signs of life at Mt. Hood - alpine is still kicking

[Dan]

Can you believe it? I went up to Meadows this weekend and not one, not two, but a whole three people were enthusiastic about alpine/knew what it was!

Now, conditions did kind of suck, but half of Shooting Star Ridge was groomed and semi-soft, which was enough to keep me happy for a couple of hours (it was my first day, after all). After that, I checked out the rest of the mountain, but it was iced up pretty solid - I wanted one of them Icicle Fairies, or Snow Weasels, or Freezer Snakes, or whatever you Madd-men are calling your 158s.

So, the alpine enthusiasts - best comment was from a liftie taking his break. He said "Man, sometimes I see a bunch of you guys up there ripping and it looks totally cool." (Which made me wonder: how many is "a bunch"?) He asked me what it would cost to get into alpine and I had to tell him it'd be hard to do for less than $300, which he seemed pretty disappointed to hear.

Another guy told me "it takes balls to ride an alpine board up here today!" I'm not sure why he thought that, but hey, at least he knew it was an alpine board.

Finally, another liftie asked me what it was like riding alpine and of course I told him that it r0x0rs.

Hmm, I talked to three people about alpine - that makes something like 25% of the people on the hill that day. Pretty good, huh?

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

Hi Dan, glad you had a good time at MHM. If the season ever gets going I think we have the potential to have 6-10 riders show on a good day.

Today , A very sweet (read:hotty) young Japanese girl in the lift line said: "Is that an alpine snowboard?" , I was pleased that she recognised it for what it was. She said that they are all over the Japanese snowboard mags. COOL!! So, being the gentlemen (read:dom) I am , I was happy to explain the specifics.

Very fast conditions, scraped off the new pretty fast. Sun was a big bonus though.