justin lamoureux

Fissile, the Grand Poobah, the Impaler and the Alien

2012-01-24T21:34:00.000-08:00

Fissile Mountain and the Banana Chute

Had a few good splitboard missions lately.
the snowpack has finally gotten stable enough to go ride some big lines, so I took my wife Kimmie out to Fissile mountain to ride the banana chute. She'd never been out there and it makes for a really good long day trip. The sky was blue when we started, then turned to super milky clouds and the day finished off with me leading the way back to Whistler Mountain in the dark, in a snowstorm. Touring via headlamp when it's snowing really challenges how well you can navigate around the mountains.

I love being in the mountains

Kimmie climbing up the notoriously loose south face of fissile

I love every minute of being in the mountains with my wife. So rad.

Kimmie getting her first look down the Banana chute

darkness and freshies

watch for snowcats and don't miss the cat track

We also got a chance to tour into what was once a snowmobile access zone. It's pretty far for a day trip but there's a secret pillow zone that my friend Dave Basterechea and I found many years ago that I thought would be good. It's called the grand poobah. also in the area is the little poobah, the perfect four and the Impaler. how can you not want to go back? only problems was, I hadn't been there in 5 or 6 years, and it was hard to find when I'd been there frequently. It's buried in the woods, hiding behind gullies and ravines. But after many hours of splitting, I was able to crack the forest code and find the Poobah. and it was deep. beyond deep. almost so deep we couldn't ride! I basically had to swim my way up the mountain to get on top of the pillows but it was well worth the effort. and as seems to be the case, toured back out via headlamp in a storm.

through the trees.

wallowing up

this is the little poobah!

yup. kimmie got this zone too

completely unrelated frame grab from a video I'm putting together. frontside 360 drop

oh and this. kimmie and our alien on top of Fissile. over 3 months.

quick one

2012-01-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

just a quick frame grab from one of today's runs.

couple runs on whistler mountain

2011-12-29T20:52:00.000-08:00

My 2 first laps of the day on whistler mountain on a decent powder day.
christmas time 2011

Colorado, giant crystals and no pow.

2011-12-26T21:34:00.001-08:00

Kinda got busy there and a month flew by. Hasn't really snowed since my last posting, so not so much touring going on. Just one little exploration mission where we crossed some creeks, got lost in the maze and found some crazy huge hoar frost. But now the snow is back, Whistler is getting hammered and we're heading out for some storm split boarding tomorrow.

With the long dry spell and no pow kicking around I went down to Colorado for the US grand prix. It was an interesting comp since I'd only ridden 1 day on hardpack prior to being there and had 2 days to practice. The crew at Copper did a really good job on the pipe this year and I was super happy to ride a sick pipe. We only had a few hours of official training of each of the days prior to the comp. And I forgot they were running a ski comp too so we had way less practice time. And half of that time is at the wrong time since you need to take turns of having the skiers in the good light and the snowboarders in the good light.

Qualification day was of course cloudy and bad light. When we'd been riding in sunlit perfection all week (minus the bad practise times). During my few practice sessions I'd focused on getting in tune with the pipe and feeling my edges on hardpack again. And during the 25 minutes practice prior to the comp, I couldn't land a thing. haha. Which a handful of years ago used to freak me out, and now I laugh about it. I almost prefer it now which is a little weird. Anyhow, I landed my first run with a few mistakes but it was enough to put me in the top 4 in the heat and keep me qualified for the finals. By the time my second run came around I was in fourth and knew i needed to land my run clean. Which I did, but the judges gave me a lower score. I don't usually bitch about judging ( I used too when i was younger; they have a hard job), but it sucks when you know you landed a better run and a few judges agree and score you higher and a few don't and score you lower. But you KNOW it was a better run, and you end up with a lower score than your first run, and you get 18th and top 16 got to finals. So I missed finals by 1.2 out of 100. Sucked. I just wanted to keep riding the pipe.

So went and spent a day riding breckenridge with the Frends crew, hitting jumps and laughing all day long. Then came home early and ended up on a splitboard recon...

Steady! kimmie balancing on icy logs

chuck 'em

giant hoar frost

this was our objective for the day but the maze of roads slowed us down and we only got to the bottom of the line. BOOOOOOOO

that's one giant crystal

Snowboarder photo annual.

2011-11-29T22:25:00.000-08:00

Snowboarder magazine just put out their Photo Annual, and as always amazing photos throughout the magazine.
I'm very happy to amongst its pages this year. Thanks to Snowboarder for running the photo and a big thanks for Matt Domanski for snapping the shot. Stoked!
I'll try and get a better scan of it later this week.

jl

TESTing

2011-11-21T21:11:00.000-08:00

testing a new camera, skins and taking the splitboard for another glorious day.

Winter's Back!!

2011-11-13T20:50:00.001-08:00

My favorite time of year is back! We've had some good days splitboarding lately. It's still snowing and getting deeper by the day.
Welcome back winter!!

new season about to begin

first line of the year

i love the view of my splitboard punching a new trail

not happy at all.

this outhouse got buried last year. hoping for a repeat.

myslef, my wife kimmie, Leanne Pelosi and jeff keenan.

kim cracking an ollie

Jeff Keanan. popping through the trees.

me with a natural spinner

Leanne and myself. 'testing' our k2 splitboards.

kimmie getting her turns in

face shots!

hehe.

dakine poacher pack and k2 panoramic splitboard. my favorite gear.

Rob Fagan playing.

heading home at sunset

NZ part 3- waves and caves

2011-10-09T10:48:00.001-07:00

Pretty much every year I'm in New Zealand I make my way up to Raglan on the north Island. It's one of my favorite places to go surfing. If you surf, you should probably go sometime in your life and get some of the longest waves of your life. 3 awesome point breaks lined up one after the other. But there's not always waves and there's not always good weather to snowboard, so here's some surf photos and some of cruising around New Zealand.

This is why I go to Raglan. Indicators going off at low tide.

Life is a little different in New Zealand.

Tried to go caving at Waitomo caves last year but they were flooded out. Not this year. Into the abyss!

Down the Tomo. 30 feet down from the previous photo and after a pretty tight pich, this is what you're rappelling down.

Our guide challenged us to boulder around the this pond with claims of no customer ever making it. While a little slick, the bouldering in Squamish is tougher.

Jump!

cave life.

When I arrive in Christchurch every year and make my way down to Wanaka, I'm always looking for this wave to work. A few hours off the plane and I'm paddling out into an overhead solo session at Magnet Bay, with only sheep to keep me company.

making the trek to Milford Sound on a day off from snowboarding.

Great scenery with great company.

Milford Sound.

Mitre peak in milford sound.

I know what you did last summer!

Supposedly the trout fishing is amazing in New Zealand. With creek water this clear it seems like cheating.

The Kea. It's an alpine parrot, famous for ripping apart cars at Treble Cone. Very curious birds and have an amazing orange patch under their wings.

My Raglan slashing. Point and shoot cameras are a little tough to shoot surfing with.

I'm in that Barrel somewhere!

Waiting for the 'Valley' section on indicators to wall up and start racing.

Raglan golf course. The sheep are a lot tougher to hit than you think.

The area around Rotorua is famous for hot springs and thermal zones. This little guy is spitting out sulphur and is hot enough to cook your hand

kimmies in the mist.

The world's best natural hot spring. Waterfall, perfect temperature, perfect depth.
It's amazing and this photo does it zero justice since we went at night.

I'm out of NZ! awesome trip!

NZ, le riding

2011-09-24T09:31:00.001-07:00

-Snowpark. Pretty much the reason everyone goes to new Zealand in august.

I managed to get 3 weeks of riding in New Zealand this summer. I showed up the day before the Burton NZ Open started (which was kinda stupid on my part) and left the south island right after a world cup a few weeks later.

This year the weather was pretty good. Pretty much sunny the whole time. Lots of wind, but at least we could see. After last year's club field experience I was definitely hoping for some good storms in the Canterbury Mountains to go back up there but it just didn't happen while I was there.

The last few years in NZ were pretty pipe heavy and I was looking forward to mostly hitting jumps at Snowpark. I did the 2 pipe comps that were going on and just missed the cut offs for both of them, but I didn't really ride pipe too much and all my boards were shorter than i usually ride. And they were all different boards that I was testing and didn't know which one I liked the most so I kept switching boards all the time.

-Production line tuning. K2, Ride and Unity boards

In the end I was super happy to just ride and hit jumps. My wife also was able to come down for the last week on the south island and check it out finally. So it was great to show her around. We headed up to Raglan on the North Island to get some waves for a few weeks afterwards. I'll get some north island photos up sometime soon.

Here's a few windy runs from the world cup. Being 6'2" tall, the wind always gets me. First run is me messing around in practice and the other 2 are comp runs.
jl

so i lost my wedding ring in NZ

2011-09-11T21:39:00.000-07:00

yeah. not even married a month and i lost my ring. awesome.

I just got home from 5 weeks in NZ and figured i should probably get around to posting some stuff about my trip.

I'd be been in NZ for a week and they got a massive storm. It snowed pretty much everywhere in the country. It never snows down in the lower elevations there. So it was dumping. And my rental car had some transmission issues. It couldn't really make it up to the hill so that was a small problem for me. My rental guy told me he had an extra car in Queenstown that i could go get. Sweet, just have to hope the subaru can make it to Q-town the long way around (it's flatter). And it was puking snow, so i didn't really feel like driving over the pass.
Anyhoof, I eventually make it down to Queesntown. I'm a little late and the whole airport is shut down (it's 5:15pm) due to the storm. Hmmmm. I'm supposed to meet a rental car guy in the airport. Well maybe i can call from the airport counter. So regardless of the very dark looking airport, the first door i walk up to opens and in i go and car the fellow from their counter phone, cause there's not a sole in the airport. So as i talking to him , the police roll up next to me.
They wait for me to get off the phone.

"How'd you get it?"
-the door opened
"did you set off the alarm? the roof caved in"
-uhh no i need to switch a rental car.
"hmm, ok"

they take my info in case i did make the roof cave in, and sit down. I need to call the rental guy back, very busy and doesn't want to help me due to the storm.
'you'll never make it to wanaka mate!'
-just came from there
'nah mate, too much snow. can't do it, you'll never make it!'
-i'm from canada, this is mellow.
'nah nah nah"

eventually he agrees to meet me at the airport so we can get my new car.
The cops by now have left me all alone in the airport, AFTER an alarm was triggered. I wait for a little while in the airport, then proceed to the door to meet buddy. Door's locked. hmmmm. other door's locked. and the other. ALL the doors are locked. Interesting indeed. Eventually I spot an emergency release button, so I climb up a wall and pop the door open. Victory! at least for the door.

Buddy picks me up and we go to his rental car yard. All the cars are buried. No shovels to be found. So being Canadian, I proceed to dig out and brush off the cars with my hands. No problem. Couple minutes later and we've got the 6 cars out of the way and I'm off in my new car.

I drive 20 minutes out of town and realize i've left my house key in the Subaru.
Back to the airport to get those.
Run over to the subaru and grab the key.
I jump back into the new car (Mitsubishi hunk of crap SUV) and it won't start! WHAT?!
So i get on the phone to the owner then to AA to come jump the car.
"is there an immobilizer switch on the car?"
no, started the thing twice already no problems and no sneaky buttons.

I wait in the storm for an hour for the AA guy to arrive. We mess with the car for 45 minutes. No luck. hmmm.
He asks me if there's an immobilizer on the car. no I looked everywhere.

Obviously not, as it was on the key chain. The aftermarket crappy looking keychain was the immobilizer. You needed to unlock the doors to be able to start the car. The owner didn't even know. Stupid all around (myself included). So, hours later I'm finally back off to Wanaka.

About 10 minuted form being home, I realize my finger feels a little light.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. followed by 10 minutes of swearing.
It was 11:30pm and snowing, I couldn't do anything about it. So I waited a while and called Kim to tell her the bad news. Surprisingly, she was ok with it as she thought I'd hurt myself.

I was pissed. I've never worn or owned jewellery in my life and i lost my wedding ring inside of 3 weeks! Not stoked.

My ring is made from Kim's grandparent's rings, melted down into a custom ring for me. There was no way i was losing that ring. At least not at the hands of a mere snowstorm.

The following morning, I hatched a plan. Find a metal detector. The ring pretty much has to be in the car rental parking lot right?

Back to Queenstown, rent the 1 metal detector for hours around and call the rental car guy to let him know my plan. "Sure thing mate. have at it" thanks

I start combing the parking lot through the 15cm of new snow. bottle cap, nail, washer, bolt, nothing, rebar in the cement, car. Metal detector works great at finding crap. I try for over an hour and I can't find the ring, but keep thinking that it's here in the snow somewhere. How can i make this detector work better?

Pile up all the snow into 5 chest high mounds of snow and scrape it down to cement.
Wand over the pile of snow with the detector.
Pull 2 inches off that pile, chuck it on the ground and wand over it again.
repeat, repeat and repeat until the pile is gone. More nails, more washers, another bottle cap. The detector just beeps and beeps and beeps. Annoying as hell.

I'm gonna find this ring.

3-4 hours into the digging, another beep. Yeah, yeah, what am i going to find this time. As i dig through the snow i spot a familiar corner with familiar lines.
NO WAY!! Found my ring! SOO STOKED! quickly text Kimmie to tell her the good news.
Amazing!

It basically took me all day to find it in a nearly impossible situation. So happy to find my ring. I still can't believe i found it. Needless to say, after that little mission I barely wore the ring the rest of the trip.

jl

summer!!

2011-08-04T13:25:00.001-07:00

well at least a little bit of summer. It's been pretty cool in Squamish all summer. Big news for me is got married a few weeks ago. Ceremony on the lake, I came in on a canoe and kimmie and I left on it as well. Awesome.
That's been keeping me busy getting ready for that. A few days at Camp of Champions on blackcomb, which is always super fun. Lots of biking, climbing and skateboarding. and a fair bit woodworking. Trying to start up 1080 Wood. couple random photos below from a few of this summer's projects.
and now packing for another new zealand snow and surf trip. 2 days and counting and lots to do.
later
jl

quick sign i whipped up to find the wedding.

cedar surfboard towel racks

Walnut coffee table with wedged tenons and maple butterfly keys

walnut and birds eye maple boxes and picture frame

winter ends??

2011-05-30T21:59:00.001-07:00

all good things come to an end i guess. whistler blackcomb shut down today for the 2010/2011 winter. to say this season was epic would be an understatement. we were still able to ride down to the parking lot at base 2 on closing day. insane.

after seeing whistler's season stats on the video below, i thought i'd share my own so far for this season. i count my season from the start of the northern hemisphere's winter and ends when i'm in NZ usually.

season started on nov 18 for me
so far i've ridden 132 days
82 of them have been powder days. Lots in the backcountry and lots on the hill, just an insane year for snow.

there's still lots of snow around the mountains so whenever it's good I'll be splitboarding and looking for new terrain.
bring on the spring/summer riding!
jl

Thank You For A Great Season! Love from, Whistler Blackcomb from Whistler Blackcomb on Vimeo.

valley of the chutes

2011-04-29T19:15:00.001-07:00

i think between the photos and the video you get a good sense from rob fagan's and my trip to the "valley of the chutes". named after the valley of the kings as there's an egyptian theme to some of the peaks in the area. we spent 3 days camping and splitboarding in the mountains around squamish. it was super awesome.

in summer you have to climb 9-10 feet of stairs to get into this outhouse! and it's below treeline...

it was pretty nice out

camp

getting there..

