Snow Summit 4.14.2009

I went up to Snow Summit with my bro today. Bear Mountain closed last Sunday and BBMR (Big Bear Mountain Resorts) is busting ass to keep the two runs at Summit open until April 18th. This is the last week of local shred so I'm trying to get three or four days out of it.

One thing I have started to understand about snowboarding... some aspect of trying to ride is going to go wrong. Sometimes it's equipment, sometimes it's idiocy, today it was both.

I got up early and had to literally drag my brother out of bed. We were fine with time and looking at a nice long day on hill. Just as we were about to get on the freeway he realized he had forgotten his goggles at the house. It didn't set us back much but it did set us back; so we embarked for round 2 of trying to make it up to Bear.

When we pulled in to the parking lot I realized my season pass was still two hours back the way we came, in my house in Palm Springs. Talk about your all-time boneheaded screw-ups. Lucky for me Snow Summit has a policy that gives you one chance to be that stupid... so they gave me a sympathy ticket and things were on track again. Round 3.

View from the parking lot.

This was my brothers first day on a board since he tore his ACL a few years back (ironically, he tore it wrestling a few months before he was set up to go with me to High Cascade). After begging him consistently for a year he felt like his knee was finally stable enough to take a few runs.

Brother G... stoked maybe?

Conditions are pretty dismal at this point. This is where people start to bitch and moan about how there isn't any powder at the end of April in Southern California... but all you really need is a layer of slush just to get that fix, yaddadamean?

Wait... I thought it was called "snow"boarding?

It was pretty funny; when I was getting my sympathy ticket this guy came into the Guest Services office and just started going off. "There is only one high-speed lift," "There are only two runs open," "There are patches of dirt everywhere," "Everything was gated off, and I got stuck at this slow two person chair." This is what trail reports, lift reports and live cams are for... no surprises; in fact these things were probably created so resorts wouldn't have to deal with bullshit like this. It's like the guy wore a blindfold until after he got off the chairlift because he wanted to be surprised!

Complaining about anything at a resort when they are 5 days from closing is like asking Jed Anderson to stop hitting rails. It was pretty obvious the lovely ladies behind the counter weren't empathizing with the douscher so I started making whining baby noises while the guy was mid-complaint to get some smiles; I couldn't just sit there and let them try to be serious when listening to this guy. I'm sure he wanted a ticket a refund, I'm sure he made a big a scene and I'm sure mountain security had to tell him to fuck right off.

So we finally got on the hill and got shred. The bro was doing pretty damn good considering he had ACL injury that he "re-habbed wrong." We took a couple of laps through Upper Westridge to hit the park but G wasn't about re-injuring his knee first day out so we just had some fun running laps, doing butters and spins in the flats; basically we just enjoyed the fact there was snow.

Remember how I said something always goes wrong? G managed to drop his goggles going from the car to the bathroom and I'm thinking the second they hit the ground they got swooped up (aka stolen). This pretty much ended the day, so we headed to this collection of giant snow boulders I had seen. One was shaped like a tank and looked pretty fun, so I threw some snow for a "ramp" and got to work.


After a few tries an instructor came and told me that she tried to play in the snow boulders earlier and the lifties called her in to Ski Patrol. I just bought my pass for 09.10 so I'm not looking for trouble before then; I took a few shots and headed home. Honestly though, what liftie is that serious about his job this close to end-of-season? This dude's not even going to have a job in 5 days, might as well loosen up a little... god forbid I use my SNOWboard to jib SNOW.

While we were getting our gear off some nasty weather started setting in. It really won't matter if it snowed or not but the idea of things getting refreshed as Summit finishes out the last week sounds nice. We managed to get this bitching picture of the storm on the way back... maybe this should be the logo image: