After a 90 minute hike in our ski boots with our skis over our shoulders, we arrived at near the top of the Whakappa Volcano in New Zealand

We had the option of continuing our hike, but with massive clouds moving in and visibility going from super awesome to super sketchy, we decided to take this picture and drop into a chute that would lead us back safely to the main lodge.

Skiing Whakappa in New Zealand – it was an epic view. When the crowds showed up and the lineups went from 15 minutes to 55, we decided to hike to the top. We’ll show you the picture from the top in our next post.

Beauty, eh?

That’s what we thought too – until our skis sunk about 4 inches and hit black Volcano rock. Skiing was still epic – but we had to be careful about going anywhere off piste for fear of completely wrecking our skis.  This was taken on the North island of New Zealand

In an earlier post last week I joked about “safety first” going too far in Ontario and speculated how far resorts will take it.

Turns out one of my predictions is already in practice at Whistler, B.C.

If you are ripping it too fast down the lower side of the mountain at Whistler, you will now get a speeding ticket!

Knarly Karly – a friend of a friend who carves a mean turn on her snowboard was busted at the bottom of the hill for going too fast and was advised that the fine would be charged directly to her edge card.

Enforcing a slow zone with speeding tickets does make sense – especially when you have over 15,000 people on the mountain at one time with different abilities… but let’s hope enforcement stays restricted to the bottom of the runs!

Happy Holidays everybody from Grin and Barrett. 

After spending 4 quality days in Collingwood where Sasha rookied her first level 1 course at Blue Mountain and Phil spent 4 days ripping down the hills of Alpine, we’re taking 3 days off the hills to spend quality time with our family before heading to Whistler Blackcomb for a week.

We’re bringing two sets of skis each – one pair to rip and one pair to float.  Thanks to our new wireless card for the laptop, we’re planning on posting updates from Whistler with pictures and maybe a small video or two.

We’ve also discussed video taping a half dozen or so ski “tips” that we can then post on this site throughout the season. Topics such as – best way to ski powder (assuming we get some), bumps, steeps, or carve down a mountain. Any suggestions or ideas? Let us know and we’ll do our best to incorporate it into our filming.

Happy Holidays!