2011-04-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

a couple teaser shots while i get everything together from the mission to the 'valley of the chutes'. see the photo from my last post.

climbing

fresh-ish wolverine tracks (from the previous afternoon)

2 days and 2 seconds

2011-04-20T17:31:00.000-07:00

it's festivus time! i mean festival time. the world ski and snowboard festival in whistler is on again. and that means a few more spring comps in the form of Monster's "The Show"
I wasn't really feeling the need to ride moguls this year (there's been a lot of powder) so i skipped the first event and went in for the boarderstyle and halfpipe comps.
Boarderstyle consisted of a very short (and really easy) boardecross track, but with a park jump at the bottom and involved mandatory spinning. I put in a good qualifying time and was the top seed through all my heats and also was going in the first heat.
I hadn't raced BX in a very long time and it was pretty fun to be in the start gate waiting for it to drop. some riders were about ready to pass out from nervousness. The gate dropped and it was on. Being such a short course there wasn't much passing going on, but your spin on the last kicker really counted. if you came in third a good spin could put you into the next round. I was going to try to avoid being bumped by that method. So as we came around the final gate, i was in the lead and gave a quick check back to see where everyone else was. Little bit of a lead, sweet, so i flipped around and went switch into the last jump with a cab 540. The next round was a little tighter and i went cab 720 while in the lead, jon versteeg went back 900 and will jackways went frontside 540 right behind us (snowboard canada jon scarth's photo of this action is below)

The finals were jon, travis williams, yan devo (he'd bumped his way through with a cab 540 on the oakley O) and myself. The prize money was winner take all, and all of us having had a fun day, agreed to split the cash prior to the final run.

Travis and i were grappling right out of the gates. boards hitting, grabbing each other and jon managed to grab the lead. Close to the final corner jon lost his edge a little bit and both travis and i tried to pass on opposite sides on the outside lanes. unfortunately the outside lanes were slower. I was just able to get about even with jon and travis got squeezed out of the course. Jon boosted anothe back 900 for the win and me right behind with another cab 720.

there's a couple good posts up with some cool photos to check from the event..
http://www.snowboardcanada.com/news_article?news_id=1715
and
http://www.push.ca/blogs/snownews/archive/2011/04/19/the-show-day-three-boarderstyle.aspx

the next day was the halfpipe 'contest'. It's not really a contest, but it is, and it's not really about the pipe, but it takes place in the pipe. This year there was a bell hanging above the lip to smash and a log positioned on the other side. With the pipe being good finally, i was pretty happy just to ride pipe. But to do well in this 'contest' you need to play by their rules, which aren't much, but they want to see you hit the rails and stuff. So i tried to get the bell with some air to fakies. i tried a bunch of times, and i missed the damn bell by centimeters a bunch of times. getting bored of missing repeatedly, i went for a few pipe runs. then over to the log. I thought a frontside alley oop 360 with some log action mid way through would be cool. however after a few triesi only kinda got it once, and then the nice pipe took my attention again and i went back to doing whatever runs popped into my head. I ended up in second place for the day. Guillaume morrissete took first and brad martin took second. I think guillaume's alley oop bell ringer got the prize for him. it was pretty sick.

snowboard canada and push write ups are here...
http://www.snowboardcanada.com/news_article?news_id=1716
and
http://www.push.ca/blogs/snownews/archive/2011/04/20/the-show-day-four-dustin-craven-s-halfpipe-jam.aspx
couple really fun days on the hill, and now we've got a few nights of festival-ing ahead of us. Going to watch the intersection movies tonight and then the pro photo showdown tomorrow night, which is the hottest ticket in town and always an awesome show.

then I'm off to try and get these little lines with the splitboard...

quickie vid from today

2011-04-14T19:52:00.000-07:00

so much good snow lately. i'm still trying to catch up on everything and get some posts up about a few trips i've done lately, but the snow keeps me riding!
video is from today on whistler blackcomb.

chute-ing gallery

2011-04-10T13:48:00.001-07:00

Since i first saw this zone over 5 years ago it's bugged me about how to access it and when the snow would be good. finally with my splitboard i cracked the code and spent 2 days up there this week. First day was with my buddy kyle, then next with my girl kimmie.

Kyle and i made it up fairly quickly to the bottom as the snow had a crust on it and made for some quick traveling. After spending some time scoping the zone, we settled on our first obvious line. Off the peak and straight down. It was the simplest line and a good chance to really get a feel for the zone. Now we just had to get up there. a few hours of breaking trail later, we were standing on the peak and enjoying the view. As we sat eating our lunch i called out "fly by" as a bald eagle glided by just about 100 feet horizontally off the ridge line from us. 20 minutes later, a juvenile baldy fly by on the same line. Later in the day, we saw a third eagle fly by!

Feeling good after seeing the eagles we dropped into a first run. The snow was blower (especially for april). Kyle dropped first and we leapfrogged each other a few times from safe spot to safe spot, Kyle filming and me shooting photos (trying anyways). Our first run went great, and we were feeling good about the snow.

as we were switching over to split mode to climb back up, we heard a rumble. we both quickly looked up to see an avalanche blasting off a big cliff and coming down the slope towards us! even having picked a safe spot way out in the flats, it gave us no comfort seeing a huge dust cloud coming at us. we ran like hell until we realized the slide wasn't going to get us. Upon inspection afterward, we guess that a huge tree bomb (snow piled up in the trees) dropped onto a shelf and started a slide in the recent storm snow and the huge dust cloud was a result of the slide airing over the big cliff. We still felt confident in our assesment of the snowpack in the chutes and headed up for another run.

Our next pick was a tight chute that we were able to see from the bottom. finding it from the top would be another story. The ridgeline drops off very quickly into all the lines so it's difficult to see which entrance goes or which entrance goes off a cliff. So as we poked around the ridge, found a little drop for us to hit along the way, and eventually found our entrance.

We noticed from the bottom of the chute that the exit may hold some chunder (icy chunks, avalanche debris, etc) and decided that full speed was not the way to go. And we couldn't see the whole chute from above, so safety prevailed as i dropped in first, made a turn and pulled aside to let the sluff go by before riding the rest of the line (being only 2 guys way back there, you need to make sure you make it home).
As i exited the chute just ahead of my sluff, i wondered in the chunder was hard or soft so i decided to check it out. turns out it was pure ice and i lost my edge with my sluff barreling down after me as everything slid down the little gully that was there. I managed to pull it together, get out of harms way (there's a mandatory left turn in front of a cliff near the bottom) and enjoy a some more nice turns down the lip of the gully. Not finding any safe spots on the way down i radioed kyle from the bottom and passed along the snow conditions. main chute was great, main exit was not so great.

We wondered about getting a third line for the day but may have been pushing our luck with the amount of sunlight left, so we called it a good day and left.

The next day, kimmie wasn't working and we debated about riding whistler or heading out for another mission. Kimmie hadn't ridden in a few weeks and wanted some pow turns. With our skin tracks already into the gallery, i figured going back to it was the easiest zone to get into. The weather was closing in as we made our way up there and enjoyed lunch in a whiteout on the peak. We'd decided on one of the main chutes to see what was in that part of the zone. I just needed to find the entrance in a whiteout, in a zone i barely knew. But i was able to find it easy enough. The snow had warmed up a little from the day before, but the turns were still quite good as kimmie and i leapfrogged our way down the chute.

With it starting snow we left the zone with full intentions to head back up there whenever it's good. So stoked i finally made it up there and it was everything and more i thought it would be.

jl

the chute-ing gallery

me climbing up to the summit

kyle getting some turns. snow was pretty good...

kyle again. i have more photos but kyle is just buried in all his turns in them

kyle poking around. the advantage of going second and having somebody down low with a radio to talk you into lines

left over dust cloud from the tree bomb avalanche

kyle riding our second line. he's the little dot way up there

second days line

kimmie with her lunch enjoying the view

march in 3 parts...

2011-04-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

couple videos made up from march. third one coming, as well as photos and some background stories..

justin lamoureux - march part 2 - splitboardin' from justin lamoureux on Vimeo.

sunny days are pretty awesome

2011-03-08T10:40:00.001-08:00

we finally got a break in the weather between dumping snow. I love fresh snow, but sunny days are kind of helpful to be able to get up high and ride some lines. I had a few great days this weekend with great friends in the backcountry. New zones and classic zones got ridden. Here's a few shots and a quick splitboard clip from the last few days...
jl

i'm looking to send through the middle of those spines

joel and myself at the bottom of a fun slasher line

joal and me. helloooooo

a sunday split mission. rob fagan and i rode the 2 obvious chutes through the upper sections

saturday split mission. it's an ok view..

snowpit digging. i'd say it's good to go.

one of the zones we rode on saturday. the video above starts on the knob at treeline (upper left corner of the photo) and runs the length of the ridge (going diagonal right; center of the frame) almost down to the lake (little clump of tiny trees above the lake in the clearing).

damn birds ruining the shot!

quickie on the split

2011-03-04T19:17:00.000-08:00

fun day cruisin on my splitboard looking for pillows

calgary world cup and washington

2011-02-27T16:17:00.000-08:00

-23c with -33c wind chill. what a great day to run a contest!
welcome to calgary i guess. The world cup held in clagary was held in mildly cold and mildly icy conditions. When it's that cold you have a hard time getting any sort of speed going and mistakes cost you dearly. When the snow is like that it also burns the base of your board and effectively ruins a board for ever wanting to go fast again.

I've had board problems all year. My contest boards for the past little while have all been custom Bataleons. It was a blend of our project green and an old enemy model from 3 years ago (or so). and i loved them. However i only had a few left at the start of this year so they were prized boards. Bataleon recently changed factories and made every board in the line up softer. This was not working out for me at all. I've had to practice all year on boards that were messed up or too soft or trying other boards out that you're not used too. I haven't been happy with my results this season and i can directly relate it to how bad my practice sessions have been. It sucks to have to protect boards so you have a good one for a contest. then on the contest day you have to quickly get a run together cause you can finally ride how you want. But you didn't get any good practice so it's a bit of a catch 22.

Calgary was no exception to that trend this year. With it being my last major contest for this season (i'm taking a mellow contest year this winter) i was hoping to use my last custom board to practice but the cold snow stopped that idea dead as i didn't want to ruin the board. So in the end I just missed making finals again.

That evening i was on a plane to vancouver, spent a few hours in squamish then packed up the car and headed down to washington to spend a few days shooting down there with my good friends Will jackways and Abbey Lockheart.

We had a gorgeous day in the mt baker backcountry then followed that up with a good day hiking off from Stevens Pass with a few locals. The sun was in and out and by the end of the day it was PUKING. Unfortunately we had to drive home right away since my girl had to work today. Great 2 days down there and now the snow is back in BC and i'm pretty much at home all month ready to ride and get some shooting done. We'll see what happens. never had a march without a contest. pretty excited.

jl

things you don't see at a contest

2011-02-19T11:18:00.001-08:00

Waiting. You never really see the waiting.

The past few days at Stoneham were pretty interesting. Firstly i thought the pipe was REALLY undervert. Prior to qualifications, a quickly downloaded app on my phone (while checking out the pipe) gave me the angles on the wall, which read at 75-78 degrees... the machine cuts at 84. I wasn't super stoked on it. But i knew the guys that usually pop to the flats a lot would love it, as they'd suddenly be hitting tranny perfectly and the rest of us would fight to make it back into the pipe.

Wednesday was our first day of practice and i didn't spin or grab my board once. It felt like i was skating a mini ramp so i just did ollies all practice. The second day it didn't feel much better to me. I grabbed a few times and did 2 720s.
Friday was the contest day and it was supposed to rain, which i love. I knew it would help steepen up the pipe walls a little. So that plus the groomer putting a little steeper cut on the pipe definitely helped me out, but still wasn't really loving it. But after traveling out here, missing some good snow in whistler, i had to pull it together and make something out of the trip.

Our day started off mildly late since it was a evening final. practice at 2pm, quals started at 3pm. It was rainy and foggy but we were able to ride no problem. I was the first rider to drop and landed a decent run in the fog that i thought would get me through to finals. After 10 guys had their runs, the fog had different ideas for the contest. We couldn't see past the first hit. So we waited at the top of the pipe hoping for it to clear. Then they tried to judge via the TV cameras that were on site. The judges still couldn't see. So the decision was made to postpone for 30 more minutes. then 30 more minutes. then 30 more minutes. We ended up waiting 2 hours before getting back to the pipe. 15 minutes of practice and right back to were we left off. But now under the lights and the rain had stopped. With everyone being able to see better than earlier i started to think my score wouldn't hold. Thankfully it did, and i landed a slightly better run my second try to make sure.

We ran through quals with no further fog problems and headed into the girls rounds. So the guys that made finals had another 2 hours to wait while the girls rode.

After having gone through several start/stops yesterday, and with the pipe not quite to my liking, i was having trouble psyching myself up for the finals. But I guess experience counts for something in contests and i just buckled down and convinced myself otherwise.

My first run in finals i dropped in too low and my first hit was right where everyone was landing theirs (the hit i was hitting was lower than everyone else to start off with). oops. almost gave up right there but experience kicked in again and I managed to put a run together though. But was really bummed on missing my first hit. Second run went better, but several mistakes kept my score lower then what i was aiming for. However i ended up 6th for the comp right behind my good friend brad martin. With not really liking the pipe, i was pretty happy with the result. Was also a good confidence boost in my ability to make runs happen. The top 4 spots were taken by japanese riders with ryo aono taking the win. Congrats to everyone for the super shredding.

A bright spot every year to being in stoneham is the crowd. they're awesome! I've been doing contests here for a decade or so and the crowd is always amazing. they get into it so much. Big thanks to everyone that makes it out every year to the event here in stoneham to cheer us on. The riders love you.

and speaking of cheering people on, I'm going to go cheer on my friends in the big air contest.
Next stop Calgary world cup later this week.
jl

whistler is SUPER deep

2011-02-14T18:25:00.000-08:00

this past week has been awesome!
good days in the backcountry last week, and since friday whistler has gotten well over 1m of snow. It's been great on the hill. The past 3 days i've ridden first chair to last without stopping.
Saturday and today were full on storm riding days riding trees all day long - pretty much my favorite style of riding. Sunday we got little breaks in the clouds so Peak was open on whistler and it was all about upper mountain hang time, launching cliffs everywhere. So much fun.
Such a good weekend. I'm off tomorrow morning for stoneham, quebec for a qorld cup then to calgary for another one the weekend after. Hope the pipes are good, been itching to ride a good one.
enjoy the 2 blurry videos from my crappy phone that Kimmie shot today.
jl

museum displays and good times in snow

2011-02-11T16:52:00.001-08:00

The last few weeks in and around whistler (since the world champs in spain) have been interesting. We got some rain pretty high which limited us to park and pipe riding for a few days. Then got just enough snow to ride in the backcountry, but you had to pick your landings carefully as some were not as deep as they appeared. Some wind, some sketchy avalanche conditions and finally a bit more snow and safer avi conditions.

