snowboardingtrip2

The Further Adventures of The Gas Co.: A Valentine’s Weekend Snowboarding Trip to Mammoth Lakes, CA By: Matt Talley

Right after our first snowboard trip of the season, I got a call at work from my buddy Joann. She had decided, for some unknown reason, that I was a person who could get things done and was the go to guy for organizing another winter trip. She really needs to get to know me better so that she can see just how disorganized I truly am. I figured “what the hell” and gave it a shot. I knew we needed a high capacity cabin for the President’s Day/Valentine’s Day weekend. I made some calls after a bit of Internet research and soon discovered that we should have had this plan about two months before Memorial Day 2002. Rooms, much less a cabin, were impossible to find. Everything was booked solid. I was getting discouraged until I remembered the empty fishing camps that I had seen near June Lake/Mtn. when we were there in January. I found some of the websites, looked at amenities and my second call was on the money! Mono Sierra Lodge (www.monosierralodge.com) was in Crowley Lake, about 10 minutes from Mammoth Mtn. and thirty minutes from June Mtn. and their biggest cabin was open for the entire weekend. The cabin slept eleven people, but there was only one bathroom, no big deal. There was no hot tub on-site, but the owner had maps to a few nearby natural hot springs. Oh yeah!! I put the deposit on my card and lodging for the whole trip was only $90 a person. Cheap, just the way a road trip should be!! The group started out as The Gas Co. (Joann, Ed, David, Matt Brauning, Kei and little ol’ me) and then Joann invited her buddy Chris. Chris had never snowboarded and Joann was going to give her a lesson on Saturday. We all met Chris at Pier Street Annex in Newport Beach one night and she seemed to be a great fit for the group: She dished out as much shit that night as the rest of us. Joann called the Monday before we were going to leave on Friday and said that she had invited two more of her buddies, Chad and Scott and maybe a couple of girls that they knew. With two extra girls there were again questions about whether one bathroom would be enough. Imagine 5 girls (and Ed) sharing a bathroom in a small rustic cabin… it made me cringe a little. I think that Joann saw my point and she said that she needed to think about that many girls coming along and get back to me I dropped by the grocery store the Thursday night before we left and picked up some eggs, bacon, cheese, chicken breast, steak, snacks, breakfast bars, Power Bars and a little bit of alcohol: Ketel One Citron Vodka, two bottles of wine, Margarita mix and a fine little bottle of Puerto Vailarta Reposado Tequila. Brauning bought some more food and he grabbed some more booze from his rather well stocked bar at home. In addition to picking up some of the food, Brauning offered his truck up as our road trip chariot. It seated 6 and was able to haul all the gear in the back. Joann and Ed rounded out the groceries and the others in our group brought assorted grub as well. The morning of the trip, I got a call from Joann who said that only one other girl, Julie, was going instead of two and that we had to pick her in LA on our way to the mountains. Joann, David, Chad and Scott headed to Mammoth EARLY Friday morning and we were going to meet them at the cabin. I called Julie and we got things worked out so that we would swoop off the I-5 near downtown LA, throw her stuff in the truck and get right back on the freeway. The rest of the day flew by and I was off work and at Chris’s house by 3:00. We met Matt at his place about thirty minutes later and were at Kei’s house by 4:00. Kei had been sick for a week before the trip and had gone back and forth about five times on whether she was going or not. At the last minute she packed her stuff and hitched a ride. Ed met us at her place with his gear, a full ice chest and a suitcase that would make Paris Hilton say “Damn, you pack like a girl!” After we lugged his suitcase to the truck and two of us strained to lift it into the back, we were on our way to three days of boarding bliss! About 6:45 we dropped off the I-5 and picked up Julie as planned. As a “thank you” gesture for us giving her a lift she bought us all much needed and appreciated sandwiches. The traffic sucked, but we were busy teasing each other, listening to music and telling jokes to really care and Julie fell right into the rhythm of things. About 10:00, as we rolled toward Mono County, Ed and Matt noticed a truck behind us with funky red lights and commented on it. About a mile after we all turned to look the funky red lights turned blue. A burly female Sheriff’s Deputy pulled us over for speeding, 85 in a 65. She had nailed Brauning with the radar gun and then had bumper-paced him just to make sure that he couldn’t slither out of the ticket. As she was getting his information, she noticed that Kei wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and issued her a ticket as well. Brauning and Kei were incredibly gracious about their tickets: “thank you, yes Ma’am, no Ma’am" and as the officer was walking away from the truck, Kei yells out the window "Have a good weekend!" I’m never that sweet when I have to pay fines, ever. We rolled into Crowley Lake about midnight and while the cabin wasn’t exactly easy to find, it was exactly as advertised. The place was full of rustic art, deer/elk/moose heads, a great fireplace, log walls, a Norman Rockwell calendar, a grill outside, rustic lamps, interesting books, skiing/hunting/fishing/country life magazines, plenty of wood for the fireplace, a big dinning table, western themed prints on the walls, a full kitchen, dishes, pots & pans, silverware, big gas stove, microwave, ect… Everyone introduced themselves right away, we unloaded all the gear and stayed up until about 1:00am talking and getting to know the new additions to our usual group.


