As I said two posts ago, I've been going through some difficult times recently due to not skiing the previous two weekends. So by the time this past week came around, I was pretty much desperate. I was going to go out and get some turns in no matter what. Unfortunately, none of my friends were up for any real trips. Girlfriends, visitors from out of town, or side jobs tracking wolverines took precedence. So I resorted to pimping myself out on Telemark Tips (www.telemarktips.com) to find someone who was interested in doing some backcountry skiing in the Eastern Sierras. "Single white male, AT skier, 22 years experience downhill, 5 days backcountry, enjoys steep couloirs and long walks on the beach, willing to do anything to join party of experienced backcountry skiers for weekend in E. Sierras." Amazingly enough, my post got lots of looks but no offers.
Rejected by all of the free-heelers on Telemark Tips, I turned to my next best option. My friends Tyler and Dianna were planning on going to Snow Summit for some night skiing on Saturday with Dianna's cousin, who was in town visiting from Massachusetts. After getting spoiled by all of the great early season skiing at Alta, Snowbird and Vail, I told myself I wouldn't sink to the level of skiing at Snow Summit. But like I said, I was desperate for some turns. So it appeared that this was to be my fate for the weekend.
Sitting in my office Thursday, I remembered one of the important life lessons I've learned in the Navy. While I was a Midshipman, I spent 5 weeks one summer on the Los Angeles class attack submarine USS Houston. While on board, we were lucky enough to pull in to Pattaya Beach, Thailand for a port call. I had only been on board for 2 weeks before we pulled in. But they had been out for a few months already and really needed to blow off some steam. I won't go into any details. But I will just say that I was scarred, yet utterly amazed at what great use they made of their time. While there, the junior officers let me in on their informal liberty rules: 1. Always seek to elevate. 2. When you crash and burn, regroup, and elevate. What they are basically saying was live life to the fullest. Find a way to squeeze the most fun into whatever you are doing...even if it involves skiing at Snow Summit.
What relevance did that have to this weekend and how was I going to elevate? The title of the entry pretty much gives it away. But one of the life-goals I said I was going to accomplish at some point this ski season was to surf and ski in the same day. That is a quintessential Socal experience. There is probably no other place in the world where doing that is so easy. So I met Tyler and Laura (Dianna's cousin) at San Onofre at 10 o'clock on Saturday morning. The waves were a little on the small side (2-3 ft and mushy). But we all managed to catch some good waves and have a great time. I've got to give a big hand to Laura. It was her first day ever on a surfboard and she actually stood up and rode a wave on the second one she tried catching.
After spending 2 hours surfing, we took off for Tyler's place in Laguna, picked up Dianna, and headed up to Snow Summit. The drive up there was actually a real pain. It took us 3 hours to get there and the roads weren't even that bad. I attribute this to a combination of typical LA traffic on the freeway and LA drivers not having a clue how to drive in snow once we were in the mountains. If there were any snow on Mt. Baldy at all, the drive alone is reason enough to go there. We arrived at Snow Summit around 5 PM. Snow Summit has a $40 ticket that is good from 3-9 PM. So as far as ticket prices go, it’s not outrageous.
Once we were on the mountain, we actually had a fun time. It's small and the terrain isn't all that interesting. But it did have good snow and moderately pitched terrain that was good for cruising. The mountain was nice enough to groom in between the jumps in the terrain park. So we enjoyed ripping big turns in between the teeny boppers playing in the park. Truth be told, the whole experience reminded me a lot of the Friday and Saturday night ski club trips we used to take to Greek Peak and Holiday Valley when I was in junior high and high school. Back then I was one of those kids lining up to hit the jumps trying to pull the biggest daffy or backscratcher. I have to admit that things have changed a bit since then. The jumps in the park are now man-made and much bigger than the ones we had. When I was that age, you were the king of the mountain if you could successfully land a helicopter or a double daffy. Nowadays, even as a kid, you have to get inverted to really impress your friends. On the positive side, instead of eating overpriced cardboard pizza in the cafeteria, we treated ourselves to pints of Sierra Nevada.
But just like in high school, the biggest thrill came from breaking the rules. Shortly after we got there, they closed all of the slopes to the skiers' right of the East Mountain Express chairlift in order to blow snow and to groom. We were eyeing it all night, salivating over the untouched corduroy, and decided to cut the gate leading to that section of the mountain at 9:15. We figured that if they caught us and took away our lift ticket, it would be no big loss. The mountain closed at 9:30 after all. About 100 yards after cutting the gate, we came around a corner and saw a snow cat blocking our path. So we turned back and hiked up into the woods to see if we could make our way around him. But just as we were approaching the edge of the woods to cross the slope up above the snow cat, we saw two guys in the middle of the slope adjusting the snow guns. So we turned back in retreat thinking that this wasn't to be our night. However, as we were nearing the gate that we had cut only 5 minutes earlier, we heard the snow cat start up and head up the hill. We immediately turned back around and made our way along the path as fast as we could. As we were passing the slope where the snow cat and the guns were, we didn't even look to see if they saw us.
The run was gorgeous...for Snow Summit standards. We were skiing on a layer of fresh, soft, untouched corduroy. Adding to the thrill of breaking the rules were the snow guns that were still going at full blast the whole way down. We really couldn't see very well and were praying that they didn't have any hoses crossing the slope. We never would have seen them. Thinking we hadn't been detected, we came across 2 snowmobiles coming up the hill on the last pitch. Luckily they really didn't care as we both kept going and they didn't turn back. We took one more run that night. But that run was definitely the highlight. What I feared was going to be a sub par weekend turned out to be a lot of fun.
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