About eight or nine years ago, I went on an overnight snowboard trip with my editor and a couple of friends. We stayed with the editor’s grandparents and the morning that we were set to ride, one of the guys called out to get us moving, “Let’s roll, the pow is calling.”
It was this same year that Utah got four feet of snow in 24 or 48 hours. I can’t remember, because if I wasn’t digging out, I was scheming how to get to the hill. The editor, a friend (one of the friends from the overnighter) and myself took off early from work and drove up Big Cottonwood Canyon. The drive normally takes abou 20 minutes. It took almost an hour because it wouldn’t stop snowing.
We were beginners and so we stayed on one lift that had green runs and one blue run. I remember spending most of the afternoon being buried in powder. On the bunny hill. It was insane. We decided to hit the blue run because it was the only run steep enough to sustain forward motion. I remember being up to my armpits in powder and having neither the strength or skills to navigate. It was, in the parlance of the older, crunchier snow addict, epic. The kids would have called it sick.
Today, Heather and I hit the hill. It was snowing on the mountain and didn’t stop all day. It had an epic vibe. It had sick vibes also.
Heather did remarkably well considering we hadn’t been on the slopes for three (!!!) years and it was her third day on a snowboard. I believe it was on one of the runs today where Heather realized why I wanted to spend all our money dressing up in 74 layers of clothes and spend $100 on passes.
Because it did not stop snowing, I was able to be supportive to Heather (by shutting up when asked) and ride the sides of the same bunny hill in about 18 inches of powder. We’d do another run, and I couldn’t see where my terrible form had wrecked the snow. I could wreck it again and again and every time whoop it up because the marshmallow love that is Utah powder enveloped my calves. It was the most perfect day I’ve had on the hill in a long time. Sharing it with Heather made it even more so.
