Tomorrow will be buttz-to-nutz busy.  Prepare ya self.

Here’s a few snaps and a POV shot with the ContourHD from today (Friday April 9th, 2010):

More pics and vids here: link

Rather than write my own recap i decided to rhyme.  Here goes:

The Slalom had a lotta bros.  A few Yo’s.  Probably some ho’s, but i don’t knows.  There were a bunch of crows flying in circols.  Some people met the 5-0.  This dude got clipped in the nose.

..and here’s a POV shot with a ContourHD of a hike we did up the Arm on Saturday.  It was fun.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I managed to get some “interview-chat” time with the VholdR headz.  Here’s what went down:

VholdR:  Soon is a good time to do your interview if you want.

nwBro:  Ok.  I got some shit.

VholdR:  We’re getting so much traffic right now.  Super sick.  We got 7 thousand visitors yesterday on our site.

nwBro:  Fuck.

VholdR:  Is that good?

nwBro:  I got 189 yesterday.

VholdR:  haha.  Maybe it will get you a bit of action?

nwBro:  Eh.  I don’t care about action.

VholdR:  Right.  Gotcha.

nwBro:  Im just stoked on the cam.  And all the shit I’ve read online is weak. We gonna do this legit.
With cusswords n shit.

VholdR:  haha, coo.

nwBro:  I don’t even like snowboarding anymore.

VholdR:  haha, me neither.

nwBro:  Only reason i want to snowboard is so i can watch a video of ripping ropeline apart on a pow day.
I got the line in my head…

VholdR:  HELL YEAH.  I’m excited to check out the park this weekend.

nwBro:  The park?

Vholdr:  Yeah.
Looks like some fun hits in there right now.
Just saw some snowskate action from hurlbut–using a VholdR. some juicy lookin booters in there.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn6TFHDLXns

nwBro:  No park this weekend homes.  Ski Acres is closed.  Only park you gonna be riding is Alpental wall hitz.
Old school.
Board grabs.

VholdR:  Oh shiz.
hahahaha.
Thats coo too.

nwBro:  Yeah, i don’t think surf will be on either.
Fuck.

VholdR:  Frak.
Build a booter!
Alpy bc…

nwBro:  In spring slush?

VholdR:  Maybe.
Oh yeah.
Not that rad.
But still fun maybe?

nwBro:  It hurts.

Vholdr:  Maybe a nice hip or naty feature somewhere?

nwBro:  We could get JR and Brock to come out and drop off huge cliffs to flat.
In slush.

VholdR:  hahaha.

nwBro:  They’re all about that shit.

VholdR: fer sher.

I’d be down.

nwBro:  Ok….ima start hitting some questions.

VholdR:  Ok ready.

nwBro:  So the audio on the VholdR was pretty bad. Sounded like a jet. What did you guys do to make it better?

VholdR: We have a new higher grade microphone and better tuned the firmware for higher speeds.
Sound with action video was an area where we learned the most.
We first tried to hear people’s voices and that became too sensitive when you got going at speed.

nwBro:  Yeah, i can’t imagine really getting away from some sort of “jet” noise…

VholdR:  Watch the videos up there now, we kept the raw sound so people could compare www.vholdr.com/contourhd/videos
You definitely hear less wind and more action this time.

nwBro: Cool. You can always just dub some Sublime over your vid anyways.

VholdR: haha, true.

nwBro:  So are you guys making any changes to the VholdR software? the video editing stuff?

VholdR:  Absolutely.  Making the software HD compatible.  So you can import, clip and post HD videos to VholdR.com which will all be a widescreen HD community.
Specifically…a widescreen and 4:3 player in the software, thumbnails are 4:3 or widescreen (16:9), and then a improved user interface.  Kept the main functions of importing, clipping, and posting online, just beefed it up for HD.  Of course it’s Mac PC out of the gate.

nwBro: Does the new cam use a different codec for both the SD and HD modes?

VholdR:  Yep.  We have upgraded the camera hardware. We’re using the H.264 video codec.  Wikipedia has a great page on what h.264 means (page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264)
But it compresses HD video really well so you get high quality and small file sizes.  Then the file type we produce are .mov.  Very Apple product friendly.

nwBro:  Im a PC.

VholdR:  Quicktime and VLC will be the main players we recommend.   Still testing all the editing software and computer compatibility but so far using the ContourHD videos is really simple.  Should be a much better plug and play experience.

nwBro:  Cool.  You have a few competitors out there.  Do any of them shoot in HD?

