TAKE A HIKE

Another day at Snowboarder Magazine’s Mammoth house. The smell of stale boots and stale beers. Guests on the floor. Out on the mountain; deep snow and gnarly kickers …I rode the park at chair 4, then in Main Park, with that hack Landon Short. He was throwing Tomahawks and backscratcher-Andrechts. Sick stuff. I Saw Hana Beaman taking laps. I could drop some more names, but won’t. And—yup, that good ole’ California sunshine was blazing. After seriously schralping the entire mountain, I split and went for a hike.

Across from our house Grindelwald, there’s a lumpy little peak, which I ascended on snowshoes this afternoon for the free corn-freshies the hike would surely yield. And mandude, was it radical.

I climbed the 20-foot snowbank and stomped up into the sparse trees. Carrying my board on my back, I scoped my line on the way up. Warm sun and above on the steeps, totally untracked snow. I wanted to defile it, so I kept hiking. After about 30 minutes up on the snowshoes, I strapped in to my board at sunset. Across the valley, the darkened trails of Mammoth loomed. I put away the digital camera and dropped in in a state of complete stoke-ulation.