FUCK!!!!!! the ski world will never be the same

[carbs]

RIP Shane- never met him but he was a true inspiration
drinking a few tonight for him & skiing a few tomorrow at Burke, never knew that he went to BMA until tonight, its kind of an honor to be skiing the same terrain he skied when growing up

[Tye 1on]

dammit. Superman is right. This is just not good on many levels. RIP Shane...+++

[swerve]

Having some whiskey and watching some movies. I would have loved to have met you Shane.

Ill go jump off something for you tomorrow.

[CarveMan]

Somewhat ironic, but my Blu Ray of Claim arrived today.

I'll be saying goodbye tonight in full Hi Def glory.

RIP Shane. You will be missed.

[boobookitty]

Shane has changed my life with his smooth skiing and Spatula building. He'll always have a place in my heart.

[mtcham]

Condolences to Shane's wife, daughter and friends. Truly a sad day for the skiing community.

RIP Shane

[Fear Of A Flat Planet]

damn this sucks.

[Pow4Brains]

Time to crack open a Double Bastard and pay respects.

Say Hello to Heaven...and Coombs.

To a man that left the world a better place.

[hutash]

Still hard to believe.

Peace Bro, and condolences to all family and friends. I am amazed at how wide his touch was here, but the more I think about it, the more I realize just how big apart Shane was in the skiing world, and TGR.

[boltonoutlaw]

R.I.P. SHANE MCCONKEY

[Rasputin]

Ouch. That's really sad news.

My condolences to friends and family.

He had a genius for ski design.

I'll ski my Huckster's tomorrow.

[bodywhomper]

such a bummer.

condolences to family and friends.

[Arty50]

I was on my way home a little while ago and WSD sent me a text: "Cannot believe the news about Shane McConkey. So very very sad."

I found myself sitting there in the parking lot praying that it wasn't true. That maybe this horrible news wasn't the most horrible news, but my heart knew that it was. After my reply, she called and confirmed the worst.

It's funny just the other day I was thinking about what my next pow ski is going to be and Shane immediately popped in my head. I mean, he started it all. I remember when the Spatula came out and everyone thought it was some lame joke. Volant couldn't give them away and the bulk of them ended up being shelled on eBay for cheap. But something funny happened. The few people that were lucky enough to have been smart enough to buy them realized what they had in their hands, they told their friends, their friends tried them and ran out to the nearest store or snatched a pair of eBay.

Prior to the Spatula, we had relatively traditional skis. Some had more or less sidecut, but the tips and tails were relatively traditional as was the camber. But soon everyone discovered that you didn't have to build a ski that way, and that the sky was the limit as far as ski design. Now we have rocker, recurve, tapered tips and tails, and almost everything under the sun. There's so much cool stuff out there, my mind is on the verge of exploding when I try to figure out what I what. And it all comes from that crazy ski that looks like a pair of Ronald McDonald's shoes.

And then there's the man himself. I only got to meet him briefly at a MSP premier at Squaw, but he had that huge smile on his face and you could tell instantly that he was one of the happiest, most fun people on the planet and one of the nicest people you'll ever meet.

I can't begin to say how much he'll be missed. I guess I had always secretly hoped that we'd be seeing his goofy until the day hell froze over, and then we'd see him rip the schit out of that too.

[greenmachine]

sucks ass. sorry for your loss(and all of ours) huck

[RagDoll]

I am just starting what I hope will be a long life spent in the ski industry, and shane was one of the people I looked forward to meeting most somewhere along my journey. I have held on to a pic of him in FREEZE magazine for years, where he's skydiving, sitting on a saucer, and punding a fifth of JD--in the hopes that I would meet him someday and get an autograph on one of my favorite images of all time. It is going to be a very sad finally putting it in a frame unsigned. RIP shane, I never met you but I hope I can live a fraction of the LIFE you did every day.

EDIT: BTW if anyone has that somewhere in digital form, it would be great to post it here, brings a smile to my face every time I see it.

[wendigo]

One of the rare people worth emulating the style in which he lived his life.

My condolences to friends and family.

[Voltron]

A legend and inspiration to my life.

RIP Shane

[johnykim]

unbelievable....still hasn't sunken in. prayers go out family and friends.

[RoanMtnMan]

All I can say brother is that you did it right. You lived what you loved and did it better than all others. The fact that you inspired and touched so many lives should be validation. Say hi to Coombs. Explorers die young but legends are never forgotten.

[Yonder_River]

R.I.P. Shane

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...38515142490531

[BenWA]

I remember the first time I saw him ski in Peter C's "Into the Powder" back in '94 or so. He was instantly an idol as far as I was concerned. His casual backflips in the middle of mogul runs like they were nothing were about the coolest thing I had ever seen (that was LONG before inverts became the rage, and before "freeskiing" was even a word). When I went on to ski bumps more seriously a couple years later, I modeled my mogul skiing hugely from his style.

Didn't stop with bump skiing though. As Shane made more of an impression on the freeskiing scene several years later, I continued to regard him as the most versatile skier since Plake and did my best to assimilate his big mountain style into my own. I remember watching RAP's "Buring Winter" and rewinding his part on the VCR over and over and over, just so I could scrutinize a few schralping turns of his. An amazingly influencial person to me. He lived more in his short life than most do in a lifetime. In fact, he lived more than any of us could probably ever imagine. Those moments where he did something amazing, and it was just him there to experience it. Maybe others saw it from afar, but he was doing it. He was there. He lived it. He lived life. Go live your life.

[mdp]

Somewhat ironic, but my Blu Ray of Claim arrived today.

I'll be saying goodbye tonight in full Hi Def glory.

RIP Shane. You will be missed.

I watched it again tonight. One of my favorite video segments of all time was Shane's in Claim. Besides the music and him poking fun at his own "old age", I love the laid out front flip off a knoll/roller into chopped up pow in full view of a chairlift full of people.

Such a great skier. Such a huge loss to the community.

[Egg Beater]

I feel like the whole sport of skiing just died.

[Shepherd Wong]

Tragic. My thoughts are with his friends and family.

[grubbers]

thanks for all you've given us, shane. my thoughts are with your friends and family.

RIP