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Our next two Hotties on the Hill are two guys we met on a huge group trip to Mammoth in January 2006. Eileen had organized a big group and we were in two separate condos - 6 or 7 people each! It was an amazing 3-day weekend with TONS of snow and lots of fun. Here is Little Jenny, me, and Eileen on our first night out with the big crew, at Dublins in the Mammoth Village.

Greg is from San Diego, and Wade is from Orange County. Eileen knew Greg from playing softball with him, and then he ended up bringing Wade along in the 2nd condo. These guys are awesome snowboarders - super fast yet always in control, and look good while doing it!

They took us all up to Cornice, Dave’s Run, and all those insane runs way at the top of the mountain. Only after a little “Liquid Courage” at McCoy were we ready to tackle these double blacks!

Luckily there was a lot of snow this season, so the runs were pretty manageable… once we got over our initial fear. We ended up taking the gondola up to the runs quite a few times. Here is a pic of the whole crew in the gondola…

But I tell you those guys ALWAYS beat us down the mountain, no matter how fast I felt like I was going!

Of course no trip to Mammoth would be complete without a night of craziness out dancing… here’s Wade dancin’ a fool, with Stacey to his left.

They were as good of dancers as they were snowboarders! Really fun, all-around good guys. (That’s me, Wade, and Greg.)

And a precursor of things to come… Wade & Little Jenny the next morning, as we cleaned all the new snow off Little Jenny’s car…

To finish the story - a happy ending! Now Wade and Little Jenny are dating, mainly as a result of this trip! She has her own personal hottie on the hill. Go Little Jenny!

This begins a regular installment we’ll be featuring on this blog on the various snowboard gear and snowboard clothing shops we visit.

Location: Val Surf, 169 W. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena

(image courtesy of Yelp.com)

Right on the outskirts of Old Pasadena sits Val Surf. It’s only about 3 blocks down from a PacSun and a Vans store on the same stretch of Colorado Bl. So their clothing selection tends to run along those same lines… more of the same Roxy/Volcom/Element/etc. clothing you see pretty much the same from store to store.

I always find these chain “surf/snow/skate” stores to be kind of depressing. On the one hand, I like that these sports are now somewhat mainstream and more people enjoy doing them because I’m a populist at heart and really I just want people to be happy doing whatever they’re doing. On the other hand, it takes away a lot of the authenticity and the fact it’s mainstream means it’s now been co-opted by a lot of lame-ohs. Not to mention it makes the mountain resorts and the best surf breaks very crowded!

My philosophical rant aside, in this Val Surf you’ll find a huge selection of hoodies and jeans for both men and women. Hoodie heaven! For the ladies, lots of thermal tops and snug fitting tees. They have a wide selection of jeans by Hurley, Roxy and other top brands. In addition, I was pleased to see they carry Frye boots and had some for 50% off! They also featured quite a few styles of Ugg boots (ugg is right, I was thinking!) and a HUGE selection of wetsuits.

Now about their snowboard section. I was somewhat disappointed to see a very limited selection of women’s snowboarding jackets and snowboarding pants - only about two racks of each. Size selection was decent, but prices were high for my tastes. Maybe I am too used to the deals at Ski Dazzles and the end-of-season sales in the mountain shops. But I thought $199 for a pair of mediocre-looking pants was kinda high. The usual suspect brands were in full force - Burton, Roxy, 686, Grenade.

They carry about 20 different types of bindings (weirdly, I don’t think I saw any Flows in this store but I saw them at ValSurf.com), and a moderate selection of boards though sizes on display were limited. I saw mostly 147s and then it went up to 157s and above. Did they have more in the back? I didn’t ask. Further, only about 1/4 of the boards were women-specific (lots of Never Summers.)

Not a lot of beanies but lots of gloves and mittens.