I've taken my new splitboard out on a few missions to scope some new terrain, and we've had some really good days shooting. I've been stoked to be riding and shooting a lot with my good Kiwi friends Will jackways and Abby Lockheart. We've been joining Gaeten Chanut, Martin Gallant, Marie france roy, Leanne Pelosi, Robyn van gyn and others randomly for the last few weeks to get some stuff done. It's been rad riding with everyone and seeing them all send. A few days ago we were out for marie's first day in the backcountry since hurting herself last year, and i can easily say she hasn't missed a beat which was rad to see. I love seeing people come back from injury strong and riding well. That day was epic sunrise to sunset riding (my friend jeff's view of the day and me buried in a pow slash - http://pattersonimages.blogspot.com/2011/02/one-of-better-days-out.html).

martin gallant checking the morning zone for some laps.

In between the shooting days i was invited to the Whistler Museum's opening and to help cut the ribbon of their new olympic exhibit, in which I have a bit of my olympic gear. My stinky boots that i loved, a pair of goggles and a shot of a switch back 5 from the Games. It was pretty cool to see my stuff on display with some other whistler athletes' stuff. I'd never been in the museum prior and i have to say it's pretty cool. Basically the history of the area, town personalities, athletes gear, and photos of naked people. Usual museum stuff. Check it out sometime when you're in whistler.

I also went to Calgary for a few days for the Burton Canadian open. The comp was pretty fun although with a chinook blowing in calgary it was minorly (read majorly) windy for those few days. The Open series is trying out a new judging format call Live Scoring which is interesting for sure but i think they have a few kinks to work out for it to work great in halfpipe. But it's going in a good direction.
Anyways, I battled the wind for the second comp in a row and just missed finals by 0.5 point on 100! they were taking top 10 to finals and i got 11th. bummed. However, it being an Open I felt obliged (or egged on by Cory from Snowpark technologies; head digger for the Open) to poach numerous runs in the finals. They had night finals for the first time (at an Open) and the pipe was riding good, minus the ever present wind. congrats to kohei Kudo and kelly clark for taking the wins.

I've also had a few missions thanks to my good friend matt (although not necessarily his fault). I blitzed out of calgary that same night as the pipe finals and was in squamish at 2am. at 7am i received a phone call from Matt asking if I could come into the backcountry to help him and a few other buddies drag his sled out which had broken down a few days prior while we were shooting. I'd be a few hours late. an hour later he called again, saying it was getting bluebird up top and to head to his house and bring his camera gear out there.
What i thought would be a somewhat mellow-ish day taking a few shots and dragging a sled out turned into a nearly 12 hour mission. Punching trails, digging sleds, taking a few photos, having the tow ropes break at nearly the top of a big hill, and sending matt down the cat track in the dark with no headlights or brakes made for a very long day. With a lot of laughing and swearing depending on what was happening, eventually the sled got taken out and we all headed home for food and much needed sleep.

A few days later, at the end of a splitboard mission day, matt decided to spin his truck around on a pretty icy corner of a dirt road. I heard his truck disappear around the corner, and thought he made it. then i heard the tires spin and the truck slid into the ditch. After an unsuccessful first exit attempt left his truck deeper in the ditch, we spent the next 2 hours filling in the ditch with rocks and snapping tie downs as we tried to tow his truck out with my car. Thankfully we eventually got it out (we weren't exactly close to town) to end off another long day.

Usually our days finish past sunset and you just head home no problems. But both of those 2 days are days i've come to expect and pretty much just laugh the whole time as they happen. If nobody gets hurt and everything eventually gets taken home it's all good and worth some laughs. It's happened to me before and will probably happen again so I'm always willing to help out my friends as much as possible.

Whistler's forecast is for a fair bit of snow this weekend, so hopefully it'll be deep until i leave on tuesday for 2 world cups in quebec city and calgary.

As i mention in the title of the video, i sometimes forget i have my cameras with me. I get so excited to ride sometimes i forget to pull them out, for stills or video. good thing there's professionals on hand to document!
thanks to matt domanski, jeff patterson and gary pendygrasse for pointing cameras at us lately. much appreciated.

jl

a custom build we saw in the parking lot. Has a 4 stroke engine and it get multiple people up there in style (although slowly) is all i got out of the owner

something you have to be ready for in the backcountry. broken machines and a bunch of rubber necking friends to laugh at you. matt domanski getting ready to ask for a tow out.

busy month in a nutshell

2011-01-29T12:05:00.000-08:00

so much for a mellow winter. it seems as i've been as busy as always or more so.
After leaving colorado in december, I went back to squamish for a few days. prior to heading to the eastern townships in quebec for xmas.

First i proposed to my girl kimmie while riding powder under a full moon (the night riding video from december). she said yes, we laughed for a bit then kept riding until 230am. I've done some pretty intimidating things in my life and asking that question was way up there!
Went to quebec for xmas, rode at jay peak a little and even more fun took my 23 month old nephew on his first turns on a snowboard. He was LOSING it. just babbling and laughing the whole way down. He loved it. It was probably one of the funnest things i've done on my snowboard. So we went for a few more laps until he passed out.

Back to Squamish for new years. A few days on my splitboard exploring new zones (ie getting lost and scoring) and it was off to calgary for 2 days to ride pipe with the national team. It started snowing in the mountains so i bolted to revelstoke for a day on the hill there with my old friends joey vosburgh and chris payne. 55cm on a new hill with good guides. thank you!

The next few days were for remembering a gold old friend, Greg Todds. Greg basically invented the super pipe and noboarding, and he showed me how to freeride way back when we lived in lake louise. He passed away in an avalanche in 2005 and there's been a memorial noboard race for him every year. This was my first year having the time to attend the weekend and it was awesome. Great crew of old friends celebrating GT. Loved it. can't wait for next year.
you can check out more from GT's weekend on Spencer's blog at push.ca..

www.push.ca/blogs/spencerfrancey/archive/2011/01/26/6th-annual-gt-memorial-noboard-race.aspx

Back to squamish for a few days of riding here then it was off to spain for the FIS
world championships.
Spain this year had very little snow outside of the event site. actually none. amazingly they pulled off a good event. the weather and snow could have been a little better, but cant control that part. The pipe was primarily super icy and pretty bumpy. I had a pretty terrible week. Poor food (for me) and the pipe was like my kryptonite. For the semi finals day, it was sunny and i was feeling good. Then the wind picked up, alot. Being 6'2" and riding a 161cm board i'm not found of hucking in the wind on an icy pipe. I just couldn't get a decent run together and ended up in 18th place. I couldn't wait to leave.

Got home and promptly went to the island to go surfing for a few days. While i was in spain, it had rained pretty high on whistler so all the snow was pretty hard, so surfing was the logical choice with swell in the water. shoulder high to a few feet overhead and glassy the whole trip.

I've been riding the hill for a few days since the island (park's epic on blackcomb) and getting caught up on everything since i haven't been in front of a computer much lately (or bad internet connections). Finally snowed again last night and today, and it's supposed to clear up this week so hopefully we'll get a few good days in the backcountry prior to heading to calgary for the canadian open.

enjoy the 2 videos and some photos from my last month.

jl

to make spines more intimidating, add trees. SUPER fun line in a new zone.

taking my 23 month old nephew for his first riding experience

i always wonder what people at owls head think when they see a canoe in the lake while they're skiing.

sometimes getting lost in the woods and barely getting any turns in while splitboarding is worth it.

if you ever want a noboard pad, call Cholo burns

the course for the 5th annual GT memorial noboard race.

pick a stick and good luck

long time friend and old lake louise local, Chris Soper and I at GT's memorial

trouble andrew rocking the crowd for GT's memorial.

GT memorial race times. Congrats to Ave for taking the win.
i was pretty stoked on my first lap ever there. i mostly wanted to hit a pillow line that no one had hit yet. turns out it was good line for time too

i think it's scott penner's kids' noboard at the memorial

al clark and johan olofson's custom noboards (left and right ones). GT's memorial

gt's memorial. work your way up a few KM of logging roads and you're there.

sunset on mt atwell and garibaldi

myslef, mikka haast, dom vallee, ingrid and jp auclair. going for a trek in the blackcomb backcountry.

stumbled across this little guy while in the woods

I'm not much for sledding, but it's useful to be good on them. figuring out my 4 stroke yamaha..

dave b.

dave B. going for some pillows on his noboard

noboarding is like learning to shred all over again. little airs suddenly become hard again

la molina spain, FIS world champs

she was crazy enough to say yes. Kimmie and me up on a ridge at the end of another fun day of shredding.

world snowboard night??

2010-12-20T14:59:00.000-08:00

so yesterday was world snowboard day, i guess. I missed it.
ironically, i was setting stuff up at home so i could snowboard more. However, i did get to go out last night and ride some backcountry laps with my girl kimmie under a full moon. It was super epic. Riding pow and doing tree runs in the dark is a must experience in my book. It had been a while since my last night pow runs (kimmie's first) and we both loved every minute.
watch the darkness..

dew tour at breckenridge

2010-12-17T16:14:00.001-08:00

after hearing stories from their team riders, about how insanely epic the pipe was at breckenridge, we had high hopes going over there for the dew tour this week. and we were let down. The pipe was long (wicked) and perfect width and pitch. however it was quite undervert and lots of riders were struggling to make it back into the pipe each hit. I'm not a fan of undervert pipes.
So our practise day came and went and we hoped for a better pipe for the qualifiers the following day. The walls were a little better, but still pretty undervert and to make it more fun a pretty good snowstorm moved into breck the day of the contest.
We had a long practise session in the morning and i was making zero headway into getting a run down. I was pretty bummed. As the girls did their runs, we ate lunch and i rearranged my head. In our short warm up prior to our guys heats I was able to figure something of a run out and was happy to at least have an idea of something to do. I didn't land a full 'contest' run in practise but I'm ok with that as long as i have ideas for runs. I'll spare the details of my runs (and it's in the video), but they were mostly switch. After landing my first run, and getting a pretty good score (i was around the cutoff score), I decided to do what would be hopefully a harder run. I moved a few tricks around, and added a few other ones and landed the run. I was pretty happy with it and it felt like it was a better run. Coaches and friends all thought it was better too, however the judges disagreed with that and scored me lower. So i ended the dew tour with being just a few guys out from qualifying. I was pretty bummed on not making the cut, but happy i was able to put some decent runs together in a pipe that i really didn't like.
The following day Ross Baker, agent to the stars/snowboard legend Bob Klein and my self went out to berhtoud pass to hike some backcountry lines. We met a few friends of Bob's who knew the area and we were off. Beauty bluebird day, pretty stable snowpack and nice snow greeted us up at nearly 12000 feet. We had a super fun day, hitting little cliffs and chutes, and getting some fun pow laps in. It was Ross' first time in the Rockies backcountry (he's from tahoe) and he quickly learned that if it looks a little bony, it's actually really bony! Very different snowpacks between the rockies and the coastal mountain ranges. It was a great day in between all the pipe days, practise sessions and contests. We all loved it.
And now my colorado trip is done and i'm sitting in the denver airport waiting to go home to squamish.
enjoy the little video
jl

justin lamoureux - dew tour and berthoud pass, dec 2010 from justin lamoureux on Vimeo.

espn article

2010-12-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

a few weeks ago espn put up an article on what snowboarders do in their spare time. Kinda looks like we mostly either kill things or build things. I'm on the building side. check it out and open the gallery at
http://espn.go.com/action/snowboarding/blog/_/post/5844355/off-clock

jl

first contest of the year

2010-12-10T11:28:00.000-08:00

The contest season has started down here in colorado with the US grand prix at copper mtn. It's been an interesting week for me.
I showed up a week ago to get a few days in the pipe prior to the contest. On my first day at the pipe i realized i was riding a broken board. In my last minute packing i didn't really notice which boards i packed and grabbed the wrong one! thankfully i had 2 more boards with me. I usually like having 2 identical boards for contests (in case one gets broken) and now i was left with only one of my favorite boards and a prototype which i hadn't ridden yet. Turns out the prototype didn't last long under my feet and didn't make it to the contest. Having only one board is a major stress to me when it's contest time. My boards usually take quite a while for me to break but you never know. Thankfully i got another one sent down so I should be sweet for the rest of my trip.
I had a few good practice days where the pipe was good and a few where it wasn't so hot. However, one of those days Copper received 13inches of snow so i didn't ride pipe that day. Copper has a pretty good base for this time of year so we were able to ride the trees and some of the alpine bowls. It's always nice to get a good powder day while on a 'pipe' trip. and it's puking right now so hopefully tomorrow will be another good one.
Onto the qualifiers, which were yesterday. I've never really felt 'on' this time of year at coppers pipe so I generally use it as a warm up for the rest of the season. I'd planned 2 slightly different runs for the contest. The first one was supposed to be backside air, frontside 720 indy tuck knee, cab 900 melon, switch backside 720 mute to backside 720 japan. However, i tried to adjust my line after the first 720, ended up scrubbing some speed and it just messed up my line. I ended up falling on the switch backside spin. For my second run, the plan was to drop in with a mctwist (instead of the backside air) into the same rest of the run and finish it off with a switch frontside alley oop for my straight air. Which as an entire run, at this time of year was, somewhat ambitious as it's a pretty tech run and i wasn't sure there'd be room left in the pipe for the switch alley oop. And i hadn't landed (or even tried) that run yet in practice. but i really enjoy doing new runs spur of the moment so i was psyched for the run. I ended up landing the run but it was too sketchy to go through into finals.
The video below is a compilation of both runs put together, just to give an idea of what i was going for.
We've got a few days of riding either copper or breckenridge then it's the dew tour next week at breck. and we're hearing the breck pipe is epic. I can't wait to get up there and check it out.
jl

more pow!

2010-12-03T15:17:00.000-08:00

wow. another good november in whistler. just shy of 3m of snow in the last few weeks.
We've had some great splitboard days and really good pow days on whistler. Peak chair opened today (which i missed), but during the early season we're allowed to hike peak and harmony, when the avalanche conditions are ok. Our last hike up was just a few days ago and it was epic up there. My girlfriend and i met up with the snowboard canada guys and did a few laps. We hit west cirque, west ridge and frog hollow. Fresh tracks all the way down. I'm sure today was super fun on peak. Kinda bummed i missed doing easy laps on peak, but i'm sure i'll get some later in the year.
I came down to colorado yesterday to start getting ready for the US grand prix and the dew tour. We were riding at Copper today and the pipe is pretty good. light and wind were kinda suspect today but pretty fun to be riding a nice pipe again.
Hopefully I'll get some pipe footage up but in the meantime you can check out a short video from this past sunday. yup, it's more powder riding.
jl
hmm for some reason the video seems to be cut off on my blog. check it out at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YVd2gnsgI

early season splitboarding.

2010-11-27T17:26:00.000-08:00

getting the legs warmed up for the season up in the mountains above squamish.
fun couple of days splitboarding with maelle ricker, rob fagan and my girl kimmie.
whistler just got a few more feet of snow this week. get out there and enjoy!
jl

justin lamoureux - early season splitboarding from justin lamoureux on Vimeo.

whistler mountain opening day 2010!

2010-11-20T07:10:00.000-08:00

video pretty much says it all.
stoked winter is back!
jl

first day of riding!!!

