Snowmobiles and Snowboards

Today we finally got to the ski run! It took 2 days of trail clearance on the snowmobiles last weekend and then another few hours this morning as we headed up again. This time I found some snowboard boots almost my size and a Prior Khyber board and some K2 bindings in the ski workshop. So I set those up and strapped them on the snowmobile.

Heading up the high trail was very tippy as an ATV had gone up and dug out trenches which were now rather hardened with crusty snow plus it was minus degrees with a horrid wind chill. Before too long I'd hit a rut and tipped over on the sled or rather the sled on top of me. From then on I had to stand with my weight on one side or the other just to stay upright.

Quite a few tipping incidents again today and lots of digging people out but Adam had some great techniques and skills to pass on which helped out a lot.

After clearing a few more trees we hit the bottom of the ski run, so we put on our snow shoes and strapped our snowboards on our backs and started following Cliff up through the trees as he skinned up. We went on for a long long time- well at least 40mins or so. The views were awesome and the trees are massively loaded with snow. Eventually we hit a massive windy bit and the snow in your face was like sand blasting!

Cold and tired we quickly tried to eject the snow shoes and don snowboards and put layers on.

Now... I have not snowboarded for 2 years almost and this was to be my first few turns on a challenging run! Adrenalin kicked in for sure. But as we took off in the deep powder it was awesome and I made my first few turns- all going well until Emily fell ahead of me and I managed to stay upright and traverse along to the treeline where I stopped but got dragged over by the deep snow. Then we descended into the trees- woah! Not great to be in tight trees on my first run of the season in deep snow! Lots of falling leaf through.

I emerged out with a few super sweet turns to the sleds at the base with everyone watching. I couldn't believe we were down already after such a long hike up! Ah well so great to have done some boarding at last.

We quickly mounted the sleds and headed down before it got dark as it was pretty cold now.

Great day- pretty tired and cold but happy!