Trip reports : Poor Mans Heli

Things That Sound Good But Aren’t

Carrying a full keg up 2k vertical feet/3 miles. The idea starts off with good ol’ fashioned backyard engineering and ingenuity. “Just build a wooden platform on skis!” “Make a light metal brake for the rear so it doesn’t slide backwards!” However, the pre-tour optimism quickly gives way to the reality of the physics of moving 150+ pounds of beer and metal up a snow covered hill while already having 35+ pounds of gear on your back.

A well designed failboat

“We’ll just get one person in the harness pulling and have someone in the back guiding” quickly becomes groups of three touring ahead one to two hundred yards, dropping gear and bootpacking back to the last shift. One in front pulling, one on the side guiding (especially during extended sidehills), and one in the rear pushing. All that was missing was the ‘Cool Runnings’ theme song

Think this and you'll be close

As big of a bitch as it was (and it was a massive, mustached Amazon of a bitch that was also PMSing) it was probably the most fun I’ve had on a tour as we all came to grips with the fact that it wasn’t going to be easy so we might as well have fun with it. Only thing left to do is go fetch the empty keg from the hideout in the woods later this week.

Keg camo

TR: Baker Splitfest 2012

Baker Splitfest was ridiculous. Between the weather, testing a theory on consecutive days you can eat pizza and while repeatedly stressing your liver, and the number of people that were there…just insane. Splitboarding has officially gone from beardo to brodown.

Short summary: Sunburns and cold smoke.
Long summary: Below. Holy shit can’t believe I wrote that much.

Day 1: Was rolling Han Solo style from Portland so decided to break drive up into two short legs (even though straightlining Baker would take less time than the typical winter drive to Tahoe…). Tacoma, Parkway Tavern, ’nuff said.

Pizza #1 on the weekend. My hat says 'I don't like rainbows, I'm just gay'

Day 2: Commuter hour wake up call as my buddy lives in Tacoma, works in Olympia. Hung out til 9:30ish on the assumption that all the commuters would be in their desks by the time I was near LaPNW. That whole assume ass/you/me thing rang true and dealt with PTSD flashbacks from my time in California (btw, legit LOLWTF at everybody that does a commute like that 2x a day 5x a week for reasons like ‘I can afford a house’). The American dream – back 40 and white picket fence – is NOT worth that level of aggravation twice a day.

Just north of the U-district returned to normal cruising altitude and the first glimpes of the North Cascades, Baker, etc. reined in the blood pressure and voices in the head. Destination: Bellingham, Allsop factory and meeting Jeff Haley to finally be on the receiving side of ‘first round in my town’. Chomped an insanely good burrito (‘burritos in my barrio’ is the midday workweek ‘first round in my town’) under crazy PNW blue skys on the Bellingham waterfront talking shop, looking at pics Jeff took of the big Baker avy, and just inhaling the salt air. Lunch done, time to check out a local brewery, Chuckanut Brewing, tasty, heavily German influenced (aka no IPA to be seen) beers.

Straightforward German style beers

Head up to Glacier tripping on the Nooksack river, that place just looks like there should be salmon and steelhead chillin’ in every little hole. Stopped a few times but didn’t see anything so dunno. Belly up to the bar at Chair 9 and see none other than a-man from Spectre of the Brocken. Pleasantries exchanged, beers chugged, uberbros made fun of. Mentioned I was going to go easy on the beers as I was planning on tenting it in the Baker lot and he offered up a spot in his hand ~~whittled~~ milled with his bespoke axe cabin in the woods. STOKED! The weekend was looking up.

Threw beers down our faces as fast as Yoga Pants and Holstergirl could serve them (which was not very fast, but they made up for their lack of speed in other ways) awaiting Laughing Guy’s arrival. More ‘first round in my town’ checks cashed courtesy of Shaun A and Brian S! Run into Chris aka bcrider from splitboard.com for first time in years, siiick. Shoot the shit with Kyle for a quick second, hadn’t seen that guy since he’s gone big time. Siiiick. LG finally arrives, we Voltroned up to check out the upstairs happenings.

Upstairs. Upstairs deserves it’s own chapter, bolded title and all. Remember the first time you discovered the Super Mario Bros. warp zone and just ended up in some crazy world you’d never imagined – like WTF all those mushroom dudes are now beetles? It was that x1000. 100+ other people enjoy suffering uphill for a few pow turns? Really? And the sheer number of demos available? Just insane. What kind of bizarro world am I in?

