Photo: Iceland Tourism
Iceland is a bold country for bold people. It’s for travelers who want to dive directly into nature, party until the sun comes up (even when it never goes down), and dine on some of the sea’s most freaky creatures.
The Land of Fire and Ice is a place that continues to wow its visitors whether it’s their first visit or their fiftieth. However, these six insane things to do in Iceland are ones that most visitors, even the most seasoned Iceland travelers, have never done.
Because of my work, I have a lot of online friends — people I’ve only spoken to through chat and email and other written communications. They all know I’m Canadian. I’m fairly well-known online as one of those Canadian travel bloggers.
But when first meet people and start to talk eyes widen and jaws go slack. “You really are Canadian.” They’ll say after I let fly a monologue filled with ‘eh’s and ‘oh yeah’s.
It was an awful year for snow. Well, at least it was in the west, and the results for some hills were pretty dramatic. Most resorts across western North America received significantly less snow than usual. Many closed early, like Sierra-at-Tahoe which was forced to close in mid-March, six weeks earlier than last year. Most resorts expected to close earlier than usual.
I’m not the kind of person who likes to say that something is “perfect” or “the best” because those are very subjective terms. That said, one ski area this year found itself on the winning end of a few unique circumstances that make it particularly awesome for spring skiing — maybe the best. The area was spared from the snow drought that plagued the nearly the entire western half of the continent. Jasper, Alberta actually received more snow than normal, and it’s still snowing.
Then, after that, I’ll be snowboarding across the Western USA. I’ll talk more about that later.
First, the X-Games.
One of the perks of being a blogger is that every once in a while you receive an email with a random opportunity that makes your day.
Two weeks ago I sat down at my computer with a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, opened my inbox, and found an email from Skype offering to send me to the X-Games in Aspen as part of their Skype Moments campaign.
If you’ve followed my blog for any amount of time you know that I’m a passionate snowboarder. Each year I visit numerous resorts (one of the perks of writing the About.com Snowboarding Guide) and do a lot of skiing and snowboarding photography. Here are some of my favorite photos from the past few year in more-or-less chronological order.
This is my brother Ben. We grew up snowboarding together and now he teaches it for a living. He’s way better than I am.
When first I started skiing the skiing vs snowboarding argument wasn’t around yet. I was three, and started racing by the time I was twelve. I loved it, but after I strapped on a snowboard for the first time when I was 13, I didn’t put on a pair of skis for the next 20 years.
I love both skiing and snowboarding. During my many years riding in the Northwest, mainly British Columbia, Alberta, and Montana, I never had any problems with others because of my choice of ride.
Snowbird is one of those resorts that in almost always included in best ski resort lists, and rightly so. It has one of the biggest annual snowfalls in the country, and it’s the legendary Utah driy powder. It has some of the most accessible in-bounds extreme terrain that I’ve ever seen.
I was fortunate enough to visit Snowbird a few times this year and shoot some of their sponsored riders. It was epic. I rode chutes like the ones I’d only previously seen in movies. Hucked sme pretty big cliffs as well. The conditions weren’t always great for photos, but we still got some pretty spectacular shots.