2010-11-18T17:07:00.000-08:00

A few days ago i got a call asking if i wanted to go ride and shoot some stuff on whistler mountain a day before the resort opens for the season. With a big storm bearing down on us, it was a YES from me. That storm gave us 30cm yesterday, and today we got to ride.
Our crew consisted of Mike Douglas, Malle Ricker, Paul Morrison shooting photos, his son Ian, Lesley Anthony, a few video guys, Ryan and Steve from Whistler's marketing department and myself.
nov 18, 2010. paul morrison photo.

We got an early start to the day as we only had the "morning" to get some shots and a few laps down to green chair.
After last year's epic opening, as we went up the gondola, it was a tough pill to swallow seeing trees and rocks sticking up the lower portion of the mountain. But, once we got a little higher things started looking much more filled in and way deeper!

We spent the morning shooting and riding roundhouse roll and a few trails down to green chair. Not the steepest terrain but soo fun to get back on the board and enjoy some powder. We were actually only allowed on a few trails. They do save the better steeper trails for opening day. There's some really deep pockets up there and we all had some really good turns. the whole crew was so happy to be riding.

Being early season it's really easy to get carried away and jump and ride where you shouldn't. usually I'm really conscious of that and my first few turns really made me remember. Our first run we setup for a few turn shots and i got a little carried away. After literally my first 2 turns of the year, I ollied a few little trees off a roller and launched. DUMB! i dropped right into this steeper zone (which in full winter would have been fine) and right into a bunch of little trees and rocks and was lucky enough to be able to find a landing and ride through them all down to the cat track. I laughed pretty hard, but i could have ended my season right there.

If you get up there this weekend, enjoy the snow. there's some deep turns to be had just remember it's 'low tide' in the mountains right now so take it easy. plenty more snow to come.
Winter's on!

couple more shots from today at whistler blackcomb's facebook page...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=254131&id=11092928401#!/album.php?aid=254131&id=11092928401

1080 wood

2010-11-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

i've been spending a lot of time camping and surfing lately and haven't been in front of my computer too much so the blog has taken a bit of a hit. I'll have some adventures back up soon as snow is starting creep down the local mountains!
but in the meantime please check out my side project called '1080 wood'.

www.facebook.com/pages/Squamish-BC/1080-Wood/139282802791191#!/pages/Squamish-BC/1080-Wood/139282802791191

i'll be back soon. there's swell in the ocean!
justin

home from NZ and off again

2010-09-28T20:55:00.000-07:00

Back at home and getting ready for a surf road trip down to ventura, california for a friend's wedding.
here's a photo rundown of my last month in NZ, where i was mostly in raglan looking for waves.
enjoy
jl

kayaking on lake wanaka

damon haylor and myself at treble cone. enjoying my birthday powder day

the aussies crew at TC. Chumpy, nate johnstone and damon

scott gaffney at bridal veil falls, near raglan.

some random wave that you can't really get to..

hot springs!

rock that kinda looks like brain

the champagne pool. very hot! some guy decided to ignore the many warning signs, walk over the fence and dip his hand in. His yelp of pain was pretty funny.

care for a swim? it's the minerals in the springs that make the color

molten hot mud.

sweet hot creek

manu bay in raglan doing it's thing.

sometimes the surf sucks and you need to go exploring. however, we didn't think about this possibility!

stalagtites

scott and myself checking out the waitomo caves

random hole in the cave

cave ribbons.

giant fern tree

natural bridge

random cave

small dunes around Kawhia.

manu bay on a 30 foot swell and 40 knot onshores! the story of my last week in raglan. normally you just see the wave breaking in front of that car from this angle.

whale bay and indicators (further point) on that same 30 foot storm. look where the waves are in comparison to the last photo which is head and a half!

the coromandel is beautiful.

the reason i spent 3 weeks in raglan! indicators going off.

video reposts..

2010-09-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

as i'm in the process of making a new video i thought i'd re-post a few of my favorites from this past winter. you can find all of my videos at www.youtube.com/justinlamoureux or hiding somewhere on this blog
enjoy!
jl

a good day split-boarding with dave B. and a bad day by myself! my last 2 adventures of 2009..

a day of noboarding. like learning how to snowboard all over again, just without your bindings. april 2010

the best opening week of my life, to kick off one of my best seasons ever.
whistler nov. 2009.

my 2nd run from the 2010 olympic pipe finals. pretty much the best night of my life.

birthday powder! does it get better? treble cone, NZ, aug 2010

burton canadian open. a few weeks before the olympics. this comp is when i really felt my runs coming together prior to the games. calgary

the world cup in calgary the week before the open was pretty fun too.. another podium

and this was just awesome to be asked to do. my grouse mtn olympic torch "run", on top of their tram.

mmmm powder! a lot of days like this last winter.

testing boards and off surfing..

2010-09-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

My trip to the south island of new zealand wasn't quite what i was expecting. usually i just want nice weather and good pipes and parks to ride. this year, we got generally hell weather, only got to ride a good pipe for 4 days (out of 4 weeks!), and rode more powder in NZ then all my other years combined. which is obviously not a bad thing. So it definately made for a different style of trip down here then what i'm used to.

My last week in wanaka was spent hanging out with the guys from Bataleon snowboards. We had a whole stack of 2012 prototype boards to test out. The new line is looking pretty cool. We got some new shapes, a few new models of boards, and that's about all i'm allowed to say. We toured around the local hills, powder day at cardona, snowpark days and a day at remarkables, which was real fun. I'd only been to the remarkables one time before and thought the sidecountry terrain looked super fun. Snow coverage always seems to be an issue there, but not this time. As there was morning fog we cruised some park laps and tested the new boards. Then the sun started poking through to fun looking powder lines, which i was more than happy to hike to. Our web guy danny was keen to ride some lines so we spent the afternoon riding drops and skinny chutes. Danny almost drove himself into a rock wall at one point! I scoped a line with a little drop onto a snow patch, then you had to straight line out between 2 cliffs, dodge a rock then hook a good turn in front of a rock wall. I cruised the line, then turned around to watch danny. Seems the day's hiking and somewhat office legs were getting to him. He made the drop ok, stopped, then pointed it for the exit only to blow the turn. Luckily he had set enough edge before sliding out to just narrowly miss the wall. I had a good laugh, and so did the rest of our crew as they happened to see the line from the chairlift.

After 4 weeks in Wanaka, i made my way up to the north island where i picked up my good friend scott gaffney and headed out to raglan to get some waves for a few weeks. our first few days were really stormy with barely any surfing, but then the wind died out and the points started firing! couple feet overhead for 2 days straight and awesome times. Today the wind is still dead but the swell has dropped some, so we're surfing on the local beach breaks as the points are a tad too small. I'm here for a few more weeks (scott leaves a week early), so hopefully we get some more epic times out on the points.

I'll try and get some photos up from this part of the trip. but in the meantime, having more downtime at the moment my brain has been thinking of new things to build. So i thought i'd share a couple pieces i built earlier this summer. One is a key/sunglass box for the wall made from some scrap fir i had lying around. it has handcut dovetails, a carved front door, and a magnetic latch. The other is my new desk. I've been wanting to build one for a while and finally got to it. it's made from pine (stained black) and reclaimed fir flooring. the drawers and carcasses are held together with handcut dovetails again. the original idea for the top was supposed to be a slab of wood with live edges, but i found the flooring so i thought i'd try it out.

it's my birthday!

2010-08-28T03:02:00.000-07:00

when you have a birthday at the end of august, a good powder day is pretty much the best present ever.
Spent the day at treble cone with 30cm and riding with my aussie mates (damon hayler, nate johnstone, chumpy, and big ben wordsworth) and a new friend alberto from italy.
super fun day.
jl

attack of the nutcracker!!!

2010-08-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

After a few days of riding at snowpark, we started thinking of a quick trip up to one of the club fields around christchurch to ride some pow. The weather was looking good, new snow, and a fun crew. Will jackways, abby lockheart, their friend ruoriu, photog greg roebuck and myself heading out from wanaka and missioned up to My olympus.
The club fields are notorious for their nutcrackers. Generally the hills are rope tow access only. And in true kiwi fashion, the rope tows are fast, steep and run through several pulleys. So you need a nutcracker to hold on. You wear a harness around your waist, and have a metal clamp attached to it via a chain. as the rope passes by you grab on with your hands, and clamp the nutcracker onto the rope and hang on. and a big tip is don't get anything caught (ie your fingers) in the pulleys. Neither Abby or my myself had been on the nutcrackers so we were stoked to check it out.
we navigated the hours of dirt roads at night, in the fog, with dark glimpses of cliffs right next to you, to find ourselves at the bottom hut. Basically a bunk house built for club members and visitors at the bottom of the acccess road.
We woke to new snow, semi clear skies and a slight dilemma as we'd forgotten out chains (chains on 4x4 to make it up). We easily hitched rides up with the few cars passing by.
We were greeted up top with a series of rope tows, and a whole bunch of awesome lines all around the ski hill. Our first trips on the tows worked out real easy, and our crew was all smiles as we got some good powder runs in bounds on the hill.
Then my day drastically changed! On one of the top tows, i put my nutcracker on crooked and thought i could make it up no worries. after a few sketchy pulleys, the nutcracker finally ripped out of my hand on the last one and whipped straight into my knee! It seemed to hit the perfect spot and my knee just swelled right away. Bummed, my knee wasn't that stoked on bending. into the top hut i went to try and ice my knee and so i could get a few more laps in. A few hours later, my knee was feeling a bit better and i went out for a few more runs as the crew were out hiking and getting some shots.
Our next day dawned super clear, and my knee was even bigger! i did all i could to convince my knee that riding pow would be good for it, but it was just too stiff. With all the swelling, I was scared of doing actual real damage in my knee so i sat the day out and went for a mellow walk around the valley. Pissed that i missed an awesome day. The crew got some sweet lines in and had a great day. ahhhhhh. stupid nutcracker!
Back in wanaka for a few days now, and the swelling is going down in my knee, and i'm hoping to ride tomorrow. we'll see what the physio say tomorrow morning.
later
jl

will and abby scoping lines from the top hut

this is busy for mt olympus!

dinner time in the bottom hut

sidecountry lines at mt olympus.

patroller out scoping the snow

fat right knee.

out for a paddle on lake wanaka

greg, abby and will down day mini golf in queenstown

nz open and down days.

2010-08-16T14:41:00.000-07:00

NZ open was this past weekend. the slopestyle riders had a pretty crappy foggy day for jumping, but for saturday and the pipe it cleared up and was super nice. Pipe was riding pretty good. a few weird kinks in it, but in general it was riding sweet as.
They were trying out a new judging system for the contest where each trick is given a score (instead of the whole run). I think it's good in theory but really hard in practice. For slope a little handrail suddenly has the same value as an 80 foot jump, which it shouldn't. and in pipe there's no way to fairly compare someone doing 4 hits versus someone doing 6 hits. It needs some work still, but right now i'm still a fan of overall judging.
I'd planned on arriving in NZ so i'd have a week of riding before the contest day, but due to poor weather i'd only managed to get 3 days in. Which kinda sucked. Not feeling extremely on point to do really well in the comp, i tried to challenge myself and do runs with tricks i hadn't practiced yet. I tried 2 different runs. i fell on the first one on a switch backside 720. Then for my second run started with a mctwist 720, switch backside 540, cab 900, switch backside 720 and finished with a backside 900. The run went ok, but with it being pretty tech and me being out of practice it was a little lower than what i would have liked. So i ended up in 15th place. All good. Was a good way to kickstart my trip.

The following day i headed up to snowpark to take some jump laps. After a few warm ups I ended up hitting a step up to the bagjump airbag a few times before they shutit down. red bull had the setup for a few weeks for some of their team shreds. Pretty cool setup with a step up into the bag and a step up to snow right next to it. and now its open to everyone for their hucking delight.
We tried to go up there yesterday to hit it again but the weather was turning and it was way too windy for the bag. So we messed around all over the park. couple jump laps, hit some rails, over to the pipe. SNowpark is pretty fun as it's really small, everything is usually pretty good and chair rides are entertaining as you can watch people huck themselves all over the place.

new zealand has pretty unpredictable weather and we're on another crappy weather day. When it's thick cloud or snowing here it's really hard to ride as there's no trees or anything to give definition. So generally we go skating, play golf or everyone's favorite blogging!

I'm staying with Will jackways and abby lockheart in they're sick little house right on the lake and has a small mini on the side of the house. which gets hit up whenever it's dry out, which is not today! mini golf in queenstown.

We might head up to some clubfields this week to chase some pow and get a few shots.
we'll see what the weather brings!
jl

abby with a rock to fakie with will watching

me with a front rock

back in NZ! waves and powder

2010-08-11T17:51:00.001-07:00

2 of the lines from the video, pre-shedded, just getting light.

post shred on the tight line

first chute in the video (lookers left one). i was kinda scoping that middle tight one, but the runout wasn't the best. as you can hear in the video.

mellow hike and voila

mmm powder

me, myself and i. enjoying my first real day of shredding in NZ for this year. and my first day ever at lake ohau. 30cm and blue. loving it!

jumped off the plane and went looking for surf on the banks penninsula

magnet bay post session. the wave gets fat when the tide comes up (as in this photo)

most roads have no guard rails, in other places they like to pretend with wooden 2x6s..

what i did this summer..

2010-08-01T21:55:00.000-07:00

so far this summer has been pretty sweet. got rid of my glasses, learned some environmental stuff in nashville, went surfing and snowboarding. all awesome. what else went on?

got some climbing in. usually bouldering in squamish but here i'm on lead on some whistler rock

biking in squamish

and had a great trip to quebec with kimmie to see my parents. lots of canoeing (day and night paddles)

haven't water skied in years. so we got on that one evening

and i learned how to hover. can't go up yet though...

more summer adventures coming

summertime shredding

2010-07-13T12:11:00.000-07:00

just got back from mt hood last night. super fun trip. Was hanging out with Jj thomas, luke wynen and the ISTC crew from colorado. I was down there for a week and got to sample pretty much all that hood has to offer. Windell's camp had an airbag setup at the bottom of their pipe. So i'd generally start the day off over there trying some new stuff, then head over to high cascade's awesome setup for some pipe and park laps for the rest of the day. We had a week of bluebird sunny days, but a few those were pretty windy.
Since we were staying down the hill in welches, and close to windell's camp, we'd head over to their campus for some nighttime skating and tramp sessions in B.O.B. (foam pit!) and the cement park. so much fun. awesome times. thanks to both camps for letting me shred. It's pretty much a 17 year old's dream down there. or a 17 year old trapped in a 33 year old's body...

short head cam video from one of the windy days. i wanted to get some more runs but the battery ran out in my go pro..

climate project summit in nashville

2010-07-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

a few weeks ago i was able to attend Al gore's Climate project conference in nashville Tennessee, to learn how to present his new slideshow ""Our choice".
you can check my trip on snowboard canada magazine's site at:

www.snowboardcanada.com/justinsblog/post/96/Saving-Our-Snow-Justin-Lamoureuxs-lessons-from-the

also in the same vein there's an interview with me being eco-conscious on push.ca

http://push.ca/blogs/mikesn/archive/2010/06/15/eco-conscious-justin-lamoureux.aspx

justin

laser eyes

2010-06-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

i can see! unreal.

I've been wearing glasses for around 20 years. When i first got contacts a few years later, my snowboard ability virtually doubled overnight. I went from not being able to see when riding to great vision overnight. a few weeks ago my vision went from quite good in my contacts to 20/20 overnight!

