Mr. El Nino finally delivers the goods with a storm a day for a week and 5+ ft of the cold good stuff. You know how we do it...chesty mounted GoPro's and DOKA's...we hit Squaw on one of the best days of the season thus far. Not to mention the inaugural kick-off for Kevin McClure's Witness The Sickness crew. After countless hours consulting the tahoeloco weather geek and NOAA, King Kong called it for Friday and the mandatory "sick" day was on. Let's just say the day lived up to the name. Check the video!

Wondering what El Nino is all about? If you weren't around for the winter of '98 here's a professional definition from NOAA. Perfect time to ditch your skinny GS skis and learn why fatter is better.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20091015_winteroutlook.html

For a looser interpretation we turn to the master...the late Chris Farley.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEoHz56jWGY

Photos: Dev Finley

Day 1 Friday Aug 21,
Headed to Portillo from Santiago with the man Nacho driving us in his Chilean “Jeep.” (apparently a Suzuki Samurai qualifies as a jeep down there). 4 dudes 6 pairs of skis, climbing gear and everything else you could imagine. We get to about 20km from the resort and find the road closed. Nacho and Brady get out of the “Jeep” and talk us through the road closure with their wicked Spanish. Make it up to Portillo at about 10pm, looking like a foot of fresh for Saturday. Some how we are staying in a Chilean army base that has been ok’d for the gringos for a two night stay. We find our accommodations in the Chilean army post and settle in for a long cold night. But for $25 a night who is complaining.

Day 2 Saturday Aug 22,
Woke up by an AK wielding pissed off Chilean army dude who storms in the room about 6:30 in the morning screaming at us in Spanish. Dev jumps up and scares the shit out of this guy. He leaves and we head for the mountain….quickly. Get to Portillo, scam our half price tickets and hop on the lift. The skiing is good with boot top to knee deep pow but visibility is really difficult. The Dokas rocked a few runs until about 1 pm when we bagged it for lunch. During lunch they shut the main chair lift down and started bombing for avies up on the higher peaks. 2 beers in and thinking the day was done, the sun magically comes up, they open the chair, and we are off again. As we get to the top of the chair they start opening the two 4-man poma lifts and it is on. We quickly lap about 6-8 runs of creamy pow in the sun with only a few rippers from the states to contend with. At the end of the day we track it all up, take in the view and are stoked that Roca Jack and it’s terrain will be there for us tomorrow.

Day 3 Sunday Aug 23,
On my 35th birthday things are looking good. Blue bird conditions, about 2000 acres of untracked snow about to open and it is ON! Hit Roca Jack for a few early laps of 30 degree warm "Cali-pow” about knee deep. They closed the high traverses due to avi conditions but we still got filthy lines all morning. Found a couple of stashes and traverses and got face shots. August in Chile...nothing bad about that. Skied the Dokas all day and they absolutely crush those conditions. Finished the day with an untracked 1500 foot line down to the road and the lowest lift. Packed up the “Jeep” and set off for Santiago.

Day 5 Tuesday Aug 25
We headed up to the mountain with the Republics and skins to try to bag Volcan de Chillan. We got up to the top of the mountain, did some looking around and found our route to the top of the volcano. The wind was howling at 8000 feet probably blowing a steady 20-30 mph. We geared up and headed out. As we made the first main ridge about 1000 feet up the wind is NUKING! Maybe a steady 40 mph with bigger gusts. Made it to the summit in about 3 hours. Crazy place. Wind howling, sulphur gas spewing out of the rocks, surreal. The ski back down was over 4000 vertical feet to the base of the resort, with mixed changeable conditions.

Day 6 Wednesday Aug 26
They opened up more of the inbounds terrain today so we did laps on the longest chair in South America. Threw in a 30 minute tour to a great feature, about 750-1000 vert of steep creamy goodness, and headed to the thermal hot springs at about 2pm to soak off some of our stink and weariness.

Day 8 Friday Aug 28
Skied Valle Nevado today with sunny skies and spring like conditions. The base of Valle Nevado is 3000 meters (9,842 feet). Way up there by Cali standards. Took about 30 minutes to reach the top t-bar at Valle Nevado after a series of lifts and poma’s. Found a nice untracked ridge about 1000 feet long and lapped up some cream corn on east and west faces until we were too tired to hike or ski anymore.

