Three wolves™

Got back from Mt. Baker late last night after beer and pizza at the local pub in Glacier. A quaint litle place with the biggest pizzas I’ve ever seen. We ordered 3 19″ pizzas for our table of eight and managed to consume the entire lot! Helped along by a couple of lovely local stouts, it was a great end to a superb first weekend of boarding.

Headed up friday night with mike and kirsty, and picked up their friends Ben and Deanna. After a good chat to the US border security guards and getting a visa, we got to the town of Glacier where we were staying but initially had real touble finding our lodge. Turns out we were looking at the wrong place: snowwater not snowline! Once we’d sorted that out, and after meeting the rest of the crew including Jamie’s fiancee Hillary, we settled in for a good nights sleep.

Saturday brought pretty good snow conditions, but no new snow. Spent most of the day getting my snow feet and rolling around the hills. Tried a few tree runs but was feeling pretty sketchy and not quite ready for it. They have pretty old school chairs at Mt. Baker with no cross bars to hold you in, so if you slip off the seat there aint much but thin air to stop you falling. It got me wondering if the states had heard of OSH! Late in the morning saw us get a good dumping of fresh stuff, so all afternoon we were riding on fresh snow. Not bad.

Saturday night we chilled out back at the cabin. Jamie and Hill cooked a great dinner which was thoroughly enjoyed. We spent the rest of the night quaffing red wine, eating choclates and telling stories. Lots of fun.

Sunday saw us wake to what would be 27.5cms of fresh powder. Couldn’t quite get up for first runs as we had to tidy the cabin before we left, but we certainly got a fair share of freshies on sunday. It’s the first time I’ve ridden a whole days worth of fresh powder, and although it was a little tough going at times (it’s a good idea to stay upright as falling over makes for a very tough dig effort to free yourself from the powder!), it was amazing! The confidence was up 100% from saturday and I spent the day riding fresh powder in the trees, perfecting a few grabs, 180’s off little natural lips, and a few jumps off the kickers in the park.

Oh yeah, I was riding a new board too which is going realy well after de-tuning the tips on sunday (that’s probably why saturday felt so tough!) and i’ve borrowed Jamie’s burton bindings with toe caps, so we shold be all good to go for Grouse this week and Whistler this weekend.

Spent today, monday, walking around the city. Checked out Stanley park for a bit, ran a few errands, and found the Larrivee guitar factory (some of the best hand made guitars in the world) which I’ll hopefully get to on wednesday as they do tours! Couldn’t get to the Granville markets today as they were closed for cleaning, so that’ll be for wednesday/thursday as well. Got reasonably familiar with the bus system today, although I’ll have to get better at it as I spent about $10 on various busses trying to figure out where I was going! Off to a NHL game tomorrow night: the Canucks vs. the Dallas Stars which I’m really looking forward to.

Right, time to get dinner ready.

Currently listening to: NHL hockey on the telly