Borrowed Burritos

I've been meaning to write up a new post lately, it's been a while. After seeing the 'Basin berating video I thought I would write something up. I'm not gonna lie, I was going to go off on how lame I thought it was and that the it makes me want to go to Snowbasin a little less (I've never been, still want to go). I decided to sleep on it and think a bit more. I still think this should have gone down different, but it is what it is. This morning I found that a local shredder/blogger, BurritosAndSnow, wrote a post about this. I like his take, so here's a link to the post:

http://burritosandsnow.com/2011/12/28/harassment-at-snowbasin-more-indicative-of-a-greater-problem/

First Days 2011 and The Spot...

Got up to shred Brighton a few times already, super fun. First day was a solo mish, just my headphones to accompany me. Some of my favorite riding happens on solo. Also got up with Wren from Wasatch Attack and Zack from Snow Joker. We had about a foot of fresh that day, only found like two rocks and a stump... Glad I have a Never Summer! Gonna be a great season... as long as I can avoid hitting my elbow on anything.

The Spot. Doesn't sound too glorious, right? Well, depending on your definition of glorious, it's not. Now, I've never been to "The Spot", and probably never will. Looks like they have a lot of fun up there. I mean camping, snowboarding, axes, knives, fire and pizza?!? Pretty cool... Maybe someday I'll "tool up" my own spot. Until then, I'll just hit up Brighton.

Here's a funny clip showing what us outsiders can envy:

My Cuz Has The Life

My cousin has a pretty cush life. This is how he spent his summer. The embedding isn't working, so here's the link:

http://vimeo.com/30294803

Utah Rules

Just further proof that Utah Rules...

Mich and I getting our feet wet!

Me, Mich, Ryan 

(tourists don't know how to focus...haha)

Narrowing slowly...

Us, framed by nature

The Lineup

Ryan conquered this boulder FIERCE!

Water hikes are dope

[no words needed]

Swimmin' hole!

The Zebra Rock

Orderville Canyon

The "waterfall" at the "end" of Orderville Canyon 

(had to edit out some guy falling down the right side, ha ha!)

[again with the no words thing...]

Aaaand the shot of the trip... in my opinion at least

How was the trip...? Two solid thumbs up!

Dodge Barrage

D-Will and Korver came back to SLC to host the third annual Dodge Barrage. I hope they bring it back next year, it was an awesome time and I would love to actually participate instead of simply spectate. 

Kam and I in line for the autographs (Kristopher took the pic)

 Korver, Williams

The Crew: Korver, Deron, CJ, Wes Matthews

The setup

Team Huddle for the TMNT

 A Wes Matthews dodgeball dunk

Left to right: Korver, a guy that kinda looks like D-Will, D-Will all attacking one poor old portly guy

The rush to be the first to the balls

You Aren't That Big

Go to the mountains. Hike to the top. Look all around... you aren't that big. 

Today's Moment of Inspiration...

Take one second real quick and think about the thing that you love most; sports, the outdoors, food, TV, going to the movies, xbox, playing the theremin, surfing the web...the list goes on. Think about how much joy that thing gives you, the feeling you get when you're in your element enjoying life the way you like to enjoy it. Your favorite thing is probably really weird to someone in the world... Just think about that next time you want to make fun of somebody for doing something that makes them happy. 

Basic Properties of Snow

Spring/Summer snow is usually not stable, as illustrated perfectly here:

Shhh...it happens to you

Flooded basement is one more nail in the coffin for one one of these this year... 

Teasing: Burton

The Mega-lanche

So...  you don't survive this.

Thanks Flicky

If you didn't know, flicky.com is a neat website. That's where I found this gem. For an awe inspiring nature video, watch muted. For a reeeeaally funny video watch with the volume up.

Borrowed

Wasatch Attack 1 from Wren Withers on Vimeo.


Borrowed this jewel from Wren over at Wasatch Attack. Last known image of me shredding without any elbow hardware...

All Time

Yeah, Scottie, you're retarded.

Inside Vs. Outside

Memorably Forgettable Memorial Day

Memorial Day 2011 was to be one of the best that I ever had with Snowbird getting almost a foot of fresh powder... yeah, things started out really slow.

Wren and I had to wait about an hour and a half to even get on a chair. Once things got going, it was great! Found this little gem on ksl.com. Yup, that snowboarder was thoroughly enjoying the fresh powder! Even with a couple of nose dive induced cartwheels, it was a really fun day. 

