orage and Meatheads headquarters today, and we’ll see what else the day brings.

Four days of restless couch sleeping—made all the more miserable by an ever-looming demon cat—have rendered me incapable of any sort of in-depth Dew Tour breakdown. This list will have to suffice for now. Expect something a tad more substantial tomorrow.

 I give you the best of the 2009 Dew Tour Totino’s Open at Breckenridge.

 1.) By simply closing your eyes and walking forward in any direction, you were guaranteed to bump into a lovely young lady whose sole mission was to force you to eat  complimentary little pizza rolls and down Dixie cups of Mountain Dew. In an era of resorts charging $3.50 for bottles of water, anything free is glorious.

Fuel for the elite athletes of the snowsports world.

 2.) The weather. Last year’s Breck stop, despite featuring what was arguably the best slopestyle course ever built, was cursed with incredibly snowy and windy weather. Thankfully, this weekend in Breck was absolutely beautiful. Blue skies and relatively warm weather, combined with another incredible slope course, paved the way for some of the most impressive comp skiing yet to be seen.

 3.) Speaking of the slope course, I have to say that I was thrilled to see a wallride. Admittedly, most riders seemed unsure of just what to do with the damn thing (not Sean Jordan or Phil Casabon), but it added some badly needed variety to the cookie-cutter “2-jib 3-jump” format we’ve been seeing recently. Let’s hope the trend continues and we see creativity and choice-of-line really factor in at future stops. Also, there wasn’t a “cannon box” or “money booter” anywhere in sight. There was an unfortunate gap-to-truck-flat box-thing however that nothing cool happened on.

 4.) Gotta hand it to Breckenridge Resort. They reeeeaaaally know how to handle huge crowds of people. Sure Peak 8 was a circus, but the event staff did an amazing job herding everyone around. Even the wait for the Gondola after Superpipe finals Saturday night was a breeze.

 5.) Remember when I said nothing cool happened on the gaptruckflatboxthing? Well, I lied. Simon Dumont absolutely stomped a cork 3 hand-drag over it. Upon landing, he assumed what I can only guess was an ironic/mocking afterbang position before catching an edge and absolutely eating shit. In doing so, he cool-guyed himself right out of slope finals.

 Look out for the worst of the worst tomorrow…

 Last but not least, thanks a million to my Breck pals (and hosts) Mike, Joe, Tyler, and Whitney.

 As a fan, you have no idea how to navigate this new internet pantheon of ski icons. Where to start? Should you even bother with these websites, or just stick to what you know? Well, BroBomb’s got your back with a foolproof ranking of the best new sites. Humor is so hot right now, so I’ll be rating them for intentional and unintentional hilarity, as well as amount of useful information, and the degree of vanity that has gone into each self-serving web destination.

  We’ll start with TJSchiller.com. TJ is from Canada, but he shunned his national “.ca” heritage for the less-weird dot com.

Vanity: TJ takes the cake on this one. The homepage is one giant picture of either TJ in action, or his big grinning Canadian mug. The purpose of this is to imprint that image onto your brain. He won’t be throwing 1440’s forever, but when it comes time to make a move on the announcing/commentary circuit he’ll have you brainwashed into liking him. Smiles are contagious to primates, when you see a smile it makes you want to smile. Therefore, you’ll smile when you see him hyucking it up on EXPN. We all know TV ratings are based on smile power, so he’ll have it in the bag.

Unintentional Humor: It’s really a pretty dry site that does little other than provide links to TJ’s Twitter and Facebook. I found it mildly funny that he felt the need to include a bio that more or less states how he skis in contests and gets to fly in helicopters. Don’t give away too much TJ.

Intentional: Well there’s the Contest Winner/Chug Life video. There are at least two guys who think that shit’s a knee slapper. Otherwise, humor free.

Vanity: Well the ass on the cartoon vixen Colby’s clutching is probably a touch out of his league, but you can’t fault dude for trying.

Comedy: I’m going to combine this category as Colby’s website really isn’t about his skiing at all; it’s purely a promo for his joke videos. Whether or not any of it is funny hinges on one question: What is the endgame for Mr. West?

“My Friend is a Pro” used to be funny, and his Epic Pass ad still is. Colby does above-average impersonations, and seems to have a knack for big joke comedy. Does he aspire to a career in mainstream comedy? It’s a long shot, but he could probably eek out a living doing ski-film cameos while waiting for his big break. The other possibility is that his ambition goes no further than a recurring gig as Matchstick’s annual skit jester. It’s a safer bet, but a pretty sad end for anybody. If that’s the case then he gets a zero for humor, because it’s downright depressing.

I say go for it Colby, be the first skier to break out into mainstream showbiz. That asshole Dane Cook filled arenas with bro-comedy, you’ve got to shoot for the stars.

Vanity: This guy truly believes that being a blonde, blue-eyed, Montana-born Rasta isn’t an oxymoron. Can you be batshit crazy and vain? Not sure.

Intentional Comedy: 0

Unintentional: Through the damn roof! If you’re going to do the white-Rasta thing, you better damn-well go all the way. Tanner actually writes in Jamaican patois. He’s like a walking case study in the upper class co-opting the rebellion of the underclass a.k.a “white kids acting black.”

There’s a very important message in there somewhere: “If you have any questions or suggestions just hit a bredda up…I just had to get someting up so we could start pumpin dat FIRE!!! Hope all is bless. RESPECT!!!”