Recently in Red Bull Skiing Category

A couple weeks ago, I had the chance to visit Armada Skis World Headquarters in Southern California. It's definitely not the shiny and sterile mega-complex that a couple of Armada's larger competitors have, but who really cares. For the last six years Armada has been pumping out better and better skis, and now they are adding some sweet outerwear to their already stellar hardgood lineup. We got the tour (check out the gallery here) and sat down for a few minutes with Armada Marketing Guru, Jeff Russel...

Jeff, we're in the meat of the summer right now. What's going on here at Armada?

This time of year is all prep for next season, and the season after.

Right. Summer's not really an off-season for you, is it?

The first couple years, in the beginning, it died at the end of April for most of us here. The phones just stopped ringing when the ski resorts closed. We get some orders from buyers, put them in the system, then just try and figure out some other stuff to do the rest of the day. It was so slow. That's when we all took vacations. Every year would get busier and busier, to the point where now a lot of us are as busy as we are in the middle of the winter, just without all the travel. A lot of prep goes in now like organizing shipments and finalizing production, not only on skis, but softgoods and all the rest of the categories we produce. We have to get them into our various warehouses to ship and get documents ready to ship to various dealers.

For product development we're working a season or two ahead, while simultaneously working on shipping the current season's product. 

Meet Dano Bruno. This past January, on the morning of the X Games 13 Superpipe Finals, we walked into the zen zone that is the garage of the Armada house in Aspen. The smell of wax and methodic buzz of an expensive cordless drill permiated the senses. Enough Armada skis lined the wall, in various phases of mounting and tuning, to thorougly stock a retail shop for an entire winter...and it was all next year's shiz.

I talked with Dano while he moved through the preparations on Tanner Hall's Armada Pipe Cleaners for the evening's event and got the story on Dano, Tanner's Skis, and perhaps why the Pipe Cleaner is the winningest ski in X Games Superpipe history...

It's strange how Powder Magazine has affected my life. I remember the exact room within Sennett Middle School in Madison, WI where I saw my first issue. The Photo Annual with Doug Coombs and Scot Schmidt dropping a cornice on the cover. It must've been like 1992. I still have it, and every Powder that has come out since. The decision came quick back then: this is what I would do. I would write for Powder one day.

The path I followed through life pretty much revolved around this one goal: writing for my high school newspaper to majoring in Journalism in college. Maybe for a second I would lie to myself, and my advisors, about what I really wanted to do. The raised eyebrow was an inevitable result to the statement "I want to write for a ski magazine," so I'm sure I fudged it a bit and just said "writer" to career questions. I can't say I love writing in and of itself; but I love where it takes me and the situations it puts me in.

December has been a particularly sobering month this season all across North America. Snowpacks from Colorado and Utah north into interior B.C. are highly unstable and have wreaked havoc on resorts like Jackson Hole, and on the lives of the friends and families of at least 16 victims. The fact that three of the deaths occurred in-bounds at resorts underscores the severity of the danger in the Western snowpack at present and is a reminder that skiing powder at a resort, while still statistically extremely safe, doesn't automatically free you from the dangers associated with deep snow.

I came across a truly marvelous account of an avalanche that affected a group the day after Christmas in the Utah backcountry. The author, Tom Diegel, goes into great detail about all the aspects surrounding the burial and extraction of a member of his backcountry party. Keep in mind the skiers involved were not searching out or skiing the gnarly steeps and cliffs we see so many professional athletes riding in movies and magazines. They were after a mellow run through the trees on some seemingly safe and gentle terrain. Reading through Tom's account and then watching the associated video where they revisit the site with Utah avalanche specialist Bruce Tremper offers a rare oppurtunity to really get an idea of what can happen out there.

Read this, watch the video, and think about what you know about avalanche safety, rescue, and travel in dangerous terrain. Remember, people have died falling into tree wells often skied terrain in-bounds at resorts. Lastly, don't hesitate to take action: ask questions, take a class, get a training partner, practice, set yourself up with the necessary safety tools (shovel, probe, and beacon), and learn to use them. Thanks to Tom Diegel for his account and honest evaluation of his choices. Thanks to Bruce Tremper for the video (at the end of this post).

Have fun and be safe out there. 

A couple weeks ago we caught up with Sean Pettit on the phone while he was sitting in a computer lab at his high school. We talked about his blow up segments in this year's crop of movies, being a teenage ski star, and fighting with his brother Callum.

Sean, how did last year go for you?

I'd say last year was definitely the best year I've had so far. It was crazy and action packed. It's hard to even put it in words: getting to jump in a heli and whatnot. It was unreal for me.
 

Tanner Hall landed at LAX from IF3 in Montreal a few days ago for the next leg of his premiere tour which would the showing at Red Bull North America Headquarters in Santa Monica on Thursday night. But first, T took a day to check on on his two other biggest sponsors, Oakley and Armada, and get some business taken care of while he was in the neighborhood. I rode along.

The day began by getting picked up at the hotel in Santa Monica by a tinted-out Suburban limo. I was chasing in my economy-sized rental and really putting it to the test trying to keep up with the driver on the freeway in LA. Glad it wasn't my car. It's one of those places were after you drive on the highway you feel like you need to lay down and take a nap. It's exhausting in a strange way.

A couple weeks ago we celebrated the end of July by heading up to Mt. Hood to meet up and shred with Red Bull team rider Angeli VanLaanen. We rolled up to the lift at Timberline and got up on the glacier just as the racers were getting out, and cruised around with Angeli as she sessioned Windell's jumps, rails, and pipe. Afterwards, we sat down and talked about her season, injury, the former USSR, and being a Red Bull rider. 

What are you doing up at Hood?

I had an ankle injury this season that I was taking some time off to let heal, and I got the A-OK after the Fourth of July to come ride. So I started biking and doing some mellow stuff and then came up here to see how I felt on my skis.

And how's is it?

It's going good. I'm going every other day to be nice to my ankle, but overall it's feels pretty solid.

What have you been working on  up here on snow?

Definitely just getting my ski legs back. Just jumping, doing basic stuff.

In the fall of 2007 I was searching for a project to challenge myself and my desires to ski bigger and more challenging mountains. After completing my "Ski the 14ers" project and then going on to ski the Grand Teton, Mt. Rainier, and many lines on Denali in the spring of 07, I naturally turned my attention to the Alps. When thinking about the birthplace of skiing and alpinism, I immediately came up with four objectives that I thought would challenge my skiing and organizational skills, while at the same time being very interesting an inspiring to the general public when presented in film and photo form. The Matterhorn, Eiger, Mt. Blanc, and the Monte Rosa, the most iconic mountains in the Alps, served as the platform to take my ski mountaineering experience to the cradle of ski mountaineering in the spring of 08. 

With my old friend and skiing partner Stian Hagen, of Oslo, Norway, but living in Chamonix, I planned the project. Photographer and partner Christian Pondella signed on to join us on the climbs and ski descents. Writer and friend Jack Shaw would document the trip for Powder Magazine and several European Magazines. Photographer Peter Mathis would shoot the project for German Magazine Stern as well as Kastle skis and others, and Matchstick Productions, whom I have worked with for over a decade, would produce a film segment for their new movie, "Claim" as well as a television show about the project.