Fall on the Seacoast | October 1, 2013
Finally! What a release.
After a long, flat, ordinary summer and a dismal hurricane season (so far?), we’ve received a welcomed autumn swell. The small Easterly swell direction and funky tide made for wobbly and sometimes walled out conditions in many of our favorite spots. Alternatively, it lit up some not-so-frequented spots along the coast that accept the E swell exclusively. Regardless, I spent most of the morning Tuesday doing the run around bullshit. The ‘is it better over there?’ complex.
I face this conflict all the time when we go skiing. I ski at Bolton enough to know what spots will be poached first and which spots don’t see much traffic. The conflict often arises on powder days, evaluating the risk/reward for going to spot A on first chair vs. spot B or C? The classic maneuver is leaving your super secret stash for later in the day because you’re confident no one’s going to poach it. It’s more practical to ski out the more popular and usually better/steeper/deeper terrain until it’s tracked out.
Short but semi-relative tangent – My brother used to tell me that when he arrived in Bozeman, MT in 2007 and got his first season pass to Bridger, The Ridge terrain was preserved until the afternoon. Skiers wouldn’t hike The Ridge from first chair, primarily because everyone was under the ‘code’ that inbounds terrain was first to get tracked out and when it’s done, then everyone can pillage the ridge. This was well before the Slushman’s backcountry access lift was put in.
You’d think that a new lift put in place to turn previously out of bounds terrain into new resort sidecountry might help to spread skiers out but instead it seemed to just add more chaos, and with the chaos came the cave-in and relinquishment of the ‘code’. It’s difficult to draw a parallel here and I guess there’s really no way to compare the two sports in this manner.
…..BUT if there ever was a similar code in surfing, the last bit of the foundation caved in when the first stand up paddled into a wave.
Crowds aside, most of the time these small one day swell windows make for crunch time decisions on the high tide. My solution is simple, and probably common:
Follow the speed limit and scope every friggin spot in question.
At the least get some recon from a friend. As annoying and unnecessary as it may sound, I can relax knowing I made the best possible decision. Additionally, for as long as I can remember I haven’t had to endure any ‘Oh man, you should have been there’.
I’m sure everyone scored on this last swell. It looked like there were good waves at every spot I passed but for me, in the end it’s about the adventure and maximizing the potential of the day, the lighting, the subject or the equipment and it’s also about producing an image I’m happy and confident showing to other people. Unfortunately for me, these photos just don’t come from simply driving down to Rye and clicking the shutter.
The photographer has the ability to reference the images and prove that the team has made the best decision, in the case that they did make the best decision. Unfortunately Matt and I didn’t win on any images Tuesday, we didn’t even come close – but it’s good to work the rust out, remind the surfer of his weaknesses (just kidding, not his flailing arms) and explore new spots that we’ve never seen break.
DAMNNN it feels good to be shooting at the ocean again.
A little all over the place on today’s blog – it’s been a while since I posted anything and I may be in a state of seasonal confusion.
Mantana | Downdays
We have had some really warm weather these last few days in Southern Montana. Needless to say there hasn’t been much skiing going on, so what are some things to do during these off days:
-Drink beer, the same sport as the East coast with a much more expensive taste.
-Browse ski shops, some seriously awesome gear in a ski town such as Bozeman.
-Boiling river, haven’t been down yet but hopefully this week.
-Fly fishing, I’m more of a saltwater spinning reel fisherman but Casey is really into fly fishing.
Temperatures finally dropped below freezing about an hour ago for the first time in a few days. Bridger is reporting an inch but word is there was at least 4-5″ at last chair. The drunk and delerious weather forecasters are continuing to predict 1-3″ overnight for the next few nights — the same forecast as the last 5 nights with no avail. 
We are located in South Western Montana, at the edge of the purple cloud that is directly off of the pointed angle in North-Western Wyoming.
Casey and Andrew went out for a little fly fishing today and Casey nabbed a 9″ trout, unfortunately the GoPro ran out of batteries for the fish. Back to Bridger tomorrow hopefully, fingers crossed.
Misc. – Coming home on Saturday, it looks like the East Coast mountains are getting bombed again tomorrow. Unfortunately the Nikon camera that I sent in for maintenance was sent back in peices, they couldn’t fix the camera and we’re sh*t out of luck. I’m looking into the D3100 with it’s full HD and continuous auto focus. Stay tuned!
Mantana | January 9, 2011
Well today was day 5 in Bozeman, pretty stoked to have an edit for each day of this vacation. I started off just making two on consecutive days and realized that I was going to be collecting a ton of footy, why not just post one a day? Here is a little screenshot sequence from this afternoon. Each passing day is the best day I’ve ever skied.
It’s getting a little tough finding music, we get our music from the Podsafe Music Network, or music.mevio.com. These site (both the same essentially) are royalty free and make finding music less stressful. I could spend much more time searching through that network than editing footage though. I still have that permanent grin on my face from today, finally we got to see a little bit of sun. The 1″ that Bridger reported overnight was more like 4″ at Slushman’s. Check the posts below for information on the Slushman’s lift. Enjoy the edit, I think it’s our best yet….
Mantana | January 8, 2011
Super bad visibility today at Bridger, they reported 4″ overnight so we headed up. We got up there around 9:30 and the place was practically empty, when we left the parking lot was completely full. There was more like 8″ of snow over at Slushman’s where we spent most of our day. Slushman’s lift is a very unique one, it was bought a few years back from Alta and services a previously backcountry only area. The spot where the lift is was once a secret spot for most of the Bridger locals. At the bottom of the lift there are to hanging beepers to beep in your avalanche transceiver, there aren’t many lifts in the country that use a system like this. Hopefully I’ll have the camera back soon and I can take some photos of the terrain that the Slushman’s lift accesses including the ominous Saddle Peak, a 9,172 foot gargantuan that is hike-able through the Bridger ridge.
Even with the terrible visibility we still got a few good clips, check it out..
Screen shot from Thursday at Moonlight
Moonlight Basin | January 6, 2011
Took a trip out to Big Sky today to check out Moonlight Basin, as we got closer to the resort we noticed there was significantly more snow than the day before at Bridger. Unfortunately it was much more wet and sticky, still skied until 4pm and had a blast. Looks like maybe a backcountry day for tomorrow. 
alpine-live.com 