VholdR:  No, it’s the first HD camcorder you can wear.  Look at www.vholdr.com/contourhd/techspecs.  We put an awesome chart there comparing us to the competition.
With ContourHD we talk about “amazing video quality” and “easy to use”.   So the video quality is now our strongest differentiater.  We’re putting a comparison video together that should be up next week so you can see video shots side by side. HD is a totally different experience. It’s big and awesome.

nwBro:  Word, but none of the other ones have goggle strap mounts right?  Cause im not into helmets.

VholdR:   The wearability is something we’re also going to highlight.  Our “how it’s wearable” page goes up next week.  But it will show how you wear it on a helmet, goggles, vented helmet, handle bars, etc.

nwBro:  Well, you should highlight the fact that you have lasers.

VholdR:   The goal is to give you HD for more than just your head.

nwBro:  Do any of the competitors have lasers?

VholdR:  I’ve never seen another camera with lasers…tech nerds such as yourself definitely like that feature.  haha

nwBro:  Lasers are fucking sic man. You can fuck with cats. They love that shit.

Vholdr:  And dogs. Bauer has some sweet videos on the site (our office dog).

nwBro:  Trippin on lasers?

VholdR: Yep, straight trippin.

nwBro: ha ha! Ok…are you guys keeping the same website name?  Or is it changing with ContourHD?

Vholdr:  Vholdr.com for now.  It has all the traffic.   If you type in contourhd or hd helmet camera the website comes up.  What we’re saying is…ContourHD by VholdR.

nwBro: ah.  Ok.  So the cam is a wider lense now.  But it’s not mega fish eye wide right?

Vholdr:  No mega fish eye like go pro.  We thought 135 was a nice middle between Vio @110 and GoPro@170.  170 is interesting for alone POV but 135 is much better for following people.

nwBro:  Yeah, makes sense to me…too wide and all that’s good is filiming up close.

VholdR:  Exactly.

nwBro:  What’s the craziest video you’ve seen on Vholdr.com?

VholdR:  I still love motorcycle ice racing.  Motorcycle sidecar ice racing.

nwBro:  Whoa! That’s Extreme.

VholdR:  vanstylhee is posting a ton of great POW footage from south lake tahoe.  You’d think the guy has been unemployed all winter getting after it everyday.  Comboed with perfect daily bluebird pow conditions in the sierras, a new 09 dragon sled, and doods who know what up, makes for good POV.   http://www.vholdr.com/users/vanstylhee

nwBro: Gotta do something to stay occupied.

VholdR:  haha, i guess so.

nwBro:  Ever get any illegal stuff you have to pull?

VholdR:  Not yet.  We’ve had naked bicycle riding. Really popular video.  Naked motorcycle riding in Santa Cruz.

Of course it’s from Santa Cruz too.

nwBro:  Oh, i bet its coming.  I just read some of the comments on the Gizmodo post….

VholdR: haha.  They’re hysterical. “beard sold separately”.

nwBro:  There’s a bunch of dudes on there that are digging on your model.

VholdR:  That photo of Ivan Marcinko is everywhere.  He’s the most famous unknown guy in the world right now.   Hopefully k2 will be stoked on that.

nwBro:  Well good for him. Dude throws down some ill aerial maneuvers.

VholdR:  http://www.flylyf.com/the-vholdr-contourhd-wearable-hd-camera/
That was a big reason why we approached him.  We’re looking forward to seeing some HD POV footy from him.

nwBro:  Cool. Well, thanks for the info.  Im pretty stoked to get my hands on one of these things next winter.
Looks like you can get them all over the place?

VholdR:  Yeah, at REI, Amazon, and Helmetcameracentral.com.  Local shops wil have it soon too. Like EVO.

nwBro:  Word.

…

The week of the trip was spent working  in 4-10 mode. I split Thursday evening straight from work and made the 5-1/2 hour drive to Mazama in about 4-1/2.  It was cloudy pretty much till i got to Roslyn, then cold and clear the rest of the way.  Conditions were looking good so far.

The mountain weather up till the week before i left was pretty much crap.  No new, windy, cloudy, etc.   I was stressing thinking we were gonna be riding on a bunch of yuk.  But we lucked out and got a mini storm that dumped enough to make it sic.  It’d been cloudy, and/or windy most of the week up till when we all got there.  When we woke up Friday morning in Mazama–Bluebird!

