Snow

I love snowboarding. I mean.....I love Surfing, but I really really love snowboarding. My first true action sport. My dad got me on a snowboard at age 5. I was miniature. Its like when you see those little kids on skis learning how to ski and your like....can that kid even walk ?!?

I generally go to mammoth for a week right after Christmas, and another week during spring break.

I went to mammoth over break, it was amazing. On Saturday they got 11" of snow, on Sunday they got 8" of snow. I got there on Monday.

Monday was 50 degrees and sunny all over the mountain with barely even noticeable winds. I wore a Tshirt and a thin jacket expecting to be perfect and I was burning up by the time I was done with like 2 runs through the park.

My favorite part about snowboarding is you can observe other rider's techniques in the park, and apply them to yourself fairly easily. I've mastered the doubles and some basic tricks but I'd been struggling with the triples in the south park at mammoth for like a year now. I'd landed a few clean but alot of the time the gap on the jump was just so big that it was hard for me to keep my balance in proper alignment.

I spent like 25 minutes in the lineup watching the speed and technique other riders used to hit the triples. Eventually I went for a section of three and I came up a little short on the first, skipped the second to build speed for the third, and then I hit the third going what I thought was waaaay to fast but I ended up landing just a bit far but still on the perfect downslope. I was amped to land a clean triple. After that There was a 20 ft snow tabletop. I had way too much speed because this jump launched you alot vertical instead of horizontal and long story short I was nearly able to lean my body back into position before the jump but the back end of my board was too far forward and I ended up taking a fat chunk out of the snow in the ground with my face. Got a nice swollen black and blue eye and a scab under my eyebrow and my nose started bleeding. At least I didnt break it...

This is why snowboarding is the best and worst sport. I nail a clean triple and get on of the best feelings in the world, 5 seconds later my eye is nearly swollen shut and already getting black.