Snow for the New Year? Yes Please

After patiently waiting for Mother Nature to turn her cold side, it looks like the winter season has finally arrived here in the Green Mountains. And, oh what a relief it is.

Over the holiday week, and following a surprisingly white Christmas, the temps have remained chilly enough for expansive snowmaking at many resorts and low and behold a bit of fresh to find its way to the slopes. Check out this boarder gettin’ some at Killington on Thursday.

Yeeah bro! Photo Courtesy of Killington.

Up at Sugarbush they’ve been droppin’ ropes left and right. We’re talking over 50 new trails open in the last 48 hours. Redonkulous.

Bolton, Stowe, Smuggs and Jay have been feeling the love lately, tallying close to a foot of fresh top to bottom in the last days of 2011.

Sugarbush picked up a foot of flakes this week. Photo Courtesy of Sugarbush.

The images rolling in from the resorts this week are definitely kickin’ up the stoke and more seasonal weather is due as we welcome twenty twelve. Maybe even some lake-effect snow. Keep up the funky snowdances, ancient rituals and all-night Ouija board sessions. They seem to be working.

Snow in the forecast to start off 2012. Image courtesy of The Weather Channel.

There’s a lot on tap in the New Year, so be sure to keep an eye on the Ride Vermont Events page for all the deets.

Enjoy the snow and Happy New Year.

-Ride Vermont

Throwback Thursday – Launch It Like It’s 1999.

Ross Powers launching out of the pipe at Killington, '99. Photo: Jeff Curtes

Vermont is as serious about its snow sports as it is about Maple syrup. That’s why for decades, the Green Mountain State has been crafting Grade A (fancy) snowboarders who have gone on to kick ass and take names on the national and international stage.

Ross Powers wasn’t the first Vermont snowboarder to ride a halfpipe, he was just the first to do so for a Gold Medal. However, Kelly Clark was right there with him in 2002, when both Vermonters made the state, and the country, proud. Before the world got a look, anyone hiking the pipe at Killington on this day got a good look alongside photographer Jeff Curtes. Once a Vermonter, always a Vermonter Powers now heads the Stratton Mountain School’s snowboard program.

Each Thursday we present a photo from the annals of snowboarding history in Vermont.

We’re Live, Now Win Some Goggles

It’s official. Ride Vermont [dot] com is now live on the interwebz. To mark this joyous occasion we are giving away a free pair of Figment goggles from our sponsors at Anon Optics. Now you can look dapper on the slopes and tell your friends you got the hook up from your bros over at the illest Vermont snowboarding site –ridevermont.com duh.

CONTEST FINISHED. Congratulations to our winner Eric Maurer of Manchester, CT. Enjoy those gogs and the envious looks from passersby this season. See you on the slopes.

One winner will be chose at random on Wednesday, 12/28/11. Frame/lens color may vary. Retail value $94.95.

Johnny O’Connor Takes 1st, and $4K, at 2011 Rails 2 Riches at Killington

2011 Rails to Riches, Killington, VermontThere was a time, and it wasn’t too long ago, when the idea of giving raggedy snowboarders several thousand dollars for sliding on rails would have been considered “absoludicrous“.

We’ve evolved as a sport, though. There’s big money in this sliding sideways thing. And Killington now has one of the biggest cash purses available for amateur snowboarders. The event is called “Rails 2 Riches”, and the 2011 version, held on December 10, featured a $20,000 purse. The men’s snowboard winner, Johnny O’Connor, took home 4 G’s alone.

Watch the official Ride Vermont video for highlights of the comp, including some insane air-to-downrail trickery by Johnny himself.

Congrats to all the winners.

2011 Rails 2 Riches results

Skier Men
1st place: John Kutcher, Park City, UT $4,000
2nd place: Dominic Laporte, Quebec, Canada $2,000
3rd place: Keiran McVeigh, Middlesex, VT $1,000

Rider Men
1st place: Johnny O’Connor, Plymouth, NH $4,000
2nd place: Shaun Murphy, Westfield, MA $2,000
3rd place: Mike Ravelson, Plymouth, NH $1,000

Skier Women
1st place: Jackie Kling, Ambler, PA $1,000
2nd place: Julia Krass, Hanover, NH $500
3rd place: Molly Prosser, Quakertown, PA $250

Rider Women
1st place: Mary Rand, Saunderstown, RI $1,000
2nd place: Kassandra Dolan, Truckee, CA $500
3rd place: Laura Rogoski, Salt Lake City, UT $250

Kevin Pearce Back on Board Nearly 2 Years After Accident

Kevin Pearce rides again. Photo by Adam Moran, Transworld Snowboarding.

One day in 1987, a child was born. His name was Kevin Pearce, and he would go on to become one of the world’s fiercest halfpipe competitors.

Kevin grew up in middle Vermont, cutting his teeth in the growing array of superpipes in the Green Mountain State. By 2009, he found himself one of the best halfpipe riders in the world, widely believed to be the only rider who could give Shaun White a meaningful challenge at the 2010 Olympics.

Disaster struck on New Year’s Eve of 2009, though, when Pearce struck his head while training in a halfpipe. He suffered severe head trauma. It was doubtful if Kevin would ever ride a board again.

After nearly two years of intensive rehabilitation and against odds, Kevin Pearce rode a snowboard again this week.

“I used to take this for granted,” said Kevin as he rode a chairlift alongside a terrain park at Breckenridge in Colorado, about to make his first run since the accident. “Now it’s just nice to be up here.”

Surrounded by a small army of boarders, Kevin looked cool and comfortable on his first run back, even throwing a backside 180 and ollying off rollers.

Ride Vermont salutes you, Kevin. Keep riding, no matter what.

~Luke

Photo by Adam Moran, Transworld Snowboarding

Throwback Thursday – Sometime in the Late 70s. Stratton Mountain.

Jake Burton at Stratton, late 70s.

Someday soon, we’ll be telling our grand children about the days when snowboarders were banned from Vermont’s ski slopes. It’ll be our version of the classic “When I was your age, I hiked 20 miles to school, in the snow, uphill!” adage that old timers like to toss around.

“When I was your age, I had to hike up the mountain to snowboard. There was no high speed gondola like that fancy thing they got at Stowe!”

Before resorts allowed snowboards on the lift, anything with an incline had to do. Jake Burton, pictured here at the Stratton Dump in the late 1970s, was known to hike whatever he could find to get turns, especially during the development of the Burton Backhill. Often referred to as the BB1, the board pictured was Burton’s first and manufactured in Londonderry, VT. This photo is one of the earliest Burton shots on record.

Each Thursday we present a photo from the annals of snowboarding history in Vermont.