Speaking of kickass Norwegian Skiers…
This last weekend I worked the third annual Snowcial conference in South Lake Tahoe @ Harveys Lake Tahoe Casino and Heavenly Mountain Resort for the company I work for, One to One. Most of you don’t give a shit that it’s a social media, marketing and design conference for people who love snow sports, but what you do care about is that I won a skiing contest!
Vail Resorts, which owns our very own Heavenly Mountain Resort, launched a ski run tracking service along with their season passes this year called EpicMix. To me, the key features are that it tracks your vertical feet skied and your ski days, and other basic data about your season at a Vail Resort. It also awards you various and sundry “pins” for skiing certain lifts at certain times and in certain orders. I have to admit, that doesn’t interest me. But I can see how Bowie and the other mini bacon strippers would think it’s cool at some point.
In the weeks before the conference I found out that a couple of marketing guys from Skistar, a chain of ski resorts in Norway, were coming. And one of them is named Sondre! He told me he was named for Sondre Norheim, the father of modern skis and skiing and the subject of Sprincter Boy’s post here. One of the events we have @ Snowcial has been a scavenger hunt, so this year we used EpicMix to facilitate a contest, and a challenge to get attendees to discover the mountain. I signed up to ski with Sondre and Kenneth from Skistar and Ryan Cantrell, from Colorado.
I figured they’d be good skiers. I figured they’d be enthusiastic. I was wrong. They are unbelievable skiers, and can barely contain themselves around snow. I’d put money down that they were the best skiers on the mountain. Both had skied from birth and raced through college. Kenneth was even on the Sierra Nevada College ski team back in the day. I kept up, but just barely. And I didn’t even have time to take any photos!
Monday morning, Photo John and i went to tour the Moment ski factory with them, cause oh yeah, WE FUCKING WON THE COMPETITION!!! What was the grand prize? Oh, only a skis from MOMENT FUCKING SKIS! (note: as a snowcial producer i wasn’t able to take a prize) But that’s ok, cause I now have buddies in Norway!
Sondre took home some Moment Night Trains. And commented to me on the irony of his namesake and the fact that he just got skis that have reverse camber and reverse side cut…
wolfy's epic mix dashboard
In addition to taking the team win, I took overall win as well. But again, as a conference producer, not elligable… That went to Eric Wagnon, the Skiing Examiner.
Sunday I skied with Photo John, who you may remember from such TBS posts as Pack Whore, and Tahoe Jenn and her better half Nills. I got a good photo, John got several. That’s me in his gallery towards the middle. It was death crust almost…
So there you go. You all think I’m a geek, but I skiied with some badass skiers, won a contest and got paid to ski every lift @ Heavenly in a single day. Plus i got to know know some awesome new people, Sondre Amdahl of Skistar Trysil, Kenneth Larsen of Skistar Hemsedal. and Ryan Cantrell of RTP Interactive. Geeks and skiing, skiing and geeks. Eso es Snowcial.
Put that in your shammy and smoke it.
-M
If you want to find out more about Snowcial check here for all the info and links.
So, when you get tired of bashing your nads on the death crust, you can give me the skis. I need some extra-fat ones for all the waist-deep powder out here!
My field site in Wyo has gotten just under NINE FEET in the past 12 days. Holy snorkels, Batman!
Nice pix…Wolfy, you’re lookin’ a little gripped though. I guess I’d be gripped too if my heels were stuck to my skis!