Rating breakdown (scale of 1-5, 5 is excellent)

• Snowboard outerwear selection: 3
• Board & gear selection: 2
• Prices: 2
• Staff knowledge and helpfulness: n/a - I didn’t talk to anyone

Overall, I’d give this store a 2.5 out of 5 for snowboarding stuff… it’s kind of too generalized and tries to be a lot to many audiences. To be fair, I didn’t talk to anyone about the boards and bindings to gauge their experience and helpfulness, but it really seemed like most of the store was more focused on fashion, surf, and skate with snowboarding falling 4th in priority.

Web site: http://www.valsurf.com

Leaving work today at about 3:45pm (Hurrah for New Years weekend, early release!) I happened to look over to the east from where I was in Pasadena. When what to my wondering eyes did appear, snow on the higher elevation mountains in what I think are the eastern San Gabriels! It’s cool, because at that time of day the sun is beginning to set to the west and is casting really nice horizontally-slanted beams as it goes down, which highlighted the snow on the west-facing hills I was looking at.

We got a ton of rain late last week and I guess I just didn’t make the connection to getting snow locally. I believe I was looking at Mt. Baldy or at least some of the surrounding mountains (Baldy is a local resort just east of San Gabriel Valley/Claremont that I haven’t been to yet because of last year’s horrible dry winter. I understand it goes off when we get lots of snow in a season, fingers crossed!)

Here’s a picture I attempted to snap with my Blackberry - apparently it doesn’t do so well with distance shots But it is nice to be in Los Angeles and still have a nearby reminder of snow, snow, snow!

Did you know that Shoes.com sells snowboard boots online? There is a really decent selection (30 styles) on their site, good brands, and prices seem reasonable. I haven’t been in the market for new boots for a while (I’m gonna wear these Burtons till the soles come off dammit, they fit me so well!) but if you need some new gear, and know what you want to buy, then head here. And a secret tip - I’m a KCRW member and they offer a 15% off discount to members at this URL which I’ll share with ya:

http://www.shoes.com/kcrw

Go here to activate the discount and then do a search for “womens snowboard boots” to bring you to their full assortment of boots. And while you’re at it, you should consider becoming a KCRW member too, to take advantage of all their other discounts, and support this awesome public radio station at the same time!

The only thing is about buying boots online, it’s so important for boots to fit you perfectly, that you should be sure of what you’re getting. If you were so inclined, you could go try different pairs on at a brick & mortar store, decide on a model/size that works for you, then head here to get a sweet discount. Shoes.com also offers free shipping & returns (like Zappos.com, my other favorite online shoe store) so it’s a good deal all around.

Why oh WHY, when there are loudspeakers playing music on the runs… do the ski
resorts usually play classic rock? And even in the bars… wtf?

Please! Don’t make me hear Runnin’ On Empty by Jackson Browne again!

At least in the parks there is more contemporary music: Incubus, Linkin Park, and the like. Not necessarily my style, but I don’t think anyone but me would appreciate some deep or progressive house on the hill.

Resorts… listen up! We’re not a bunch of graying baby boomers who are down for some ZEPPELIN when we’re out snowboarding! At least throw us a bone with some 80s or something. I would love it if I was cruising along and heard Rio by Duran Duran

Check it out… bookmark it and give it love, cuz we’re gonna be adding a lot to it in the season to come! http://www.youtube.com/SnowboardWomen

Started off with some videos from Snow Summit from yesterday. Here’s one:

Got videos of your own you’d like to add and share? Email me: erica at snowboard-women dot com and give me the heads-up!

Saturday I woke up at 5:45 and hit the road at 6:45 to drive to Big Bear where I was meeting Cheryl and her husband Eric for a morning of practice/warmup riding before my snowboarding trip to Whistler in a little under two weeks.

(here comes Cheryl)

We were pleasantly surprised by the conditions! They had made a bunch of snow and there was at least two feet of coverage on all the open runs. (Coloradans and others, please don’t mock us about our lack of snow here in the local mountains)

(snowmaking machines below Chair 5)

The temperature was like Goldilocks’ porridge - not too hot and not too cold, just right! Runs were a teeny bit icy in places but for the most part it was as good as it gets at Snow Summit. Plus, there were NO crowds… we think everybody was getting in a last day of Christmas shopping! What a pleasant surprise.

Bonus… we left before 1pm so we got the “Getaway voucher” for $19 off our next ticket. All in all, a great day at Snow Summit!

(pizza & beer after our riding.)

Oh sweet jesus… spotted yesterday on Snow Summit in the lift line. People, this kind of hat is NOT cool!

We love snowboarding for the sheer thrill of riding down the mountain and slicing up powder while dodging skiers and little kids tucked all in a row during their lesson. But half the fun of heading out on a weekend snowboarding trip is the prospect of seeing all sorts of hot snowboarding guys both on the mountain as well as in the lodge and out having cocktails!

Since we love to meet these snowboarding hotties, we thought we’d share some of our latest treasures here on this blog… Introducing a new category of posts called “Hotties on the Hill!”

(click to enlarge)
Our inaugural Hottie on the Hill is Scott. My friend Eileen and I met Scottie during a Memorial Day trip during the epic season of 2004-2005 when they had like 16 feet of snow in Mammoth. Yep, we were still riding in feet of snow even at the end of May that season, it was amazing!

Scott lives in Lake Tahoe but was in Mammoth to hang out and visit. When I met him, he totally f’ed with me and said that these people he was hanging with were his mom and dad… gullible me believed it until he told me he was 28 (these people were only like early 40s.) Ha ha! He had a strong charisma - just look at those eyes! - and was very interesting to talk to. We had a good time hanging out at Hennessey’s! Uhh… I think we went to Lakanuki later that night too… that night was a doozy…

Okay, back to it. He’s an awesome rider - originally from Bellingham, Washington, a rad picture of him soaring thru the air on his board was even on the Mt. Baker season pass for the 04-05 season! He also skates and surfs and plays guitar… poetry writer too. And he is damn funny! (Ladies, are you listening?)

Believe it or not, I still keep in touch with him and it’s been 2 years later… definitely a unique person and really cool to know. In fact, here’s a picture of him from this summer when we hung out in LA - check out the sweet ride in my neighborhood we found for him to pose by…

Scottie - congrats on being our first Hottie on the Hill! See ya in Tahoe sometime this season, I’ll try to make it up there.

Do you have a Hottie on the Hill you’d like us to profile? Send us some pics and a brief profile and we’ll be more than happy to share!

Sometimes people aren’t just bad snowboarders… they’re bad dressers too! Bad snowboarding can be corrected with practice and good training. But bad style? That’s just something you can’t really go to class to fix. It just happens. Sometimes to the best of us.

Introducing Mountain Missteps. In future posts, I’ll be posting pics of bad fashion missteps I see on the mountain, and when we’re out and about in the lodge and the bars. But for now, here are some of the things I’ve seen in the past and have cringed deep deep inside, or just straight-up hate when I see!

• Ugg boots. I know, I know! People love their goddamn uggs! But I hate hate hate them. To me, there is just nothing appealing about them. (They’re like Crocs, urgh!) I especially hate the pink ones.
• One-piece ski outfits worn by snowboarders. Now this is just… dreadful. There is no other word for it. They’re even bad on skiers. Check out this hilarious blog post about these apparitions from shayboarder… showing wayyy too many of these specimens. Nuff said.
• Too much makeup. Man, this ain’t a goddamn fashion show! Wearing tons of foundation and eyeliner on the mountain makes you look a fool. And then if you go out at night? Cold weather is none too kind on caked-on makeup… and it’s even worse if you end up dancing in the club and get all sweaty and it runs down your face. Easy on the makeup, kids.
• Neon anything. Just… don’t. Please.

I can’t wait to keep my eyes peeled for more atrocious sightings this winter! The gang and I will share them when we are unfortunate enough to witness them… stay tuned.