Brent Kearney

Since the big storm a couple of weeks ago, the ski conditions have been great. Over the past week, the Sun has been out almost every day, changing the trend of a ski season with overcast skies all winter. I’ve been making good use of my season’s pass at Sunshine Village, and I’ve met some excellent people on the slopes this year. This past week in particular, has been really fun. I put together a video slideshow (~48MB) with a selection of photos from the past week. Its a pretty big file, so you’ll want either a fast Internet connection, or a lot of time, to download it. If you’re using Microsoft Windows and you don’t already have the free QuickTime Player, you will need it to view the slideshow. Its worth having anyways, so install it if you don’t have it. If you’re on a Mac, don’t worry, you already have Quicktime.

You’ll notice that some of the images are a little blurry. Thats because someone–*cough* Maryke *cough*–has their camera set to low-resolution mode. Sorry about that.

I’ve decided to add a new category of articles, Health and Fitness. I’ve always been into health & fitness, but since I moved to the mountains three years ago, it has been a much more central part of my life. For mountain sports, the more fit that you are, the more fun you can have. This is true of all sports and physical activities of course, but especially true in the mountains. Back-country skiing, climbing, hiking and trail running all require you to gain lots of altitude with your own muscles, and it is a very demanding task.

Part of my summer fun this year will be running in the 5 Peaks Trail Running Series of races, the first one in a month from now, on May 20th. This will be my first race. Having that deadline, May 20th, creates a special motivation to get out and train, and bring my fitness level up. A month is not much time for preparation, but its enough to bring my resting heart rate down a bit, and improve my time on a 5km run.

Last year, the best time in my age category was 22:58 minutes. That’s an average speed of 13km/hr. The ever-dreaded last place was 31:47 minutes, an average pace of 9.43km/hr. I think even that will be a tough one to manage. At first I thought 13km/hr over rough trails for 23 minutes was pretty fast, until I calculated the average speed that Phil Villeneuve maintained to win the 10km “Enduro” category. He finished it in 35:21 at a blistering pace of nearly 17km/hr!

My biggest challenge will be not injuring myself by pushing too hard in the coming weeks. I haven’t been running much this winter, choosing to ski and do indoor rock-climbing instead. So my knees are tender. I’ll start off slow, and measure my results, aiming to improve a little each time. This is going to be challenging, given that the ski season still has another month to go! I will alternate running and ski days…

As my training progresses, I’ll monitor my resting heart rate. Today, its 56 beats per minute (bpm).

Blue skies and loose powder at Sunshine today, following a week of nightly snowfall leaving 46cm of pure fun all over the mountains. This day was beyond words; see a few images from today here.

Just when it seemed that the ski season was dwindling down, Sunshine starts getting pounded with new snow. With well over 20cm of new snow, conditions are superb. The temperatures are cold enough at high elevations that the snow isn’t sticky, as one would normally expect for spring conditions. Delirium Dive, right now, offers some of the best skiing that I’ve had all season:

The Banff weather forecast predicts more precipitation for the next 4 days, so Easter weekend should be excellent all around. This year, the closing date at Sunshine is May 22nd.

Apple has been in numerous headlines for their overly aggressive legal tactics, usually when they’re trying to silence people from speculating about their upcoming products. This is a new low, however.

Apparently 3rd-grade student Shea O’Gorman, of San Francisco, wrote a letter to Apple with some of her ideas on how the company could improve its iPod Nano product. Apple replied with some legalese, harshly stating that Apple does not accept unsolicited product ideas.

Shea’s mother’s description of the girl running into her bedroom to hide is a perfect description of how it usually feels to ask questions of Apple. Hilarious.

Hilarious, and also kind of disgusting. The publicity from the event, since her Mom was on the local TV news, has prompted Apple to say that they are considering changing their corporate policy with regards to letters from children. That’s decent of them. It wouldn’t be surprising if the new policy turns out to be to move directly to litigation against the children’s parents, instead of writing nasty letters.