I had the opportunity to undergo laser eye surgery with Dr leger at lasik MD in vancouver, and 2 weeks later i couldn't be happier with it. and i was about to not do it.

I'm a little squeamish when it comes to my eyes, so i had my reservations about laser surgery. But it was super easy and the staff at Lasik MD were awesome.

For the curious, here's the details on the operation. It's kind of creepy but in a weird way i enjoyed the experience. I started by not wearing your contacts for a week. It's to let your eyes return to their normal shape, but being primarily a contact wearer i think it's so you hate your glasses even more! Show up for the operation, sign some paperwork that ups your anxiety level, and get a few drops in your eyes. Dr leger greeted me upon entering the operation room, chatted for a few minutes and he talked me through the Lasik operation. OK, let's do this!

you lie down on a table, a few head adjustments and they tape up one eye, and place a metal clip on your other to keep it open. Once that is in place, a suction cup is placed on your eye and your vision blacks out. A flap is cut on your eye in 5 seconds and your vision returns. mellow. Don't feel or see a thing.

now this is where it gets interesting. You see a pair of tweezers (or something) come down to your eye and flip the flap up! you vision goes from normal to a really foggy pair of goggles. WHOh! ok, watch the red light, 35-45 seconds and done. a drop on your eye and the flap gets placed back. Done. next eye. When you sit up, you can see. But it's a little foggy.

I think the operation took less than 5 minutes!

Afterwards, you chill on site for little bit then have a check up and you're free to go home before heading back the following day for another check up.

They tell you not to read, or watch tv or anything the day of the surgery and i'm not sure how i could have. My eyes just wanted to remain shut. I had a hard time just opening my eyes enough to apply the drops i needed to. So i napped all day, and listened to a movie, then went to bed.

Then the coolest thing in the world, you wake up being able to see. It's unreal. I went back to Lasik Md for my post-op check that morning and was able to see at 20/20. A week of being really mellow later, i was even better at 20/15! crazy.

I'm still marveling at the surreal-ness of the whole thing. Just being able to see little things that i couldn't before is awesome. Like stars outside my window when i go to sleep. I'm just starting to get back into normal sporting life and i'm loving it. No shifting contacts, no dry contacts, no vision problems. awesome

thanks to Lasik Md and dr leger for the vision.
can't wait to snowboard in a few weeks.
jl

i did my first surf comp while blind

2010-06-15T15:40:00.000-07:00

Last weekend i did my first surf only contest, The rip curl stew in tofino. The few i've done are in surf/snow and skate comps, and have a slightly different format.
And i had to do it without really being able to see. well, chose to do it that way i guess.

Since there was a decent swell in the forecast i'd planned to head over to the island for some waves, check the comp and support the canadian surf scene. Then as time got closer decided to do the comp for shits and giggles (thanks rip curl for letting me in). However, just days before leaving i got a call from Lasik MD saying my appointment for getting my eyes lasered was a week away and i shouldn't wear contacts. I've had glasses for over 20 years, and been mostly in contacts for the past 15 years, so i started to change my plans to bail on the island since i didn't really like the prospect of blind surfing. Then my girlfriend kimmie talked me into (real rubber arm over here) trying to surf with my old glasses and rainx on the lenses. Sure, that's a great idea. however, it didn't work. five minutes into my first session the glasses fogged up and i was hating them. So i ripped them off and tried surfing without being able to see. Better than the glasses, but uhh where's that wave?? But once i caught the wave i was ok with the eyes, just a little more reaction as opposed to planning.

With my limited vision i decided to still do the comp. I figured if i got waves i might do ok (make it out of a heat or 2; i had no delusions on winning). This is where surf contests get interesting, will you get the waves? I couldn't imagine my career waiting for a "right" halfpipe to show up so i could do my tricks. It's kinda stressful in a way.

The contest was being held in world famous cox bay. well, maybe just tofino famous.

(i think there's might be a clean wave out there somewhere)

It's a great location to run a surf comp, hotels on the beach, short access, and always waves, just not necessarily the best wave around. Lots of duckdiving and waves that push through and don't break. It's a far cry from the reefs and point breaks that i usually surf. But, there were some good waves coming through, just had to find them. I found 1 ok wave in my 20 minute heat. I jumped off that wave, got stuck in a bad current and proceeded to spend the rest of my heat duckdiving. Not surpising, i didn't advance out of the 4 man heat (got 3rd). I had a blast in the comp as it's calls for a different head space then snowboarding, and it's interesting to see my own surfing on a time limit.

The scene on the beach was awesome. Miniramp on the beach, tunes, girls, and good friends kicking around. I pretty sure the whole town of tofino stopped by at one point or another. A bunch of whistler folk were on site, even 2000 US open halfpipe champ guillaume morrisette was strolling the beach.

The rest of the contest, the local boys went off! Showing his world class skills, pete devries won the comp (check his insane recent footy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZuPuxAIuig), followed by the bruhwiler borthers, sepp and raph, and in fourth was ben murphy.

It was really cool watching these guys (and some of the other local super shreds) going off in their home break.

Unfortunately, i missed the finals as the waves were going off on another beach nearby and i was in the water for 9 hours. Had to get my fill before my eye surgery the following day.

Thanks rip curl for the good times at the comp, and marc and andrea at the surf social in ucluelet for the place to stay and the good times too! hopefully i'll be back next year to check it out again.

(great setup for the Stew)

(spy's daryl trinidad and myself catch-ing up. I'm always happy to run into my longtime friend)

Mt garibaldi

2010-05-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

This is the view i wake up to everyday when i'm home. from left to right, Mt dalton 2653m, garibaldi 2678m (just barely seen hiding in the middle)and mt atwell at 2655m high. To say i've been antsy to get up those mtns and ride them is an understatement. I'd just never been on a mission to go up there. Finally, a week ago (the day after the plane ride) i got to head up there with my girlfriend kimmie. A late night decision to go up and an early morning saw us on our way. Our plan was to climb garibaldi, which is the highest peak in the region, then hopefully get on dalton while we were close. Atwell is a mission of it's own, and currently a little too far out of kimmie's league.

Another glorious day greeted us as we made the mission to get to splitboard land. Once on our boards, it was pretty easy going as the lower elevation snow was still frozen solid. With the fast conditions, i was able to take some side route exploring looking at future lines. While doing so, i also thought i'd be able to cut some corners and ended up above a pretty big crevasse zone, which forced me to backtrack back down to a mellower section of the glacier.

The general approach up there is pretty easy and straight forward. When we finally got a view of the main glacier and peak I wasn't really surprised to see old tracks up there as it had been mostly sunny for over a week and a few super nice weekends prior.

Getting closer to the final headwall, i knew the ice axes where going to be coming into play. As it was kimmie's first climb using one, i gave her a quick how to and a lesson in self arresting a fall with it.
I skinned up as high as i could and checked out the climb then set a new boot pack up as kimmie watched from down below. I was fairly surprised at the quality of the snow. Not frozen! Firm, but was still winter snow that would not be too bad.

I reached the summit fairly quickly and it was awesome. To see this mtn everyday when i'm home and to finally be on top looking down was epic. As i waited for kimmie to make the climb i scoped out the summit ridge and the possibility of getting over to dalton which is super close. However, upon scoping the whole ridge for a way down towards dalton, the only one i found was 65 degrees for a few hundred feet and dead ice. The climb up for me would have been easy, the ride down... no way. I needed a longer rope than what i had to be able to rappel down it. So summitting dalton ended right there. Another day.

Kimmie was doing great with the ice axe and was all smiles when she made it to the top. I was so stoked on bringing her up there and getting her up on a big peak. Especially since it may have been her last day snowboarding for the season.

We hung out on the summit for a while and enjoyed the views and ate some lunch while waiting for the snow to soften up a little.

Time to shred! I sent kimmie down the face we'd climbed up, then i traversed over and found some rocks to launch off. Then it was high speed turns the whole way down the glacier.

We were able to ride almost the whole way out, which is always awesome. As we made our way over brohm ridge to awesome views, we realized the day was still pretty early and it was full on spring in the valley, which i always forget when i'm in the mtns.

After making our way up almost 2700m from sea level, once home kimmie and i pulled the bikes out and went for a 2 hour pedal around some of our favorite trails to end off one of our funnest days of the season.

morning light

gear for the day. splitboard, full pack, poles, crampons, and ice axes

table mtn and black tusk

hmmmmm

garibaldi glacier

kimmie climbing up

mt atwell, squamish and howe sound

epic looking chutes

kimmie topping out.

me and kimmie

looking west and north off the summit

looking north

looking south

billy goating. this nub had a little bridge over to it and huge drops all around it.

the drop off from that nub

kimmie

spring time is high speed shredding

kimmie's that little dot! she rode the main line down from the summit (lookers left; summit is hidden) and i goated through the rocks to go launching, farther lookers right (just before the highest pinnacle on the ridge line).

a very happy kimmie on her way down

plane ride around squish

2010-05-13T22:13:00.000-07:00

this past monday i was talking with Mike carney, who's a life long squamish local, former Olympic downhill skier, and now realtor. We got onto the subject of planes and he mentioned he was getting his hours done in a cessna, and was heading out that afternoon for a flight around squamish then asked if i'd like to come along. Hell yes!
It was amazing, to say the least. i got to scope some potential snowboard lines and get an unreal tour of my home from the air.
Thanks Mike!
jl

part of the tantalus range

rumbling glacier on the tantalus range

howe sound

the stawamus chief

black tusk

mt atwell. everyday i open the curtains in my room and this is the first mountain i see.

mt atwell again

mmm powder

2010-05-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

a noboard day in april.

pipe follow stick

2010-04-25T23:02:00.000-07:00

blackcomb has been demo-ing a 22 foot cutter for the past few weeks and i've been loving it. everyone has been loving it. so fun having a good pipe at home. it's been years. hopefully we'll have a 22 foot pipe for next season.

here's a little clip of me riding said pipe with a gopro camera on a follow stick. it was definitely harder than i thought to keep my camera hand steady while doing tricks but i got a mellow run with it.
jl

when i say mission...

2010-04-19T11:37:00.001-07:00

it's been amazing around whistler lately! rode pow for over 2 weeks straight. it's been awesome, lots of time on the hill and in the backcountry exploring new terrain.

One of my missions, involved 2 days for me. I went up solo one day to check out a new zone and spent a few hours wandering up to treeline before heading down. The area looked awesome and the next day i grabbed a crew consisting of dave basterechea, kyle wolochatiuk and his girlfriend krista for a little mission to summit this zone.

To make a 12+ hour mission story short, we summited after 6-7 hours of climbing, we toured straight up heli tracks, dropped into the unknown and shredded it by headlamp, got some awesome powder turns in, found pillow lines, krista found a hole, and we all had a great time.

Some of my pics aren't loading up properly so i've got a few from kyle and dave.
more to come
jl

kyle in the trees

kyle and me way down there, watching dave head straight up heli tracks

me cruisin up the last pitch

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no more skis!

garibaldi in the background, i have a totally different view of this mtn from my bedroom

hi!

dave making his way over to the spine

dropping into my line

me shreddin

dave's view of me

kyle's view

kyle on the spine line

me riding down. kyle and dave rode the sunny spine in the back, and i rode the face just lookers left

we found some pillows in the trees

krista got eaten by a pillow hole in the dark

shredding by headlamp!

kyle taking a break near the end of a long day.

solo splitboarding

2010-04-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

one of my favorite things to do on a snowboard is check out new spots, especially at home. There's a lot of zones around whistler that can only be accessed by foot, so some days i cruise out by myself and get up there to see what's to be had.
yesterday was one of those days. Sounded like a mellow hike up to this zone. It turned into a really good slog. about 5 miles worth of breaking trail in 80cm of snow, losing the trail a few times, making my way around a maze of an unfrozen creek and dodging terrain traps through steep tight trees. I ended up being on the move for 8 hours straight. little bit more than i thought it would be, but scoped some new stuff and rode the most perfect tree line ever. can't wait to get back up there.
jl

taking my board for a walk in the woods

big cedars

mushroom pillow or buried hut?

if you want in, start digging.

future objectives

creek maze

perfection! and a couple thousand feet of it.

euro trippin' video

2010-03-28T18:15:00.000-07:00

a short HD video of my recent euro trippin.
2.5 weeks, 4 countries, 3 contests, a bruised tailbone, messed up ribs, and 1 world title. great trip, minus the tailbone and ribs.

seems every song i picked can't be used on youtube, so the video is to the sweet sounds of shredding.

the globe!

2010-03-21T02:52:00.000-07:00

My last minute plan changing has paid off and I've won the world cup halfpipe overall title.

The pipe was pretty difficult for the contest day. Was just super warm and sunny here all week so lots of holes and lots of bumps. But as always, good riding still went down. Freddie austbo won the guys, followed by christophe schmidt then myself. On the girls side holly crawford won followed by mercedes nicoll, who's been having a good run here in europe with a 4th and 2 podiums in 3 contests.

It feels awesome to have won the globe. I never really thought about trying for it, especially this year where my focus was solely on the olympics. But circumstances brought me to europe and it went from there. I'm still pretty beat up from last weekend (it still hurts to sit), so really happy i was able to get some good runs in and finish the year with a podium and the crystal globe.

since this list is very long, i'm going the short way..
a huge thanks to Kimmie, my family and all my friends for the support, todd at perform x training, Canada snowboard and own the podium, and i have to say a big thanks to my sponsors for all the help. Bataleon snowboards, bern helmets, whistler/blackcomb, dakine, cheetah factory racing, reef, surefoot whistler, and rude boys snowboard shop in banff who've been supporting me for pretty much ever.
this year's been awesome.
thanks!
jl

euro trippin'

2010-03-16T10:21:00.001-07:00

in what seems like a trend of last minute plan changes, somehow now i'm in spain!

X games in france didn't go as good as i'd hoped. Just wasn't riding super good and didn't make the cut to finals. Fun trip of shredding though. pipe was pretty good, and got to ride some nice lines which i always like.
Quickly skipping out of tignes, i headed to italy for a world cup in a town called valmalenco. Knowing it was an 18 foot pipe, i wasn't expecting much. I hate 18foot pipes and generally avoid them. I hadn't ridden one in nearly a year, and less than a week in the last 2 seasons combined. For me, it's extremely different. a 22 foot pipe is nearly 25% bigger than an 18 footer. it's a big difference, it'd be like telling a 100m sprinter to just run 80 meters but their specialty is the last 20 meters of the 100m race.
Some people can bounce back and forth between the 2 pretty easily, but i seem to struggle in an 18 footer in comparison to the 22s. maybe it's because i'm taller and ride bigger boards than most people. I don't know what it is, but that was my last serious contest in an 18 foot pipe that's for sure. On the contest day, i broke a binding in practise, messed up a board during the day and fell really hard in practise for finals. I hit some undervert and put my butt into the coping. I was not stoked. But i ended up 4th at the end of the day and in the lead for the overall world cup pipe title. It's weird how things balance out sometimes.