Day 9 Saturday Aug 29
Solo riding at La Parva today. La Parva is right next to Valle Nevado and is also very high and expansive. Once again took the usual shit show of lifts and poma’s to the top and immediately threw on the skins. Did an hour and a half skin up past the resort boundary to the north. Once there got to drop a beautiful 2000 foot run back down to my old skin track, where I once again climbed up and dropped a run called Mcconkey’s back into the front of the mountain. Fabulous day, great creamy snow, and just enough wind to keep things from heating up too much. Finished off the day with a few pisco sours and some groomers to shake the legs out for the long trip back to the states.

All in all a great trip. Never bottomless, but found fresh lines every single day at every single resort even after a week without snow. Great journey to a funny land with little people running about eating capricious amounts of fried meat and cheese, drinking booze and having a great time. Not bad for my least favorite month of the year August.

Pray for Snow.

We were lucky enough to close out our season in style at Points North Heli in Cordova, AK. Kevin and Jessica Quinn run an operation that is a better example of coordination and efficiency than most Fortune 500 companies. Try getting 50 powder hungry mad men (and women) 10-12 runs a day in some of the most bad ass terrain on the planet and on top of that get them all back to the lodge alive! Thanks to the entire Points North crew, most of all to our guide Alz for showing us what the Chugach is all about.

Its a strange feeling being on a ski trip and wishing it wasn't snowing but after two down days our only option was to "drink it blue", something this crew did with the best of them. Luckily the "three-point low" opened over the Zone and it was on!

I know, what's eco-friendly about burning 40 gal/hr of jet A to go skiing? It's never felt so good to be bad...check out the video.

The Extremem Scene Radio crew were cool enough to invite us on the show to talk surfing, snowsports, traffic tickets, and...bending over?

Take a listen...here!

Whether its pure luck, a keen intuition, or a fledgling career as a meteorologist, there is nothing more satisfying in skiing or riding than being in the right place at the right time. Luckily for us out here in Nor Cal all it took was a 4wd car and patience to sit in 80 traffic to be in the right place at the right time...anywhere on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe last week.

Outfitted with the latest in video equipment compliments of our friends at GoPro, we headed to the Sierra Nevada's to shoot a little POV ski action. Enjoy!

Note: cameras were mounted to our chests...yeah it was pretty deep!

Come see the Republics at SIA in the ECOsource display!

We were stoked to be included in this years display along side a bunch of other great products that are taking the snowsports industry into a more sustainable and environmentally friendly future. Now back to the craps table....

The January high pressure system finally moved off and the snow started falling. Where else would you want to be than the Wasatch! Waist deep and nuking for two days straight...perfect conditions for doing some DOKA testing!

Thanks to Justin and Porter for showing us their secret stashes out at Snowbird and the Mountain Hardware crew and the Bogan's for a superfun day at Solitude.

In 2007, Arc Wood & Timbers partnered with Entropy Sports to produce a unique wood ski core. The logs that were utilized for the Entropy Ski Cores were sourced from a decommissioned floating logger’s camp on a lake in Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The camp was built in the early 1950’s and deployed to harvest large stands of coastal forest trees. Since water logging was banned to protect community watersheds and biodiversity, the floating logger’s camp was recently decommissioned. The original logs used to support the floating camp are 52’’ – 56’’ in diameter and 90’ in length. The density of grain is very tight, thus producing beautiful Clear Vertical Grain stock. The logs have been well preserved in cold fresh water, awaiting a new life with Entropy.

Arc Wood & Timbers provides custom milled specialty wood that is sourced from reclaimed structures and salvaged logs. Our wood comes from tight grained, sustainably harvested logs or vintage structures, dating 200 – 700 years old. The remarkable beauty of this wood is like nothing else in this world. We use forest friendly extrication methods to remove the “Blown Down”, or “Dead Standing” trees without damaging the natural landscape, thus preserving the natural habitat and reducing the carbon footprint by allowing new seedlings to flourish.

Years in the making, from the lab to the mountains, through many prototypes, waist deep blower days to bullet proof hard pack...this is our journey.

Welcome to the Entropy Snow blog where we will update you on all of our snow products, the stories behind their creation, and best of all their adventures on the mountain. For Winter '09 we are introducing a product line that covers the spectrum of conditions you'll encounter from the Rockies to the Sierras. We feel these skis not only deliver on our promise of performance equipment, but take the crucial next step of having a lower impact on our fragile environment. Join us as we pledge to move forward on a path of environmental sustainability while delivering a product that will rip on the mountain.

Desi & Rey Banatao
Entropy Founders/Designers/Engineers