Cody Townsend

Vote for Elyse!

cara — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:05:52 +0000

So the FWT is holding a fan participatory voting system for the FWT’s Line of the Year award. The winners win a Nissan car so the voting is quite important to us broke ass athletes.

Elyse, who won the second stop of the FWT in Squaw laid down one of the most solid lines I’ve ever seen a woman ski. She took down a ‘guys’ line and managed to punch bigger and stomp harder than the other ‘men’ that took the same line. She easily would have been in the Top 10 for the men if she had a pair. So click on this LINK and go vote a 10 for Elyse. That line definitely deserves a car.

Here’s the vid, but make sure to go to the FWT link above to vote. Cheers!

Jackson Hole

cara — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:41:02 +0000

I admit that it was tough. I left Squaw in a pounding blizzard with an ultimate destination of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Which as most people know has been suffering in the ‘good-snow’ department this year. Avalanches, high winds and conservative snowfall has put Jackson in a hole (pun intended) this year. With a forecasted blue-bird pow day in Utah I decided to make a pit stop hit before heading to JH. So I drove the 8 eight hours to Utah, met up with my honey for a Valentine’s Day dinner and then promptly woke up at 4 a.m. for a Mt. Superior mission. After a cold but spine filled morning session I trucked up to JH with expectations for high and dry conditions. My spirits were still high but an extreme case of Jet-Lag coupled with early morning missions created the single scariest drive I’ve ever had. (And that’s saying something considering I’ve driven solo to Alaska twice know) Liberal amounts of coffee and Red Bulls did nothing to abstain from the dreaded “bobbing-for-apples” head droop syndrome and extreme fatigue. But somehow I managed to roll into JH in one piece at around 1 a.m.

The next day was met with blue skies and wind-fucked snow, but a forecasted storm decided to upgrade itself within a matter of hours and promptly spewed a few feet of snow. Suddenly the near death moments behind the wheel were worth it as Todd Ligare, Schroder Baker and I pitted ourselves in trench-town madness. Overhead blower was ingested and smiles were iced by a plethora of face-shots.

Big Mountain Pro 09

cara — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:53:39 +0000

Departure: Reno, NV. Destination: St. Anton, Austria for the 2009 edition of the Swatch/O’neill Big Mountain Pro.

So any Day Ø usually involves a fair bit of travel. With that travel usually comes TSA water-bottle hassles, sore knees from airplane seats designed for 10 year-old midgets and the dreaded lethargy of jet-lag.

On this edition of Day Ø, I flew into Munich, Germany to catch a ride to St. Anton. With I few hours to kill I decided to head off to the European version of SIA; ISPO.

And zen it was off to ze mountains through ze tunnels!

ZE WARP SPEED!!!

NIEN! Ze Warp Speed is not allowed in ze mozer-land of Osteriech!

And then we arrived..

Public Apology for the FWQ in Squaw

cara — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:35:21 +0000

So after successfully convincing Squaw Valley to hold the first ever contest on the legendary Tram Face, I and a few others thought it would be an absolute necessity to hold a Golden Ticket qualifier to the Tram Face main event. I thought the qualifier would be an amazing chance for the local ski community to ski a face they’ve been looking at for years but have never been legally allowed to ski. Without the qualifier I felt like it would be a slap in the face to the local skiers as they watched a bunch of world class skiers from non-Squaw locations be allowed to ski the face sans themselves. So that being said, I put a lot of heart, miles on my truck and time on the phone and computer to get this qualifier to happen (I’ll add that I have not and will not be paid a single penny in my coordination efforts of this qualifier. My efforts were solely based on the desire to give local skiers a chance to ski Tram Face). Well unfortunately to circumstances I cannot explain, the qualifier has been canceled. So to the skiers of Squaw, the ski community of Tahoe and the skiers around the world that wanted a chance to ski Tram Face, I am sorry. I did all that I could. Next year we’re gonna make it happen. And this year, the main event will be a show no one should miss.

Cheers.

Elyse in Russia

cara — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:32:04 +0000

Cody here posting up for Elyse cause she’s lost in the snowy wilds of Russia right now. From her reports the snow was tits deep all over the place and the shredding was insane. From my previous trip to Russia I know that Krasnaya Polyana with a meter of fresh is seriously one of the best ski areas on the planet. So with those two factoids combined, I know that Elyse is having the time of her life.
As far as the FWT contest went her placing wasn’t the greatest, but holy hell did she step it up for all the women out there. On the second contest day she sent a cliff that only one other guy attempted and led guys like Xavier de la Rue and Steve Klassen to claim that that was the biggest air they’ve ever seen a girl do. I saw a pic and let me tell it definitely was up there in the all time category. So even though the placing might not reflect it, Elyse definitely stepped it up for the ladies out there and I definitely can wait to see her accolades the rest of the year since it’s on January and that was one of the first hucks of the season for her. Way to kill it Elyse!

AK Day 2 - We’re Skiing

cara — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:41:38 +0000

So my first day of the season couldn’t have started off better. I graduated from college on Thursday and by Saturday I was skiing glorious powder under blue-bird skies in Alaska. That my friends, is what dreams are made of.

Since Day 1 on skis was looking so glorious, Elyse, Nico from the Levitation Project, Adam Clark (photographer extraordinaire), a couple Levitation Project Snowboarders and I decided to head up to Turnagain pass to get into the low horizon sun reaching only the highest peaks in Alaska. Since we were with snowboarders (and cause we didn’t bring skins) we opted to climb the 3000 vertical feet the old fashioned way. On our feet. It’s good for the soul really.