My plans had me going to boston the next day to visit my brother and the Bern helmet offices, then heading off to the US open in vermont. BUT...
The overall title has never a goal of mine, but being in the lead and having one world cup left was too interesting of a possibility to pass up. It was a really tough decision since the us open is my favorite contest. I'm from the east coast (quebec) and it just feels like home when i'm riding around there. crazy weather, crazy riding, good pipe and slopestyle setup. i love it.
But spain won out due to the crystal globe (prize for the overall)
After riding all day on sunday, traveling to milan, i stayed up nearly all night trying to change plane tickets so i could come to spain. By 430 am i had it all done, passed out and off to spain.
I just got into la molina, checked out the pipe (22 footer that's looking good; hopefuly it'll be riding good) and am settling in for the week.
Should have some time this week to get some video up from the euro trippin. check back.
later
jl

euro x games

2010-03-09T07:28:00.000-08:00

somehow i've ended up in france.

weeeeeeeee. a few chairs, some hiking and voila! we lapped this guy a few times.

to make my long desicion making seem short.. i was supposed to be on a cat trip riding pow this week, but some weird weather (ie no pow) and bad forecast prompted me to opt out and take an invite to go to the x games in tignes, france.
I haven't been here in a long time, and that was early season. This place is HUGE. lifts going everywhere and lots of chutes and cool lines to be had.
So after a day of shredding pipe, my friend trennan (ski coach for all the canadian pipe skiers) and i cruised off to check out the mtn and get some lines in. variable snow but super fun day. nice to be back in big mountains again.
Girls pipe quals is going down in a few minutes so i gotta jet and check it out.
jl

the drop in to the above chute

one of our lines. down the cresent chute. sloestyle start in the foreground

tren and me stoked.

it was a little cold and a wee bit breezy today.

hoceky hockey hockey! eh! eh! eh!

2010-03-04T10:07:00.000-08:00

Having played hockey since i can walk, it's one of the sports i associate the most with the olympics. So i try to get into as many games as possible. Our athlete pass doesn't get us into the indoor venues unfortunately, we still need a ticket. Each country's olympic committee is given x number of tickets for each sport. These are then dished out, in our case, by the athelete services people who are olympic legends marnie mcbean, sylvie frechete and jonathen guilmette. all multiple olympic medalists. They take care of the athletess in our village, make sure we're happy, give advice and also give out tickets. So you ask for tickets in advance and one of these 3 will let you know if you have them or not. Usually hockey games are in big demand, so the usual answer is no. BUT, if you hang out long enough in the athlete lounge chances are someone won't come pick up a ticket and you happen to be right close by, you can grab the ticket.

So between a family ticket, asking for a ticket and hanging around the lounge picking up scraps i got to see all the canada games from the 1/8 finals all the way to the finals and got into the bronze medal game too. The athlete seats are WAY up there, but you're in the rink so who cares. Sometimes, like the bronze medal game, a box ticket rolls through from people who want athletes around. In the case of the gold medal game, i got my ticket (nosebleed) 20 minutes before the puck dropped and it was a coin toss to see who got the ticket! (2 minutes later the other person got one too). I've seen a fair few hockey games in my life, and to say that the canada-russia and canada-usa games were crazy would be an understatement. It was insane, and my voice is still hoarse 5 days later! Soo stoked i got to see those games.
We all know how those games ended and it was amazing to be in the rink.

The hockey players did hang out in the olympic village. You could plop down next to them for breakfast or play some ping pong with them (sid's backhand is not limited to hockey!). I went on a bit of a mission these olympics to meet as many canadian athletes as i could. Makes cheering that much more fun and i like meeting new people. I met sidney crosby, shea weber and marc andre fleury pretty early on as they were in the lounge the most. I was pretty stoked that sid and shea watched the pipe event in the lounge and the following day told me I "was freakin nuts". I provided Fleury and some of the other hockey guys with a laugh as i asked for martin brodeur's name. Obviously i know who he is, but not having cable at my house, i'll say it's tough for me to recognize him without his jersey on! (and a lot of the other guys for that matter). Another day, brad martin and i were the only people in the lounge and playing nhl10 on an Xbox. Fleury came in and watched us play. As we were playing canada vs. canada, i jokingly said we should put marc in net. Well, brad did for the shootout, and i ended up finally scoring in a 12 shot marathon. he turned around to marc " how could you let that in!!?" 'sorry' was marc's sheepish answer through all the laughing. i can't say i've ever played an nhl video game and had the player right there in the room.

Canadians like to put hockey players up high on a pedastal but they're normal people, just really good at hockey. So it was really cool to hang out with them and get to know them (and everyone else in the village!).and yes i realise i just posted stories about nhl players, but that's what people have asked me the most. "do the players actually stay in the village?" "have you seen sid?" yes to both, and they even celebrated their gold medals and the end of the games in the village with everyone else.

sidney and shea. sidney's the short guy in case your wondering

rob fan, mercedes nicoll, sarah conrad, brad martin, and palmer taylor at the russia canada game. Rob's first nhl/world level hockey game!

i'd hate to play canada in this rink! nothing but red shirts and screaming fans

mercedes and i at the gold medal game

it always amazes me that there's still fans for countries half way around the world. Suomi (finland) fans for the bronze medal game against slovakia. and still alot of canada jersey's!

brad martin would be the least official looking person in this box. finland-slovakia bronze medal game

our 2 assistant chef de mission. legend's steve podborski and joe juneau. (skiing and hockey)

scott neidermeyer and i waiting for the closing ceremonies. yup again, he's the shorter guy. if i had another 30-40 pounds on me maybe i would have stayed in hockey!

my 2nd olympic run! i love the internet!

2010-03-02T18:51:00.001-08:00

my second run from the olympic finals. randomly found it on the internet.
stoked. first time i get to see it.

village life, media and shaking babies and kissing hands

2010-03-01T16:20:00.000-08:00

part 2 of olympic living. Now that i'm out of the village maybe i can catch up on things!

When you do well you're time gets eaten up with media and appearances after your event. If you have a medal it's a full time 16 hour day job for days on end. With my 7th it was mid-road busy. Over the week and a bit left during the games i rolled through CTV, RDS, CBC and Global, plus numerous radio spots. We also get called out for quite a few shaking babies and kissing hands events. A few of the better, and/or easier, events were the Canada Snowboard meet'n greet party, a "play it cool" reception at the David Suzuki foundation and one with the mayor. From what we knew about this one it was maelle ricker getting thrown out on stage in front of 10,000 people at Livecity. Turns out the mayor named the day "canada snowboard day in the city of vancouver", maelee said a few words then we all got thrown out in front of 10,000 people! This one was quikly followed by a Damien marley concert that was awesome.

On a few days, you're ushered from one event to the other, not even really knowing where you're going! but it's all good. We're all grateful for the support from fans and sponsors so we roll along, smile, shake babies, kiss hands and enjoy it. It's rare that snowboarders get so much attention.

The olympic village was pretty much like living in a bubble. No stress, relaxing, mellow. it was awesome. The food was good and there was a huge selection. and there wasn't lines at mcdonalds. But a few eating contest got a little out of control. Greg bretz managed to pound back 60 mcnuggets! unreal.

Being our home games, and one of the largest teams we definitely got the choice buildings. right on the water at False creek. The condos were pretty unreal. And our athlete lounge was insane! top floor of one of our buildings. full views all around, ping pong, foozball, tvs, xbobx, wiis, food. everyone spent some serious time up there. Whenever there was an event with Canadians competing, the lounge was packed with everyone screaming and cheering. Getting insight from teamates who weren't competing. pretty cool watching a hockey game with marty brodeur and marc andre fleury and getting their insight into the game. It was awesome.
well, that's enough for now.
i need to go riding.
jl

the team canada moose

village art

hmm which houses are for the canadians?

view from my deck. it's ok i guess

athlete hangout barn. video games, tunes, pool, foozball, etc...

Dom maltais pong-ing in the penthouse athlete's lounge

who lives here?

good luck sneaking into the village

food!

canada house warmup with a view

no pressure!my nephew cedric, terri, and my bro claude with maelle

the vancouver mayor and palmer taylor, sarah conrad, and maelle

small crowd,10,000 people at livecity in yaletown

hate 'em or love 'em! judges and good guys at the canada snowboard party. Brandon wong, myself, dave desa, and marcello centurione

RDS prior to being interviewed by my mom's cousin, and RDS host claude maillot

brad martin and myself on the CTV set

Dr. Suzuki and myself

Dr. Suzuki and a bunch of olympians who are members of "play it cool"

olympic life part 1

2010-02-26T16:37:00.000-08:00

wow, unreal week since the pipe last week. Gonna try and get some posts up about olympic life after your event is done.
The night after pipe, i left and went home to squamish to hang out with my family and have a big breakfast with some friends, then ran back down to the city to catch the girls pipe event. All of them were ripping. Fun to watch it all go down. The crowd was going crazy again. So sick. We all had a great time running into friends in the stands and running into some personalities. My favorite was being able to chat with jake burton for a little while and fill him in on a few stashes for his upcoming day up on blackomb. He was pretty stoked to get some local info on lines.
The following day was all about running around doing media appearances and interviews. Followed by getting to watch the latvia-czech hockey game with my family. Still a crazy crowd! unbelievable the fans that come out to the olympics from fairly random countries (latvia) and in force!
For the weekend i went back home and hit up some blackcomb backountry with my brothers one day and a few friends the next. Both my brothers are really good skiers, so it was fun to be able to scare them a bit and get them in on some good lines. One of them hasn't skied out west much, so his eyes were fairly wide seeing me walk to the edge of big cliffs and call him over. Super fun weekend of shredding in full bluebird. soo nice out.
More to come, I got the canada-slovakia game to get too! OOOWWWW!

'06 cdn guys pipe team watching the girls pipe event. myself, hugo lemay, crispin lipscomb and brad martin

jake burton and myself. 2 olympics for me and 2 photos with jake. haha

It might suck trying to follow your little brother who's an olympian known for hiking... those 2 dots are my brothers sucking wind.

my oldest brother claude dropping in

One of the objectives of sunday, decker mtn

Hiking up to decker mtn, my girlfriend kimmie following the boot pack

7th!

2010-02-22T10:23:00.000-08:00

WOW! little late in getting to this, but life has been crazy the last few days.
Stoked i got 7th in the Halfpipe last wednesday night. It was an interesting day for me for sure.
My first qualification run i fell on a cab 9. WHAT? This rachets up the pressure on your second run by a lot. I was confident i'd land my second run but, sometimes you don't. So i had to spend some time accepting that possibility and getting around it and telling my self that i was going to land that 2nd run.
In quals, my run was shaping up to be switch back 5 mute, cab 9 melon, switch method, cab 7 mute, and edning with a frontside 9 stalefish. As i went through the 2nd run it was all good, until i hit a rut going into my last trick. I bailed on the front 9 and stopped the trick at 720. I wasn't going to risk not landing at this point. BUT, i knew the run would score lower than i'd like. 8th place, top 9 go through, and with 10 guys left to go that can beat me, i don't like the odds. To say i was nervous watching my friends drop in and do there runs is an understatement. i wanted to puke.
But i made it through in 9th.
Semis, i changed my run to dropping in forward for a method, front 7 tuck knee indy, cab 9 melon, switch backside 720 mute, to backside 900 mute.
My first run went ok, but had a few mistakes. Again it left me on the bubble to qualify for the finals. uhhh. But with reverse order seeding for this round I got to watch everyone try and make they're way into the top 6. Nobody was able to bump me so I dropped into my second run knowing i was in.
Food at this point was starting to be an issue. I'd eaten at 11am in the morning, it was now 6pm and finals starting soon. It was a strange schedule for the games but i knew about it a head of time and trained pretty hard to be able to ride for hours on end. But really, the schedule sucked. By the end of the comp, six of us had ridden 3 practise sessions and 3 contest rounds with really no time for more than a snack.

FINALS! the crowd was unreal. I was the first guy to drop in and i took a minute prior to my runs to absorb the scene from the top of the pipe. Big crowd, empty perfect pipe. Loved it. I'll have that memory for ever.
My first run was supposed to be method, front 7 tuck knee indy, cab 1080 melon, front 9 stale to back nine mute, but i clipped the lip on the 720. As i took off into the 1080, i knew i didnt have enough speed to get it done so i landed it at 900 and quickly decided to go into my semis run. Not the run i was looking for.
My second run also was not what it was supposed to be. same run as above but was going to end in a backside double cork 900. I had a bobble going into the last hit
which threw me off enough that i didn't think i would be able to get the double so i went for just a backside 9 to end it off. Not quite the runs i was looking for but 7th at the olympics isn't too bad. It was also the best finish ever by a canadian in the guy's pipe event. So i got that going for me for at least 4 years. haha

The crowd was amazing. I don't usually acknowledge much prior to my runs but being at home and having that crowd, i had to get them to make some noise. It was so loud from up top. Never heard anything like it for a snowboard comp. absolutely loved it. When one of my runs in semis was over, i realized that hanging out in front of the judging booth, the crowd couldn't see the riders. So i ran back up just to give them a wave and the response was crazy. The crowd blew up! That was going to happen again for sure. Both my finals runs, i made sure to run back up the pipe a little ways and give the crowd a wave. It was truely amazing. My last run i gave the crowd a little bow. It wasn't an exit bow from contest riding, just a big thank you on my part. It was the night of my life and a big part of that was the crowd response and i wanted to pay them back.
Thank you to everyone for the support, loved every minute of it! and i swear i'll get around to my emails one day soon.
check back after the games, i'll have some photos up and such.
thanks
jl

game day

2010-02-17T09:26:00.000-08:00

i kinda thought i'd be nervous for today.
I'm not.
I fell asleep right away last night, slept great and Brad didn't even snore! which is rare.
this morning i feel awesome. Really excited to ride my snowboard. contrary to '06, it doesn't feel like the olympics. My head is in a totally different place. Experience maybe. or maybe being 7 years older than my competitors! and i think the oldest guy ever to ride in an olympic pipe event, which may or may not be a good thing..
I just can't wait to snowboard. it's my favorite thing to do in life and today i get to share that with the world.
I know i may not win, hell, i might not even make finals. Shit happens and pipe riding is crazy these days. But i'm totally at ease and happy that i've done everthing and taken advantage of every opportunity that i could have to be here and do my best.
it's gonna be a fun day of riding and i can't wait!
jl

oh and i found out i got bib #26..

GAME ON!!!!

2010-02-16T22:12:00.000-08:00

Pipe comp is tomorrow.
Practise tonight was super fun. Pipe was perfect. Feeling good and can't wait to shred tomorrow.
All the canadian guys are starting in the second heat. we practise around 2:10pm PST and start the heat around 2:45. I'm rocking #25 or something around that.
check it out!
jl

game time

2010-02-15T12:49:00.000-08:00

The opening ceremonies the other night were unreal, which if you caught it on TV you'd probabaly agree with. The part you don't see is how long the night is for the athletes. It starts in the village around 3pm. We had a canadian get together in the village. Then you make your way over to the ice rink via bus. Hang out in the rink for a while as the other countries slowly filter out.
Being the host country, we walked in last, so we had a while to wait in the rink. Then it's a short walk over to GM place. We then all hang out in the bowels of the stadium in a HUGE lineup and slowly make our way around the inside. Having the performers and volunteers cheer us on as we passed by was awesome. Finally we get a view of the stadium and we're walking in. Words cannot describe how amazing that walk in was. the roar of the crowd was unreal! To make it 2 for 2, brad martin and i walked in together and enjoyed our second opening ceremonies. The whole night was amazing.

rob fagan and myself at the end of the night

Since then we've been hanging out in the village, work outs, eating, watching the games and playing some video games.
and yes, if you're wondering the hockey guys are staying in the village. In here they're just as good as everyone else. Marnie Mcbean (olympic gold medal rower/ works in the village with the atheletes now) just nearly kicked scott niedermyer out of the canada athlete's lounge, before realizing who he was. She doesnt follow hockey much. Without a hockey shirt and gear on i don't recognize the guys either really!

We finally got in the pipe last night, and the shape is really good. Little soft from the previous night's rain but there's a great crew working up there and it should be all good for the comp on wednesday.
Currently I'm watching the guys snowboard cross quals. I wishi i could make it up there to support my frineds but i've got my own schedule to follow until pipe is done.
Go canada!
jl

1 day until the games Opening

2010-02-11T22:22:00.000-08:00

Oops, i think i may have skipped a press conference this morning. Sorry Guy (our media dude). Something called "powder", called from the squamish backcountry.
After a few morning errands, my buddy Kyle and I went up for a little splitboard mission just up the road from my house. Rain in the parking lot, quickly turned to snow as we climbed higher onto the ridge. Getting to the top it was pretty much a whiteout and puking. Lots of deep snow for us to chuck ourselves blindly into. We mostly sessioned a small cliff area until dark and called it a day.
I making the move into the village tomorrow. Our pad is ridiculous!
later
justin

My torch "run"

2010-02-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

had an amazing day yesterday. Took the olympic torch up grouse mtn on top of their tram! check it out..

the flame!

2010-02-09T15:57:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I received a very interesting phone call.
"HI justin, are you carrying the olympic torch?"
not that i know of.
"would you like too?"
sure. when? where?
"on TOP of the grouse mountain tram."
Hell yes!

So tomorrow afternoon I'll be carrying the torch up grouse mountain, on top of the tram. Gonna be cool. If you're in north vancouver, come check it out.
jl

burton cdn open finals

2010-02-07T10:44:00.000-08:00

My 3 finals runs from the cdn open yesterday.
jl

2nd at the burton cdn open!

2010-02-06T18:20:00.000-08:00

Just finished the burton canadian Open. Another 2nd place! stoked.
finals runs coming soon. in the meantime..
I took a chest mounted GO pro HD out on a contest run.
This is my second run from the semi finals, as seen from my chest.

2nd at the calgary world cup,

2010-02-01T07:05:00.000-08:00

my finals runs from the calgary world cup this past weekend where i got second place..

2010 Olympics!

2010-01-26T08:37:00.000-08:00

This past weekend we had our last olympic qualifier event at the world cup in stoneham, quebec. Everyone's goal on the pipe team was to have 2 top fives (out of 5 events) as it meant priority selection for the Olympic team. Coming into this past weekend, i was the only rider with those results. But it by no means meant i was safe. With canada having only 3 spots for the guys pipe team it was still possible for me to get knocked off the team. Brad, jeff and Dustin each had 1 top five and if they all got a top five in stoneham, naming the team would have become very tight indeed. If 2 of those guys got top fives, then the third guy was left out. Being in the 3rd spot brad was sweating the most these past few weeks.

As quals progressed Jeff and myself were sitting in 1st and 3rd, brad was around 10th and dustin was the last guy to drop. needing to land his second run to make finals (and his chance at a top 5) we all watched as dustin dropped into his do or die run. Dusty dropped a pretty good run, but with too many flat landing and sketches in the flat bottom it's gonna be really close to making the finals or not. We all piled around the score board to see the score come up, discussing the ups and downs of his run, debating possible scores. Dustin's score comes up short. I'm pretty sure i hear brad's sigh of relief from across the pipe! It sucks to see one friend's dream ended and another's realized at the exact same time. Basically right at this point Brad, jeff and myself all know we're on the team. Our smiles get bigger, shoulders relax a little more, high fives are slapped.

But we still have finals to go through. At the start of the day i told my coach i was gonna wing it through all my runs. Practise for finals was going really good, board was running fast, liking the pipe, feeling good. As we got into the finals themselves, the temperature dropped, a lot. I dropped into my first run and it felt like i was riding on sandpaper. I was barely moving in comparison to practise. Wasn't stoked. The temperature had fallen so much it made my wax job pretty much useless (cold snow is like little daggers and you need really hard wax for it; otherwise you go really slow). I made do with the situation (not much you can do) and ended up in 4th place. janne korpi from finland won on his last run, jeff got second and antti autti got 3rd. Was a fun night minus the unexpected slowdown.

We had a press conference yesterday in quebec city to name the olympic team, then jumped on a plane to head out to clagary for another world cup and the burton CDN open. In cowtown for a few weeks then heading home and the Games.
jl

riding powder, halfpipes and planes

2010-01-21T13:59:00.000-08:00

my life has been pretty crazy lately. planes, powder days, halfpipes, michigan?

Early jan i spent a few weeks in mammoth california. The week following the US grand prix was interesting. actually mostly just windy. We had a few days cut down from it being super windy, a few days of puking snow. A good powder day which is always welcome. And finally our very last day in town it was real good. or at least the afternoon was really good. Always nice to leave on a good note. I'm not gonna count the casino in reno later that night!

My travels had me scheduled to go home for a 3 days, but it got cut down to 1. And i fully lucked out. 80cm and bluebird. needless to say it was a good day to be home in whistler. While in mammoth i'd heard about a 22' pipe being cut by pat melondowski out in the upper peninsula of michigan. Sorry, what? who? why? how? word on the street was that it was a pretty good pipe. Turns out the pipe was bigger than the hill, i mean the ravine that Otsego resort is perched atop. Aussies, kiwis, japanese, italians, the french. quite a few teams are making their way to michigan to hit up this pipe. So after riding pow in whistler, i made my way to michigan for a few days to ride the smallest ski hill i've ever been too. And the pipe was good, and the people at the resort were amazing. Super nice and really accomodating to all of us. One of the nights iw as there one of the japanese coaches and a few of his riders made a feast for 35+ people. They cooked for over 6 hours! it was unreal. The vibe in michigan was really cool. Was kinda bummed having to leave after just a few days. So rode for a few days in michigan, then jumped a plane that night and was riding stoneham in quebec the next morning.

Stoneham is hosting a world cup which is our last event for olympic qualfying. Anxious to get it all over with. Currently I'm ranked in first, followed by jeff batchelor and brad martin. the contest is tomorrow during the day with night finals. hope the pipe is good so we can throw down for the crowd, which is generally always good here in quebec.

The video is from my last 2 days of 2009. one of my favorite things to do at home, explore new zones on my splitboard. enjoy.
jl

mammoth GP #1 finals and #2 quals

2010-01-08T20:19:00.000-08:00

couple more runs from the comp down here in mammoth.
the first run is my run from the first GP final (13th place). I had a different idea in the start but made up a new run as i went along.
and the next 2 are my quals runs from the second GP. missed finals and got 22nd. Probably would have made it had i landed the first run.
I don't really like doing the same run twice, and kept trying to change my runs a little bit every time. my quals runs today were pretty similar to the other day but was going to go switch back 720 on the first one on the last hit, and added a fs 9 to the second one. too bad i cant seem to do straight airs this week, def hurts when you're rolling down the windows on a straight air.
Pipe was amazing again. The wind sucked though. I'm sure finals is gonna be another good show tomorrow. Then a week of shredding here before heading home for a few days then stoneham. I'll try to get another vid up later this week.

mammoth grand prix#1 quals

2010-01-05T22:59:00.000-08:00

quals for the first grand prix in mammoth went down today. was feeling kinda sick this morning prior to going riding. Runs went pretty good. first run was qualified me for the final in 7th overall (i think). the second run was supposed to be WAY different but i messed up dropping in, then again on the second hit. So then i just messed around the rest of the run. I'm a goofy foot, so don't listen to the announcer on the tricks so much.
Finals tomorrow at noon. stoked.

happy new year!

2010-01-04T21:12:00.000-08:00

wow. 2010. Christmas was sweet. hung out at my parents in quebec, played some hockey, went sledding and took our canoe out for an ice breaking mission on the lake (which is pretty scary; falling in not much of an option). headed home to squamish after xmas, day in blackcomb park (it's awesome; especially for dec) some splitboarding, pow riding on whistler and a solo splitboard exploring mission that took a wrong turn and ended with me almost jumping out of my car!
We just got down to mammoth mountain in california for the US grand prix. We've been here for 2 days and on our first day here we had 2 surprises waiting for us. Pipe wasn't open and the contest starts a day earlier! so we effectively lost 2 days of training. Today's one day of training had one really good wall and one undervert wall which isn't the sweetest combo. But Billy (the pipe cutter) is aware of the problem and will hopefully get it cut perfect for the comp tomorrow.
I gotta go grab my boards and get them setup for tomorrow. more to come and maybe another video if i get around to it here.
jl

soo it started snowing again.

2009-12-18T07:39:00.000-08:00

After spending 2 pretty cold weeks in colorado, and no snow in whistler the whole time i was gone, it started snowing the day i came home. 70cm in less than 2 days. Stoked.

My last day at Copper I ran into an old friend who set me up with a Gopro HD camera. Such a sweet little camera for POV shots. Took the Gopro up on the hill the last few days and made a short video. enjoy
jl

grand prix at copper

2009-12-11T21:54:00.001-08:00

first contest of the year, US grand prix at copper in colorado.
i joined up with the team down here just over a week ago, and for the most part since i've been here it's been really cold and fairly windy. it hit -40 with the windchill a few days ago during the first "official" triaing day. so pretty sweet conditions for pipe riding. yeah...
but we've gotten in there and gotten some quality riding in.
Today was the qualifiers for the comp. Tom (our coach) came walking into the house last night saying "justin i have good and bad news. you're in the 3rd heat" 'soo what's the bad news' i ask. "so is eveybody else"
generally heats are split and radonized according to your fis points so in theory it evens the heats out. but it never really works out that way. There's always an easy heat and a hard heat. My heat today was the hard heat. it consisted of shaun white, louie vito, scotty lago, jj thomas, kazu kokubo, jack mitrani, greg bretz,2 really good finnish guys (janne and iika), another good japanese rider (daisuke), a couple more ripping american kids, dustin craven, and myself to name a few..
there was a few jokes around the house about my luck to be in that heat. heat lists never really bother me but when they were only taking 4 people out of a heat... it starts being a little tougher. so 3 heats, 4 people from each, then the next 4 overall scores to make a 16 person final.

So today, i finally started riding at what i consider a somewhat normal level for me. I had some timing issues on a few tricks the last few days so I was lagging a bit on where i wanted to be at. But today felt pretty good.
My first run went decent i guess. had planned to drop into a switch back 540 to start, cab 9, switch japan, haakon, frontside 9 and a back 9.
I almost decked out the cab 9 (pipe was a little undervert today; 7 people got injured and had to be carted off my patrol. not good). then hit a fairly undervert section where i wanted to do the front 9 and had to settle for a 720. which left me riding swtich again and left me to improvise on my last hit. i settled for a alley-oop switch backside 540. hadn't done one of those in about a year i think. felt good on the take off, came around nicely but i landed a little flat and on my heels. i ended up hooking my heel edge across the flatbottom, dragging a hand and essentially tripoding across the flat. little better than flat out falling but not by much.
too many mistakes. i got a 36.6. and with the heat i was in i needed a solid run.
and the second one wasn't going to be it either. slipped out on the cab 9, ended up at 720 and had to improvise the rest of my run and i decked out a few hits later. day over. 31st place overall i think.

shaun, louie and greg went 1,2,3 for the heat and for the overall scores. Dustin and charles reid are the only 2 canadians to have made it through to finals.

Pretty bummed. I hate not making finals. But i can't beat myself up too much. rode pretty much how i wanted to ride and it just didn't work out on the contest runs. Happens. Gonna watch finals tomorrow, then a few mre days of riding the pipe here before heading home tuesday night.
jl

classic lines, good times and lost tourists in the backcountry

2009-11-27T21:35:00.000-08:00

After an utterly epic start to the season we got hit with a little rain on wednesday in the mountains. not expecting much on thursday we went up to check out blackcomb mtn's opening day. Surprise! the clouds parted and the alpine was awesome. We spent the day lapping Spanky's ladder. For today, knowing that the snow was quite good in the alpine, Dave Basterechea, eric soucy and myself grabbed our avi gear and went out for a casual day of hiking a few of blackcomb's classic backcountry lines. Eric had only enough time for a quick (relatively) lap so we started off we D.O.A. It's fun tight chute that runs off the side of blackcomb peak. It tends to get a little wind hammered and with a handful of people having done it yesterday it was a little more chewed than we had hoped for but fun nonetheless and held some good turns. And as a usual occurance from the wind, a rocky exit.
Having left eric dave and i went on to do usueme. as we grabbed a bite to eat on top of the chute, we heard a voice cry up "Please wait for me! I'm all alone and pretty scared!" what? "yeah sure. we'll wait for you" As it turns out, he was a tourist from the states who had met some people, who were going to take him to another line in the area.
Somehow this fellow ended up getting seperated, on his own, lost, with no avalanche gear, at sunset in the backcountry. As we were the closest people to him, he followed our line. So Dave and i waited for him to make his way to the top. Then with the sun setting in behind the mtns, we enjoyed our pow turns down to the valley below.
another awesome day in whistler.

Dave B. dropping into the top of D.O.A.

Eric Soucy, DOA

dave B.

View towards Black tusk and Tantalus range

Me, spicing up my life, riding the bottom section of DOA switch

common sight looking back up DOA, rocks.

blackcomb peak

wedge mountain

myself and Dave, on top of usueme just prior to sunset

usueme

it's been a good start to the year!

2009-11-24T18:06:00.001-08:00

Whistler has just been getting smashed with snow recently. We're well over the 5m mark for november. Which makes for the snowiest november on record. I've been back from Hawaii for 2 weeks now and have ridden powder 13 of those 14 days. the one missing day was right before the hill opened and i helped a friend move. It's been the best start to a season i've ever had. Just never seen anything like this in november. been amazing.
I was supposed to be on a plane right now headed down to Copper colorado to go ride pipe, but they're pipe isn't quite ready yet, they don't have much natural snow and we've got lots here. So that plane ride has been postponed for a little bit.

winter's here! get out there and ride.
jl

Today, 3rd day of Whistler mtn 09/10 season.

2009-11-16T14:49:00.000-08:00

Unreal

Whistler opening day!

