FC Magazine Launches Online Winter Home
09.01.03 - As we look past the fall season and start gearing up for another winter, we're excited to announce the launch of our new ski and ride website: 'First Chair - On Line Magazine' (http://www.firstchairmag.com). This site will actively serve as an on-line epicenter of the 2003 East Coast powder movement, which exists at Jay Peak, VT. Our Boston-based ski and ride brain trust developed this site as a definitive resource for a multimedia, interactive destination to prepare for, document, and remember the 03/04-winter season. Full completion is scheduled for Nov. 1st, ideally coinciding with the first turns of the season.
First Chair On-Line Magazine (still under construction) will offer many resources to skiers and riders looking to enjoy the upcoming New England Winter. Our fully interactive weather map will feature key mountain destinations throughout the area. By rolling over your favorite mountain within the map, you'll have instant access to weather reports and web page links. This feature is the product of years of frustration navigating many weather pages attempting to predict storm locations and snowfall amounts; now you get it all in one place. Throughout the winter we plan to add more and more ski areas to the map.
FCMag will also contain an enormous archive of our skiing and riding adventures with high tech digital video recordings and action photography. We hope to bring your eyes and ears straight to the place we go every weekend searching for the first chair lift ride of the day, the first and last face shots, and every powder stash in between. Those of you filming with us, both behind the camera and in front of it, will have something to cherish all week at work waiting to get back to the mountains. And for those of you with friends and family constantly asking, "You're going skiing again, didn't you just go last week," they'll understand what, how, and why we do what we do.
First Chair will also offer links, gear suggestions, and contact information for those of you looking for more knowledge on anything ski and ride related. In addition, we'll be focusing on our home for the winter: Jay Peak, VT. From the trees, chutes, and powder stashes in bounds, to the 'huck n' duck' playground of the surrounding backcountry terrain, we'll bring all of it right to your desktop. Contributors in Lake Tahoe and Washington will also give us some West Coast flavor, and with any luck, the editors of First Chair Magazine will be visiting them for some first person reporting. We look forward to bringing you more ski and ride info as our site progresses and the season approaches. Stay tuned and think snow.
~ FC Staff
12.07.03 - Over the past 24 hours, the NOAA (www.noaa.gov) weather radio station forecasted 16"-24" of fresh snow for Jay Peak, VT. When we left for the Belfry early Saturday evening the snow was falling at 3" per hour. The anticipation of the following day's powder filled turns sent us to bed early and stoked...
10 Ideas to
Kick the Pre-Season Blues
11.22.03 - Jay Peak may open December 4, 5, or 6. This is what I read on the Jay website today. Last week President Bill told us we could get our boards ready to go right after we finished our turkey dinner, November 28th. And before that, we were promised we could hit the snow on the 22nd. And so goes the waiting game we play every season.
Skiing, more than any other sport, leaves it’s participants waiting for the coveted ‘Opening Day’. From watching the weather channel to bouncing from .com to .com, we attempt to guess when Mother Nature will start up her snowmaking guns...
Tech Tip #1: Pre-Season Tune-Up
11.01.03 - Many skiers and riders drastically underestimate the importance of tuning
their equipment. Maintaining gear not only improves your day on the mountain
but also goes a long way towards prolonging the life of your skis and snowboards.
Dull, rusty edges and dried-out bases cause sacrifices in speed and control,
which are essential to beginners, intermediates, and experts. This first edition
of Tech Tips offers preseason advice for tuning your equipment. I will provide
basic approaches to maintenance and things to keep in mind early in the year,
leaving in-depth tuning advice for later discussions...
Tenney Mountain Opens – October 4th
10.04.03
- Tenney Mountain promised an early opening to the 2003/2004-ski
season and on October 4th, they delivered. Breaking Killington's
41year history of providing the first turns of the east coast
ski season, Tenney hooked up 200 skiers and riders with spring
corn snow. Incorporating
state-of-the-art Japanese snowmaking technology into this mid-
New Hampshire ski mountain, owner-operator Dan Egan built a
terrain park
worthy of the jib scene that converged on it...