Jones had what appeared to be ~20 boards, including some carbon fiber topsheet/skunkworks looking ride. The guys from Arbor were there with a handful of boards as art, bamboo sidewalls and all. The crew from Chimera was there with some fun looking rides, and were cool cats to chat with. Mervin sort of showed up in their usual half assed form with one Lib and one Gnu. Prior was the star of the show by far, they blew the others out of the water and brought some next level demo game to the Splitfest. They had to have at least 20 boards there PLUS brandspankingnew 2013 Spark bindings AND new G3 skins for every demo board. What is that, $30k worth of inventory at retail? Prior brought their A-game and made the rest look like chumps.

Oh, and did I mention not only were they absolutely CRUSHING any new splitboard setup record time you’ve ever done (seriously, take the fastest time you’ve ever mounted your split bindings and they were doing that PLUS cutting new skins in less time) but they also had attractive wimmenz doing it? Genius. A-man said it better than I ever could on his report

Canadians don’t fuck around with this shit: I couldn’t believe my eyes! Maybe there’s a national mountain lifestyle marketing seminar program all these people go through. I dunno. Government Coolness Subsidy? This style definitely works at Baldface, where ten dollar cans of Kokanee at the end of a 600 dollar snowboard day become somehow easily justified when they’re being served by beautiful young women. Prior’s fucking on it. Instead of a bunch of dorky me-looking dudes with one set of used bindings, they’re represented by international model chicks in hot clothes with the most expensive demo fleet you’ve ever seen.

Insanity. More beers consumed, off to sleep and get ready for the main event.

Tonight's lesson: it's probably a good idea to pace yourself when consuming a 9%+ stout

Day 3:
Hangover? Check.
Sunshine? Check.
Insane terrain everywhere you look? Check.
Pow? CHECK!

The snow was DEEEP on the way up and we still had further to go. The way LG's truck was going I think he had 36

Saturday was ridonkulous. From Laughing Guy showing the world the benefits of EPO on the skin track to the conditions to the eight million other people to the sometimes ‘interesting’ skin tracks, just awesome. Was stoked to be on my first tour of year, but can’t lie had the new crew + first tour of the year + some funky knee shit jitters going early on. Enough talk, a few pics.

Alex and B skin up

Insane views to be had around every corner, nook and cranny. Was hard to focus on what I was doing with all the insane zones layered upon zones on top of zones.

View to the left of where they are

A little sliding to be had on the baked faces

If you look closely you can see Laughing Guy with a syringe in his butt taking his next dose of EPO

Discovered I had duct taped my nether regions back right around here...

Inbetween lap #1 and #2 I sat around in the valley, cleaning the tape residue off my upper inner thighs and shooting shots of random people playing snowboards while waiting for the crew.

If you were me you'd wish this was you

This is what it looks like to shoot a 10lb bag of flour with a .45

Another random dude, another random pow turn you wish you were making

a-man finds diamonds in the trees

Reconvene with the crew, consume consumables named after other Cascade volcanoes, head up questionable skin track for lap #2.

Bumped into Mr. Almassy on vert #2

Checking out the terrain in the next photo

The prior photos next photo

Same planet....

...different worlds

LG turns, A-man peeps from behind the trees

b-man turns, a-man still peeping in the distance

zombie trench foot

Overprocessed this photo to try and show the slayage in this zone. Mind boggling.

Shit, this is getting long. 2nd lap lapped, valley high-5s, more shared Cascade volcanoes, back to town to s/s/s, off to Chair 9 for pizza #3 on the weekend and insanity. Props to the employees there for not hulking up on the customers because it was NUCKIN FUTS up in the place. Had to be their biggest crowd ever.

Chair 9 welcomes splitbrofest 2012!

After telling A-man and Laughing Guy all day that I’ve got mad raffle karma and I’m going to win a pair of Sparks and they were going to win new boards we got there just in time to buy tix, lube our shoulders and wedge into the crowd and watch the shit show. It’s always amusing and disturbing to watch grown men play game 7 NBA Finals Dennis Rodman for t-shirts, waterbottles, chapstick and other tsotchkes. It’s even more disturbing to watch it go on for an hour and a half. Go get your rebounds kid! Three or so numbers in, Laughing Guy’s number is called! Rolls up to the insane table o’schwag and cops a pair of Voile Light Rail bindings. Siiiiiiiick! A few numbers later I’m called, roll up to the table o’schwag and get the Spark Blazes. Siiiiiiick, so stoked! I take one for the team and run back to the condo to drop our stuff off, roll back into the shit show and see that a-man won a BCA pack. Siiiiick. Raffle: slayed.

