Volcanic snowkiting: Italy’s Mount Etna, an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, has become a European locale for winter snowkiters.

Produced by Boulgakow

Kevin Pearce, Olympic snowboarding hopeful who was critically injured during a December halfpipe accident in a Park City, Utah, has progressed enough in his rehabilitation that Craig Hospital doctors think he may be able to return home to Norwich, Vt., in the next few weeks.

“‘I don’t know that he’ll be doing halfpipes, because we don’t want him to hit his head,’ said Dr. Alan Weintraub, medical director of the brain injury program at Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colo. ‘But he’s going to snowboard. I can pretty much guarantee it,’” reports John Branch of The New York Times.

“The short-term threat to his life came from the blood that filled the ventricles of his brain. The long-term struggle stems from a ‘very deep diffuse axonal injury,’ Weintraub said, or the damage in what he called the ‘deep wires of the brain.’”

Wishing for wind: Swedish photographer and kite-boarder Henning Sandström needs a winter lift…

Produced by Henning Sandström

The Las Leñas ski resort, located high in Argentinian Andes in the western part of the Mendoza Province, is known for untracked powder, steep and rocky descents, and, unfortunately, the infamous Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 (the Andes rugby team flight disaster).

Ben Stubbs of The Star writes about snowboarding the steeps of Las Leñas after a six year hiatus. “Wisps of salt-fine snow sting my face as we stand on the edge of the mountain near the Marte Iris run at 3,430 metres. I look across the tops of the deserted Andean peaks all around us and resist asking Fernando if he has his own tracking device tucked in his jacket. I look over the lip at the village more than 1,000 metres below before it disappears in the clouds and I follow the other boarders through thick snow that slushes to the side of my board.”

Street surfing–a combination of snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing–has been a recent passion of Karl Fice-Thomson and his Surf Anywhere project. And though he admits the original reason for starting the project was to cull British surfers from the inner cities, the recent popularity of the sport with school-aged kids has many PE teachers and school administrators praising the positive impact on children.

“‘I was sceptical at first,’ admits Denise Howard, director of sport at Brookfield school in Derbyshire. ‘But it’s something completely different, and being in the middle of landlocked Derbyshire, the chance for students to have a go at any kind of surfing was too intriguing to turn down,’” reports Kate Hilpern of the guardian.co.uk.

“Indeed, six million children worldwide have now been taught how to street surf, with 250,000 taught in the UK alone. ‘When you’re the last kid picked for sports teams, it’s horrid. I know because I was one of those kids. With street surfing, everyone’s rubbish at first, but you suddenly get it and it’s addictive,’ reports Fice-Thomson, who adds that the sport is increasingly used in training top snowboarders and surfers.”

Vintage Skis

Despite a 12-year campaign to engage snow sport newcomers, the skiing industry reports that the “conversion rate from newbie to active participant has only risen from about 15 percent since 1999.” These numbers, the slumping economy, and a future that won’t include the current and aging baby boomer demographic have the ski resorts scrambling to adjust their business models and on-mountain offerings.

“Resorts have planned for at least a decade for a fast and furious drop-off of visits from baby boomers who helped build the industry but who will likely cut back as aching knees, hips and backs set in,” reports Catherine Tsai of The Associated Press.

“Things are changing though. In the last decade, more resorts have embraced snowboarding, added terrain parks and boosted offerings beyond skiing, for instance with summer mountain biking.”

photo credit: nilsrinaldi

Cirque Belgique: Belgian Snow, Skate, Surf Extravaganza. Szymon Stachon at the 2009 Quiksilver skateboard Super Bowl, “A Day In The Life” with snowboarder David Doom, surfer Jamie O’Brien, and Hadlow kiteboarding.

Produced by Cirque Belgique

As professional snowboarders continue to push the height, speed, and complexity of their aerial maneuvers, head injuries–and concussions in particular–are on the rise, and many of the sports rising stars are trying to educate themselves around the health concerns and consequences.

“‘The athletes are definitely more skilled than ever before,’ said Dr. Robert Cantu, a professor of neurosurgery and part of a team at Boston University Medical School that has found that athletes who sustain multiple concussions during their career are at increased risk for chronic traumatic encephalopathy. C.T.E. is a degenerative brain disease with symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s,” reports Matt Higgins of The New York Times.

23-year-old Australian snowboarder Torah Bright–winner of the women’s Winter Olympics halfpipe–has sustained three concussions in the past year, and all while wearing a helmet: “‘Hitting your head is quite scary,’ she said. ‘You need a functioning brain. Even though you can still walk and talk, it’s still quite serious.’”

Terrain Parks–winter playgrounds for younger rail-riding, half-piping skiers and snowboarders–have slowly worked their way into the ski resort zeitgeist, offering opportunities to build upon aging demographics, and also ways to “shrewdly” design ramps, jumps, boxes, rainbows, and rails “that segregate the populace, although not necessarily in an overbearing way.” Keep the snow tribes apart, and keep them happy.

But to feed the economic and cultural on-mountain continuum “resorts have to find ways to nurture park beginners so that they will progress to an advanced level. This is good business: no one will keep at a snow sport without becoming at least somewhat proficient. So operators need a large, experienced park tribe to justify the cost of building and maintaining the complicated, outsize terrain parks now common at large resorts.” Bill Pennington of The New York Times reports.

Spring PowderFest: ARC’TERYX videographer and Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine’s circulation manager Angela Percival captures the “downhill vibe” at Whitewater Resort’s Kootenay Coldsmoke PowderFest in Nelson, B.C.

Produced by ARC’TERYX