That morning at the Heli barn, we went through a safety seminar and a quick transceiver training session.  The safety seminar consisted of how to deal with the helicopter on take off/landing, approach, and generally being around it.  The transceiver training consisted on how to turn on the unit, how to run a systematic search, and how to pin-point a victim.  All-in-all, it took about an hour.

The helicopter they’re running out there is brand new.  By brand new, i mean it had 50 hours of flight time.  The guides were extremely particular about how to conduct yourself, what to do, what not to do with regard to damaging the helicopter.  This thing is fragile, “a big guy could easily rip this door right off.”  I didn’t break anything.

There were 4 groups of 4 that day so there was a bit of a wait once the heli started running.  We were the last group to get taxied out.

I’ve never been in a helicopter so i was pretty much giggling like a girl when we took off.  The pilot, Shamus has a lot of experience flying and was clearly on point flying the thing.  Dude was pretty much carving it up in heli.

We got dropped off on Drop Zone 1 and proceeded to LZ1 (see map below).  Sic run.  Wide open pow, perfect vis, nothing too sketchy, so we all hauled ass.  We hit 7 runs over the course of the day.  All runs were pretty much wide open pow, huge arcing turns, slashers and huge sprays.  On Run 6, i got to hit a super fun chute.  It was about 15 feet wide and pretty long.  The terrain that we hit was advanced intermediate for the most part.  The steeps that we did come across were short.  It was mostly mellower slopes with short sections of steeps in between–like a series of benches.  In the pic below Dax drops off the rock right in front of him and set off a little slide.  My cam died right as he was in the air.

There was some super fun tree runs.  A lot of the tree coverage out there was the Larch tree which is a deciduous conifer–it’s a pine tree that looses it’s needles.  Pretty cool.  Around here you find them all over the east slopes of the Cascades.  I’ve never ridden in them.

The snow coverage out there was like it is out here–low.  There were rocks and trees sticking out here and there but it was pretty chill for the most part.  The rocks out there are mostly granite which tend to be a lot less jagged than the stuff we see in western WA.  So the few that i did hit didn’t do any major damage (sorry Ride).

Super fun trip.  We scored big time with the weather and snow conditions–couldn’t have been better.  The heli operation out in Mazama is awesome.  Organized, efficient, professional, safe and fun.  If you got some extra coin check em out.

I wish i was rich.  Maybe next year…

Check out the full photo Gallery.

Check out some Vholdr clips (volume is loud).

Here’s the KML of the map above.  Check it out in Google Earth–pretty rad 3D stuff.

Find out more about North Cascade Heli on their website:  http://www.heli-ski.com/

Here’s a Vholdr shot (might turn volume down before pressing play):

ps – Holy Oly this Saturday.

When all was said and done, i had like 150 new emails piped from my Gmail account to my iPhone.

They ended up all coming from YouTube. WTF? I just assumed i got some weird spam bull shiz. Which is partly true.

Backup 1 month: I started uploading a few vids to YouTube to take the traffic/bandwidth dent off my site and figuring it’d drive some new traffic here.

One of the videos i put up was of Harstad riding the dude-tube at Ski Acres aka Central a few weekends ago. The clip was using the Vholdr camera that attaches to your goggle strap. These things are fukkin sic but that’s another story.

Anyways…i was getting all these comments on this vid that i posted on YouTube. I had my account set to email me each time someone posted a comment.

I found out later that the reason i was getting all these emails (an account setting i quickly turned off) was because the video was featured on the front page of youtube.com. Holy shit! The video had maybe 40 views last week, now it’s up to 200,000 and climbing. Last i checked it’s still on the front page. As a result i’ve seen the traffic on nwBro spike mega too.

Here’s the video. Some of the comments are soo damn funny.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But here’s the best part. The video below is a ‘video response’ to me posting this video. This guy took the time to film himself clowning this video. So rad… Makes me want to get a bunch of piercings and spike my hair too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Most of the 12 doods were on Splitboards and a few on snowshoes. Splitboards vs. snowshoes is

a whole other topic but basically they both have pros and cons. Basically you can jump into shoes and just start charging and splitboards DEFINITELY have a learning curve. But, after figuring splitboards out a bit you can see how much potential they have. Especially after witnessing the Leeward doods floating around on them. Seeing how I’ve never been splitboarding before (skied twice in my life), rocking a 50lb+ pack, not including all the gear you’re wearing and dragging on your feet, being a total desk jockey warrior of the weekend, and a Sea level city boy, I’m seriously surprised I even made it. It all equaled to one of the most grueling and one of the raddest things I’ve ever done. I think that went for most everyone. Many things can make or break your trip but this is what I learned on this one besides how out of shape I am:

• Get the best sleeping bag you can find or afford! Highly recommend the REI Kilo Expedition -20 bag. Make sure you get one with a little extra room for your boot liners, tele skins, water bottle and whatever else you don’t want to freeze over night (Nate can vouch how lame it is trying to squeeze into a pair of frozen boots in the early AM – http://snowboardermag.com/videos/flash/trick-tip-frozen-boots/ ).