Baker splitfest edition spark blaze bindings

Baker Splitfest edition Blaze bindings, made the gas $$ worth it!

We decide that we’re all least likely to broceed and head home for an early sleep. Next morn’ roll out to Seattle for pizza(ish) #4 on the weekend and to hit Bottleworks for a few bottles of their 13th Anniversary Ale brewed by Stone.

Pazzos!

Good people, good snow, good beers, epic weekend is epic.

TR: The Enchantments 2011

Preface: I’m typing this less one finger so report is scheduled to get longer with time. Yet again sliced myself on a knife, same damn finger, right down the scar line, bread knife this time. Probably should leave the guns with the parents at this rate. This ninja shit ain’t for amateurs. This time doesn’t need stitches though (contrary to what the lady friend may think), glue and pressure work A-OK.

Enchantments. Group of 6 this time, two n00bs in the mix due to a few last minute flakes. Amazes me that people can know about something 8 months in advance and still find a way to flake on it at the last minute (literally, one person told us less than a week prior – though was mentally weak last year so not a huge surprise in hindsight). Whatever, shit comes up and I’d rather not have people that aren’t stoked to be there be there so it all worked out.

This year’s trip was about a month earlier (almost to the date) than last year, and was also twice as long (6 days!). Was interesting to contrast the conditions between the two years – though this year we didn’t get ‘typical’ September conditions given the La Nina snowfall. Last year the larch were on their downward slide from yellow to almost orange, this year the larch were just starting to turn on the latter half of our trip. Wasn’t feeling my inner Ansel Adams this year so didn’t snap that many photos or put any thought into their composition. Correction, I WAS feeling my inner AA to start, but after getting setup to take what would have been one of the sickest photos I’d ever taken only to have the cloud hole close up on me I was over it. It may be time to sell off the SLR and just get a P&S since I seem to use my SLR as a P&S anyways these days.

Gotta get some work done, a few photos below. To be continued…

It was a wee bit foggy/misty on the way up

Bridge on the way up

Lunch spot. Last year's was under 6+ feet of snow still

Moar lunch

Patch of wildflowers halfway up the Pass

Does this cooler go in the winter, does it not exist due to too much snow?

TR: Mt. Adams

So first, let’s just get it out of the way now – if you saw a guy that looked like anybody in the below pictures on Adams a week or two ago but rode like a total chump it wasn’t me. I swear.

Anyways, Mt. Adams is the second highest mountain in Washington state, aka Mt. Rainier’s easy little sister that gets no love. Got the call from my buddy Steve that one of his clients and his friends were going to hit Adams and that they had a spare pass. As soon as I heard the client’s friends had done Everest I was there as I thought they’d be interesting to talk to.

The drive from Portland to Adams was uneventful outside of the fact that we started four hours later than expected. Thus, instead of getting to Cold Springs at 5PM we rolled in at 9PM. As seems to be my thing with Cascade volcanoes it’d be a headlamp and moonlight hike to Lunch Counter.

One of our first glances of Adams.

Sunset from Cold Springs area

Hike to Lunch Counter was as uneventful as it could be for two people that had never been there before hiking after sunset. The moon’s reflection off the snow was bright enough that the headlamps weren’t needed outside of the time Steve needed to fix a blister (note: it’s damn stupid to try new hiking boots out on a major hike). Hike started off as dirt but quickly became snow and intermittent volcanic rock. Fortunately the snow was just about perfect for hiking – t wasn’t frozen, so no crampons needed, and it wasn’t midday soft so we weren’t postholing.

It was rocky in spots

Made it to Lunch Counter around 1AM, setup camp, attempted a few failed night photos, and climbed into my Mountain Hardwear Phantom 32 to attempt to get some ZZZs. Attempt failed. Tossed and turned all night (for some reason I seem to never sleep well at altitude, but part of it may be due to excitement??), listened to small rock slides being started by others climbing into the night, finally day broke and I gave up. Woke up to a BEAUTIFUL alpine morning though! “HOLY SHIT” was about all I could think when I climbed out of the tent. As we’d climbed by moonlight we had no idea what, if any, view we’d have from our spot, and as I hadn’t slept in the alpine in awhile I forgot how blue the sky can be. We took photos like a bunch of Japanese tourists.

AM stretch

Steve trippin' balls on the view

Cozy, soft spot

A little GoAm AM panoram. Yes, it was a beautiful morning.

Untitled from Justin H on Vimeo.

