visionsofchance

IPhone Eye Candy II

Aaron Chance — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:32:04 +0000

Some snaps from Begbie shoulder this morning, beautiful sun but COLD!

IPhone Eye Candy

Aaron Chance — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:17:06 +0000

Some images from the season so far, tweaked with the Camera+ app.

SplitFest 2012

Aaron Chance — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:17:32 +0000

Wow, what an awesome weekend! Many thanks to Wade at TreePilot for organizing a great fundraiser up at Rogers pass, drawing 100 + splitboarders from far and wide and raising $4500 dollars for the CAA and the CAC. Outstanding! The conditions were epic, nice settled pow on all aspects. Alister and Bucky from Chimera were up from Salt Lake City, and we had a sweet run on Avalanche Crest on Friday.

Bucky high above the TCH. Photo Joey Vosburgh

Photo Joey Vosburgh

I have been up and down many hills with the famous 2 Mill Hill, but never with him on a snowboard. In the spirit of SplitFest, Greg joined our posse on Saturday equipped for some sideways shredding. I snuck into the first shot just ahead of him, expecting to leave him in the dust. When I pulled up to a stop after 1500′ of dreamy powder, there he was, right behind me with a huge grin on his face! Here is a clip of the man himself on the third run of an 8000′ day.

Alister had an awesome quiver of decks with him, and he left behind this beauty:

The "Unicorn Chaser".

The Unicorn Chaser, 160 cms of tapered, swallow-tailed nimble fun. I have four days on this board so far, all in deep powder conditions, and I love it’s versatility. Good flotation, very easy to turn in trees and gullies, and perfect for faceshots. Not the board I would grab for mountaineering objectives, but a rockin’ good time for everyday powder. Anyone interested in giving it a try in the Revelstoke area? Please comment.

Happy New Year!

Aaron Chance — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:37:26 +0000

Yeah 2012! Photo Joey Vosburgh.

The New Year rolled in with great powder, and everything above 1000m is unbelievably filled in. I have only managed a dozen or so days of shreddin’ so far this season, all good but one. Lately things have been really, really good. Joey snapped the above photo on Little Sifton, New Years Day.

I have taken the plunge into the modern world and equipped myself with an IPhone 4S, so prepare to be bombarded with photos tweaked by all the effects that you have already seen thousands of times

It was this blog post that convince me to spend the cash on the latest and greatest, mainly the side by side HD Video comparison with a Canon 5D Mark II.

Here is my first video effort. Shot, edited and uploaded entirely on the IPhone. Footage is from Jan 2nd, when we ventured up (believe it or not) Video Peak. Hope you like it!

I am headed up to the pass for the second annual SplitFest, looking forward to a great weekend of slashing pow and hanging with friends.

Mark H.

Chimera!

Aaron Chance — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:13:18 +0000

1. A fabulous creature with parts from different animals, originally with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail and supposedly a personification of snow or winter.

2. A vain, foolish, or incongruous fancy, or creature of the imagination.

3. An organism with genetically distinct cells originating from two zygotes.

These are the Wiktionary’s definitions of Chimera, and it is easy to relate any one of the three to split-boarding.

The inaugeral Split-Fest held at Roger’s Pass this past winter brought out 60 + folk who have found the magic of ascending mountains on skis and tearing their way down on a snowboard. One of them happened to be Alister H., a compatriot from the early days in Rossland, whom I hadn’t seen in a over decade. We got right back to shreddin’ (in epic, deep powder), and it turns out that Alister is in the midst of firing up a Wasatch based company that produces handmade splitboards. Exclusively. Aptly named Chimera.

As the weekend drew to a close, Alister had answered a good many questions about the prototype board he was rockin’, and he had an inkling of what the ideal board would be for the Revy crew….

A month later he showed up with the stick, and it was love at first sight: 165 cm Mace, big mountain charger!

Chimera Mace 165cm.

I got it set up pronto, and we headed out for Cheops North for a little test drive. Dropping in, I immediately felt the board’s stiffness (carbon fibre in the area under foot when in ski mode, and some in the tail as well) . Now I like a stiffer board, so I laid in a hard heel-side in the firmish conditions to see about control. Awesome. This is a board I can go as fast as I want on.

I took the deck with me on a four day photo-shoot at Sol Mountain Lodge, and I continued to be impressed by the boards features. Like the reduced tip swing weight provide by minimizing the metal edge at the “split“. And the non-stick light colored topsheet. And the Mace continued to perform, nicely captured by Bruno Long in these pics.

Photo copyright Bruno Long.

Thanks to Jeff Mitchell, Bruno Long, the Cooperman Family at Sol Mountain, and Alister Horn at Chimera.