TR: a Westward tour, sirs

[WaistDeepGroomers]

Nothing crazy here, just some pics from taking my laptop, splitboard, and an extremely large ski bag fraying at the edges at the far end of its life on the road West for a few weeks to rebate on the east coast season.

The trip began in the Cascades, following a very intense four day trip for work to the white privilege conference, which was an incredible experience and very profound personally and professionally (learning to identify systems of white dominance in life and work) but thus completely exhausting. Naturally, charging Northwest cement seemed an appropriate recovery tactic.

We began at Alpental, where it was pouring rain at the base and nuking snow at the top with few takers.



Anyplace where the best terrain is accessible off a fixed double is alright with me. This place is awesome!!



I was a big Alpy fan. Such fun terrain all the way to the lift, even if the majority of the back bowls were closed. Ran into the wise Chris Bobby and quickly showed the limit of my quads and of my intermediate snowboarding talent. Who cares, it was Awesome!!

The next day we went to Crystal, with its astounding views of the Narnia that is Rainier.



Fun terrain, although I was no match for the dust on crust and refrozen spring chunder.

[WaistDeepGroomers]

My friend Kit had no complaints though. Also the stuff off that double chair (see a trend?) Was super duper fun.



The next day it poured rain on the way to Stevens, so we touristed around Seattle. Buddy's girlfriend works for Bezos so we got to.tour the new balls downtown.



This was followed by a quick jaunt to Bellingham to catch up on emails and bike the trails for the first time (thanks Transition)! Had an awesome.splashy wet ride that satisfied my curiosity for the Galby trails, then rode home in a down pour. Beautiful there along the coast.



Onto Utah! Caught an awesome sunny pow day at Brighton. But first, Crown Burger!!





Hmm...



After that experience, it was time for my favorite burrito from Toros Tacos in the Sears parking lot in SLC:



The following day a friend and I surfed some hot pow in Days Fork after a slippery skin to the top:



Then it was time to pick up the Land Rover I rented and send it to Jackson!!



Got into town just in time for an epic sunset:



After two days of hammering the laptop, we lucked into a surprise spring storm and just enough dust on crust on Glory to have a radically smile-inducing run down First Turn, which I think is where I'll have my family spread my ashes when I shuffle off the mortal coil.





Probably boring, but I always thought this tree along the bootpack was beautiful:



Then a return to spring and a casual after work lap.on Snow King. It was great being here with the resort and most everything closed, i.e. no tourists and plenty of room to.move around.




Began the weekend by looking for the little skied V Couloir in the national park...



....only to find it was on a completely different part of the mountain from where we assumed it was, and Son of Apocalypse and Apocalypse looked like wet slide prone garbage. Oh well! We went down to the river for the afternoon. I had no interest in surfing in mountain meltwater after freezing to death on the Maine coast all winter, but buddy was way into.it.







On my final day, was able.to rebate on Taylor which was very fine indeed.





Got up a little late for perfect corn, but got my first East Face run in safe conditions and greatly enjoyed the natural half pipe at the bottom.



After that it was time to pack up the Land Rover and gun it back to SLC in time to make my horrendous redeye and spend four and a half sleepless hours before being spat out in the cold east coast Monday morning dawn.

Thanks west coast!

[biggins]

Good stuff. Solid road-run steeze.

[CascadeLuke]

Good for you guys! Did you make it to Stevens eventually?

[Ignatius]

Thank you for sharing this good ol' fashioned trip report. I enjoyed reading it.

[WaistDeepGroomers]

Good for you guys! Did you make it to Stevens eventually?

NAw, it was pouring rain almost to the summit the day we planned to go

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