shSnowboarding: Day 2 (Sugarbush)

Today is our six-month anniversary of being married! Six more months and we can eat our stale, frozen wedding cake.

Sugarbush was a lot of fun. They had 18″ additional snow there and it was snowing during the entire day.

20121230-121153.jpg

We took the Slide Brook Express Quad to Mount Ellen and stayed there most of the day.

20130101-154621.jpg

Victoria, Johnny and their friends, Kathleen and the two Mikes, ate breakfast with us at the lodge but then we split up again so Gavin and I could ride the greens.

20121230-121258.jpg

Since this mountain is at a higher elevation, even some of the greens could easily been blue at a smaller mountain.

20121230-121313.jpg

The boards were great. I have a huge crush on the Feelgood. Both Gavin’s board and mine took a run to get used to. (I’m used to my hand-me-down beginner board that was beginning to fall apart and Gavin was just starting to get used to rental beginner and intermediate boards. These were definitely and upgrade.)

20121230-121321.jpg

The snow was coming down pretty steadily so stayed bundled up. We rode Crackerjack and then did Walt’s Trail a bunch of times before breaking for lunch. Gavin and I had stashed our leftovers at the lodge so we ate that pretty quickly and then got back out there again.

20121230-121330.jpg

I took some video with my GoPro3 that Gavin got me for Christmas. We headed over around 3:30pm on Northridge Expressway and Mainstream toward the Slidebrook Quad on our way toward the main mountain. We met everyone at the main lodge at the base of the mountain.

20121230-121409.jpg

Because of the constant snow during the day (and our lack of four-wheel-drive),) the ride back home in the car was challenging. So Victoria’s friends picked up food for all of us.

20121230-121436.jpg

The five of us had spaghetti, meat sauce, asparagus and garlic bread. The garlic was particularly delicious. I’m going to have to make it again like this.

20121230-121443.jpg

Snowboarding: Day 1 (Stratton)

We stayed over at Victoria and Johnny’s house the night before so that we could get an early start on Friday and get on the mountain ASAP.

20121230-121033.jpg

It was a beautiful day at Stratton mountain. Gavin and I rented boards from the mountain so that we would save some time. I rode one of the Burton intermediate boards in 42 and Gavin got the same one in a 62.

20121230-121112.jpg

After the first run on a blue, Gavin and I broke off and stayed on the greens. He did really well with the turns.

20121230-121121.jpg

On the way back from the mountain, we stopped at Darkside Snowboards to rent some demo boards for the rest of the trip. I got a Burton Feelgood (44) and Gavin tried the Burton Flying V (62.) I was super psyched about this board, especially since I’ve been stalking that make for several years now.

20121230-121129.jpg

Once the rentals were done being set up (which felt like it took forever), the four of us went to dinner at a place called Garlic.