Update!

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WHAT UP

So Ohau was awesome; if you haven't seen my facebook photos you will see some here now! The avalanches that happened on that day were the biggest Ohau had had in 15 years. One of them destroyed an equipment building that housed about $20,000 worth of tools, and another took out an entire platter-pull tow.

Mike and I woke up and dismantled the tent in record time on Friday (July 24th) so we could be fastest to the top of the mountain. We stopped only at the bottom of the access road to put on snow chains at formula-one pit crew speed. It must have been world-record speed.

We hurl ourselves into the car (I'm in the driver's seat), stomp the gas (well, just enough to get us in the single-lane access road first) and we make it about 15 seconds until...we run into a line of cars. Stopped.

It turns out it didn't matter how fast we put the chains on because they still hadn't fully opened the access road. They were still clearing the parking lot of avalanche "debris". So we crossed the river in our little subaru and made our way up to the ski field.

The snow was amazing. On our first run we cut far right to go around the on-mountain resevoir, but I dug my nose too far into the snow and flipped end over end. I landed on my head. It did not hurt. That may or may not give you an idea of what the snow conditions were like. We had first tracks all day, including a chute that was crazy steep and narrow. Snowboarding like that really makes you feel alive.

A few days later, Mike and I decided to go check out the coast (which is 6 miles from my dorm). It is BEAUTIFUL and we found a good surf spot that rents some stuff cheap so we're going to do quite a bit of that soon... Take a look at the pictures, comment, let me know what you think!

Love yall,
Parker


*UPDATE: pictures will be up soon

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