I know that this site is geared towards different board-sports and being active, so I figure I’ll tell you about my most recent snowboarding trip. It was pretty insane.

Last year I found out that we we’re scheduled to play a show in Lake Tahoe, Nevada on January 4th, 2008. Since my brother and I don’t get to spend much time together anymore, I figured it would be cool if he came out to the show and we made it a snowboarding trip. We always used to go when we were younger, but with him being in school and me always on the road, we haven’t made it out to the mountains together in a while.

Anyway, almost as soon as I booked our flights out to Nevada, our show out there on the 4th was cancelled. I’m not sure why, but for some reason it just wasn’t going to happen. By this time it was already too late to cancel my trip out there, so my brother and I just said “Fuck it, we’re still going!” And we did just that.

We flew out on January 2nd, rented a car, and drove to the hotel. Apparently we made it just in the nick of time because as soon as we arrived at the hotel, they informed us that the worst blizzard the state had seen in over 25 years was on its way. Of course my brother and I didn’t think to check a weather report before we left, but we thought, “Whatever, better for us”. It honestly wouldn’t be the first time that we almost died in a blizzard- but I won’t get into that story now. The hotel concierge told us that it was going to snow about 5 feet that night. All I could think was how fucking epic it was going to be.

It turns out that it ended up snowing for 2 days straight. It sucked though because the snow was so thick and the wind was so strong that they wouldn’t open any of the ski-lifts. So for an entire day we were stuck in the hotel at the bottom of the mountain. It wasn’t until the second day of the blizzard where we got fed up enough to say, “Fuck the lifts!” My brother and I contemplated and decided that we didn’t fly all the way out to Tahoe just to sit in a hotel room.

Even the nonfunctioning ski-lifts couldn’t stop us. We geared up and began to hike up the mountain on foot. I’m not sure exactly how far we made it up, but I know it took us almost all day. The conditions were hellacious. The visibility was extremely low. On top of the thick drenching snow, there was a dark grey gloom in the air which yielded hail, rain, and all together doom. There were times when I couldn’t see my brother just 10 feet in front of me. We had two-way radios just incase we were to separate.

Like I said, I’m not sure how far we made it, but after getting pretty damn high, and pretty damn far, we decided to get one good, long, crazy ass run in. And it was just that. The way down was even more insane than the hike up. We were speeding down the mountain basically blind due to all of the conditions. On the way down we actually found a park. We hit some jumps and rails, but nothing super intense. I knew we must have been going the wrong way because we definitely didn’t see the park on the way up. And I was right! By the time we hit the bottom of the mountain I saw a huge sign that said, “Welcome to California”. We had to take a long-ass cab ride back to our hotel in Nevada, but overall the juice was worth the squeeze. We flew home the next day but the drive to the airport was completely agonizing. The storm had passed and there was nothing but clear skies in the forecast. The sun was shining and there were several feet of untouched powder just begging to be owned. WHAT A SHAME! But after everything, now that I think about it, I’m just glad to be alive.

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Category: Uncategorized   Tags: Snowboarding