Earn your turn

The term "earn your turns" I brought renewed sense brought me back in time, snowboarding was a simple, raw and young. Some take the path of the split shipment more environmentally friendly, these mountains, we will go, while others want to see the purity of the thing that controls our lives. Last winter, a trip aboard a tiny split, self-service backcountry lodge BC in the video has not the right way for me to go back to the mid-90s, when hiking Loveland Passwas the norm and there is still the thought of snowmobiles in my head.

We are a strong team of riders who are inexperienced in this walk-your-own-lines were pack-in-a-small-hut adventure, then the level of expectations were high and a bit 'scared. have been together for scrap Neefus Casey, John Foy, and John Makens. The arrival of the helicopter landing pad, was the first for a couple and not a standard for the rest. As we flew, wrapped in a milky sky the Purcell Mountain Range andthrough canyons and mountains, it became the Mark Kingsbury Hut International, a small hut, which would be our home for the next five days.

We loaded the food and equipment supplies and watched the helicopter disappear back into civilization. We were alone. This is the moment when it struck me that we have always been tolerated by mother nature, without the exit plane of the bird would come to us after five days, depending on the weather. Wasting no time, we loaded all the equipment in the cabin and got ready for ourfirst tour to scout the area. For people that have dedicated their entire lives to finding their next turn standing sideways, stepping into two boards facing straight ahead, even if it is just to go forward and upward, is something I don't think I will ever fully become comfortable with. And what I was about to put my body through was something I also would soon find out I was not prepared. About six hours, three plus miles and a couple thousand vertical feet into the tour I stopped to catch my breath. I took a look around and realized where I was-alone in the middle of some massive mountains that were ours to ride if we had the man power to climb them.

Over the course of the next five days we hiked around 15 miles, climbed nearly 15,000 vertical feet and watched patches of sun come in and out, often after sitting above a face for upwards of 90 minutes looking for that 60-second hole that would allow us to see the face and capture it through film and photography. The snow was less than perfect with a pretty solid crust layer covering most faces. There where pockets of good snow on north-facing slopes but finding it took heavy searching and a little bit of luck. The skies opened up and dropped about 12 inches of light snow upon us a couple days in that gave the trip some re-birth. It put temporary smiles on our faces but did not sit heavy enough to reload most of the steep pitches.

The evenings and life in the hut is what made this truly a unique experience. With six guys in a hut of about 120 square feet, your personal space is not much more than a 3 ft x 6 ft section of the bunk that you can call your own while buried deep inside your sleeping bag. Ropes crisscrossed from wall to wall as make-shift clothes lines to dry out our gear. Boots, gloves and skins hung on every possible hook to dry out over the wood burning stove and a propane stove boiling snow to make purified water was running for hours on end.

The one thing we did not sacrifice is amazing food and plenty of it. We ate like kings and possibly better than I had eaten in months. Beer was rationed out like bread during wartime and heavy games of poker with Monopoly money went into the evening by lantern or headlamp. Bow and arrows where constructed from the woods, and hours of trying to shoot empty soldiers were spent on this alone. As we came upon Day 4 we realized that the rationing would have to extend to shit tickets as rolls where running low or empty. Walking the 100 feet through snow and scraping the ice of the toilet seat was an adventure in its own. The hut temperature would go from nearly 80 F when we fell asleep to about 35 F when we awoke. Being the first up meant you had to brave the cold and re-kindle the stove to pump the heat back into our bodies.

When I look back on the trip, it was not about how gnarly somebody got or what lines the riders took that pushed them to the limits of what the mountains would allow. There was plenty of both, from Casey cart wheeling over a 20-foot face or Makens dropping 25 feet to pure ice and riding away. The trip was about much more. It was about getting back to the purity we all had when we started on this path in life. It was not about how many tricks or runs you could get but taking a step back to enjoy where we were. It was about the good times you can have with a crew of people that share the same love you have for sliding sideways down endless feet of vertical and not having to think about anyone else for 40 miles to beat you to your next line.

I have been lucky enough to travel all around the world in search of snow and perfect conditions, all while using gas powered machines to get as much done in the shortest amount of time. In the end I would trade any one of those trips for another five days in 120 square-foot hut and my own body power to get me to the top of whatever face I choose as my next canvas for a couple turns standing sideways.