Then they opened up Mineral Basin, things were just getting better... for a minute at least. A few runs of blower powder and we made the decision to go to the Little Cloud lift... that proved not to be the best decision for me. We were cruisin down, getting after the chopped up pow all crazy like. I spotted a roller that looked like it would be a perfect ten to fifteen foot air; I bombed it. Ninety five nine percent of the time I check my landing before just bombing something. I don't know why, but this time I just went for it. BAD idea.  I popped off the top of the roller, going about thirty miles per hour and looked down to spot my landing and saw nothing but car sized jagged boulders.I literally thought "I'm going to die". About a second later I was able to rotate my board (brand new Never Summer Proto CTx #cringe) so that it hit the boulders first... then impact. Board hit the first boulder and bucked me into the next one (which was later described by Wren as "the gnarliest boulder" of the bunch). When I hit the first thing that went through my mind was this video. I have no idea why. The very next thought was "This isn't real". Next I tumbled over a few more death boulders and over what felt like a ten foot rocky drop and ended up in the sitting position. My thought right then was "I'm so lucky that I'm just dreaming right now. All I need to do is wake up." Then the pain settled in and I realized this is very much real. Somewhere during my wee tumble my helmet came unbuckled. It didn't slip off cause it was too loose, it was actually unbuckled. I should probably email Burton about that... oh well. 

So I'm sitting there, wind knocked out of me, making that awful noise that really hurt people make (think dying walrus or something), I'm watching my helmet roll down the mountain and thinking how stupid that was. Next thought was "How does my snowboard look?" BIG time shout out to Never Summer Snowboards, my deck was almost completely perfect. Definitely held up their durability reputation on this one. One deep pinhole in the base and that's it. Amazing considering how hard I slammed that board into the rocks.

My friends, Brian and Wren were able to get ski patrol up there and to do their thing. Keith, the guy in charge of ski patrol was really good, took control and made sure I was as comfortable as I could be. Since they were worried about my organs looking like mashed potatoes they made me ride the toboggan straight to the ambulance. The EMT's were really good too. Once inside, they cranked the heat up for me since I was apparently shivering really bad and they sweat their guts out so I would be comfortable. 

The hospital wasn't messin around either. They sent me straight to "Trauma Bay 1" or some official name like that. Once inside they were just dying to cut my clothes off, but I wouldn't let them destroy all my gear, I made them take it off, ha ha. Normally I think it would probably be pretty cool to be in a room full of women undressing me as quickly as possible, this scenario however, was not that cool. 

After about a dozen x-rays, multiple CT's and a handful of MRI's they were able to determine that I had a shattered left elbow (radial head), lacerated spleen, bruised kidneys and liver, gnarly bruise on my left flank (love handle), sprained right ankle and a severely jammed right thumb. They stabilized me and all that junk, and about six hours later I was going in for elbow surgery. Crazy.

Here's me right after surgery, apparently I thought I was really funny. I was quoting Anchorman, ha ha!

My Trauma Team and all my nurses at Intermountain Medical Center were awesome. I liked them all, even though they labeled me a "Fall Risk", which I found amusing, considering how I ended up there.

All in all I spent two nights and three days inpatient at IMC. During that time I had a ton of friends and family come see me. That is pretty humbling to see that many people taking time out of their lives to come visit a drugged up dude who talks too much. I am truly lucky to have that many awesome people in my life.
At home, the awesome people kept coming. Friends and neighbors bringing dinner, family helping with the yard work (thanks Jake!), "grown up" sitting, and just hanging out with me to keep me entertained. Thanks everyone!
Then there is my awesome wife has been the worlds best caretaker. She keeps me fed, puts up with my orneriness and always makes sure I have my pain meds when I need them. Thanks Michelle!

Lessons learned: I have amazing people in my life and I need to be better about showing appreciation to them...and... ALWAYS CHECK YOUR LANDING!!!

Yeah.... it's May?

Spring 2011

Spring 2011 has been an interesting one. 

What usually is spring slush park laps was knee deep pow turns.

 

What is usually fresh cut grass and pulling weeds was building snowmen.

And I have loved every second of it.

Now bring on the flooding?

Fools in April

Fools in April who complain about this... More turns for me!

If not now, when?

  Adolescents by incubus

Wings @Brighton, Now with ESPN!

Base Camp. Zack bottom left, looking inspired.

The "course" 

The Red Bull Minor's Cup was held at Brighton on Saturday 4.2.11. Zack and I checked out a few of the runs the kids had. Watching these lil rippers makes me wish I could have started riding at a younger age... maybe then I'd be good. 

***EDIT*** 

Thanks to espn.com for this, much better than mine, coverage of the event. 

Spring Conditions: The Dark Side

Before...

After

Started out as a beautiful night... then that hard shiny stuff reared its ugly head. Ice sucks.

Fail

Untitled from Mark Seguin on Vimeo.

Let's just say things didn't quite go as planned....

Spring Conditions 2.0

They kinda speak for themselves...