Who's Online

5 anonymous users and 0 registered users online.

You are an unregistered user or have not logged in.

Welcome to GotWake.Com

Whether you're a wakeboarder, a geocacher, a snowboarder, my mom, or all or none of the above - hopefully you find something of interest while you're here.

To log a Gotwake signature item, please visit the Tracking Application.

News

Articles: One Good Turn Deserves Another
Posted By: Billy on Sunday, December 04, 2005 - 04:20 PM
Or: Finally, some SNOW! At long last, we received our first winter storms this past week, which finally enabled Tahoe resorts to open. Squaw Valley reported 2' of snow on the upper mountain, and announced opening day of Saturday, December 3rd. After a grueling week at work, I was really looking forward to getting back on the slopes. Drove up late Friday night after work in Lee's fancy new Audi All-Road Quattro - what a luxury ride! The next morning it was off to Special Tickets to pick up my (10th consecutive) season pass - which is always fun. Immediately I started seeing old friends, and making new ones while waiting to get our pass photos taken - the ritual that begins each season. Then on to the locker room, where the excitement continued to build: Remembering my combination, opening the locker and finding that YES, all the gear I expected to be here actually was - and continuing to run into more friends and acquaintances. Not long after, it was actually time to get out there and make those first turns. I'll save the rambling about conditions, available terrain, and how I rode for the extended text, for those who care to click through and read it. I will leave this parting shot though - demonstrating that by the end of the first day, I was feeling daring enough to try my hand in the terrain park: Okay, so it's pretty tame, as far as terrain park features go - but I was pretty happy to hit this pair of sliders on my very first day back on the slopes. Read on for more details . . .
>>> Read more about One Good Turn Deserves Another (4373 bytes more) []	2585 _READS

Articles: Lake Cushing CROSSING
Posted By: Billy on Friday, May 20, 2005 - 06:01 PM
Or: Hey, wait a minute... I'm DRY! This year marked my third attempt at Squaw's annual Lake Cushing Classic pond crossing event. I decided it was worthy of a "permanent" page, so I created one, with a lenghty write-up, a few thumbnails, and every link imaginable. So here I'll limit myself to simply saying "I MADE IT!!", and that it was a whole lot of fun. There are both still images as well as a 14MB video for those of you with a fast connection or a lot of patience. For more information, see my Lake Cushing Classic page here. Enjoy -- I did!
>>> []	2281 _READS

Articles: Got Spring?
Posted By: Billy on Sunday, March 20, 2005 - 07:35 AM
Or: Winter Storms During the Vernal Equinox That's right - spring is here, ushered in with a nice winter storm - one last "hurrah", as it were. Years of experience have definitely taught me to realize that the snowboarding season comfortably extends into May each year -- but the number of powder days drastically declines as winter draws to an end. But these were no spring conditions (which have been the norm for the past month) - but rather a brutal, and bitter winter storm, yielding LOTS of that good old "white gold". It was definitely 3 days of powder, on all different parts of the mountain. Editor's Note: Those camo pants work almost TOO good!
>>> []	1878 _READS

Articles: Even Odds
Posted By: Billy on Monday, January 31, 2005 - 04:20 PM
Or: Adrenaline Rush in the Baby Park So, I think this is called a 50-50 grind because I'm just as likely to fall off and land on my head as I am to ride away from it. Actually, that’s not fair: On this particular occasion, I was 4 for 4 – just don’t ask or expect me to try a board or lip slide. Sure gets the old heart pumping, that’s for sure – and to think, these are the training wheels variety! I didn’t even try the little tabletops they had built over here – maybe next time. I should bust out the new HelmetCam and make a few runs through here, for a first-person perspective (trust me: even these little hits look bigger when you’re charging towards them!) At least I'm working on it... once or twice a season. ;-)
>>> []	1431 _READS

Articles: Buried Alive!
Posted By: Billy on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 04:20 PM
Or: Never have I done so much shoveling! No, I'm not talking about the fate of the Donner Party, or that soccer team that went down in the Andes mountains. This is the story of how Dingo and I had to spend our every waking moment digging, shoveling, and hucking snow - though his version looks a lot like playing. After posting the previous article, I turned around and headed back up the following day - I made it in time to take a few night runs on New Years Eve... then back to the shoveling! Once the walls/berms of my staircase extended up over my head, things got much harder: launching each payload felt a bit like an Olympic track and field event, and my arms and shoulders were getting quite a workout. I had to shovel EVERY time I opened the door - morning and evening, coming and going. Each morning before driving the few blocks to the mountains, the Tahoe had to be excavated from it's snowy bed: So, if there's that much snow on the car - imagine what happens to a narrow canyon of a staircase, with 6-foot walls? Well, if 18" of snow falls during the storm, I end up shoveling twice that much as it all 'drifts' into the trench. It may sound like I'm complaining - but I'm actually not. It's more like bragging. Anyone familiar with riding in powder knows that if the car looked like that in the morning, then I spent the day floating through knee-deep freshies, getting face-shots all the way down the mountain. This was an absolutely amazing storm series, and I'm glad to have spent most of it right here in the thick of things. If the pictures and my descriptions still haven't conveyed this point - these storms dumped a TON of snow! How much? Over 12' (yes, that's FEET) in the past two weeks. Don't believe it? Here's the snowfall totals... you do the math. Mostly excellent riding, though during the peak of the storms the mountain was in reduced operation. Powder turns every day, if you knew where to look for them - wooHOO!!
>>> []	1437 _READS

Articles: Got KT?
Posted By: Billy on Friday, December 10, 2004 - 04:20 PM
OR: How to rack up big vertical in an afternoon Although we did get a few additional feet of snowfall over the past week - it was capped off with a nice heavy dose of rain, all the way to the top of the mountain. The result is some pretty challenging conditions... So I wasn't expecting much today, as I rolled out late after working a couple hours in the morning. As I skated up to my first chair, the lift op spotted my pass and suggested "They just opened KT two minutes ago"... and off I went! That's how I spent my afternoon - doing laps on my old friend KT-22. About four runs into it (over 7K vertical in under an hour) I was starting to feel the burn, and wondered if I could last for ten. I ran into Ed around lap number 9 - and we finished the day off strong: Alex should have been paying all of us for the grooming we were doing... Here's how it looked when we started, on my first chair up: By the time we were finished, GS Bowl was actually started to get pretty good... until it started firming up again! All in all, a great first day back on KT. It will be interesting to see what tomorrow holds in store...
>>> []	1102 _READS

Articles: Giving Thanks
Posted By: Billy on Saturday, November 27, 2004 - 04:20 PM
OR: You know it's going to be a good day when you wake up to this! Ah - I love the sound of avalanche blasting in the morning. It sounds like... powder. Then open the front door and shovel a path up to the car, then dig this out. By the time we got to the mountain, we knew it was gonna be good! Click the thumbnail to see a few pics... This storm added nicely to an already great early season base!
>>> []	1097 _READS

Articles: Trick or Treat?
Posted By: Billy on Saturday, October 30, 2004 - 04:20 PM
Is this some kind of trick - did Billy just dig up some old photos from the archives and post them as current? Nope - no tricks here - nothing but TREATS. A couple of early storms brought several feet of snow to Tahoe. This year, it wasn't just Boreal opening early - there was SO much snow, that virtually every resort was open for the last weekend in October. So, here it is: October 30th, and not only is Squaw Valley open - but open from top to bottom! Don't get me wrong - this doesn't mean the whole mountain was open, by any stretch - merely that the mountain run was open, and you could ride all the way from the top of Shirley Lake right to the deck of the locker room. These conditions so FAR greatly exceeded my expectations - but better yet was the fact that I ran into my good friend Dr. Down as I was stepping out of the locker room, and had a riding buddy all day! The man is a machine - he started hours before me, and rode right until 4:15... Check out the gallery of early season riding - including powder turns here and there! Incredible... so much fun, I think I'm headed back for more... Dingo sure loves the snow, and had a ton of fun romping around in it - just like his dad! See you on the slopes!
>>> []	961 _READS

Articles: Lake Cushing Classic
Posted By: Billy on Monday, May 17, 2004 - 11:57 PM
Or: For some reason it felt like I made it further... It has been an absolutely insane spring - with more work, play, visitors, and stress than I ever imagined possible. I intend to summarize a lot of that in another post - but for now, I wanted to quickly share a recent highlight. Back on April 25th, I participated in the 14th annual Lake Cushing Classic at Squaw Valley USA. This was my second attempt, the first being several years ago -- I didn't do so good then. As for this time... Clicking the image above will download a short video clip of the event from the video gallery. This download is fairly large (8MB), but there is a smaller version available in the lowband gallery, which should be a bit friendlier to modem users. As you'll see - I still didn't do so great... but: It was good enough to earn me a huge center-page photo in Tahoe World (the local newspaper) covering the event. Sure it's a crash photo - but it's the biggest one on the page! I'll try to get it scanned and posted sometime soon... Like the video says: Until Next Year...
>>> []	1430 _READS

Articles: Back in the Saddle
Posted By: Billy on Sunday, March 07, 2004 - 12:11 AM
or: How FrankenFoot Got His Groove Back It's been over six months since Double-D had his terrible accident while wakeskating on the fourth of July. After the surgery, his foot looked something like this: So it was with great pleasure that I spent the day with him on the slopes of Squaw Valley. His first day back on the slopes was a great one - and as he tells it, aside from a constant aching... his injury didn't cause any extreme pain. He actually tore it up that day - see for yourself: Right On, Big D!! Glad to have you back, my friend. We've missed you...
>>> []	1481 _READS

Theme by XanthiaThemes.com