At the moment I’m chilling in my extremely luxurious Super 8 motel room in Salida. It smells like a mix of Shea Flynn’s sweaty ski boots and stale smoke. No wonder I’ve lost my appetite for dinner.

But I shouldn’t be complaining. I had a super fun day shredding around Monarch Mountain with the K2 crew to get photos for their website and catalogue. My knee still isn’t 100% but I’ve been able to hit a few of the little jibs and get some cute tree shots.

Last night I arrived just in time for dinner at Bensons and 50 cent beers at the local bar.

I discovered a new game- Shuffle board. I’m not the most talented shuffle border, but maybe a few more months in an isolated Colorado town would fix that.

The next morning we were up early on the mountain. One of Monarch’s claim to fame is the highest Starbucks in the World!!! Schmies, the K2 ski graphic designer, and Drew getting their caffeine hit.

Most of the features we hit today were log jibs in their natural terrain park. I kept it pretty mellow as my knee is still healing.

The K2 crew- Sean Decker, Shea Flyn, Schies and me.

Shea Flynn getting the shot

For me, this year’s X-Games didn’t pan out as expected. Two and a half weeks ago I partially tore my MCL on the air bag while training a new trick over at Vail. At first I thought I had blown my ACL (which is really bad news as it requires surgery and 6 months + of rehab). But luckily an MRI revealed that it wasn’t too serious and no surgery needed.

I was told that it would take 6 weeks until my knee would be 100%. The doctors were skeptical about me competing in X-games, but I was determined to be ready.

For the last two weeks everyday has consisted of 2hrs of physio, gym, pool and leg exercises in between. I got back on skis 2 days before competition day and played around on a few of the rails. My knee felt OK, but not stable enough to hit 70 ft jumps…

So I made a really difficult decision and pulled out of my biggest event of the year. It really messed with my head for a few days, but in the end I know I made the right choice. The girls who did compete absolutely KILLED it. There were switch 5s,7s and 9s being thrown. Sarah Burke even attempted a 1260!

1) Kaya Turski – 96.66
2) Keri Herman – 85.00
3) Grete Eliassen – 84.33
4) Ashley Battersby – 83.66
5) Megan Olenick – 79.33
6) Sarah Burke – 64.66
7) Kristi Leskinen – 50.66

So I’ve spent the last couple of days in Aspen hanging out in the athlete tent, eating free food, doing interviews and cheering on my friends who are competing.

I’m already feeling good being back on my skis. I’m still working super hard in the gym and if all goes to plan, I’ll be back to jibbing and jumping two weeks! European X-games is only a month and a half away. I’ve got some work to do!

The first little edit of the 09/10 season. More to come

Over the weekend I drove over to Vail to have a play around on the airbag they have set up in their park. Perfect for learning new tricks.

Over the New Year period I took a little break from Breckenridge (which had become over run by day-trippers from Denver) as escaped to Aspen. I spent the days shredding Buttermilk and Snowmass and the afternoons Bunny hunting.

Walking through the streets of Aspen is one of the most entertaining experiences you will have in a ski town. The New Year holiday period was prime snow-bunny hunting time. Over the first few days I missed some quality Bunny pictures but quickly learned that it was best to take my camera with me every time I stepped out the door.

The best way to shoot bunnies is from a moving vehicle. This is more discrete and you can capture more bunnies in less time. The other option is shooting them while on foot. This is far more obvious and can be a little risky. Some of the best bunnies have bodyguards- who don’t take lightly to their bunnies’ ridiculous outfits being mocked.

I am still working on my bunny hunting game, there will be more pictures to come, when I visit Aspen again for X-games at the end of January.

Over Summer Woodward opened a facility at Copper Mountain. It’s a kid with ADD’s dream. There’s skate bowls, trampolines, bouncy floors and a special snowflex jump into a foam pit. I’ve been spending a bit of time here burning up energy and learning some new tricks, which hopefully I’ll be able to take to snow. It’s way more fun than the gym!

If you haven’t already heard, girls’ free-skiing has been excluded from the first stop of the Dew Tour this year. The only good thing I can gather from this is that I have more time to upload this blog than my blogging competition; JF Houle and Tom Wallisch. They’re probably still in line at registration, too bad, I win.

The three of us all met up with photographer Nate Abbott in Breckenridge’s park to get some shots for the 2010/11  Sweet outerwear catalogue.

I had a car accident two days ago and sustained a minor concussion, so I was doing more ski-bunny posing than skiing. But I had fun sitting beside the jumps watching everyone throw down while training for the Dew Tour.

Tom and I being cheesy for the camera. I had instructions from my little brother to steal a lock of Tom’s hair to give me skiing super powers, but I think that would have been crossing the line.

Nate getting some shots at the top of the Dew Tour slopestyle course.

Apparently Tom has a good penguin impression.

The gondola ride home.

Only a few more weeks until I head over to Colorado. But for the moment I’m finished with school for the year and have finally had time to do other things apart from study and work…. Actually I’m at work right now, but I have used my time productively to make a little edit.

This was one of my last days in NZ. It had been rainy almost all of August. Then the last few days I was there the sun came out and so did the camera. This is only a really short edit of a fun afternoon I had with two of my ski buddies.

I’m still haven’t joined my snowloving friends up in the cold half of the world yet. But I’m trying to get as close as I can to the feeling of skiing by hitting the Melbourne water ramps. The  water ramps, which are about a 50min drive from inner city Melbourne, are pretty ghetto (compared to the plush chlorine and bubbles of the Park City and Lake Placid water ramps). But we make do.

The water is pretty dirty and filled with all kinds of weird and disgusting animals; Leaches, sluggybugs. frogs, ducks, kookaburras. You have to make sure to keep your mouth closed when you’re swimming in.

We already looked pretty cool in our wetsuits and ski boots, but no stylish water-ramping outfit is complete without a good smear of hot-pink zinc!

Gettin that grab.

Discrete headwear, owned by big mountain legend Julian Carr, has their new website up and running. It’s based on the concept of the team riders facing off against each other. If you click on the changing heading you can read what they have to say about each other Check it out at 

http://www.discreteheadwear.com/