California Dreaming

Posted on by Matthew Fry

What’s up Earth? This is Matt here live out of Truckee, California. I have spent the winter at Squaw Valley, and I have to say that I have never been better. The terrain here is unbelievable. The park is ridiculously smooth right now. Here are a couple shots of the biggest jump line at Squaw at the moment.

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click on pics to enlarge

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Sick park
photo credit: Sean Crosby

Of course, the park is just a small part of the mountain. Squaw’s off-piste terrain is some of the best I have ever ridden. There are trees, open bowls, little drops, big drops, natural jibs and all sorts of natural features.

Throwing down with an injured rotator cuff.
View across Lake Tahoe.

I leave to go back home to Seattle next week for the multiple competitions in the area, but I will always remember Lake Tahoe as being one of the most beautiful places in the world. We all live one globe, we are one people, we are one love. Remember that and be thankful each and every day you get to go skiing, because you never know when you’ll go.

Here’s an edit to consolidate my time in Tahoe:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Peace and Blessings
Matt Fry

RIP.CRJ

No drama, some trauma

Posted on by mobbsteep

The first weekend of February started with no drama and fighting amongst the crew like normal. We found a couple natural hittable features along downhill and decided that we would just sesh them for the day. After we got comfortable with them we started small and worked our way up. I started out with sending some 360s deep into the trannys, Lloyd and Reidar with some 3s also. And of course Shane had to show us up by throwing down a frontflip and then exploded! Next run Shane stomped a laid out frontflip, Lloyd did another 360. Reidar surprised us all with a 720 to fail, but nonetheless surprising after his 720 to pole in the chin that resulted in an airlift to Harborview Medical Center a few years back. I decided to do a rodeo 5, it felt smooth but i couldn’t ride it away on my Armada Alpha 2s (park skis) in the northwest cement. We were all getting pretty stoked on these fun little natural features on a seemingly “not much to do” day.

The crew decided that we would take another lap and then grab lunch. While on the chair Shane mentioned that I should just do a rodeo 720 so that I could actually ride it out in the heavy snow. One by one we hit the feature, Reidar with another 720, Lloyd stomped a cork 720, and Shane threw a underflip. I told him that I was going to just do a 360, but he called me “pussy” and dropped in. I knew what I had to do… And that was to finally land my first rodeo 7 on skis. As I dropped in there was no hesitation, I popped off the lip and set the rotation. Looking for my landing I noticed that I didn’t have enough air to complete the rotation and bailed. As I hit the ground I felt my teeth crunch against my knee  and I knew right then that my teeth were done-zo! I stood up right away and skied over to where the crew was standing and said “My tooth!”. At this point I didn’t realize that I was bleeding so Reidar told me. I then touched my tongue to my lip that was lacerated and it made me want to puke. Feeling like I was going to pass out I sat down and so many thoughts were racing through my mind. So I had a lacerated upper lip, one tooth lost, one tooth wiggly, one tooth crooked.

Once I got to the bottom of the mountain the Crystal Mountain Ski Patrol patched me up a bit so I could make it to the hospital and my dad had the car waiting. We drove to Tacoma General/Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital where I spent the next 6 hours waiting, getting stitches, waiting more, x rays, waiting more, and then I finally got to head home on some vicodin.

Monday I went to my dentist and he referred me to a orthodontist that will put braces on my upper teeth to realign them.

I’ll keep you guys updated!

One Love,
Patrick

Stevens Pass Comp

Posted on by mobbsteep

What a weekend at Stevens Pass, WA. My sister and I embarked on the journey Thursday night and headed over to Pat’s to pick him up so he could come along and film for us. What kind of trip would it be without his crazy ass. We went to stay the night in Seattle at Reidar’s house. Spent the night getting chauffeured around town in a god damn Chrysler Sebring with the top down and making beats on the synth.

Got an early start the next day. Up at the crack of dawn listening to Raydar’s dad crack some crazy jokes about his special ass oatmeal he was feeding us. Finally on the road with A-hab intact. A couple pee breaks and an insane owl spotting later we were on the hill. Signed in for the comp and went to scope the venue. Met up with Shane and we all picked out our line and were stoked for the following days. Got off the hill and had a crazy night at our hotel kickin it and swimming in the pool.

Qualifying day was kind of a joke… but still a good time. We all just skied around and waited for the fog to roll out. When we couldn’t get a break from the weather they called it and we took a few more runs and headed down the hill. We managed to drag Shane along so he could crash with us in the hotel room which didn’t even have enough beds for everyone as it was…. So Raydar got to sleep on the floor. That night some pretty crazy, shit went down. We started the night out with walking around Leavenworth and ended up walking in a hotel that i remembered had a racquetball court in it. On our way to find the court I’m not sure how we got so lucky, but some random old guy ended up running up to us and was wondering if we had signed up and were looking for all the racket ball gear. So of course we said yes, got all the gear from him and had a crazy racquetball match. Left there, some how not getting in any trouble. Went and got some food and headed back to the hotel. The night ended up with Pat pissing off some built 200+ pound guys from a wedding that was happening at the hotel, by asking if there was an “open bar”. Some how Raydar ended up taking the blame for it and was later brought to the stage in front of the whole entire wedding to apologize. Then was drug into a closet and nearly got his ass beat, some how escaping from the biggest guy choking him out. After he came back outside with 4 huge ass guys right behind him some crazy shit went down. Drunk ass people started yelling an some guy kept trying to take Raydar back into the hall. Luckily pretty much the entire wedding was on our side. So while everyone was bickering and some guy pushed this drunk girl shit got crazy and Mobb Steep dipped out to the hotel room.

The next day the fog still didn’t clear up so they were forced to only run the bottom of the venue. It wasn’t too terrible still some good skiing. My sister ate shit off this cliff I told her to drop…. whoops! She ended up third though. Not bad for her first comp. Shane took 4th. I ended up second and Pat got some good footy of us all and a dope edit. Quite the weekend!

-Lloyd Dahlem (Young Frog)

December 2009

Posted on by Matthew Fry

Wattup world! Long time no see. We’ve got a big update for you all here. Da Hut is now outfitted with a chimney and a real wood stove. Basically a 5-star ski in ski out deal. Take notes, Boyne. As far as skiing goes, Mobb Steep has been shredding some fresh PNW ice and rain out here for the past couple weeks. Mother nature may try to screw us over, but us Washingtonians know a thing or two about rain. Using the soggy snow, we put together a tree jib on Tuesday and had a massive session that day.

The tree jib was pretty successful. We got some pretty sick footage which Patrick will be editing within the next week or two. Some of the shots include taps to spinouts, tree-riding, and a Durtschi-esque flip to branch tap. The rest of the week we shredded about, kicking it old school until some fresh snow fell on Friday. The weather was crazy at times, turning from rain to snow to hail to snow again, and vice versa. I have to say myself that even with the runs turning to slush, I was having a blast on my new skis. Icy groomers are great when you have a solid edge to use, and  a true skier loves being in the mountains no matter the conditions.

I’m going to keep this short, since I have to get ready for my trip out to Lake Tahoe on Thursday. I will be living in Truckee from Jan. 8th – March 15th. If you are around the area, hit me up. I’m always stoked to meet skiers and shred it up!

Stay classy, Earth.

– Matt “Philosofist” Fry

Van Life.

Posted on by mobbsteep

Friday – So this weekend started on Friday December 4th with me loading up Marvin the Red Rocket with all the skiing essentials and some. I then headed to Buckley where I met up with the crew at Lloyd’s house to hit up Scotty Burn’s newly built backyard setup. After a so-so sesh due to all the nagging, poor attitudes and waiting for snowboarders to strap in we ate some delicious clam chowder provided by Susie (Lloyd’s mom, thanks!). The night hadn’t hit it’s low until we arrived at Sterling’s house with lame movies and floor sleeping.

Sesh photos to come…

Saturday – At about 7:20 AM on Saturday morning I start to become restless and can’t sleep any longer. Feeling fresh as an apple, I wake everyone up and tell them it’s time to head to Crystal. About 40 minutes later we arrive at Crystal and take our time getting ready since it hadn’t snowed in more than a week. Shane and Lloyd not being happy with the conditions and hard snow decide that we should go to our hut and hang out. And me not wanting to shred by myself agrees. An hour or so goes by and we go to the base lodge for some grub and stay there the rest of the day messing around. 4:00 PM comes around and we catch the shuttle down to Lot D.

Saturday Night – Now we planned to sleep in my van so Shane, Scotty and I begin to take turns using our mouths to inflate an air mattress which takes 20 minutes. Someone mentions poaching the Silver Skis Inn pool to get some swimming and we venture up there to check it out while blasting the Bose portable speakers, but decide otherwise. I give our homie Kristen a ring-a-ling-ling and we hit up her condo for some shenanigans with her and nicole. This included but was not limited to eating terrible macaroni & cheese, mesmerized by a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition magazine in 3D where it seemed as if you could removed their clothing and much more! Once a certain someone showed up everything became dull and awkward so Shane, Scott and I dipped out to my van and quickly fell asleep.

Sunday – 7:00 AM we got a nice wake up with Sterling pounding on the outside of the van a long with strong gusts of wind and negative temperatures. Scott had to go work the lifts so he left Shane and I. Next you know we have another visitor pounding on our house, what do you know it was Lloyd Dahlem with all his gear! Shane demands that I warm up the house a bit for our newly acquired guest and the van wouldn’t turnover. After many tries it still wouldn’t. Feeling a bit bummed out we head up to the lodge to make our freeze-dried breakfast, beef stroganoff  with noodles! I must say that it was really good. Seeing that it was negative 2 degrees Fahrenheit with 80 mph winds we decided it’d be better to just not skiing and instead again mess around in the lodge. Eventually my dad showed up and he tried to get ole Marvin the Red Rocket to start and it still wouldn’t. So we went home and decided to come back the following day with new spark plugs and other ideas.

Monday – Marv was sitting there in Lot D like a lone soldier. I replaced the plugs and jump started the car and got Marv home safely.

-Patrick Fesler

Half day 11/24/09

Posted on by Shane Schorzman

So Young frog and i had a half day on Tuesday. We decided what better is there to do than go shred the slopes even tho it had been raining all day. Magically as soon as school got out the weather started to somewhat clear up, everybody was super stoked as soon as we broke through the cloud’s into bluebird coming up the Crystal Mountain Blvd. We soon geared up an was ready to shred, the moment we click on our skis we knew it was gonna be a fun day, being sunny and having the snow super slushy from the rain was about to make for some good fun.

The road up the chair noticing that there were clouds starting to come in about half way up Rex so we dipped over to queens in attempt to jib some shit! First run was a failure for me. I was dipping switch down queens an came to a knoll that i thought “hey im gonna try to switch 5 this lil guy” FAIL, soon enough i rotated a 450 ending up side ways an wreckin pretty good.  After doing some jibbing around queens Lloyd and I decided since the mountain was so dead to try an get the stove an extra tarp up the the hut( we attempted to get the stove up pre season but ended up hiding it in the woods cuz the hike was way to gnarly) so we went an got the stove that was buried in the snow. When we had hiding the stove we kept it on a little plastic sled so we could scoot it around, now that we had it we started dipping down discovery. we rushed the stove onto the chair as the lifties didnt say a word we knew the coast was clear. Getting down to queens was an adventure Lloyd in front skiing with his skis super close together and me in back with a super wide stance so our skis wouldnt cath on each other, flying down the hill innocent by standers thought we had a keg haha. We got onto queens with out any problems and soon enough found trouble making our way through TLC with the stove since it was a very awkward shape an weighing in at around 30 pounds or so. FINALLY we got it to the hut an set up the extra tarp making it super nice inside with no snow getting in. Still to come is setting up the stove an chiminy which should be a great time. All in all super super fun day for sure!

-Shane