MOUNTAIN KHAKIS - Built For The Mountain Life Blog

Paddling adventures are great Birthday presents!

MK Ambassador, Lauren Burress, shares her 13th Birthday adventures.

 

13 years old FINALLY! I have recently had a birthday, the birthday of all birthdays to be exact. Yes I am officially a teenager. My parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday I said I want to go paddling! There’s not much water here in Glenwood Springs Colorado, so I was shipped off to the Jacksons (my kayak sponsor) to paddle for 2 weeks. 

The night I arrived it was late so no paddling. But the next morning I was ready to go do some kayaking! The hole was sweet, good for loops and McNastys!

The next day we got packed up for the 9 hour drive to Raleigh North Carolina, there is a huge festival/pool session type deal, called Rollapoolooza, where all the kayak companies come and do clinics. I went the year before and it was really fun. This year they held it at the same place and I think there were a lot more beginners there, which is great! I even saw a few smaller kids bomb-proofing their roll!

The next morning we had breakfast at Cracker Barrel and I hiked with Emily and Trevor, the photographer, to Gorilla. We got some sick shots and headed back to get on the road.

We all woke up late the next morning but got geared up for kayaking at Rock Island. It was a little different than before we left but still fun! I think it was 2 or 3 days later when we went paddling again; we got down to the water paddled for maybe 10 minutes and they shut the water off!  We were all really bummed!  We waited for about 20 minutes hoping they would turn it back on but they didn't, so we were carried up and loaded the boats. Sure enough we heard the sirens going off as we pull away.

 

My trip was really fun and just what I wanted!  I had an awesome birthday, and am stoked to be a teenager! :)

Thanks for sharing and happy belated birthday from your MK team!

AJ Linnell's recent NOLS trip into the Teton Backcountry

MK's Ambassador, AJ Linnell, describes his recent trip into the Wyoming Backcountry.  Thanks AJ, what a great Trip!

     

     I just spent 10 days in the Tetons teaching an instructor training seminar for NOLS, doing some really amazing riding while training a new generation of backcountry snowboarding instructors.  With all the time we spent skinning and riding, my trainees were pretty impressed at the performance of my Wagner approach skis, and how easy my transitions were compared to their splitboards.  50cm of new snow graced us over the first few days, and after seeing the start to our season's snowpack it was really nice to see stability improve around here, opening up the big lines that were too dangerous before.  On our last tour day I went down the far north ridge of Treasure Mountain with five of our riders to explore an avalanche path up there.

We made our way along the heavily corniced ridgeline under overcast skies, cutting one HUGE cornice to test the slope below--no reaction under hundreds of pounds of impact made us feel pretty good about the situation.  Test pits near the starting zone of our intended path confirmed good stability, so we punched the gut in fast powder, riding one-at-a-time from safe zone to safe zone.  (Practicing good down-guiding technique.)  Big rooster tails ripping through little trees in steep terrain had everybody grinning and whooping, and the turns just kept coming.  We finally reached the bench at the "bottom" of our run when I realized that we were standing at the top of a shot that I had been eyeing for a couple of years from the skateski track below.  It was pure luck that we ended up right on top of it, with perfect conditions and a group of strong riders.  Awesome.

The Boy Scout Couloir is so named because it is the only clean line through the 400' limestone cliff above the Treasure Mountain boy scout camp.  Steep, narrow, and perfectly plumb, the couloir is a deep and beautiful cleft through towering rock walls.  Ultimately, the reason that I hadn't ridden it before was because of the long access and the difficulty of finding it from above.  But with us camped on the summit of Treasure Mountain, we were perfectly set up for a descent and didn't even know it.  It would mean a long skin back to camp, but what better way to wrap up this trip?

After describing the couloir to my tour group they jumped at the chance to ride it, so I took over the down-guiding and we rode up to the lip to scout the entrance.  We found a little sneak above some rocks to access a dozen 50-degree turns into the meat of the couloir--beautiful.  Once everybody was grouped up inside the couloir, I rode firm, fun powder to a good spotting zone just above the rock portal at the exit and gave the team the thumbs-up to ride it out one-at-a-time.  They made fast, controlled turns, leaving cold crystal rooster tails, opening it up once they hit the fan at the exit.  Once they were safely through and into the forest below, I aired off my perch and rode out to join them.  Big smiles, lots of high-fives and general giddyness ensued.

We rode down through a bit more forested terrain to the bottom of the canyon and transitioned for the skin back up.  After 8 days of winter camping, everybody was a bit fatigued and really hungry, but super stoked to finish the trip with a line like that.  The 5-hour skin back up (splitboard skins can be a nightmare) took a circuitous route up Eddington Canyon and past the Eddington Chutes.  (We had ridden those a couple of days earlier.)  We watched the sun set over the Big Holes just as we climbed a bootpack through the rock band at the top of the Treasure Mountain massif, the sky turning lava red.  Dusk fell into dark as we rolled back into camp, spent but happy, ready for a huge dinner feed and looking forward to going home to family and friends. 

