Ride Journal

I woke up on day six of Tailgate Alaska freezing my butt off. Apparently the heat in the RV stopped working again so getting out of my sleeping bag was a tedious affair. On the plus side, the sky was looking only slightly overcast, similar to the morning conditions on Tuesday. I was hoping the sun would burn away some of the clouds and we would get to go up. The ABA guides seemed positive about it so the decision was made to fly on day six.

Wednesday in Thompson Pass turned out to be a down weather day. Even though it looked promising when I woke up, which compelled me to get my gear together and walk over to the helipad, it didn't take long for the window to blow over and for clouds to roll in. When I got the official word from the ABA guys that Wednesday was going to be a day for “window shopping” (i.e. waiting for windows in which to fly), I decided it would be a good opportunity to drive the RV into town to get gas and a few supplies.

I woke up on Tuesday morning to what looked like overcast skies. Even though I didn't think the helicopters would be flying, I decided to get geared up anyway. I put on all my snowboarding stuff, my climbing harness, avalanche transceiver, and loaded some Clif Bars and water into my pack and made it over to the village area. This was a good decision as it happens, because what looked like clouds was actually valley fog which was quickly burned off by the sun. By 9AM, the skies were starting to look bluebird and the helis were getting ready to fly.

I woke up early on day two of my Tailgate Alaska adventure, but since Anchorage is a whole four hours behind Ottawa, it felt a hell of a lot later than it was. First on the agenda was to finish the paperwork that I needed to do to get my rental motorhome on the road. While I was at it, I met up with a few other tailgaters that were renting their own RVs and also making the drive to Valdez later that day. Paul, Rob, and George from New York in one RV, Justin from parts unknown in another.

Earlier this week, I went to Mont Tremblant for the third try at passing the freeride teaching component of my CASI level 3 instructor's certification but didn't meet the standard yet again. The reason this time was that it was judged that I hadn't pushed the students hard enough during my lesson. Whether or not they left as better snowboarders was irrelevant; apparently the alliance has become more about creating return customers than about making better snowboarders.

Last weekend I took a whirlwind road trip to Mont Rigaud just west of Montreal. Those of you who know of Mont Rigaud might be wondering what the hell makes this event so significant? Reaching the heights of Mont Rigaud will not exactly induce high altitude pulmonary edema or cerebral edema, and the views are not exactly spectacular. However, even if you have the raddest terrain on the planet, what does that really mean without a good crew to share it with.

On the weekend of February 20th, I was in the White Mountains of New Hampshire to do the AIARE Level 2 avalanche course. It wasn't that long ago – December to be exact – that I had done the level 1 and I was keen on becoming an even bigger snow geek. This time, as I understood, we would be spending a bit more time in the field looking at snow grains, making weather observations, and just generally playing in the snow. I was also hopeful that this time I'd have the opportunity to do a little backcountry snowboarding while I was at it.

On day four of the SIA tradeshow, we decided to skip out on the commercial aspects of snowboading and focus on what's really important: the snow, the mountains, and the fun. Brian and Steve of the Sierra crew volunteered to provide us with rides in two senses of the word: a means to get to the mountain, and boards to get us down the mountain (we didn't bring our own snowboards to Denver). We then set our bearing west in the direction of Keystone for a day of riding on Sunday.

I recently purchased some new camping equipment in anticipation of winter camping/snowboarding adventures this season. This past weekend, I decided that, in addition to going snowboarding, I would also take the opportunity to test out this new equipment in an area where, if something went wrong, I could easily make it back to "civilization" without freezing to death. The area in question: the woods around my home mountain of Mont Cascades.