White Rabbit

James, the head coach of our snowboard team, decided that he needed an admin day to get some emails and office work done, so he asked me to coach today.

I showed up at 10 to 9 and met just one of our athletes.
It was a snow day, so the Truckee/Tahoe Unified Schools were out.
The athletes we normally coach on weekdays didn't show, so I got to work with just Griffin. Griffin is a 6'2" 16 year old shredder, and he pretty much kills it.
I could go into what kind of coaching Griff needs, but that would be off-topic.
It's enough to say that Griff rides powder pretty fast and loves to charge everything as fast as possible.

So Griff and I headed out and got on Zephyr, heading straight to Cookie Cliff, which was awesome. We rode down to the bottom of Backside, headed back up, and had to amazing Promised Land runs.
Next we decided to head to LookOut Mountain, and after a short run, a short Poma Lift ride, and a short traverse, we dropped into the Doctors' Office.
It was pretty off the hook. Big rocks completely covered in blower pow turned into great jumps, and we both got way more air than anticipated.

So we arrive at the bottom of Lookout, and the chair is stopped. We jump in line, close to the front, and see a bunch of race coaches, Ryan and his private lesson, and Paige, our program Administrator. I probably should have figured that someone knew something I didn't.
As we're standing in line killing time, I get a phone call from James, the head coach. I answer it, of course, and he tells me he just received an email telling him that White Rabbit is going to open in 15 minutes.

A little inside info: White Rabbit is about 1/3 of Lookout Mountain, the third that faces the backside and has the fewest trees on it. It is also the most consistently steep terrain at Northstar. The downside is that it is 95% rocks, and rarely gets enough snow to cover them. Last season it didn't open, as far as I know, and from what I understand rarely opens more than a few days a season.

So I let Ryan in on the secret once we load the chair, and we all head straight to the gate. Right behind us is Ski Patrol, and after waiting for about 3 minutes, we strap in and follo about 8 others through the gate.
We took the center section for the first run, and after a long traverse out involving some hard skating, we got back on the backside chair, rode to the top, strapped in, and b lined it back to the Lookout Link Poma.
Another short traverse and a top speed, no turns run down Martis deposited us back at the lift, where we rushed on and headed straight back to White Rabbit.
This time we headed far right. We got pretty deep back behind a ridge and almost got sucked into a gully that would have resulted in a long hike out.
We made the traverse and headed back to the same line for the next run.
The windlips and roller on WR were amazing! We found ourselves launching 30 to 40 feet and more without even trying and landing in soft, pillowy pow every time.
It was pretty incredible.

I forgot to mention that it was bluebird for every one of the runs we made, and cold, with almost no wind.
Anyone who says Northstar isn't sick needs to spend more time away from Vista.

Tomorrow we're hiking SawTooth Ridge all morning, maybe building a kicker, and having a picnic.
I love my job!

Blower

Epic Winter Storm hits the Sierras, depositing 4 feet of snow in 5 days.
Many resorts are forced to close at least half of their lifts due to avalanche danger and high winds.
Many services are disrupted by the weather, and remain so for days on end as the snow just keeps coming.

I lost my internet for 4 days thanks to 37" of snow disconnecting a cable on the tower in front of my house, and it didn't bug me too much.
Just kept riding (swimming) all this amazing snow!

I know the title implies epic light dry snow conditions, and that's a bit of a stretch for Tahoe, even in the best of times.
We definitely got some great snow, but we also got a bunch of that awesome, wet, heavy crud we like to call Sierra Cement that solidifies our base and guarantees fewer core shots and fewer injuries on these amazing ungroomed pow days.

We're pretty grateful.
We had some friends in town from Mt Baker over the last 3 days, and they had a great time! The conditions reminded them a lot of home. It's just too bad nothing here is as steep as the blue runs at Baker. Even Squaw couldn't offer a suitable substitute for what passes for teaching terrain in the shadow of Shuksan. But they had a great time, and we were happy to play host!

Also, over the past few days, we received our shipment of Bataleon Demo Boards, and are excited to get the team on them. Hopefully we can convince some kids, parents, and shred heads to drop some dough and start riding the best not-flat boards ever conceived. If you, or anyone you shred with, is interested in trying one out, drop me a line, we'll see what we can do.

Enjoy the snow, don't get stuck, drive carefully, see you tomorrow!

Patchouli

What's Yellow Orange and Red and looks good on a hippie?

Fire.

Why do hippies wear patchouli?

So blind people can hate them, too.

How many hippies does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Dude, brah, leave the lights off, the glow from this roach looks like super trippy brah!

I love that the busy holiday weekends in Tahoe bring out all the Bay Area richers and the asian invasion, and not the crusty hippies, like in Colorado and Mt Hood.
This means I can leave my Hippie Killer paintball gun at home and go ride trees without getting a contact high while the hordes of Valley Folk ride thr groomers, moguls and park.

Hooray for 3 feet of snow in Tahoe this week!
People keep saying 8 to 15 feet, but that's crazy talk.
We'll take 3 feet and smile, thank you.

Flood Gates

Wow, another crazy Holiday Weekend in Northern California... So exciting.
My knees aren't taking this too well. I need to man up and start working out, running, hiking, jogging stairs, something. These kids just love the flat landings!

I think I can speak for everyone here when I say that we are very excited for this storm that's coming tomorrow night. They're predicting as much as 8 feet of snow in the next 5 days or so. The shoveling isn't going to be rad, but riding everyday will make up for it. It's easy to assume we'll be getting some good sleep these coming nights.

Okay, so I gotta air some funk here. What's up with all these kids breaking themselves? Why can't they just ride smart and listen to their coaches? Dropping like flies... If they would think before they do something, ask for help, listen to their coaches and take our advice seriously, humble themselves enough to trust us, their coaches, to know the easiest, most direct pathway to mastering their tricks...
We's be a real snowboard team! That might just be too much to take.

Pipe clinic tomorrow morning, jib clinic tomorrow afternoon, crowd surfing all day!!
Oh Yeah. Giggity giggity giggity.

Promise

Promise is an interesting word.
To have promise. To show promise. To make a promise. To break a promise.
Where does promise come from? Do we make it? Find it?
Can we cultivate promise?
If I'm coaching a kid who supposedly has promise, but I can't find it in him, is that my fault?
Should I be held responsible for creating that promise?
And what about when promise fails?
When all the hard work and dedication in the world fails to bring about what promise promised, and all that is left is disappointment? What then?

And what about when someone makes a promise, and breaks it? Can promise be fixed?

I think promise fits in the same category as words like try, maybe, should, could, can't, with sayings like "that's the best I can do", I tried my hardest", "I promise, next time I'll stick it, hopefully...".

In my world, everything has promise. Everything has the potential to fail or succeed.
The measure of that success is taken not by how hard we try, by how often we do.
I can say that I tried to do something, that outside forces made that thing impossible for me, or I can do that thing. There will always be outside forces, there will always be excuses, there will always be promise.
Fuck promise. DO.

The Road (It's a Rain Day)

If any of you have seen the movie already, and haven't read the book, you NEED to read the book! The book is an amazing work of fictional storytelling, and the prose is magically powerful and moving. If you are not into metaphor or dark, desperate, emotional imagery, you may want to skip it.
Here's an excerpt from the first 20 pages:

"He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from it's shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.

He woke before dawn and watched the gray day break. Slow and half opaque. He rose while the boy slept and pulled on his shoes and wrapped in his blanket he walked out through the trees. He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time. Then he just knelt in the ashes. He raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God.

......

They were days fording that cauterized terrain. The boy had found some crayons and painted his facemask with fangs and he trudged on uncomplaining. One of the front wheels of the cart had gone wonky. What to do about it? Nothing. Where all was burnt to ash before them no fires were to be had and the nights were long and cold beyond anything they'd yet encountered. Cold to crack the stones. To take your life. He held the boy shivering against him and counted each frail breath in the blackness.

......

The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt yours with listening. Often he had to get up. No sound but the wind in the bare and blackened trees. He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old chronicle. To seek out the upright. No fall but preceeded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must."

--Cormac McCarthy
The Road

Sick Day

Is it winter? Is it not January? Where is all the snow in such a hurry to get to, that it's disappearing from Tahoe so fast? I certainly hope someone out there is getting some to make up for what we're not.
All this hot and cold business is making everyone sick, including my whole household, and now me.
So I'm staying home today, watching SNATCH and any other thing that seems more fun than a barrel of rats, and trying not to eat myself into a coma.
The Shred Dudelander night camps at Boreal are taking shape, so I'm going to spend any spare time I get today working on marketing them and hopefully drumming up a few rich, shred-obsessed punters that will actually commit to paying the meager price of admission and showing up.
See you all on Wednesday.