Skinning out of the mountains with our camp in the sled behind me, I became acutely aware of the caliber of the backcountry snowboarding program that we've created at NOLS.  If you're a snowboarder and you want to take your riding to the next level in the backcountry, I would definitely consider taking a course--you'd be amazed at the experience.

 

Dealer of the MONTH - Down Wind Sports, MI

Thanks to Bill Thompson of Down Wind Sports for sending us some pictures from the recent Michigan Ice Fest. Recent cold temperatures across the East have made for some great ice climbing conditions from North Carolina on up. Happy climbing!  Check out their website:

http://www.downwindsports.com/

How do you MK? - Jeff Wagner

Jeff Wagner, an aquatic biologist, showing his carp on the fly!

 

Jeff is wearing the Orignal Mountain Pant!

Coming Back from a Great Trip In Europe

Lorin Paley, MK Ambassador, recently just got back from Europe for the first time.  Lorin is a Telemark and Alpine ski racer that resides in Steamboat Co.  Lorin will be apart of the US Telemark Nationals at the end of this month.  Good Luck Lorin, MK is behind you all the way!

 

    Lorin here with the update from the air over Washington, DC. What an exiting trip for my first time in Europe! We ran through the airport on a tight connection in Washington to start it off, and it seemed to stay at that pace all the way through. We arrived in Slovenia in possibly the biggest car there (a Mercedes Sprinter) to a foot of fresh cement (they called it snow). We must have jinxed ourselves in the car checkout by telling the car company, “We don’t need chains!” We pushed our white rocket out of a parking lot in front of race headquarters before even our first Slovenian meal to start a seemingly endless trend. We knocked out a rear reflector on the third day on Bohinj’s super skinny roads. The next time walkers and bikers ask for a road widening I will just have to pull out the photo of one of our many attempts at turning around. The snow that we arrived to in Slovenia (they are having their best snow year in Bohinj in ten years) turned to rain by the second training day. For every race day in Slovenia, it remained foggy and thick at the elevation of the race hill and clear at the top (an astonishing view!). That sort of weather made for some interesting attempts at photography by my parents.

            The racing in Slovenia was a huge learning experience. The first day I mustered a great first run in the sprint putting me in fourth, but fell in the rappalucha right before the skate on the second run. I had a great skate in the second, so I only fell back into sixth. A fun day nonetheless, and I even had the chance to go onto the podium stage and get some cool sunglasses for my placing. The next day was tough. It rained all day, and since I was still adjusting, I was a little queasy on the first run. I stuck that one out, felt better after some time chilling in the lodge and got ready for my second run. When I landed the jump, I felt my binding give way and I looked down just in time to see my ski flying towards the fence at warp speed. It hit squarely and my ski broke unrepairably. Luckily one of the Austrian racers had a pair of her old skis that she sold to me on the spot. Talk about a silver lining!

            After the “warm up race” we headed down to Austria in the sun, and we made a few stops along the way to world championships. World Championships were even more exiting than Bohinj. The terrain and the weather made for some extreme conditions the first day. It didn’t stop raining actually until right after we trekked through main street for the opening ceremony! The second day still had left over interesting snow from the rain, but the rain had ceased. The classic went extremely well for me in the Junior category with my first gold medal!! The next day, our day off of course, was perfectly sunny. We free skied all morning and took tons of pictures of the surrounding Alps. The sunny Alps are a sight to behold! After resting our lungs from the classic’s strenuous skate, we raced in the sprint. It was another successful day with another Junior #1. It is really one of the greatest things to hear your national anthem while standing atop the podium!

            Even if I wrote a hundred pages to this email I wouldn’t even begin to scratch the surface of all the experiences I had!  Now I am getting ready for the US Telemark Nationals that will be held at the end of the month in Steamboat. 

MK = Urban Living Too!

MK Ambassador, Andy Chasteen, shows us the MK's are great for the Urban Lifestyle as well.  Andy is an adventure photographer residing in the plains fo Central Oklahoma.  Although a flatlander from birth, his heart lies in the mountains.

 

Andy is wearing the Original Mountain Pants.

MK epitomizes countless lifestyles in our world of outdoor adventure.  The versatility, quality and comfort lend the pant to many different genres for us all.  Climbing.  Trekking.  Skiing.  Fishing.  Ranching.  Lounging.  

My heart lies in the mountains, however my physical address resides in the highrise life of urban concrete.  My city adventure is daily, and always on the back of my two wheeled machine.  For me pedaling is a way of life, a lifestyle.  Quite sometime ago I, by chance, came across the functionality of a good pair of MK's on the bike.  Durable, warm and roomy, my original mountain pants routinely find themselves riding the saddle of my fixie through the busy streets of my metro jungle.  I think it's safe to go ahead and add Biking to the aforementioned list.  Built for the urban life too?

Adventure is where you find it.  So go find it...       

www.andrewchasteen.com photography || 405.706.3654  
     222 east main street unit a || oklahoma city || oklahoma || 73104
           andrew@andrewchasteen.com || www.andrewchasteen.blogspot.com