The year started out a bit slow for me. I was in Colorado for the Orage shoot.

That was my first time back on snow since my surgery on my ACL. It was pretty

epic. Shredded lot's of groomers, hit up the half pipe, and some mini boxes and

rails. It was a good start and my knee felt solid. I was stoked to be back out

there. The first day was in Keystone. It was the best feeling. I'm sure you guys

can relate to that feeling if you've ever been injured. That was my first big

injury. Going through that changed my perspective on a lot of things. It helped

me reevaluate my career as a skier and what I wanted to do with it. I worked my

little bum bum off all summer, skiing as my motivation. Stoked.

After

Colorado, I came home to Tahoe. We lacked snow for until recently. I skied

around with some friends and was amused by Mike Wilson. Never a dull moment with

that guy. Some of my Tahoe friends and I went out to Utah. At the time Utah had

more snow than us. We went sledding a few times. Mike Wilson is an amazing

sledder. We found a perfect jump and sessioned it on our sleds for a while.

Well, I didn't really hit it up, but Wilson was going off. The picture of him

doesn't really give it justice. He was hitting it at least 45 feet long and 20

plus feet high. He did a couple of no handers, but I put my camera away because

it was better to watch then to shoot.

After Utah I was home for the

holidays. It was pretty mellow. I heard that Whistler was getting dumped on so I

jumped in my truck and drove up here. I arrived on the 31st and didn't make it

to 12 o'clock. I've been staying with Anthony Boronowski. We've been skiing and

sledding a lot. It's been snowing since I got here and it's the 10th today. I've

been skiing with Mike Douglas a few times since I've been here as well. He has

GPS on his phone and it is amazing when you are looking for lines in a bunch of

trees with flat light. Highly recommend the GPS for the backcountry.

Anyways, I wish I had better photos for you guys. I lost my camera one

day while sledding. Tony and I had quite the experience. We went up to shred

some powder. It was awesome all morning. No filmers just the two of us hitting

this zone with bottomless powder. On the way down we got a little off trail and

got stuck. Really stuck. It was getting late and about to get dark. We were both

beat from attempting to get unstuck. Probably about 500 meters from the trail,

we decided to abandon ship and ditch our sleds. We grabbed our skis and hiked up

to the cat track. At this point we were both pretty nervous that we might be

building a snow cave and sleeping up there. Fortunately we made it to the cat

track and were able to find our way out in the dark. It was a long day. Made me

realize how important it is to be prepared for that kind of stuff. A simple

mistake and we were about to sleep in the mountains.

I guess I'm just

saying to be careful out there. Have respect for the mountains. Be safe out

there.

I hope you guys are enjoying the snow!

-Michelle

Parker