To be honest, as of late I haven't been as stoked as I usually am to ride. Spending a few days back east during the Holidays gave me a taste of what actually riding my snowboard feels like. Just going fast on a never ending wave, cruising with the homies, there are few things better in this world.
When I got back to SoCal it was like I skipped the winter and went straight to spring riding. This is essentially what Bear Mountain offers, spring riding year round. It sounds great at first, I know when I was living back east I was always so happy when spring came around and I put away the puff. We would barbaque and session jumps and rails, and you could actually see the sky. I've come to realize that the reason I was always so stoked for this time of year was because of the time spent roughing it out through months of bitter cold and ice.
In SoCal you really don't have to deal with this, so the spring conditions become the norm and you get jaded on it. I can really only hit the same rail so many times under sunny skies before I want to go do something more creative, more free.
Then this weekend, after a much needed winter storm, I got my wish. Sherman and I drove up to Big Bear and were greeted with piles of fresh all around us. We vanished into the woods and didn't leave for the rest of the day. We rode some of the most epic trees I've ever had the pleasure of voyaging through. Every run there was a new place to drop with fresh waiting for us to shred, and it all funneled into a snake run that never got old. This simpler, rawer way to ride the mountain sparked something in me that I had been missing since riding back east, the simple pleasure of really RIDING my snowboard. The stoke is back.
-Devino
Thanks to Karen for the photos!
Thanks to Karen for the photos!
4 comments:
Glad to see you guys got to schralp the mystical redwood stream beads. Usually when that happened for me I saw people wiping pow off of ride on boxes and complaining about the weather, while just a few yards away you could be a badman in the trees... Did you see the Wu Hampsah shack?
There's a Wu Shack? Musta missed it. Every time we would come out of the woods there was this group of kids building stuff in the junkyard, it was very confusing but just meant more fresh for us!
Snowy gnomes are watching you! Shred heavy, stay safe!
Great post. I never realized how much the constant spring riding can suck motivation out, but it does. Great day - totally blew away all expectations. The Wu hampsha shack is on the other mountain I believe.
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