Picked up a 5th Generation IPOD 30GB Video last Friday night on the way back from the mountain. My mini-disc has been failing bad lately and the batteries haven't lasted more then an hour in years. I figured it was time to upgrade and enjoy shredding to music once again. Got the shiny new IPOD home and started to load my music collection, snowboard vidoes and charge the battery. All charged up I figured I was ready to go, went riding Saturday and the damn battery only lasted 2 hours. I was pretty upset, and decided to start doing some research on the web about the IPOD battery. Apple claims I should get 14 hours of continous use. Started surfing the web and the Apple discussion forums and noticed a lot of people with the same problem. It turns out that the battery meter on the IPOD is approximate, it needs to be calibrated in many cases. To do this it is recommended to do 2-3 full charge/dis-charge cycles on the battery. This allows the battery to condition itself and the IPOD will calibrate the meter automaticly. After the first chrage/dis-charge cycle my IPOD lasted 14 hours! Running for 14 hours straight shuffling music and watching a few videos I was very impressed. Some additional tips and tricks to maximize battery life are to turn off the EG, set Backlight to 2 seconds, turn off alarms, delete clocks, and not skip/rewind tracks. Way to go Apple! I'll be doing another cold weather battery test this weekend while snowboarding.Overall I'm very happy with the video IPOD, the sound quality rocks, videos are super crisp and fun to watch. Battery life is good once you condition the thing, the enclosure seems pretty durable. Check out the links below for battery information and other tips & tricks.

Copper Mountain Snow Report
Wow, today was sick. Got up to Copper super early because the pass was closed and was it worth it! 12" new this morning on top of 8-10" they got yesterday, we got 3rd chair on the Super Bee lift as it was opening for the season. Lots of deep powder all around the mountain and tons of terrain open. Spalding Bowl is open and Resolution lift is running. The T-Bar and most other lifts are running and more openings coming soon. It snowed off and on most of the day today, forecasts are calling for another 4-8" by tomorrow morning. Heading up to the pass (if it opens) to do some backcountry tomorrow and probably over to Keystone for some night jibbin. Will update after this weekend with some pictures and video hopefully.

This map uses the google maps API and generates an html page based on the spots we love in the backcountry. You can click on the map marker and view the info window which contains data about the way point, weather, snow conditions, and trip report links. This is in proof of concept mode and will be continually developed. Most of my points are setup, although some of the info window data is not correct. My idea behind this is to have an interactive map of locations we've hit, places we want to go, and any other information useful for checking out backcountry locations. Check back as this is completely beta right now, we will be adding more waypoints and lots of data. In addition keep an eye out for interactive maps with Colorado snotel data, and avalanche conditions. Map, Satellite, Hybrid, LANDSAT7, Topo, and JPL Global Mosaic overlays available. Click the above map image or use the link on the sidebar to navigate to the map.