therapy : moving a bit in the past
it was the 4th of a 7 day storm cycle. The cloud cover was still not giving us any sight, but pizzas were still falling from the sky. It hadn'T snowed anywhere, everybody was on the resort, every single touring company was here multiplying by 5 the number of riders. We had sit this storm out for 10 days, we were just happy to be in the light stuff again, drought was over, it was time to get the game on, but we were all held back because of no sight..
The crew was representing, visibili-dad (his brother Cali-dad was there though) wasn't giving us any help, but we managed to still open up the good aspects with the litle breaks of the morning. After tracking everything that had to be had in the lower mountain, around the low treeline, it seemed that everybody that was ridding powder on the mountain met up for lunch with the snow intensifiying and visibility dropping to zero.
The vibe in the cafeteria was increadible. That's what is cool about small resorts, the cafeteria full of soaked gloves and jackets. Smiles and stoke was on everybody's face with the prospect of the next days that were comming.
I had a strange feeling, everybody was looking pretty tired and many of the riders from the touring companies were at their first day of ride in this heavier costal snow. I had to head back out, the crew was chilling on a beer and one more for me and i wouldn't be able to ride. Oyvind, a slowboarder friend had the same feeling, so we headed out not expecting anything, but just to go strech the legs and sober up a bit. We had two runs on the endless t(r)ouble chair in the clouds untill things started to change. It was quarter to 2 and the resort was empty, clouds were breaking.
As we stood on the limit of the resort we had a break, looking back at the chair we only saw three or four chair occupied on this 22 minute ride. increadible. i was speachless. We could see accross the area where the crew was racking tracks on a different aspect. For the rest of the afternoon we had the entire valley to ourselves taking the luxury of drawing shapes with your own tracks. The last 2 runs had perfect visibility and it was possible to just gun it in the open aspect of the treeless open bowls. The last few inches of snow that had fallen were quite lighter with the temperature dropping.
This was the last run, the resort was empty, we were fucked, there were only 2 cars left in the parking, it would be impossible to get a lift back home, we would have to wait for the 6 o'clock bus, IF it made it up to the resort, in these conditions if was pretty much 50/50.
Halfway up the chair we saw sam and his buddy (les from LL, i don't know if any of you met him) opening up a sketchy traverse on a aspect across the bowl we were sessioning.The traverse led to these superstar/showoff couloirs. the slowboarder couldn't do it. We knew that because the traverse was open that these couloirs would be tracked out first thing in the morning, by the touring companies' riders, as the only pseudo-locals there we had to show on who's turf they were playing. I looked at Oyvind,
-dude you want to do this ?
he looked at me
- its your call
I was pretty tired of the day, my legs were burning common sense was telling me not to go but i had this little strange feeling that was pushing me...
We skied back down to 3/4 of the way down of this aspect and climbed up to its ridge, to go up it to the couloirs. Accessing the ridge was hard work in steep and deep snow, holding on to bamboos and slipery rocks. What I thought would be a walk in the park was getting harder. Once we got to the ridge, i was ready to give up(again), taking layers off from the effort of climbing this puny ridge i was thinking, that now there was a traverse AND a bootpack, for sure that it would get tracked out the next day, so we had to continue on.
Once we got to the top it was increadible. Its such a great feeling of accomplishement. As the sun was setting in the ocean not far away, the snow wa turning to bright orange. The couloirs started pretty slowly then dove in, so you couldn't really see what you were heading into. That roller to the unkown reflecting the light of the sun was just one of the prettiest sights ever.
As i dropped in, the deepness of the snow suprised me. then i took a look behind at what was going on with my sluff, nothing was moving. AH ! Ah ! ah ! I nicely laid down some of the stylee-ish turn i had ever done. The big tail on my gotamas was pushing up this cloud behind me, as big as me, that randomly threw the white stuff at my face at the end of the turn. [ah place indescriptible feeling that we all know here].
Oyvind dropped down the other channel of this V shaped bowl throwing slashes that you only see in the magazines, he reached up to me at the bottom and his smile explained it all. We were stoked by THE run, I had blown a sidewall on my stick but it didn't really matter, i was in the orgasmic state where nothing really mattered, as we headed down to the parking we noticed the kia parked there with the crew waiting for us, camera in hand. they were about to leave and had spotted us hiking up the ridge. the norwegian were hooked up with the big cameras and zooms and had shot everything.
When I got back home, my daily liter of escudo sorta tasted better, anything could happen it didn't matter.
We hid in the backcountry for the next 3 days logging in some serious vert. 7 days in a row of serious pow really burns a man out.
anyhow, i have been asking those damn norwegian to foward me the pics/vids and i'm still waiting.
insert 3 days of surf
insert 7 days of just plain rest
then insert best day of season thread...
ahh...the therapy goes on
