The Wall Street Journal did a piece on the Bearfire resort and produced this nifty video about it. All of the footage is cropped from other videos floating around the intarwebs, but the montage with narration tells the story well.
I’ve noticed a huge surge in search engine traffic related to the Bearfire Resort project. I decided to make my rounds and see if anything new or interesting hit the wire and my first stop, the office websites, popped up a special surprise. Instead of a website, I got a 509 error reporting that they’ve exceeded their bandwidth. While that’s a huge bummer, it is a sign that this project is getting more attention than they anticipated.
I was catching up over on DallasSnowboarders.com and ran across the following email reposted:
CASA Prez David Johnson and Tony Sponar of Valle El Arpa Greetings, skiers and snowboarders of the summer season!
Those of us in enjoying the South American winter want to make sure you know what you’re missing; record-breaking cold temperatures have helped a deep snowpack form right to the bottom of all ski areas across the continent, and well below in a lot of destinations.
With roadways closed to Farellones and Portillo this past weekend due to heavy snowfall, the staff of CASA Tours decided to check out the conditions at Valle Arpa, located 2 hours north of Santiago, South America’s only exclusively snowcat accessed ski area. The windy, 4×4-only access road had been cleared by staff in the morning, by Bobcat and shovels. The empty (as usual) parking lot had about 4″ of fresh, light snow, and the skies were bright blue.
We booted up in Toni’s warming hut, and bumped into the legend himself on his way back from warming up the cat. After a quick exchange on how our northern hemisphere winters had been, he decided not to wait for the other group that was supposed to have arrived for the first run of the day. Perfect… The 5 of us jumped on and we had the whole place to ourselves. The moonscape terrain of Valle Arpa was covered with a rippled layer of knee deep, low density Chilean champagne powder. I’d never seen the conditions so good here, during my 5 or 6 visits in the last 5 years.
Toni has big plans for his 2200 ha’s of terrain, which he’s owned since 1972, hoping to install lifts soon. But for now, it’s a paradise of uncrowded alpine bowls, with as much as 3500 ft. vertical per run, and more if you want to do some hiking.
This is definitely the best snow season I’ve seen since my first winter in Chile in ’99. We’ve got limited space on trips in August, but plenty of room on our September tours. Come on down and beat the heat!
Contact us at 1 888 311 2272 or email us at casa@casatours.com to book your trip today! Be sure to ask us about last second deals going on now.
Mike Taylor
Big Powder in Chile
Summer Face Shots
Vertical Dry Pow
Sounds pretty exciting! I still can’t believe that this time next week I’ll be in Chile.
I still can’t believe I’m reading this right! From Transworld:
I love Crested Butte!!! Of course, they’ve had some bad snow this past season, but it was great in 2005! I think I’ll have to go find out for myself! =D
My knees aren’t the best. I tore cartilage in my left knee in grade school. For years my knee would give out on me while I was walking or lock up on me when I would bend it just wrong. Interestingly enough, my early days of skiing and eventual snowboarding really helped to strengthen my knee and almost eliminate the locking and giving out. Still, after a long hard day of boarding, my knees would really ache. My bad knee, the left one, also happens to be the knee from which my board hangs while sitting on a chair lift. I’m forever finding ways of sitting that take the weight and stress off of that bum knee. Make it a hard pack day and it gets even worse with my knees crashing into the ground all the time.
Last season, I decided to try a new product. Based on the recommendation of my parents, I picked up a bottle of Flex-a-min from Wal-mart. I started taking the supplements a little while before heading off on my longest snowboard trip to date. After six days of riding and reaching a point of total physical exhaustion – all while making sure to take the supplements regularly – I had absolutely no knee pain.
I know I sound a bit like a commercial, but the difference was more than noticeable. A little knee pain was just something I had previously accepted as part of the fatigue of snowboarding. If the product is working as it claims, then the reduction in pain comes from helping the knees stay healthy and not from somehow numbing the pain. I plan to take these supplements before and during all of my snowboard adventures in hopes of extending the useful life of my precious knees. I highly recommend this product to anyone.
Tonight I’ve been on the hunt for a good camcorder to bring with me to Chile next Friday. I’ve been flip flopping between hard drive cameras and MiniDV. For a while, the Panisonic (like Gavin’s) was sounding very tempting. They’ve got this nifty optical stability system. Still, the idea of a hard drive keeps appealing to me. I’ve been told that a hard drive based camera runs a higher risk of freezing up than a MiniDV cam. That’s where this next product comes in with a big win.
DogCam has a couple of helmet cams that hook into digital recording devices. This means you can carry the recorder in your pocket – near your body heat. The PVR-500r reads to have an amazing spec, but I haven’t really found much material outside of DogCam’s website. They claim some very impressive quality recording options and up to 5 hours worth.
Back to the cam itself for a moment, DogCam provides some videos on their site. Snowboarding through the trees came out particularly neat, imho. The cam is a bit fish-eyed and there’s no zoom option so the camera wouldn’t really cover all of the same bases a camcorder would. Still, it’s a very tempting option. I would love to hear more from anyone who’s used one!
This particular interview is making the rounds because of a Bartle’s comments about closing down World of Warcraft. Personally, I think it’s a brilliant read from start to finish. The story caries a high level of relevance to the recent rise in social websites as well as the state of online gaming worlds. I was involved in the gaming industry for about a decade; there’s still a great deal that web dev and gaming can learn from each other.
I just ran across a June 12th Interview with Charlie Aaron over on t h e e i g h t f o l d. Hvgill writes:
My fascination isn’t because it’s some interesting new business model or new way of approaching theme parks. It’s not even the peculiarity of building an outdoor year-round winter attraction in a state known for summers over a hundred degrees.
I was recently grilled by a forum goer regarding the potential environmental impact of the resort. This interview sheds some new light on just how green this project really is!
“I think it’s good to note from the get-go that a facility the size and scope of Bearfire will have no portion of its’ operation that will emit any type of gases or contaminants.”
As a side note, I was particularly tickled to see the author of the interview use the term “LOHAS“. As I’ve mentioned before, I recently relocated to the Denver area to get in a season or two of snowboarding. I just happened to be working for Gaiam, the company that originally coined the term. Small world.
Anyway, go read the interview!
In Sept of last year, I posted Myspace: The Beginning Of The End. The post was a mix of my personal observations along with a little bit of supporting news media. Last Friday, MSNBC picked up on the trend in a story titled, “OMG! YR still on MySpace? Loser!” Awesome title, and a good read. There is a growing trend of users seeking out communities with a sense of integrity and purpose. MySpace has neither.
Well, it looks like the resistance to the planned Village at Wolf Creek managed to secure another milestone.
I still tend to think this is merely a setback for what will ultimately be inevitable. Apparently some damaging emails surfaced between the group working on the project and the group doing the independent environmental impact study. It’s kind of an interesting read – lots of drama and corruption. Still kind of a bummer for those of us that would like to have a condo at Wolf Creek!