Crumbled breakfast of champions. shit eating grin due to zero sleep

We fueled up on a few deflated, crumbled donuts I brought for the occasion and got an early 9AM alpine start. From Lunch Counter to the summit it’s pretty uneventful, more or less a staircase to the summit. We switched to crampons and ice axes after the first 1/2 mile of mixed surface for the extra security they provide on the way up as some spots were a bit steep and the slide down would be miserably long. Surface was still perfect, not too firm, not too soft, but the suncups were ominous and I was starting to realize lugging a snowboard all this way would not payoff.

Are we there yet?

it was slightly blue out

We stopped briefly at the false summit to reapply sunscreen and fuel up for the last short bit to the summit. Also threw on jackets as the wind was no longer blocked and it was actually getting chilly. Finally, 3 hours after leaving Lunch Counter, we joined the party on the summit. The prerequisite photos were taken.

Summit self portrait

I'm gonna sit here and mullet over

Creating a summit panorama. Click picture to view the pano

From there it was all downhill. I converted my board to board mode and ‘enjoyed’ the miserably suncupped turns on the way down. I’d heard the southwest chutes have been smooth, but as I had to be back in town for something and didn’t want to wait around on the summit for a few hours for them to soften decided to take my lumps through the suncups. Steve took the smarter route and glissaded down. The glissade tracks on Adams are INSANE, looks like bobsled runs all around the mountain and you can literally go 3k+ vertical feet on your ass should you choose.

A chump on a board

Steve’s glissade POV. A touch washed out due to lack of polarizer and blazing alpine sun.

Untitled from Justin H on Vimeo.

The hike out was uneventful, but sadly the snow had softened considerably so there were more than a few moments with unexpected ‘oh shit hope my ACL stays in place’ slides, postholding, and sweating your balls off as the sun was radiating off the snow.

Short gear list and 10 word reviews:
Tent: REI Arete 2 – Heavy, but recreational level bomber tent
Boots: Salomon Wings Sky GTX – Most comfortable boot ever, not great with crampons (obviously)
Pack: Mountain Hardwear Koa 55 – Comfy until overloaded and used as unintended, than it’s a bit less so
Crampons: Black Diamond Contact Strap – Versatile, can go from hiking boot to snowboard boot and back

Mt. Adams summit panorama

Quick ‘n dirty ‘n washed out due to lack of CPL panorama from the summit of Adams. Click (and then click again…) to view larger.

aka I hiked 6k vertical feet for horribly suncupped crappy turns and all I got was this lousy photo.

One Pic TR

Will have more eventually but my computer is being a b.i.

Jackson Day 3

Yeah, these have been a bit slow getting out. Not feeling all that verbose, so just a few photos.

Sick Westfalia Syncro (4wd) with truck bed liner paint job. Yes, I’ve got permawood for VW busses of all vintages.

Vista

Was so windy it blew out a three burner gas grill with the wind closed.

This ridgeline looked like it could be fun

One of the many reasons I like mountain towns

Untitled from Justin H on Vimeo.

Short vid of part of Snow King/Cache Creek ride. First minute is a touch boring.

Untitled from Justin H on Vimeo.

Used GoAm FTL! Now when I update my facebooktwitter+circles with the minutae of my day I can do it at 30fps. If a picture is worth 1k words thats 30k words per second.

Jackson Day 2

Guess I didn’t really update the ol’ blog when I was there. Here’s a quick day 2 recap.

After waking up to the below view from my tent was stoked on the possibilities of the day.

Rolled from Victor, ID over Teton Pass into Jackson. Cued up the obligatory Modest Mouse for the drive down the Pass. Chilled at a local coffee shop to get some work done, caffeinate and wait for the ladies to roll into town. Quickly realized that ‘the best coffee in Jackson’ isn’t remotely as good as the 10th best coffee in Portland. Checked into the house that is holy shit no joke 50 yards from Snow King. Yeah yeah yeah, it’s the ginger stepchild to JHMR, and yeah there’s no bike park, but being able to go from garage to trailhead in 30 seconds = FKNA money! Did a short ride yesterday that reminded me oh dear God I love mountain towns and the fit girls that call them home. So many fit little ladies running the trails. Yum.

The altitude kicked my ass in a big way, taunting me like the trainers taunt the morbidly obese on The Biggest Loser. What parts of me the altitude didn’t brutalize the horseflies finished off – massive mofos with an apparent appetite for sweat. When you were moving it wasn’t too bad, but as soon as you stopped it was game on, dinner bell ringing, horsefly buffet line. Nuts.

