Tuesday, February 1, 2011

"DUDE!"

last sunday xteam, oneshot, and i went to salmon la sac for some snowmobile shredding. as i've typed before, snowmobiling is a pain in the ass. get up at 5am, get to oneshot's by 6:15 am, head to xteam's for the trailer dance, and get to the snowpark (i.e. trailhead) by 9 am. snowmobile in about 15 miles and hope that the snow is good. much of the sled in is on a groomed road but the last couple miles involved crossing several creeks on a single track trail. quite the effort and, with the season that we've been having, quite the gamble to get some good snow. this days gamble paid off well enough i suppose. we went to the lake ann area and found some pretty good snow for playing on the sleds. unfortunately about 7 other sledders were hanging out in the same bowl as us. the zone was sessioned for a few hours. most of the hot-shots played in the bigger section of the bowl and i spent my time away from the crowded area and worked on my sleddin' skills.


creek crossing, no stucks! new sled is pretty awesome.


additional troubles on the way in, electrical troubles. sled seemed to eventually fix itself or something. i like to think that my tinkering and looking over xteam's shoulder helped in a small way.


i've been watching some "how to be a badass sledder" instructional videos that xteam burned for me and decided this was a good spot to try and emulate the moves from the videos. low and behold on my first try i did a fancy little maneuver that nobody witnessed. i was pretty pumped and didn't stop boasting of my fancy sidehilling switchback for a good part of the day. i tried to do it about 4 more times while the dudes were watching but i never came close to being successful.

bear witness, keep in mind that sleds don't turn:



flat light destruction


in the afternoon we scooted over to the next bowl and got a few snowboard runs in. the windblown spots were pretty icy but the trees still held at least 6" of nice, light, fast snow. i accidentally was sent off a mini cliff when i rode into an icy section and luckily landed in some soft snow. scared the crap out of me. oneshot worked the trees and xteam hiked for the line of the day and got some nice turns.

hey oneshot, that's a smurfy line, smurfs up!


there is a line in this photo, it's tough to see but it's there. nice work dude. click on pic to embiggen, you'll see it.


didn't get home and unloaded till about 10pm. long day.