Sunday, Stevens' Forecast: Rain
Well thank goodness for inaccurate forecasts!
I've never had a stellar day at Steven's. Bad timing I guess. This time we had a triple certed(Skiing, Telemark, Snowboarding) level 3 instructor at his home mountain.
Needless to say it was fun. We had to kill 20 minutes to get our lift ticket coupons so we practice on some pvc pipe for freestyle. 50/50s and a couple mediocre FrontSide board-slides.
Third day out of four I ended up in a natural half pipe created by a deep cut creek bed. That right there made the 10$ lift ticket worth it. Then we dropped another run with warning for cliffs through the trees(jeez this weekend was fun and tough!). More chutes/ double diamonds. Some food after 3 hours of leg burning laps on some of the best/hardest terrain at Stevens. Time for some freestyle.
Got our park passes and hit it. Rusty at the pipe. But hit the mid-sized hits cleanly with just straight air. BS 180s off random hips. Need to work on bringing the A tricks to the bigger terrain.
Got some credit on my riding again for fellow instructors. It's nice to here from peers or people I consider better some props. It's been a lot of work over the last 3 years to unlearn and relearn snowboarding on challenging terrain.
Got some good pointers too.
Over all this week I rode thousands of vert, lots of diamonds and double diamonds(WA double) at three major resorts. Did some huge drops, free style, 3 different natural pipes, three different tree routes. It felt great to slay to three resorts in Washington. Some great narrow lines including the middle stretch of Chute.
One of my best weekends or riding, in terms of fun and in terms of quality of my skills. Rode a ton of terrain.
Now time to bring it for the exam.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Long Time, no Blog
So it's been a long time since I(Bryce) expressed any adventures or thoughts.
My life has been consumed by way too many hours behind a desk and too few on the snow(thought I've been super busy with that too)!
Lots of teaching adventures to share at a later date, but I want to share my weekend first and foremost.
So on adventures:
This week I took Thursday and Friday off. That was the smartest thing I've done in a while. We lucked out and Julie had Thursday off so we went with Ted (whom I encouraged to take the day off as well). A powder day on Alpental was a blast. Ted and I have very similar riding styles/instincts. Face shots, cliff drops, stump booters. I felt like I was in a video at times even when I got bogged down in the wet snow or had heel slide a 6 ft wide gulch between two cliff bands.
Friday I followed it up with an early start and long car ride up to Mt. Baker with Ryan and Ted. While the snow wasn't exactly fresh or uncut, the weather was beautiful blue skies and the company was awesome. We rode our asses off on any thing from groomers to iced out tree runs to small powder fields(3 turns max) to soft but cut chutes.
Highlights: 19$ ticket, first run, some beautiful control dynamic turns down a 12 foot shoot rated double diamond, watching people drop the backcountry, 3-beer lunch, dropping a ~10-12 drop into cut powder then an accidental somersault but ending right back onto my board, the weather, the lift convos, jamming out on the way into and out of the parking lot, and finishing the day down the canyon in the sunset...
Yes a whole paragraph of highlights.
Saturday was some casual turns at Alpy with Julie and her work friend Karen. A good time. Karen was super jazzed to ride some Washington snow and it was infectious. The girls both had energy and it helped because I was tired. Met up with Nate(another ski school friend), and got a few turns, even found 3 more powder turns. Finished the day with some yummy Ethiopian food and an early bedtime.
Sunday was a clinic at Stevens...
More to come on that, too long of a post and it's bedtime.
My life has been consumed by way too many hours behind a desk and too few on the snow(thought I've been super busy with that too)!
Lots of teaching adventures to share at a later date, but I want to share my weekend first and foremost.
So on adventures:
This week I took Thursday and Friday off. That was the smartest thing I've done in a while. We lucked out and Julie had Thursday off so we went with Ted (whom I encouraged to take the day off as well). A powder day on Alpental was a blast. Ted and I have very similar riding styles/instincts. Face shots, cliff drops, stump booters. I felt like I was in a video at times even when I got bogged down in the wet snow or had heel slide a 6 ft wide gulch between two cliff bands.
Friday I followed it up with an early start and long car ride up to Mt. Baker with Ryan and Ted. While the snow wasn't exactly fresh or uncut, the weather was beautiful blue skies and the company was awesome. We rode our asses off on any thing from groomers to iced out tree runs to small powder fields(3 turns max) to soft but cut chutes.
Highlights: 19$ ticket, first run, some beautiful control dynamic turns down a 12 foot shoot rated double diamond, watching people drop the backcountry, 3-beer lunch, dropping a ~10-12 drop into cut powder then an accidental somersault but ending right back onto my board, the weather, the lift convos, jamming out on the way into and out of the parking lot, and finishing the day down the canyon in the sunset...
Yes a whole paragraph of highlights.
Saturday was some casual turns at Alpy with Julie and her work friend Karen. A good time. Karen was super jazzed to ride some Washington snow and it was infectious. The girls both had energy and it helped because I was tired. Met up with Nate(another ski school friend), and got a few turns, even found 3 more powder turns. Finished the day with some yummy Ethiopian food and an early bedtime.
Sunday was a clinic at Stevens...
More to come on that, too long of a post and it's bedtime.
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