Photo from Snowboard life volume 3 number 5 March 1998
It was the beginning of April 1983 and I found myself in Lake Tahoe California with The Burton Team for The First World Snowboarding Championships at Soda Springs Ski area. It was a record breaking snowfall season for Tahoe that winter.. 45 feet!
We arrived at Boreal Ski Area where we would be staying and freeriding for the next week. There was SO much snow. I remember walking over telephone wires and then siding into the porch of our third story condo. The parking lot had 50'+ snow banks and as I rode up the chairlift, the mountain looked like a wave that was jacking up. It felt like it was going to come over and break on top of me.
After the contest we had a day to ride before heading south to score a surf in Santa Cruz. So we decided to search out a place to hike. It was overcast when we headed out of the parking lot and turned east on I-80. We saw a nice peak just east of the ski area on the opposite side of the highway in Tahoe National Forest. So we took the next exit and headed back west to a rest area just east of Boreal Ski Area.
The six of us piled out of the car, grabbed our boards and just went for it. I was wearing my winter school jacket, jeans, and work boots. Coming from a skateboard and surfing background I didn't have any winter outerwear like the rest of the team that came from a alpine background. I would joke about my jeans saying "once they freeze they'll be waterproof."
We all took turns taking the lead hiking in snow/powder that was knee to waist deep. Back in the day if you wanted to get turns you had to earn those turns, so even though we hadn't hiked anything of this size before, we were all in good hiking shape. This was no small backyard hill we were climbing, this was a mountain and we had nothing to save us if we got in any trouble.
After hiking for many hours, we finally reached the summit. We sat there taking it all in. We knew these were going to be our last turns in Tahoe until the following year. We laughed and joked about the previous days and our current situation, we had no water and no food... nothing but 2,000 vertical feet of powder ahead of us.
Right after this photo was taken the clouds started to roll in and we scrambled to get our boards strapped on. As we headed down the mountain I remember seeing huge drop offs, if you went the wrong way or slipped, you were done. We all laid down trip ending turns and as we made our way towards the bottom, we ran into a natural half pipe which made for a great ending to a trip that I will never forget.
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