2009-11-14T20:32:00.000-08:00

Had an awesome time in hawaii. Met up with skiers sarah burke and rory bushfield for some surf sessions. super fun. Waves were pretty much epic the whole time. Loved it.
Came home on the overnight flight tuesday night, arrived in vancouver at 5am, and was hiking in the squamish backcountry a few hours later!
Hiked Paul's ridge both wed and thursday this week to ride some powder and get some no-boarding in. Amazing to have surfed the north shore of hawaii one day and be riding BC powder the next! There's about 140cm just below treeline around squamish which is a fair amount for this time of year.
And whistler opened today. Epic. super good opening. I'm pretty sure everyone for miles around was there. Rolled around with photographers Jeff patterson and john Scarth, and met up with tons of friends everywhere. was an awesome opening day on the hill. Played around with my new little cameraand made a video of the day. the version on youtube has better video quality, and since they killed the zepplin song i switched it to trouble andrew.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2AZgvIGuLs

hawaii

2009-11-03T15:42:00.000-08:00

Slowly making my way home from NZ. small stopover in hawaii for a few weeks to get some surfing in. It's been pretty big for last week. This weekend was insane, double triple overhead at most break on the north shore. So we went to go watch pipeline do it's thing..

last day of riding for 08/09

2009-11-02T22:00:00.000-08:00

well, little late on this one. had my last day of my 08/09 season last saturday in New Zealand. was pretty much the day we were hoping for. weather was amazing, no wind, and the pipe was, uhhh, ok. little undervert and got pretty slushy pretty fast, but it was pretty decent for sure.

With the wind finally dying down, good weather and my ankle finally back to 100% I got around to trying the tricks i was wanting to do. I've been working on several different double corks through last season and this summer. It's how i hurt my ankle in august. Was pretty pumped on being able to do them in the pipe again. So was working on one for abit then the pipe got too slushy so i decided to try some front double cork 10s. i thought the pipe was a little slow but took a few warm up hits, was feeling the wall and went for it. All felt good but i was a little short on the rotation so i tried to jam my front foot in the wall and spin my board around it, but my binding had other ideas. SNAP! day over.So with that my 08/09 season is over.
09/10 coming up in a few weeks!

later
jl

always something...

2009-10-23T02:38:00.000-07:00

today was the day we've waited for since the start of camp. the wind actually died, it was bluebird and absolutely gorgeous. unfortunately the pipe was under vert, and turned to pea soup slush very very fast. the melt has been taking it's toll on the pipe and the walls are shrinking. it kind of feels like late spring, cause it is, and you just can't seem to get everything to align perfectly.
Thankfully, the Bagjump has been setup this week so we've been entertaining ourselves on that for a good chunk of the day. It's a lot easier to just take care of 2 small hits then a whole pipe. and the walls that we're hitting into the bag are at actual full height that a pipe would be. so really good practise none the less. It's pretty much stress free riding cause you can try whatever pops into your head and see if it could actually work without worrying about the consequences like we normally would. I've been working on 2 different double corks over and over. The pipe hasn't been crazy good for those this week, so jumping into the bag has been the best way to practise them the last few days.

Tomorrow is our last day on hill. Supposed to be another beautiful day. hopefully the wind stays light and the pipe will have some more vert. we'll see. either way it goes, it'll be fun. snowboarding always is.
jl

snow and surf in a day and the never, ever, ending wind.

2009-10-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

kia ora from NZ. Our trip has been going pretty good so far. We're all stoked we've actually gotten in 5 days a week of riding. a few of them have been pretty suspect days but we're riding. The weather has been slightly difficult this past week and a half. Super slushy (way too slushy), crazy bullet proof ice, foggy, rainy, snowing, and wind. wind every day. A typical day has little wind down here in wanaka and howling winds up on the hill. we're stoked when it's only 40km/h up there. but we hear from the locals that the wind stops in like, february. awesome. But generally the sun pokes out at some point, the wind will gust and back off for a second or two. so we just wait for a quick break and drop in.

last week i took brad martin for a snow and surf day. a few friends lent us some boards so we jumped out to the west coast after riding to get an afternoon surf. It's only the 4th time in my life i get to do both in the same day. For being obsessed with both sports that number kind of surprises me. the surf pretty much sucked but it was fun. chest high kinda sucky shorebreak. a few dolphins swimming around. no matter the conditions whenever i get to do a double day i love it. brad had a blast too. so totally worth the effort.

The bagjump has arrived. The japanese team paid to have the bagjump down here and a few other people are getting in on the fun. I got a few jumps on it yesterday, and tomorrow we're gonna have dustin craven, jeff batchelor, brad, sarah conrad and myself hitting it. The setup is an idea that i'd talked with the bagjump guys about this summer. a big spine with both sides groomed with the pipe cutter so you can easily hit both sides into the bag and it's still like hitting a pipe wall.
If i can get it up i'll post a video of us hitting it. internet is super slow again this trip.

It's super windy out today(90+ km/h winds), so no riding. I'm gonna hang out in the backyard, ice my ankle in the creek, go on a bike ride and enjoy my second spring of the year.

jl

what it says. jackson bay.

brad martin suiting up for his first nz surf session. i didn't tell him about the west coast being real sharky until after the surf..

west coast driving

spring time

the neighbor's backyard

13 people in a house means a full garage

bagjump setup

back to NZ

2009-10-08T14:12:00.001-07:00

So you jump on one of the longest plane rides of your life to get to NZ, (good 12-14 hours) and jump off in aukland. Yes! back in NZ. Then through the wonders of the Aukland airport you're ushered into the longest customs line you've ever seen. because every international plane lands in aukland one after the other. So you wait a good hour and a half for customs. sweet. grab your bags and go. oh wait. another line. they need to xray all your bags to check for food, seeds, etc. Ok out of that line. sweet we're out. oh you need to transfer to a domestic flight? wait in that line over there. then finally make your way over to the domestic terminal. it's a pretty awesome trip to get here.

I had our new assistant coach Kris decoste and teammate sarah conrad on my flight out of LAX, then in aukland met up with a few more people from the team. Quick flight to queenstown, a meal at Furgburger (it's a must in Q-town) and we were on our way to our house in Wanaka. It's a fairly big place but is a bit of a zoo. we've got all the canadians staying under one roof. I think it's 13 people in total.brad martin, Dustin craven, kris and myself are in one room with bunkbeds. it's pretty sweet. we got enough room in there for all of us to chill and get away from the living room. and it's right near the lawn bowling so we've been getting into that in the afternoons. and i can see why it's an old person's game. it's a little slow.....

We've had 3 perfect days up at cardrona so far. The hill is closed and it's just the people that are there to shred the pipe. The kiwis obviously, a few polish riders, aussis, shaun white and us. it's a pretty mellow scene. Danny Kass and some of the japanese team just showed up also.

My ankle is feeling pretty good while riding. Just been riding super mellow to get my ankle back into it. but everyday is a little better and i'm bumping up the riding each day. So hopefully in a day or 2 i'll be up at full speed and trickery.

we're now on 2 down days due to rainy, cloudy crappy weather. We're spending the time on our super slow internet, gym, frisbee-ing, hot pools, video games, stretching. whatever picks your interest.

We should be back on snow tomorrow and the weather is looking sweet for the next little while.
later
jl

i've seen this a lot in my life and always wanted a shot of it. early morning hike up a freshly cut pipe.

customs in aukland

packing..

2009-10-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

Just came home from vancouver island a few days. the surf was on. awesome last weekend of summer. temps dropped and the weather turned stormy and snowed in the mountains! seems like fall is here. The surf was super fun, and my ankle was holding up good. Had some good sessions with the adanac crew (www.surfadanac.com) they hooked me up with some sweet sunglasses upon hearing that still don't have an eyewear sponsor. adanac is hooking up the canadian surf stars (pete devries, noah cohen...) with sick traction pads, limited edition glasses and clothes.
now packing up for 3 weeks back in NZ. semi-private pipe sessions are going on up there as the rest of the hill is closed for the season. hopefully it'll be good! never been in NZ to shred in oct. only surf. so we'll see.
jl

game on!

2009-09-21T21:26:00.000-07:00

finally got my MRI results back. looking pretty good. little bit of damage, but most likely old stuff from a life of snowboarding. So aside from a few aches left over my ankle is pretty much good to go. getting back into my normal life. Lots of time in the gym these days. that didn't change much with the ankle. just changed what i could do.
Going surfing to check out how my ankle is gonna feel standing sideways and getting torqued on. then in october we're heading back down to NZ to ride some more. can't wait to ride again. so my life should get exciting again here.
later

woodworking

2009-09-11T09:13:00.001-07:00

my grandfather first introduced me to woodworking, cause that's what he did in his spare time. And my dad taught me some more. And i love designing and building stuff.
It's a great way for me to get cheap furniture or do reno's on my little house.
So since i've been asked about it a fair bit recently i'm going to start posting some shots of some pieces i've made over the last few years.

logo for Kevin Sansalone at Sandbox Films

table i made for my friend's Cancer Fundraiser

pine and cedar shelves, with carved snowflakes

bar top made from salvaged fir, with cedar dovetail keys

fir/cedar rocking crib for my nephew, same piece of salvaged fir as the bar top

jewellery box for a present, made from reclaimed cedar

i hate hospitals!

2009-09-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

Finally getting closer to knowing what i did to my ankle. I've had 3 rounds of xrays, a ct scan and a MRI. still waiting to hear on the MRI results but the CT scan came back good. I didn't crack any bones, which was a big concern with the mechanism of my injury. So, now waiting to hear if i bruised the bones, pulled any ligaments off the bone or just really super sprained it.

So lots of physio right now. i've gotten the OK to jump a little bit and ride my bike. My good mtn bike got stolen so i'm road riding on my very first mtn bike, which is 20 years old. Never thought i'd train for the olympics on it. it's got hockey tape holding the seat together, the bars, gouple gears don't work, seat doesn't stay straight, frame's a little bent. it's so sweet the thieves didn't dare take it when they took all the other bikes from my garage.

So if you're around squamish and see some dude with a fro, pedalling like crazy on an old fully rigid mtn bike, probably in sandals, that's probably me.
and if i'm screaming, it's cause the brakes hardly work on that bike.

nz photos.

2009-09-02T16:51:00.000-07:00

Had to leave NZ and skip out on surfing the south island. one of our team physios basically told me to go home and get it checked out here. she knew i wouldn't take it easy while surfing. So i'm home now and the internet works so i can put up a bunch of photos from from my trip in NZ.

frends keir dillon, jack mitrani, danny davis, scotty lago and the head gre-nerd, danny kass

danny kass gets some interesting grenade logo placement on danny davis

shaun white, first hit first run 830am. cardrona

the famous "el gato loco",brad martin's mexican wrestling alter ego

perfect, peeling ankle high barrels lake tekapo. oh to be 2 inches tall!

the look out onto the canyon swing. soo much fun.

brad getting strapped in for his first bungy jump

brad, after watching the first person hit the canyon swing.

bob rae glacier

my kind of sign.

the hurt ankle brigade. me and luke mitrani up at the world cup finals

trennan paynter. trenn is coach of the cdn ski pipe team. aka coach to the stars (sarah burke, justin dorey and a whole slew of other ski pipe slayers)

the triple up birthday party (korey wright, myself and our MTV filmer tom). some of the team with party favours that tor (the danish coach) brought over.

me and the canadian girls.

i was expecting a little rock from the previous sign. not something the size of a house tetering on pepples.

possums are not native to NZ and are shot on sight because they kill all the native animals. so the farmers skin them to collect the bounty and leave the carcas on the side of the road for the hawks to eat.

stream

lake wanaka

dead center of the frame is one of my favorite places in NZ, which happens to be one of the best right point breaks there. and with 9000 foot mtns as a backdrop, it's unreal. magnamanu, kaikoura, east coast of the south island. unfortunately dead flat the day i flew out of NZ.

XXtreme thursday in NZ

2009-08-27T23:34:00.001-07:00

wed night was my 5th birthday in wanaka. along with korey wright and our MTV filmer tom cheno. (watch for "over the bolts"). the party started as a pockluck dinner/warmup for kareoke night in town. the whole night was super fun and pretty late. i'll have some pics up soon as i'm just about to jump on a plane to LAX. but i got the video done of the next day, XXtreme thursday, my last day in nz. the last part of the video is the canyon swing. one of the funnest things i've ever done. it's a ginornous 100m swing that has a 60m freefall.
enjoy.

going home hurt. lame action

2009-08-25T14:11:00.000-07:00

i've been pretty optomistic about being able to ride in the world cup this week. but after a few attempts at riding, a bunch of different taping methods on my ankle. it's just too sore to ride. So one of our team physios has basically called me home to get it looked at. no more nz.

tonight we've got our 5th annual Wanaka birthday party. team bahamas' Kory wright and my birthday's and we just found out our MTV filmer's birthday is today also.

we've got an "extreme" day tomorrow which should be awesome. especially since i've been pretty sedate for the last week and a half. bungee, jet boating and the canyon swing, which is a 300 foot pendulum swing through a river canyon. then i'm off to canada.

the world cup finals are today, so i'll try and get some footage to put up on here sometime this week. and when i get home and the net works normally, i'll put up some more photos of the trip down here and our day of jumping off stuff.

push.ca interview

2009-08-22T00:02:00.000-07:00

push.ca put up an interview with me. couple shots of some switch backside 5s from the burton nz open, and some questions complete with answers.

http://www.push.ca/blogs/andrewsn/archive/2009/08/20/justin-lamoureux-and-the-new-zealand-open.aspx

in injury related news, ankle is getting better. went for a hike today. hoping to be able to do the world cup here on tuesday. might be close though. we'll see

being hurt

2009-08-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

the downside to doing what i do. being on the other side of the world, with a hurt ankle, sitting on my ass all day. pretty much haven't done anything in 5 days. which is basically eternity here. having been here 5 times, i've pretty much seen what there's do be seen. physio sessions, light workouts and that's about it. hopefully my ankle is gonna be better soon, cause i'd love to snowboard. pretty bummed (and bored) right now

but nz is one of my favorite places to play, and here's a couple shots as to why i love it down here.the traffic, epic scenery, snowpark, and pumping epic surf at the points in raglan. can't wait to play again. hopefully within the next few days!

nz pipe finals

2009-08-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

pipe finals video.
oh my god. finally got it to work! this video has been jynxed and not wanting to upload.

burton nz open pipe finals

2009-08-15T02:28:00.000-07:00

Burton nz open pipe finals. EPIC! The best comp I’ve ever seen.
Last fall I was asked what I thought winning Olympic runs would be. My answer was “video game shit” as I knew what I had imagined in my head, and knew where it would go. At the US open this spring, luke mitrani landed a switch double backflip and I tried a frontside double cork 1080.
Today, it became full on video game shit! Shaun had back to back frontside double corks, louie vito and nate johnstone were landing and trying (respectively) front double cork 1080s. luke landed a double michealchuck and a cab double cork 1080. I hurt my ankle in practise trying a totally new double cork (or at least haven’t seen this one yet..)
It’s a new world in pipe riding and it’s awesome. And really scary! Haha
There’s a price to be paid to learn these tricks. most tricks are just an additional spin to an existing trick but doubles are a little different as it's extremely difficult to save yourself if they go wrong. Shaun chipped his ankle last winter, Kevin pearce broke his foot, I have no idea what I just did to my ankle but it hurts like hell right now, and a few weeks ago I had a double go really wrong and I thought, for a quick second as I was falling headfirst, that I was gonna end up in a wheelchair.
I’m pretty stoked to see this level of snowboarding go down.
i made another video of today, or at least some of my favorite runs. The internet is brutally slow and I can’t get it to upload onto my blog so check my youtube account. Hopefully I can get it up there. Otherwise check back, hopefully it'll be up soon. enjoy

double video

2009-08-14T01:38:00.000-07:00

if the below video doesn't work go check it on my youtube account.
i couldn't transfer the vid to the file type i usually do, so it may or may not work on macs!
or watch the comp friday on go211.com
it's gonna go off.