ESPN Freeskiing

1. Go for a mountain bike ride. Mountain biking, especially when riding downhill, has so many similarities with skiing that it is my No. 1 summertime activity. The speed, air, feeling, and rush is so familiar. Your body is facing downhill, you shift your weight back and forth between feet, pop off lips, carve through corners, hop over the tech-gnar. Group camaraderie is also similar to those winter experiences: Your crew is your lifeline, and you're there for each other to help and to share the amazing experiences together.

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2. Watch helmet cam videos and new ski movie trailers. On hot days I like to cool off by watching some Internet videos of deep powder. I am judging a POV video contest for TGR's website right now and nothing makes you feel like you're back on the mountain like the point of view camera. The entries to the contest have been sick, featuring locations from all over the world with full-throttle action. Meanwhile, tons of production companies have been posting the new teasers for the fall's action film tours. The new batch of films look insane, and expect to see an exceptional movie from TGR yet again. Peep the helmet cams contest footy and trailer at tetongravity.com.

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3. Go to a skate park. Skateboarding also has amazing similarities to ripping around on the mountain because of you're able to tap into the flow state. Sure, from a stance and feel perspective, snowboarding and skating have more in common, but all board sports share that aspect of getting into the zone where you're free of thought and letting everything flow through you. Gliding, carving, and airing around a skate park is a rush, and a great offseason diversion.

4. Visit with family. Summertime is well spent with the people you love. I was stoked to visit with my dad during the early part of the summer as we checked out some live music. My dad and I met up first in George, Wash., for a concert at The Gorge featuring music by the Doobie brothers, Allman Brothers, and The Dead. The show was sick. And my dad is a huge fan—not afraid to post up early in order to get good seats. He camped out the night before and was at the gate before 8 in the morning. After waiting for hours, he then charged as they opened the gate down the 1/4 mile path, over the grassy hill, and down to the terraced seats right behind the sound booth.

5. Ghost ride your wip. I love camping in the desert. Some of the places you can find in the middle of nowhere are truly amazing. I hit up this ancient lakebed in the Nevada desert for a camping mission while I was on a road trip. The morning was so nice, and the lakebed so flat, that I decided to get all hyphy in the place and ghost ride my wip.

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6. Go to a music festival. All summer long music festivals of all types go on throughout the world. Spending a weekend immersed in a festival, full of great music and food while kicking it with friends is the best. I was stoked to check out a few different vibes this summer and kicked it off at the High Sierra Music festival with my girlfriend and my mom. My mom rocks actaully; she invited me to this event last year and we decided to make it an annual ritual. Tons of good music rocked the place; a highlight of the weekend was Galactic on Sunday night.

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7. Take a road trip. Nothing conjures up the feeling of freedom like the open road: Bumping your favorite tunes, windows down, checking out the countryside. As soon as summer hit I was on the road, rolling from Utah to California, then into Oregon and back. Visiting friends, seeing music, and chilling with the family. Trips to shred the bike, trips to the open desert, and trips to check some tunes. With enough road trips on the docket there is little time to jones for winter... ah, a perfect distraction.

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8. Make some art. I have been into light art—using long exposure photos to "paint" with light at night—for a while now. This summer while camping in the Utah desert I found this cool natural feature that looked super wild when lit up. After a few tries I got this photo that I was super happy with. You can see my silhouette in several places where I blocked the light and ended up in the shot three times as a ghost image. I used a headlamp that had a red light switch to get the warm and the normal LED for the cool light.

9. Check out South American web cams. If you can't wait for winter anymore, now is the perfect time to head to South America. There are a bunch of sweet resorts in Chile and last year I headed south and linked up with The North Face crew for a soul shred session. We started off in Portillo, a sleeply little ski area with rocket fast surface lifts. One lift called the Rocca Jac sends you straight up a chute. Then we checked out a family-owned snowcat operation called Ski Arpa. Ski Arpa sits atop switch-backing 4x4 road with a small stone hut that makes up the lodge, guide shack, and lodging (albeit limited). The skiing is amazing, with runs that are up to 3,000 feet of vertical down big faces with nice technical features and wind lips. My favorite was being in Farellones near the resorts of Valle Nevado, La Parva, and el Colorado. There, we found cool local crews that were super warm, welcoming, and charging riders.

10. Go to Burning Man. Every August thousands of people flock to the Nevada desert to create the temporary, experimental place called Black Rock City. Burning Man is much more than a party in the desert; it is a community experience of radical self-reliance and radical self-expression encompassing all types of art: Visual, performance, musical, and beyond. And it is all done in a society void of commerce in any way; it isn't about value of one thing to another, it is about sharing a vision, an experience, an idea. I have been going to Burning Man since 1999 and every year I am blown away. It's one of the things that has the most impact in my life and represents new ideas, new breath, love, and reflection on this experience of life.