This past Saturday, Allan and I headed up to Whistler Blackcomb for a gorgeous, sunny blue bird day of snowboarding fresh powder. It was quite busy up there, but we still managed to find our stashes of powder.

We also brought along our new GoPro HD Hero helmet camera to capture some of the action. For those of you who have been following my blog for a while, you know that we had the regular GoPro camera before. I can say that the HD is a real nice upgrade. Much clearer photos and videos! Hopefully I’ll be able to edit the videos into a little movie soon.

Here I am wearing my new Volcom jacket and pants (both Gore-tex)… I’m loving how the wide angle really captures everything!

Powder spraying up on the sides.

Riding down one of the bowls on Blackcomb.

Even Allan got into the fun of it and attached it to his helmet for a while.

You’ll notice most of the shots are from the back of my board… we used the suction cup that we normally use for surfing to attach it to the back of the board… but be warned… sometimes it falls off in the deeper powder and you really have to keep an eye on it, or tether it to your board

All in all, a really fun day… and really nice to get back onto the mountain for some boarding. And, I thought this would be a great time to give away a BRAND NEW Women’s Volcom Snowboard Jacket on the blog! It’s the same jacket I am wearing in the photos above, but of course brand new with tags. All you have to do is leave a comment below, and I’ll pull a random winner on Sunday evening. If you remember my last contest, we gave away a snowboard outfit. Here’s the winner Rosy, who sent me a photo of her in all her new gear!

2010 Volcom GORE-TEX Satellite Snowboard Jacket Contest:
Sponsored by Volcom

Prize: 2010 Volcom Satellite Nimbus Women’s Snowboard Jacket in Bluebird, Size Medium
Value: $500 CAD
What you have to do: By Sunday, January 24th before 10:00 PM PST… just leave a comment on this blog post!
Who can enter: Anyone! You can enter for yourself, or for a friend, significant other etc etc…
Details: I will draw a random winner Sunday night, and I will ship the prize to the lucky winner anywhere in the world!

About the jacket: Yup, it’s totally GORE-TEX so awesome waterproofing. It’s got the works… fully taped seams, pant-to-jacket zips, Recco® avalanche system, Riri® waterproof zippers, a hood, a chin guard, vents, a powder skirt, a goggle pocket and audio pockets. My two favourite features? The built-in face mask and the Lycra hand gaitors to keep your hands warm in your gloves (you can see these in one of the photos above over my hands). Plus… I love the liner pattern!

That’s it! Good luck to everyone

It’s Friday, it’s the end of a crazy week at work for me. And it turns out my work trip is getting moved back up, so I’ll be leaving for Korea and Japan in 12 days.  Wow, lots of preparation to do.

Photo from GoProCamera.com

A quick update to yesterday’s post. I ordered my GoPro camera from NeedfulToyz.com, and received a surprising e-mail in my inbox today. Kimberly from NeedfulToyz let me know that she could possibly make it work to ship me the Helmet cam before my surfing trip next weekend. I have never received this level of customer support and professionalism from anyone before. She actually e-mailed me to tell me that if I order another version of the GoPro 5, then she can ship it to me before Tofino. AND, she’s going to exchange my parts with another customer’s parts (who happens to live nearby), and give him the parts that mine was going to have, and get the parts that he had, which are the parts I need. (He has the Helmet cam and I am getting the Motorsports one, and Kimberly is going to swap the mounting systems so that we both get the one we want). Wow! Talk about an amazing level of service. I would definitely order from them again and I highly recommend them. So hurray! I’ll get my camera before the trip if all goes well. Thanks Kimberly!

© VANOC/COVAN

Now, I probably shouldn’t be writing about this, but the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic tickets went on sale today. I really don’t want anyone to buy tickets because I want the best chance at ‘em, but hey, I guess I’ll share . It’s a lottery system, so it doesn’t matter whether you order today, or on the last day November 7th. They’re all selling Olympic Experience Packages (OEP) which increase your chance of getting the tickets that you want. I’m going to hold off, because although I want hockey tickets, I’m not sure I’m prepared to pay the $1100+ for the OEP, and even the single session hockey tickets seem expensive. Not to mention you’re buying a year in advance. But still… if you want tix for the Olympics, make sure you order within today and November 7th.

Photo Credit: Canucks.com

In other FANTASTIC news, the Canucks are offering HD Pay-Per-View this year. This is the first year ever that they have offered in HD, after angry fans (including myself) complained about paying good money for a PPV game that is actually worse quality than standard TV. Well, this year, Vancouver Canucks fan everywhere with HDTVs can rejoice, because PPV is HD this year. w00t! There’s an additional cost though — regular SD PPV games will be $12.95 and HD PPV will be $15.95. I can’t resist; I’m in!

And lastly, I want to quickly talk about some features of my blog. Some of you may have noticed the fancy little avatars/pictures beside our names in the comments. To get one, simply go to Gravatar.com. The Gravatar will work with most major blogs (Wordpress, Blogger, etc), and all you need to do is use the same e-mail in the comments. Easy! Also, you may have noticed the new image upload feature for the comments. I’ve had a few people request this. So if you want to post your snowboard or any other image, just click “Browse” to select a photo from your computer and upload it. Don’t abuse it. Or else

By the way, if you’re interested in keeping track of my blog, or anyone else’s blog for that matter, I highly recommend Bloglines. It’s a great way to subscribe to RSS feeds and see all relevant posts!