• Also bring ductape for blisters and whatever else needs MacGyvering (i miss that show). I got giant blisters on both of my Sea level city boy baby feet so make sure and kick that forward lean aaaaalll the way back when in tele mode (which was partly why i got the blisters).

• Muscle relaxers/anti inflammatory meds especially if your old and broken like me.

• Get a good water bottle because they also double as a heater. Throw that thing in your bag full of boiling water a half hour before you pass out and your bag is all nice and toasty. That thing will stay hot most of the night. Nalgene seems to be the best (the clear ones emit the least amount of chemicals when boiling water is poured into them). A few folks on the trip had leaky water bottles (REI brand) which would slowly turn their sleeping bag into a waterbed.

• Last but not least DOWN BOOTIES!!! Holy crap, I never even heard of these things before this trip. They are effing amazing! Some puffy ass slippers with down feathers in them was pretty much everyone’s favorite part of the day after slogging around in snowboard boots all day. Besides of course slashing some pow but even that could of been arguable at the time.

I brought a handful of VholdR cameras to throw on the shredders. Everyone seemed super hyped on them…how could they not, sweetest little 4.5oz all encompassing, no wires, no tapes, TV quality, POV, hands free camera out there. Of course i can’t show you the VholdR goods from the trip cuz Leeward will be interlacing it into their footage. Check’em out at www.vholdr.com.

Because there had been a few weeks since the last snow fall, we were all blown away by the perfect conditions on anything remotely North facing. Of course seeing how it’s the Sierras, the mountains just get blasted by huge amounts of sun, which is awesome, but can sometimes lead to warming up to cooling down which leads to firmness. But when your in the 5 digits for elevation it stays cool enough to where it’s pretty much good no matter when you go in the dead of winter. The trip was actually split into 2, 3 day legs. There was a third leg planned but most everyone was so beat they could barely walk by the end of the second leg. One person was so worked his legs started to wobble uncontrollably as he was hiking and his head got so hazy he almost passed out. The first leg was in the Tahoe area, the second in Bishop area and the third “day trip” was suppose to be on some crazy high peak (as if we weren’t high enough), on a mountain that supposedly is home to the longest vertical run doable in North America!???…Someday maybe.

Notable high-lights:

• The whole group, minus one camera person, dropping into a steep huge fluffy pow field with giant packs on all at the same time (as seen in the trailer).

• Ben Lynch’s sweet arching back swanys (as seen in the trailer).

• Forrest pretty much sticking everything he tried first attempt (as seen in the trailer).

• Nate Farrel’s GIGANTO monkey flip thingy into the sketchiest landing ever.

• Markku Koski’s front sevens and one footed airs.

• Eric Leines AKA the “Mule”, Ben, and Forrest rock climbing this peak like some man vs. nature shit completely exposed and then billy goat’in to get into some Jeremy Jones (who was suppose to be there) type of lines.

• Of course I can’t leave out Forrest and Ben’s drop in on a huge wooden dam…That’s right, a friggin wooden dam in the middle of nowhere while EdMANds scales down the dam roped up to get a shot (as seen in the trailer)!?!?

With a eco conscious perspective, unique idea, 3 talented Filmer’s using the latest and greatest equipment, at least 2 to 3 of those cameras on a rider at a time, a few VholdR cameras attached to their heads, some of the most talented and creative doods out there throwing them selves off stuff, sweet conditions, high Sierra terrain, a huge man made obstacle, camping in the snow, “My Own Two Feet” from Leeward is guaranteed to be entertaining.

Here are some links from Snowboarder Mag about the trip…Way more entertaining than my banter. Look for the feature story in Volume 21 of Snowboarder.
http://snowboardermag.com/videos/flash/trick-tip-frozen-boots/
http://snowboardermag.com/freeze-frame/leeward-cinemas-gallery-1/
http://snowboardermag.com/freeze-frame/leeward-gallery-2/

THANKS Leeward for letting such a rookie like me tag along.