Argentina: A Skier’s Journey EP3 [Season 2] from Jordan Manley Photography on Vimeo.

I’m digging this Argentina ski/travel video by Jordan Manley; I recognize quite a few places and sights from our recent adventures in the Andes: the Santiago subway, the trucks along the highway at Penitentes, hot springs, roadside shrines, Fernet, asado, empanadas, volcanoes, and of course, wind!

The wintery snow scenes remind me of the winter I spent with mis amigos in Las Leñas, Argentina way back in 2002. Good times! See my photos from Las Leñas here.

Ran across this video when searching about snowboarding in Switzerland… this is what it’s all about! Great riding and headcam footage by Jonathan Brasey, I think.

Thanks to kQ (and SummitPost) for the tip.

I am renting a car for the entire six weeks. This is kind of an idiotic thing to do in a country that has one of the most advanced public train networks in the world; however, having a car will enable me to haul around all my large format camera gear and all my camping gear.

While I’m there I plan on updating this blog with my latest adventures and stories, so be sure to check back often to see what I’m up to! In the meantime, check out all this great Norwegian (and Swedish) music, below the fold:

Kings of Convenience:

Whitest Boy Alive: (well partly Norwegian)

Royksopp:

And since I’ll be headed to Sweden too at least for a short while, here’s some Swedish tunes:

The Knife:

Little Dragon:

This video has me pumped. Not because I would ever do this sort of thing, but because of the incredible Norwegian scenery these guys are jumping off of. As some of you may know, I am traveling to Norway this summer for six weeks! I actually bought my plane tickets way back in January, which was probably too early since I’ve been fairly obsessed about it since. I can’t wait.

I have no other news. This spring has been a big disappointment here in the San Juans; the dust storms of last month have destroyed the snowpack. Not only is the snowboarding season finished two months too early, but the snow looks so ugly that I don’t even want to do any photography in the mountains. The upside is that I’ve gotten LOTS of work done!

In about a week I’m headed up to the Tetons for a week of riding big lines there, where the snow is [hopefully] untouched by the desert dust.

Skier: Paul McElrea.

Lots of fun hits and features in this long gully. Here’s a helmet cam of my ride:

Click here to watch the Quicktime video.

Paul charging down the gully.

Paul’s photo of me laid back.

Even more snow in the forecast!

Ann Driggers skis down the premier north face descent of this prominent 13er in the San Juans.

The wide open powdery faces provided ample opportunity to haul some serious ass, as seen in my helmet cam video below.

Click here to watch the Quicktime video. (Minus the music here).

LOTS MORE PHOTOS BELOW!

Aimee McAbery shreds the “knar”.

Parker McAbery rockets down the mountain.

After the big summit face, a nice long gully provided a surfy snow halfpipe to carve.

Jumping over a creek to access our second big line of the day. This late in the season, a lot of the snow bridges have melted out, leading to some interesting scenarios like this.

Ann Driggers skis an enormous wide-open steep face that we’ve had our eyes on for years.

Looking back up at our tracks as Ann carves her way down.

Here’s a few photos that Ann took of me carving down the second line:

Feeling the G’s.

Laying back.

As of Saturday, I had really made the most of these latest storms, having been out snowboarding for 4 out of 5 days. During those 4 days, I hiked and rode 7 large descents totaling roughly 15,700 vertical feet of virgin untracked powder. It truly doesn’t get any better than this!

More snow in the forecast…

It has been so great to have winter back again… I had to go track up some more powder this morning. The weather was mostly socked in and snowing today, unlike the glorious lifting clouds of yesterday. But, another four inches of pow didn’t hurt at all.

Below is a helmet cam video from the first lap of the day. Excuse the video quality… my video editing skills suck almost as bad as the helmet cam itself. I didn’t even include the second line because the video was full of awful blinking-black frames.

Click here to watch the Quicktime video.

Dominate the landscape! Neutralize the elements! Humiliate your surroundings!

This is what it’s like to go backpacking with large format camera gear. Ha! (Thanks for the tip, Wally).