SPRING POWDER

Most of the following is from an email I wrote while blowing smoke off my board when the ridin' was over.

22-23MAR03
Winter Park had just gotten 6-7 feet in 2 days and they just got Berthoud Pass open Friday afternoon. So I left Gillette first thing Saturday morning and met Tommy, Steve and Alex in Denver at 5:00AM at Denny's. I rode up the mountain with them and we got some serious pow. Sometimes we "chose… poorly" and had to crawl out, or pack a platform to get up. Alex and me were doing some trees and greed got me sucked into a cone pit hugging one. Had to get unstrapped with one arm around the tree, then use my board to drag myself out; Alex sitting uphill chuckling all the while.

27-28MAR03
Well, I'm not trying to rub it in, but... the Snowriding Gods have been smiling on me this Spring. I was back from Winter Park 3 days and snow was happening here in Wyoming and still no drilling. So Wednesday I see on the Internet that Jackson Hole got 13" Tuesday, 12" coming down and 6" coming Wednesday night. But... 30 MPH winds, no Interstate highways from here, the pass may close and I'd be driving into the storm with my 2WD Littlefoot truck... 8 hour drive in good weather... Oh well, I'll just go to Red Lodge, Montana, north of Yellowstone. 4 1/2 hour drive, 85% Interstate. They'd gotten 4" and were supposed to get another 3-6". So I leave Gillette at 3:30 Thursday morning and barely got there at opening because I got stuck on the approach road and had to put the chains on. They had gotten over 2 feet of snow overnight at the base and almost 4 feet on the backside. HELLO... apparently Jesus had come along with me for the ride! Anyway, Red Lodge had the best of both worlds. No more than 3 people ahead of you in the lift lines. 2400' of vertical. Double black diamond runs (that were really just singles because the moguls were all buried). 2-4 feet of fresh POW and I'm talking champagne pow. The deep pow at Winter Park had been a lot heavier and tracks would pack it down, making semi-tracked trails harder to negotiate. It was cool and overcast and snowing all day so this Red Lodge snow didn't pack, it just got scattered. First tracks in the morning and first tracks again at 1:00PM when they opened the backside lift after blasting. I'm generally a little more careful when I'm alone since it could be summer before somebody finds my desiccated carcass wrapped around some tree. So I love it when you don't have to get into the tight trees to find fresh pow. I can just go wild out in the open cause you can't really get hurt in this deep stuff (I don't think). I was flying down this double diamond run called Drainage and got a little more air than I knew what to do with, dug the tip in and as I went over I was planning on landing pointed down so I wouldn't have to dig out to get back up, but it didn't slow me up enough cause I did an almost perfect cartwheel right in line with the board. As I went over the second time I could see a skier below, but I knew I wasn't going to hit her or I'd have flopped in the snow to stop. So I did another beautiful cartwheel and landed standing pointed down hill, ready to go. My board's black on top and flame orange and yellow on the bottom and this girl says, "I look up and just see powder flying and this big orange stripe comes over and down, then over and down again, then you're standing here saying howdy. That was awesome." And it felt awesome. I always talk about whether a wipe out was a "controlled crash" or not with Alex and he always acts aggravated and says "there's no such thing, if you crash you are out of control." I always tell him, "I lost control, but that's no reason to cash it in if I can turn it into a controlled recovery." Steve put the kids in lessons since they were 5 years old so he could go off and ski. Now they're using all those lessons against us. Both Alex and Valerie hardly ever wipe out and they both harass me about wiping out too much, but hey, the learning curve is steeper when you push it. Valerie once accused me of enjoying a good crash. And you know what? Sometimes I do. Anyway, I stayed over for a 2nd day since there was plenty of pow left at closing time. And then, 6" Thursday night and the wind smoothed it back up because it had stayed fluffy dry, so it felt like 2 feet again on Friday. Life is good.

Video Snaps (Red Lodge):

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