Matthew Botos

At least according to CDC research:

More people are hurt snowboarding than any other outdoor activity, accounting for a quarter of emergency room visits, according to the first national study to estimate recreational injuries. Nearly 26 percent of the injures were from snowboarding followed by sledding (11 percent); hiking (6 percent); mountain biking, personal watercraft, water skiing or tubing (4 percent); fishing (3 percent) and swimming (2 percent).

I’ve taken plenty of lumps biking and boarding, but the worst I’ve racked up was a few stitches on the bike. As for broken bones, my only fracture was a collarbone in a game of flag football

I’ve been riding the same set of K2 Clicker snowboard bindings for 10 years, so was definitely time for a replacement. For one thing, Clickers and most other step-in bindings aren’t even being made anymore;  people found they didn’t provide good transfer on control to the board. I didn’t have a problem with that so much as having them jam with snow & ice and the stiffer boots, which finally outweighed the click-in convenience.

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Whistler felt like the first big trip I did as a more serious photographer, and I really enjoyed it that respect. Lugging a ton of gear, standing outside in the morning cold, and being perched on the finish line of a race course all added focus to both the trip and my photography.

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It was one of those cold, lonely lift rides in Whistler after losing my buddies in a whiteout that I got to thinking about why I snowboard in the first place. Some people have a strong passion or talent for the art of snowboarding itself, and I certainly do get a thrill when I can iron out my troublesome toe-side turns and carve a nice line and a maybe a bit of powder.

What I really like, though, are all the secondary benefits snowboarding brings. Spending time outside when everyone else is huddled inside, traveling to unique places like Telluride, Aspen, Whistler, and Alaska, and finding stories and photo opportunities I never would otherwise. Of course, I’ve met some great people, too - through the King of Prussia Ski Club and through a lot of random lift rides.

I guess that’s the great thing about snowboarding and other sports - that people can come to them for a variety of reasons, and all leave happy at the end of the day.

I’m always looking for new ways to share my photos and with my Whistler photos I was inspired to put together a bound photo book. It’s a beautiful 20-page, 8.5 x 11 full-color photo book in hardcover or softcover featuring a selection of photos on and off the mountain. Two sample pages are shown to the right; click to see a preview of the entire book. If you’d like one, you can order via PayPal on the Whistler page or below:

Hardcover	$34.99
Softcover	$24.99

The Wall Street Journal had a fun article on a snowboard school in Crested Butte, Colorado where students mix snowboarding and Plato. Not only does school get canceled for powder days, but at any time a quarter of the students are nursing injuries from trying to attain the philosophically impossible perfect 720.

This year’s big western trip with the King of Prussia Ski Club was to Aspen, Colorado. Best known as a playground for the rich and famous, this old silver mining town also boasts plenty of challenging skiing and riding at four mountains. You can read all about the trip in my Aspen blog entries.

View the Aspen photos

For my last day of snowboarding in Aspen, I headed to the one remaining mountain, Buttermilk. While generally viewed as the least challenging, it does feature some glades and a large terrain park. It’s also the host of the winter X-Games, which just wrapped up the week before our arrival. The superpipe and jumps are big enough you can see them from the highway, and proved to be quite impressive up close.

Margaret, one of the other boarders on the trip, and I took a few runs in the mini-halfpipe. It stands a modest 6 feet tall in comparison to the 20-foot tall superpipe. The amount of effort it requires just to get to the lip of the little guy really makes you appreciate what it takes for people to get 8 feet above the lip of its big brother.

We did get to see some of the pros in action; the Aspen Open was in progress with both halfpipe and slopestyle competitions to watch. The final big jump of the slopstyle was big enough to have a pickup truck parked behind the kicker with plenty of room to spare.

I contented myself with the smaller features in the terrain park, hitting a few jumps and finally getting up on a short box. For inspiration, though, I snapped a few pictures of others hitting the bigger elements.

As a snowboarder, I’m often frustrated by facilities that cater to skiers, but have been pleasantly surprised with how accommodating Aspen is of snowboarders. All the buses and gondolas have outside snowboard racks, and since it’s Aspen, someone even loads your board for you half the time. It’s a far cry from the past, when snowboarders weren’t even allowed on Ajax.

One thing I always love about being out west in remote areas far from big cities and their light pollution is how many more stars you can see on a clear night. I’ve stopped a couple of times walking home from dinner just to stare up and marvel at their number.

You can window shop for all kinds of things in Aspen: frou-frou food, equally over the top fashions, and multi-million dollar condos. Much of it reflects the money concentrated in this town, and one condo model hilariously so. The two cars parked in the driveway were a Porsche and a Mercedes, and the couple standing out front appeared to be an older man with a much younger trophy wive.

Aspen is actually four separate areas: Ajax (Aspen Mountain), Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk, and Snowmass. Ajax is the one that actually comes right to the edge of town; The Gant condos where we’re staying are close enough that you can hear the snowcats at night while walking through the parking lot. (The mountain is so high and close, that on our first cloudy night here, I mistook the snowcats for the moon.) Today we finally rode the gondola up to have a crack at it.

The gondola ride alone was worth it; they have new cabins this year with floor-to-ceiling windows that afford a great view of the town as you ascend and the upper expanse of the mountain as you clear the first pitch. At the top, the views continue with a panorama of high peaks and the Highland Bowl at Aspen Highlands. We also met Ajax the Rescue Dog, who is constantly training by finding and fetching his tennis ball.

The runs were a mixed bag: some nice snow and heavily powdered glades countered by scratchy, wind-swept slopes. We found other cultural experiences, though. Our de facto leader, Al, led us on a trail-and-error search for a “shrine” he remembered from past visit. In the trees, we finally found it, a collection of pictures and artifacts honoring Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Fast Eddie also discovered a bell, which he surmised is how you call the pot dealer high on the mountain…

After slogging through heavy powder on the requisite double-diamond tree run, I was exhausted. The rest of the gang was ready to move on to Snowmass and I was happy to rest on the bus for a bit. They finished a quicker lunch than I made of leftover pizza from the night before, so I was left with the dilemma of what to do with my remaining 3/4 cup of hot spiced apple cider. Taking a queue from Out Cold, I strapped on my board and rode with it in my hand down to the lift. Didn’t spill a drop!

Two more runs through the Powerline Glades and Garrett Gulch made it a day for me. That left some time to check out the shops at Snowmass, which had the exact same shirts as in Aspen, just printed with a different location. (The same trend can also be extrapolated to other resorts.)