Monkey

Salmon la Sac, 2010/03/27

Michael Magruder — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:47:14 +0000

I went sledding with the guys near Salmon la Sac on Saturday. It was a great day, with lots of adventuring around the area going from bowl to bowl, with lots of single-track along the way. Had some good climbs, and I spent some time trying to learn to turn my sled in a tight circle by dumping it on its side but I didn’t really get it this day. I’ll try again next time. Overall a good day. Here’s some pictures, though none of them are of me!

GC, 2010/02/13

Michael Magruder — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:06:52 +0000

I went sledding with the OMLB crew up near Gold Creek on Saturday. Good times were had by all. Got a lot of sledding and boarding in. High clouds and light snow now and then with about a foot of fresh snow. Lots of sledding plus me being out of shape equals lots and lots of sore muscles today. Totally worth it, though. Got to learn to ride the sled a bit more. Some fine snowboard runs. Hung out with some good guys. A Saturday well spent.

GC, 2010/01/30

Michael Magruder — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:28:52 +0000

Helen and I went snowmobiling today up in Snoqualmie Pass, near Gold Creek. We had a good time taking it easy and riding the roads up to the radio tower and back. Helen broke her sled in (it was brand new) and had a blast. Very light snow most of the time. We got some Super Nachos at the bar in North Bend on the way home, too.

Island Lake Lodge, 1/21 – 1/24

Michael Magruder — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:05:23 +0000

This was my fourth tour at Island Lake Lodge with my buddies Bill, Greg, Scott, and Peter. I’m calling this Best Tour Ever, at any cat skiing operation I’ve been to, period. The snow wasn’t the deepest by any stretch, perhaps 6-12” of light fluff over a base of packed powder. But the snow quality was excellent, and stayed that way with -10C temps the whole time. What made the trip so great was the terrain we were able to access, the bluebird days, a good group to ride with, and wonderful guides. The stability of the snowpack was better than any time any of us had seen there before, and Bill, Greg, and Scott were on their 10th or 11th tours. The snow safety crew started opening fresh terrain the first morning and kept it up the entire tour. Our group pretty much hit every new opening first (there are three groups at the area each day), and we made it into all of the high alpine drops. We got to hit a lot of great chutes, and we took a 30 min hike up Big White (see pics below) on the 3rd day. Everything was fair game, and we tracked out almost everything we saw. We got to do runs that our guides hadn’t been able to ski in years, and it was sunny and clear 3 of the 4 days.

Our crew was only 5 guys this year, so we got grouped up with 7 other random people in the cat, which is always a crapshoot. Everyone ripped though, and we ended up racking up over 63k of vertical over the 4 days. We lost two of the guys after the first day. They were part of a group of 14, and they decided to pack all 14 into a 12 person cat for the rest of the tour so they could ride with their friends. Too bad for them… our group was faster! The 3 guys from Denver had only booked 3 days, so we were down to 7 on the last day. Then half way through the guy from Boston gave up due to a bad knee so we were down to 6 for the last few runs.

Our lead guide was Corrie and Candice was our tail guide. I had a blast following Corrie… that guy laid down huge beautiful arcs and it was a genuine pleasure to follow closely behind him. Candice was super helpful the entire time and always had a good tip for a good alternate line.

All of the other amenities were the shizznizzle as usual: food, drink, service, the nightly massages in the spa, etc.

Here’s a trail map.

There’s a lot of pictures here, and it’s just a fraction of what I took. The shots of me riding are courtesy of the photographer that rode with us the second day, Matt Kuhn. Captions on the pics give more details where necessary. Most of these are scenery shots since my camera just isn’t very good for action shots. Some of the other guys got a bunch of better shots, and we took a ton of HD video and some standard def helmet cam video. When Bill gets some of that edited I’ll see about posting some of it up.

Fernie Alpine Resort, 1/19 & 1/20

Michael Magruder — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:19:47 +0000

I went to Fernie Alpine Resort for a couple of days on the way to Island Lake Lodge with Bill, Greg, Scott, and Peter. We stayed in the Lizard Creek Lodge which was nice as usual. We roll in around lunch time on Tuesday and the idea is to warm up for ILL by riding Tuesday afternoon and all day Wednesday. I’ve been nursing a bum knee, though, so I took it pretty easy and called it a day about half way through each time. Snow quality up top was very nice: light, but well tracked. The bottom third to half of the mountain was crap, though: clearly rain affected. On Wednesday, based on some friendly tips, we ventured out of bounds into Fish Bowl where we found plenty of quality untracked powder in the upper half of the bowl. The bottom was crap, but it was worth it so we lapped it again. All-in-all, a good warm up for ILL.

Crystal, 2009/11/22

Michael Magruder — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:47:52 +0000

I went to Crystal today with Bill, Simon, and Peter. This was my first day snowboarding this season (I’ve been slacking) and it turned out to be a fine day. There was, well, a blizzard at Crystal. NWAC says it snowed 11” while we were there, and I believe it. It also shows that the winds gusted to 31mph mid-morning, and I think that’s conservative. Up on the ridges it oscillated between low visibility and pure white out depending on the wind. But down off the ridge on the slopes back towards the Rainier Express it was glorious. Nice, deep, fluffy powder, perhaps 18”+ deep, and reasonable enough visibility to fly down the mountain. I choked a bit on powder more than once. Coverage is excellent for this time of season, and good for anytime of the year. We spent most of the time lapping the Rainier Express, and then took a run down Exterminator then stopped for lunch. Exterminator was good, but much more tracked out than I expected… lots of people had the same idea we did. I didn’t go back out after lunch… my legs were just too tired, as I’ve done nothing to prepare for the season. Peter went back out for a half hour or so, and Simon and Bill stayed out for another hour before we packed it in and headed home.

I was pretty pleased with how my left knee feels after today. I damaged it last spring, it turns out pretty badly. It needs surgery that will keep me off the leg for 6 weeks, and then take 6 months to rehabilitate to the point where I can ride again. I’m putting that off, though, on the theory that some boarding is better than no boarding. I’ll have it done in the spring. It felt fine in the powder, but in firm bumps it was extremely painful. I’m gonna have to pick and choose my days carefully this season, but now I know that I have some fine days ahead of me this season.

A few pics from today. I didn’t take many since, well, it was friggin freezing, windy, and hard to see.

New sled for Helen

Michael Magruder — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:15:00 +0000

We got a sled for Helen, so we can snowmobile together this year. It’s also the sled some of my buddies will use to get out there and snowmoboard with me Arctic Cat M6 153” with added electric start, so Helen doesn’t pull her shoulder out of socket trying to start the thing.

Happy Monkey site updated for the 09/10 season

Michael Magruder — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:02:06 +0000

I finally got around to updating the Happy Monkey Snowboards site for the 09/10 season. I’ll be building custom boards as usual this season, and I’ve also introduced two new stock models. Check it all out here: www.happymonkeysnowboards.com

4th of July, 2009

Michael Magruder — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:51:03 +0000

We had a nice 4th of July party at our house yesterday. Grilled some tasty meat, had plenty of good snacks and a good time with a few friends. Then, in the evening we made smores over a small fire, and set off all the fireworks I bought at Boom City earlier in the week. It was an extraordinary amount of fun. Here are some pictures that Helen took of the fireworks. There are some really cool long exposures in there.

Preparing for NV

Michael Magruder — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:32:23 +0000

Helen and I are planning a trip to Nevada in the fall to do some sightseeing and camping. We’re planning to spend a lot of time off the main roads, and given our experience with the Subaru on our trip to Belmont Mill a few years back we’re taking the truck this time. But we don’t have a lot of experience with the truck off-road, so Helen and I got the sled deck off the truck on Saturday and headed out to the Cascades to see how it handles on some bumpy forest service roads. We decided to use many of the same roads that I’ve recently snowmobiled on, so we went out to Gold Creek and headed for the radio tower.

It went very well. We went about 38 miles on the forest service roads, which were a mix of gravel, loose dirt, and snow. There were a few patches of snow left on the road near the top, up to two feet or so in spots, but the truck had no problem with that. I got a better feel for how it handles on really rough roads, too, in a few places, and how it feels when it gets loose in gravel and loose dirt. We took the 4832 to 126 and drove up to the radio tower and took in the view, then we drove down to the bottom of Monster Bowl where we snowmobile a lot. Then we took the 4948 all the way out to Little Kachess Lake then back around to I90.

We had a great time, and we’re surely do it again. We’ll try letting some air out of the tires to soften the ride a bit, and I think Helen will wear a sports bra next time

A few pictures: