Amanda and I busted it down to Utah from Mt. Baker upon work of a big storm, and were not disappointed by 2 fresh feet, not bad at all considering the year everyone had. After two days at Snowbird we headed over to Park City to meet up with Whit and Nicole from some spring skiing action.

Attached the GoPro to my board just behind my boot for an interesting perspective.

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Well, it turns out there was another Tahoe snowboarding to be had after all. Keeping with the weather that we have been getting in all season, it decided to snow over 2 feet throughout the week, and Javier sent me a text, and the trip was on.

The intention was to arrive pretty early, with Javier joining from Sacramento, but for some reason my alarm clock just didn’t go off (I did confirm that it was still on and set to the proper time), so I ended up leaving at 8:30 instead of 6:30, which totally sucked. By the time I got there and started hiking, Javier had already done a lap on Yellow Chair, but I managed to make pretty decent time. There weren’t too many people there, and of those most seemed to be on sleds, but fresh lines were everywhere

We decided to go up the bunny slope past Yellow Chair, then loop around underneath Keyhole and up to the summit through Alpine Bowl. It was definitely slower going for me on the snowshoes than it was for Javier with skins (I dropped off the split a week before assuming winter was over), and I forgot the trekking poles in the car, but who am I to complain? It wasn’t warm, but a tshirt was all that was needed on the way up, but the breeze necessitated a jacket on the way down. I hiked all the way to the peak to jump off the cornice, but the first attempt was really weak as I lost all my speed on the flat section. A little frustrated, I decided to do it again, and this time I really tried to bomb it and hit the cornice earlier to preserve as much speed as possible. It was a lot better, but…. would have been nice to be able to get more distance. The snow was actually pretty awesome, and even though we only ended up doing one run, I was glad I made the trip, despite the late start.

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“Pack your bags, we’re going to Alaska in 24 hours. Call me back.”

That was the voicemail I got from Steve, of DemoSport fame, and he was serious. With the snow season winding down, and business at the shop with it, Steve was finally about to make some moves and get some turns in of his own. Since I have a reputation for being the guy to call when you need someone to fly half way around the world with you on last minute notice, I got the call, and made the trip.

There really wasn’t much of a decision to make, since we got an incredibly good deal – buddy pass tickets on Alaskan Airlines round trip for $100, and a Costco (of all places) sale for 25,000 vert feet and 3 days hotel and food for $1000. We got 2 of the Costco packages, and 36 hours later (the voicemail ended up being slightly inaccurate), Steve and I were in Valdez, AK via SFO and SEA.

There wasn’t much fresh snow on the ground, but it was sunny out the first day, so we got to go up on the helicopter. The weather was looking unsettled, so it was hard to say how long we were going to get to go out, or if we would get to go out again on the trip. We were partnered up with a guy from Munich named Stefan, riding a Lib Tech 193 Doughboy, which is a very large board. I was just on the Burton Vapor 16, and not even set all the way back, so after adjusting my bindings after the first run, we had a pretty good day. Everyone showed they knew what they were doing, and it would have been nice to push it a bit more, but who’s complaining after a blue bird? We started with a run down a couloir that wasn’t that steep, but did have fun walls to play on, and then a few long runs down the glacier. We hit another Couloir that was much steeper and narrower, and uncovered a few rocks on the way down… at least it was steep enough that Steve was taken out by his own sluffage

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Really cold weather lead to some really light powder, and 19″ of it, so Andy and I headed to Alpine Meadows. We met up with Zachary shortly after, and then Jay and Reagan later in the day. I knew it was going to be a good day when you could hear the bombs going off in all the bowls and in Promised Land.

I tried to put together some of the video of the day, and while it’s still a little lame, it might be the best editing to date.

We hit Pete’s Peril first, then moved on to Scott, first the Chute then Promised Land once we met up with Zach. As things got more tracked out, we did a bit of hiking, starting with High Traverse into Sherwood, then behind Idiot’s to the top of Beaver Bowl. We got great snow they whole day, but the snow in Beaver was especially good.

Wrapped it up with beers on the deck, not so bad.

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