Snowboarding season is starting late for me this year. But that doesn’t mean it will be any less epic. So far this season Jackson Hole has had 221″ of snow.
This year I’m introducing a GoPro gimbal stabilizer into the mix. Here is a good example video of the difference a stabilizer makes – buttery smooth video footage. I am a big nerd when it comes to gear and tech, and I guess many other things as well.
But judging by GoPro’s stock right now and the cliff it fell off of at the beginning of this month, I may be in the minority when it comes to worrying about buttery smooth snowboarding videos.
Sales over the holiday season were disappointing and they recently announced that they’re discontinuing the Karma drone. GoPro is now said to be shopping for a buyer.
Part of the problem may be their narrow action sports use case. When I’m on a mountain, I love my GoPro gear. But when I’m not snowboarding, I struggle to find consistent value in it. We all just use our phones to capture photo and video.
To make matters worse, class action litigation was recently filed against GoPro, and the company’s CEO and CFO. Investors are claiming that they failed to disclose, among other things, that demand for the GoPro brand had declined dramatically.
Who do you think would be a good buyer for GoPro?
Jackson, Wyoming is one of my favorite places on the planet. (Here is a ski/snowboard video that my friends and I made a few years ago in Jackson.)
Earlier this year, Eagle Point Hotel Partners and the Brooklyn-based design firm Studio Tack completed a renovation of the Anvil Motel in Jackson – it’s now the 49-room Anvil Hotel.
Apparently reclaimed motels are the new hospitality trend.
What I appreciate about their approach, is the emphasis on creating something that feels local and contextual. Here are a couple of snippets from Surface Magazine:
The designers wanted to avoid a rustic feel, or what Ruben Caldwell, one of Studio Tack’s four partners and an avid backcountry skier, calls “Mountain Modern,” referring to architecture, common in places like Vail, Colorado, and Lake Tahoe, California, that excessively uses reclaimed wood and Cor-Ten steel. “We knew we didn’t want to steer anywhere near that,” says Chou, a long-time snowboarder who more recently got into skiing. “It takes a bit of familiarity with ski towns to know what you don’t want to do.”
The vibrancy of Jackson’s local culture impressed the design team—and Caldwell so much so that he moved there full-time last year. “As a design team,” Caldwell says, “we’re hyper-aware of the need for projects to be deeply embedded into the local scene.”
It’s easier to copy and paste. But the results are always better when you take a bit of time to understand a place.
Image: Anvil Hotel
I am all booked for my annual retreat to the mountains, which means I now have snowboarding on the brain. This year we are headed back to Whistler (/Powder Mountain) so that we can all check heli boarding (and heli skiing) off the bucket list. That’s one goal – among a few others – that I plan to accomplish in 2017.
If you don’t snowboard (or ski), this probably means nothing to you. It can be hard to explain the feeling. Thankfully, Christian Haller (Swiss snowboarder), Kris Lüdi, and Stephan Maurer have just released a short film that may very well be the closest approximation to the real thing. It’s called GLUE.
The whole point of the movie is to portray, in an authentic and visual way, what it’s like to snowboard. To do that, a lot of the footage was shot using a “follow cam.” There are also a lot of close-up shots. I just love the perspectives when it kicks in at 1:50.
If you can’t see the video below, click here. And if snow and snowboarding aren’t your thing, check back tomorrow for regular scheduled programming.
[vimeo 190544188 w=640 h=360]
GLUE from Christian Haller on Vimeo.