Winter Rodeo

Winter Rodeo
2014

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Snowboarding Weekend and the Baker Beacon Rally

This weekend, rather Thursday through Saturday night,  it snowed up on Mt. Baker for the first time in a couple of weeks.  The snow was pretty light on hardpack in the ski area Saturday and got tracked out rather quickly.  I attribute a lot of it to the first weekend of school buses running up to the hill.  There were a lot of people up that don't normally ride the ski area and this was made readily apparent by the fact that I saw four chairs of people that missed the unload spot on Chair 3 (a lift that serves both sides of the mountain.)  There were quite a few collisions that I barely escaped and I saw quite a few go down that could have ended rather badly.  I managed to find some sweet powder stashes in the ski area and was able to get a little out-of-bounds with poor visibility.  It was tons of fun smashing pillows on some steeps.  I took one line that I thought was going to have a decent transition but turned out to be about a 20 foot drop off of the back side of a rock cliff.  I didn't exactly stomp the landing.  I was startled in the air as I passed over the rock face and when I hit the flat on the other side my knees came up to my face.  Thankfully I choose to wear a helmet at all times and saved my brain from another concussion!

I rocked the ski area again today, Sunday, and had a lot of fun.  I rode up with my "newlywed" friends and took a couple quick runs with them.  I then hooked up with a couple other friends and hiked up to a sweet powder stash with a wicked drop.  We rolled the drop the first lap and had to do it again.  Here is a little video of the second time I hit the drop.




After we hit it a second time we headed over to the zone where The Mount Baker Mountain Safety Education Center had set up a training course for the "Baker Beacon Rally" at 11.  There were three sections set up for single avalanche search, multiple burial, and a set up for a search race.  I wasn't pre-registered for the activities and was told to come back at 1230 to see if some of the 400 people who had pre-registered didn't show.  We almost headed over to the Arm to take a lap, but as we started to take off I started talking to my buddy who was doing some of the training and he let us bypass the wait and took us out to play/train.

After working the three stations that had been set-up we hung out and waited for the raffle.  There were some pretty sweet prizes from REI, Otovox, BCA, SPOT, Pieps,  and American Alpine Institute.  There might have been a couple more, but I am not too sure at this very moment.  Anyway, if you have interest in getting to know some very basic backcountry travel safety keep your eyes peeled next year for this event!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your laugh is infectious! Rad video sir

Interesting Perspective

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