Black Mountain 🌄

The cherry on top

Wombo Combo 🏂

Ptarmigan again and again and again....

More Gore!!! (⛷️ > Work)

Wow just wow. 10am to midnight 🫠 14 hours at Lab. What a day. Everest levels of VERT!!! One of my "glad I did that once but never again" kinda activities.

Buckle up dear reader (mostly for future Chris and anyone bored enough to read my rambling 🤣) because this one is a doozy. I'm excited to look back at this one in ten years and call myself insane.

Started out the morning skiing early expecting good snow and Ptarmigan to be open. I was first chair up and was sad to see Ptarmigan was not open, so I sent cut throat fast instead. 

Roll back to the next run and lo and behold Ptarmigan is open (yay). So I send that trail fast as the first tracks down besides ski patrol. A bit crunchy but still groomed from the previous night. At the bottom as I was about to bomb it over cross over to get back to the triple lift, a snowcat was taking up the entire trail coming towards me. I stopped and waited for him to pass. But rude.

Next run I go up and find ski patrol putting the closed signs back up 😢. I asked one why and he said they were going to regroom it (okay but why it was fine) and didn't want skiers bombing it with the snowcats on the trail (fair). But the ski patrol guy said it would umopen back up in 30 minutes tops. So I sent cut throat again (big zoomies).

The rest of the morning and early afternoon was sending a glade between cut throat and no name in succession. Huge amounts of powder in the woods (at least two feet of fluffy snow). I spent so much time in those glades hopping logs and jumping off ledges. I'm really getting better at my glade skiing! Yay for improvement.

They didn't end up opening Ptarmigan until 4pm when the stupid Friday night freakout started (lame). All the glades off Midnight Express were unavailable for the daylight hours which was soooo sad!

Around 5pm I switched to snowboarding because Sam wanted to try skiing for the first time in 10 years. He nailed it and picked it right back up quickly. Though getting his foot in my boots was even harder than it is for me 🫤. He let me use is snowboard to save me a trip to the car for mine. Man is it playful. So easy to spin/pop tricks. A bit less steady at speed but a fun change of pace for me.

Once the crowds started showing up, I stayed at the now open Ptarmigan lift for awhile. The Badger and Jacopie chairlifts were all < 20 minute lift lines (gross). Ptarmigan was a 30 second wait. A no brainer for sure.

My friend and I also saw a bright shooting star on a lift ride up so that was pretty cool!

I brought a headlamp and was seshing midnight express and the glades over there. Quite a fun experience. I'd love to do more night skiing under my own lights. A bit sketchy but I could see fine. Especially with my night goggle lenses.

As I got used to Sam's board, I started understanding why he likes to throw tamedog flips and I began to start researching how to do them on the lift rides up. A few cold fingers, YouTube videos and reddit scrolling later and I was doing rolls on my backs of knuckles and practicing my Nollies at speed. I was almost starting to actually get air with it and complete the flip rotation but I needed more speed and a better knuckle. Still cool to build that confidence! I can roll/bail without hurting myself at all. Excited to try another time.

Kyle and I finished off on the badger lift. I was sending some park tricks and scoping tamedog takeoffs on the jump knuckles. Might go, but powder day and some confidence boosting required.

The longer I stayed the more I toyed with the idea of staying till midnight until I hit the sunk cost fallacy of I'm never doing this again, might as well see it to the end. By the end I was ready to pass out. I should have eaten more but I ate all the food I brought (was not expecting to stay this long) and was very hungry by the end.

Storytime over. I hoped you enjoyed wasting time reading this.

Tracklist by Spava: https://www.strava.com/clubs/spava
06h41m00s. Fox Stevenson - Bruises
06h44m15s. Fox Stevenson - Don't Care Crown
06h47m56s. Fox Stevenson - Bruises
06h56m32s. Tom Cardy - Monster Truck (Don’t touch my)
07h01m50s. Fox Stevenson - All Night
07h18m36s. Everfound - God of the Impossible
07h22m14s. Max Frost - Adderall
07h28m14s. Truslow - Doctor
07h45m42s. NF - Time - Edit
08h35m12s. NICOLOSI - Wasted Time
08h39m18s. Kings Kaleidoscope - Sticks & Stones
08h42m08s. Madge - TALL GRASS
08h45m07s. Tors - Broken Bones
08h49m00s. I Fight Dragons - Oh the Places You'll Go
08h56m21s. Moron Police - Captain Awkward
09h05m14s. We As Human - Take the Bullets Away (feat. Lacey Sturm)
09h07m56s. Alessandra - Best Year Of My Life
09h11m26s. PEABOD - Big Feelings (feat. Aklesso)
09h15m26s. SAINT PHNX - Go Away
09h29m02s. VALORANT - >one (greater than one)
09h32m53s. Young the Giant - Superposition
09h36m25s. Bryce Fox - Coldhearted
09h41m10s. New Dialogue - Flesh & Blood (feat. Smallpools)
09h51m52s. Baseball Game - Crocodile Tears
09h54m17s. Tiffany Day - SAN FRANCISCO SIDEWALK
09h58m31s. Seabird - Golden Skies
10h01m29s. The Wrecks - No Place I’d Rather Be
10h04m34s. Manafest - Overboard
10h08m35s. Remedy Drive - Commodity
10h12m16s. senses - sleepwalking
10h15m57s. Fox Stevenson - Bruises
10h28m22s. MisterWives - Organized Chaos
10h30m52s. MisterWives - Organized Chaos
10h33m53s. sundial - scenic route
10h45m39s. Seacoast - Hands Up To Heaven (feat. Brandon Lake)
10h50m00s. Seacoast - Always Been Good (feat. Jaime Masetta & Caroline Faith)
10h54m35s. Seacoast - Courage (feat. Brandon Lake)
10h58m53s. Seacoast - Mercy (feat. Caroline Faith)
11h05m16s. Seacoast - My Joy (feat. Joe Lammers)
11h10m14s. Seacoast - Let It In (feat. Destiny Barber)
11h14m55s. Seacoast - That's What Hallelujah Means (feat. Destiny Barber)
11h27m18s. Seacoast - We Say Yes (feat. Destiny Barber & Noah Courtney)
11h58m28s. Seacoast - We Say Yes (feat. Destiny Barber & Noah Courtney)
12h36m40s. Seacoast - Worth It All (feat. Caroline Faith)



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Chris Lloyd

Ptarmigan again and again and again....

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Black Mountain 🌄

The cherry on top

Wombo Combo 🏂

Ptarmigan again and again and again....

More Gore!!! (⛷️ > Work)

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