Ski your ass off at Telluride Saturday in memory of Captain Jack

Legendary Telluride ski bum “Captain Jack” Carey passed away on Lizard Head Pass last summer after a truck hit his bike. The New Hampshire transplant and Ophir resident was an world-class hang-glider, skier, biker, and hiker, and beloved by the community he’d been a big, smiling part of for over…

Her Day at Echo: Teaching (sort of) old gals new tricks

On Wednesday, I wrote about Her Day, a night riding event at Echo Mountain on the first Thursday of every month. Her Day is designed to introduce women to playing on features in the terrain park in an encouraging and relaxed atmosphere.Though I’ve skied on and off for 30 years,…

USASA Rocky Mountain Snowboard Series this weekend at Copper Mountain

Ready to live out those Dew Tour dreams and X Games fantasies and begin your Olympic odyssey? Your journey begins here: The United States Snowboard Association brings its 23rd annual Rocky Mountain Series to Copper Mountain this weekend, March 6-7, for the final event of the series before next month’s…

Weird science: Ski wax will make you infertile

The good people over at Science magazine are blogging that too much ski wax is probably not a good thing. Apparently ski wax has a lot of stuff besides wax in it, including some nasty junk called perfluorinated octanoic acid (PFOA), and that’s not the best thing to have in…

Meet your Local Lange Girl: Breckenridge’s Alex Guras

Colorado ski/soft porn fans, rejoice: Breckenridge’s Alex Guras has brought the crown to Colorado, winning the Rocky Mountain Region for the Freeskier/Local Lange Girl contest 2010. And unlike some poseurs, this Lange Girl actually shreds.(Bikini shot after the jump, you dogs.)…

Moticon SkiGo: Gear you want but don’t need

An R2 unit for skiers looking to hone their skills without any of that pesky human interaction, the Moticon SkiGo consists of: A) a computerized brain (pictured above); B) insoles that detect your velocity and position, and thus whether you’re making good or bad turns; and C) an earbud that…

Echo Mountain: Her Day

Gals, if you’ve ever skied or boarded past a terrain park and seen people throwing down jumps and tricks on the rails and wondered if you could do it too, Echo Mountain has a solution. This Thursday, March 4, is the second Echo Her Day. The event runs from 6…

Vail renames trail after Lindsey Vonn

She’s been training at Vail since the 1990s, and moved there from Minnesota to train. She and husband Thomas live there, and she serves as the skiing ambassador. Now, Lindsey Vonn, who won a gold and bronze medal at the Vancouver Olympic Games, has a trail named after her on…

Temporary “zipper lane” might ease I-70 traffic hell

So CDOT was metering again yesterday, and  I-70 again predictably turned into a parking lot at the tunnel, ending many a getaway with an interminably slow slog back to Denver. Critics are not too happy about the practice, claiming it turns a three-hour drive into a five-hour drive for no…

Bring your Olympic fantasies to life: Five Colorado starting points

This year I’ve been going for the gold in the Winter Olympic sports of Fast Forwarding Through Commercials on the DVR, Snorting Hot Cocoa Out My Nose When People Fall Down and Get Hurt, and Falling Asleep On the Couch During Ice Dancing.  If you’ve been watching religiously this month…

Telluride airlifts staircases onto Palmyra Peak

It’s not a stairway to heaven, but it’s close.Canada-based Heliqwest airlifted a pair of steel staircases and a bridge onto Palmyra Peak to span between Gold Hill Chutes 8 and 9 Wednesday morning. Telluride flacks say the getup will open up new in-bounds terrain once the staircases open for business…

Winter Park hosts TransWorld Trans Am Rail Jam

Hey boarders, have you been practicing in the terrain park all winter and feel you’re ready to start competing? This Saturday, Winter Park will host the TransWorld Trans Am Rail Jam. Previous competitions have been held at Wateville Valley, N.H., Big Boulder in Pennsylvania, and Buck Hill in Minnesota. After…

Moab in Winter: It’s cheap, and it’s awesome

Recently, I took fellow OTE blogger Greg Benchwick’s advice and I headed out to Moab, Utah. This isn’t a rare pilgrimage for Front Rangers — it just usually happens in spring and summer, when dirt hounds can get their tires and tread reliably on trails without snow. A mention of…

Icebugs: Gear you want but don’t need

It’s black-ice season on the trails (not to mention the Denver sidewalks) for the foreseeable future, and there are plenty of uphills that will put you flat on your ass if you try to climb them in your Chuck Taylors.Since 2001, Sweden’s Icebug has been solving that problem with sneakers…

The Colorado medal count so far: three

As the Olympics roll into their final week, it looks as if things have settled down — nobody’s dying anymore, Bode rose from the dead, and the US has been racking up the medals (we lead the field with 25 total). But with 19 Colorado Olympians, how many Rocky Mountain…

Montezuma Bowl at Arapahoe Basin opens Wednesday

We’re finally seeing signs that the ski season may yet be salvaged. While we haven’t had an epic dump yet, the steady snowfall of the last few days had me enjoying multiple powder runs off Chair 9 at Loveland on Monday. Now there’s more good news: Arapahoe Basin will be…