“Bring your split-board and your kayak, I have an idea”- Jack Rich
It’s not often you get to spend a weekend with two of the biggest senders that happen to be your best friends. My blog is a testament to being spontaneous and not caring about gas money; this post embodies that mentality.
Like most trips start out, I packed up my truck and headed down south to Utah blasting music. I made some fajitas for the road and was ready for pretty much anything life was going to throw at me. I packed my backcountry stuff carefully and got prepared for the adventure of a lifetime. I drove 2.5 hours from Pocatello to the heart of Utah.
My first stop on the trip was staying with my friend Brittin on Thursday night! We skied Snowbird pretty hard, which was so fun. We got a parking spot, and the lines weren’t bad, so it was a great day. The snow was icy, but it was a great groomer day to spend quality time with friends.
My brain started doing backflips, trying to imagine what tomfoolery Big Mike, Jack, and I would soon engage in.
Friday night, ended up meeting my friends in a parking lot at the base of the mountains, we were going to embark in a backcountry skiing/split-boarding night mission. This mission is deep in the mountains of Utah which had several feet of snow. With lots of questionable weather in the past weeks, the conditions were less than ideal. As we drove up to the trailhead we started to question if we were in over our heads.
When you are doing a backcountry ski trip you have much different gear then a normal day at the resort. Your skis transform from downhill skis to uphill skis so you can climb mountains and “earn your turns”. On the bottom of your skis you have “skins”. Skins stick to the base of your ski and only allow your skis to slide forward. Eventually, with many miles of climbing hills; your skins get worn out and start to slide downhill instead of uphill. This will be important information later. Jack also likes to remind me that I am a split boarder not a skier whenever he can. When you snowboard in the backcountry, your snowboard splits in half into two skis, thus the name “split-board”. The final piece of the puzzle is avalanche safety. Everyone in the backcountry should be trained to preform avalanche rescue and diligently use an avalanche beacon. You wear an avalanche beacon to be located in the case of an avalanche or to find others in the case of an avalanche.
When we got to the trailhead, everyone strapped on their beacons and checked to make sure that they were working. We put on our skins and headlamps to travel into the darkness. The area we were in started off mostly flat with very slight incline. Once we started climbing in elevation the problems started to roll in. My friend Caden’s skins started slipping downhill which is very frustrating. We got to a large knob which the sun had been hitting for hours, completely covering it in ice. I started to struggle very much to stay on the trail due to my skins wanting to go downhill. It was a struggle but the whole group made it to the top where we started our decent.
We transitioned to “downhill mode” and started, which sent him into orbit. We finally composed ourselves and headed back towards the uphill track. I started to use my poles in the flat section (I’m an incapable snowboarder). Not being used to using poles, I snapped mine in half. After this, we bombed down an icy track similar to a bobsled run, which was my favorite part of this late night expedition. This concluded the first night of a wild weekend.
The next morning we got up bright and early (11:00am) to load our kayaks up with our backcountry gear in the small bed of my truck. We drove up the canyon with lots of energy, eager to get on the snow. I’m not going to go into to much detail with our “early morning ski trip”, it didn’t go very well. My skins were slipping everywhere, I forgot gloves, and I couldn’t snowboard to save my life. Despite this, we moved on to our next side-quest for the day.
We took our hard shell kayaks out on the snow and had a blast. The local sledding hill was a perfect place to test our our kayaking skills. This really made up for the tiring ski mission. To wrap up our kayaking session, Jack had a great idea. With lots of foreign tourists watching, Jack dropped into a random creek in his kayak. He did this by sliding off of a snowbank. This was awesome.
We got in the truck after hauling our kayaks up the hill and the truck started to fill with smoke. I thought for sure my truck was finally killing itself after years of abuse. It turns out that it was just a Apple charger that caught on fire spontaneously. Finally, we were heading home stress free.
We got back to Jacks house, and decided to drive South to meet up with even more friends. Down South I met up with my friends Cam and Hannah where we yapped away like grandmas in a book club. The next morning Cam and I ski/boarded at Sundance resort. This was a refreshing break from the chaotic backcountry days I had previously encountered. Next, I met up with Trev Dawg and we jammed out on our guitars together. This was so fun because I’m just getting started with learning guitar so it was awesome to have a teacher. That wraps up my Side-quest, shoutout to everyone who made it happen.