Elevation profile of my short ride is below. Broken into two since my phone rang and turned the app off. Fail. The downhill was damn fun I’ve gotta say, nothing tech or crazy, just fun/flowy MTB goodness. Sadly there were no girls waiting to give me flowers and kisses afterward.

Snow King elevation

A few more pics from the day

View from the ride. That don’t suck.

View from Snow King

This bee somehow managed to wedge himself inbetween my spokes. Helluva way to go.

bee

Clackacraft drift boats use the tagline ‘Fear No Rock’. This boat was HAMMERED on the bow and split all over inside, though you can’t tell since my iPhone cam sucks.

clackacraft

A decent Kolsch from Snake River Brewing. Their IPA was pretty good, too, and a ~~6 pack~~ 4 pack resides in my fridge now. There’s hope for this town.

beer

Nothing epic thus far, but being able to pick up and work remotely from wherever is truly awesome.

Jackson Day 1

Pulled into the Teton Valley area around 6PM last night after being on the go since 5AM (and being awake since 2AM – of course was too stoked to fall back to sleep). Long drive made longer by the fact that my Chewbacca had to cancel at the last minute leaving me to roll Solo like Han. Most road trips you have time to ponder all your inner thoughts and question past life decisions – ‘Have I properly speced out my next big thing? Is that a gray or a blonde hair on my arm? Rework the algorithm? Should I have stayed with girlfriendABC? Wonder how my life would be different had I gone to Western and done their environmental science program? Regular or green tabasco? If a XC rider goes off a 3′ drop does that make him an all-mountain rider?’ On this drive I had time to ponder everything twice, rewind and ponder again, like Groundhog Day in my mind.

Fairly uneventful drive. Worst part was running out of the coffee I made 30 minutes into it and not being able to find a coffee shop that was open for a few hundred miles. I remember when I was a kid coffee shops opened at hours where you need coffee, not 7AM, 8AM, one place didn’t open til 10:30!?! How all the hipster coffee brands got big while subscribing to the hipster work ethos I’ll never understand.

On time departure with slight rain that stopped by Hood River
Subaru clock

Trusty co-pilots caffeine, sugar and music
Roadtrip copilot

Somewhere mid-Idaho we went from hot to nuclear and hit triple digits. BTW, driving thru Idaho is about as exciting as the WNBA draft, not much to look at. Picture the stretch of I-5 between Folsom and Bakersfield only 2-3x as long.

100 degrees in Idaho

Yup, bike is still there.

Rocky Mounts shadow

Mosquito farm

skeeters

Pondering infinity and parallel universes next to the campfire

Pondering infinity

Failed attempt at light painting ‘ride’. I was trying a candle lantern (aka couldn’t turn it off/on), MUCH easier to do with the headlamp I didn’t pack.

light painting

I love waking up to views like this. Those clouds dropped just enough rain that I got up to get the rainfly, but by the time I’d got it the rain had stopped and never came back. Meh.

view

No riding yesterday as when I rolled into town I had to satisfy the primal urge for a beer. Even the terribly mediocre IPA from Wildlife Brewing tasted like a million bucks after that drive.

Trip Report: Surveyor’s Ridge

Distance: Not far, a leisurely 10 miles

Weather: Sunny with an intermittent cloud early. Halfway point saw the wind kick up to where the clouds were moving so fast it looked like riding in a time lapse video.

Short summary: After last weekend’s attempt at finding a different trail resulted in almost running out of gas and turning tail to limp back to fuel up felt good to get on the trail. Wildflowers starting to bloom – seriously can you beat the Northwest at this time of year? Terrain started to change about halfway in from definitely western to hinting at eastern Cascades. Sign at the trailhead said recent bear sighting, but as it was gay pride parade day in Portland I figured any bears would be in the city. Good short ride that I’d do again if I had more time to go further.

The up: There wasn’t a ton of challenging uphill here, was mostly rolling terrain and gentle elevation changes. A couple rocky sections that resulted in getting off and pushing the bike through due to ridiculous pedalstrikes and riding Han Solo styley – didn’t want to break myself off with no one around.

The down: After a time check and turnaround the downhill was more apparent than the uphill – didn’t have to pedal much thru large sections of trail. Scenery went from wide open vistas and sidehill traverses to forested singletrack and back again. Great views of Mt. Hood. With the wind kicking up a lenticular cloud was starting to form over the peak. Had a nice pedalstrike on a rock around a corner kick me off the bike. Fortunately kicked me off to the right and not the left as it would have been a bit of a downhill roll otherwise!