I just got back from Mammoth Mountain yesterday evening. Snow boarding is the shit! That’s all there is to it. It was my 4th time boarding, but this time I really got the hang of it. There’s something about gliding over the snow at a speed which man is not supposed to that makes it fun. I guess that’s the thrill of it. I can see how x-games athletes become adrenaline junkies. I went up with a bunch of my cousins and their friends. I had a good time hanging with my cousins and stuff. (excuse the shitty motorola RAZR pics)
I have no idea what prompted me to take a pic of myself with my shitty cel phone, but I did. This was the view right outside the cabin. We stayed in a bitchin, big ass, comfortable cabin. It was a ski in/ski out type of deal where you walk 20 yards to the slope and you board down to the place where they sell lift tickets. Then you take the lift back up and board through the forest to get back to the cabin. It was so fucking cool.
So I was warming up and eating shit, falling on my ass, and basically suffering for the first 30 minutes. Then a switch came on and I remembered how to do it all. I started carving and kicking ass. Eventually I met up with my cousin Chris’ friend Ken and his friend Dana (see pic above). They convinced me to follow them to the top of the mountain. I was feeling good so I was down. We went up chair 15 and then kicked ass down Manzanita to chair 25. I ate shit like 3 times going down Manzanita and one of these times, I tumbled like 20 feet and I thought the term “snowball effect” was going to be a reality. At this point I realized that Dana is bad ass and none of us dudes could keep up with her.
At the top of chair 25, I thought I could look over and see James Bond kicking ass down the slope with some Russians blasting AK-47’s at him because it was so fucking steep. I took a deep breath and kicked ass down Quicksilver to Goldhill and eventually to Chair 9. I ate shit once or twice, but not too bad. There are some BAD ASS runs there. Chair 9 is at 8750 feet elevation so my smoking ass was kind of hurting. I wasn’t sure how I would hang at the top of chair 9 which is at 10,000 feet. I was thinking to chicken out and just kick ass down the intermediate slopes, but Ken and Dana were applying the peer pressure so I said said what the hell. Heights do not bother me, but chair 9 is a two seater with no protective railing and I have to admit I was sweating a bit because the chair did a 50 degree incline to the top. SHIT!!!
The top of chair 9 is only a single black diamond. I am by no means a bad ass boarder, but for my 4th time ever boarding I was pretty proud of myself. Like Dana and Ken said, the slopes up there were not really that hard. There were some difficult spots, but the snow up there was nice because there are just less people up there packing the snow. That was the most fun I ever had boarding. I want to go back already. As if cars weren’t expensive enough, I think I just picked up another expensive habit….hit me up if you got any suggestions for boards, bindings, and boots!