So back when I was a little lad ;) I decide to learn how to snowboard for the sake of snowboarding on the mountain that I live on. Here is that first story of how I began to snowboard on my mountain...
Elk bowl. A small, about forty-five yards, yet extremely steep hill located about 30 steps away from my house. In the summer this hill has to be constantly weed whacked to prevent wildfires. In the fall the trees that line the sides make it seem as if the whole forest is on fire with color. And in winter this hill turns into a snowboarders dream. With snow drifts piling up to five or six feet tall, this place truly has some of the most amazing natural features that can provide countless hours of entertainment for young creative minds.
If you were to look down this bowl you would see a lot of these features right off: first, to the left is a nicely elevated earth pile about four feet high that will become close to a six foot jump, to the right you would see a wall of trees, literally a wall of trees so dense and so closely intertwined that it would be almost impossible for you to walk through I, and lastly if you looked straight down the bowl you would see at the bottom another pile of dirt and sticks all jumbled together into one big massive heap, known to us as the boneyard during winter on its account to trap unsuspecting snowboarders. There you have it Elf bowl, now for the story about how this hill became to be an essential part of my winter lifestyle.
Its December 2010, I had just learned how to snowboard the previous year at a resort (as the same time my friend was learning how to snowboard while my brother learned how to ski) and I thought that I was ready to take my riding to the next “level,” so to speak. Well school got out for Christmas break and my brother and our friend were sledding on some of the hills in my backyard, when I had the sudden idea to present the idea of snowboarding down Elk Bowl. Both my brother and our friend agreed and so we strapped on all our gear and looked down this intimidating hill. None of us wanted to go first. None of us knew where to go or even what was down there. So as the oldest, I was volunteered to go first.
I looked down the hill, noticed the little jump to the left, the trees to the right and, what I thought at the time, the much larger jump at the bottom (The Boneyard). I took a breath… and sat back down on my butt. My brother and friend gave me a weird look before I began to “check my gear” while trying to hide my fear. I hopped back onto my feet, took another deep breath… and leaned forward. Suddenly, I started going much faster than I had originally planned to go, I could feel the board beneath my feet shaking and sliding in different directions.
At that moment I thought that I was going to just fall on my face and eat some snow, however the laws of physics had another plan for me. As I began to fall towards the pillow like snow, my snowboard suddenly hit a hidden patch of ice and threw me to the far right… right into the wall of trees with needle branches. To put it in simple terms, I screamed like a banshee being ran over by a dying cat and moose at the same time (my brother still to this day makes fun of me whenever I scream saying that it almost sounds the same). I could feel blood running down my neck, I could already tell that my body was going to be showing a lot of blue and green the next day, and I couldn’t feel my legs because they were stuck in a tree.
From one simple accident, every time I see or snowboard on that hill that accident comes to mind. I learned that in order to have complete control while snowboarding you must understand the terrain before you snowboard. Elk Bowl is where I truly mastered snowboarding, its where I go every year to relearn and remember the mistakes that I’ve made and to become something better from them. And that is the story of how I first learned how to snowboard on my mountain, the mountain that I live on and the mountain that provides security for my well being.