The print that hung over the dining room table in the cabin.	A "painting" upstairs in the group bedroom.

By the luck of the draw Brauning and I drew the fold–out couch/double bed downstairs. Because of trips past I know that he was a cuddler, but I figured that I would be safe in my sleeping bag. Wrong. About 5:30am he rolled over put his arm on me and tried to nuzzle. I had to smack him, I just had to. Brauning is no longer allowed to sleep in the same room or tent as me and if anyone reading this has a chance to take a boarding/climbing/scuba trip with him, make sure that he his either given a long cuddling pillow, has a girlfriend with him or a separate space to occupy. Well, the attempted spooning ended any desire for me to sleep another minute, so I got up and started breakfast. As quietly as I could I made scrambled eggs with pepper-jack cheese and baby spinach leaves, milk, juice, bacon (half of it soft and half crunchy), biscuits and croissants. Some sweet kind soul brought two packages of chocolate chip cookies for the weekend and I polished off half a bag and a quart of milk while I was cooking. I put the fruit on the table that Brauning had bought to offset the artery clogging properties of the bacon. I gave the house a mild ten minute warning before the food was ready. No one moved. When it was all done and on the table, I was very loud about breakfast being ready at that I was going to start eating without everyone else. That got the house up! Everyone seemed to enjoy the breakfast, but not everyone enjoyed the spinach in the eggs. I’ll have to remember to delete that ingredient from half the eggs next time I do a big breakfast for a bunch of people. As soon as the sun was up, I left everyone eating and wondered over to the main office to square up the bill with the owners. After paying for the additional people (I had only paid for 4 when I booked the room), the lodge owner gave me a map to the local hot springs and explained which ones were better for what, landmarks to look for and what to avoid. Because of this personal service, the owners’ genuine nature, the conditions of the cabins, the location and the prices, I would recommend Mono Sierra Lodge to anyone headed to Mammoth to ski or snowboard. We all piddled around getting ready and loaded and didn’t get to the June Lake resort until 8:40. After further procrastination at the truck it was 9:30 before we got in the long, slow line for the lift up to the main lodge and runs. When we finally got onto the mountain the conditions were great: a good deep base, the sun was out, four inches of powder on the groomed trails and the temperature was around 35 degrees. Joann took Chris off for her lessons, Chad, Scott and Julie disappeared and Ed, Brauning, Kei and I were off and onto a warm up run. Even though there was a long line to get onto the mountain, there were no lift lines and the whole mountain, except for the terrain park, felt deserted. I felt so good on the first ride and everyone else looked like they were in a groove too. We went up for another ride and Ed noticed that his bindings were spinning. He has trouble with his bindings EVERY time that we ride together. They are new, but they keep screwing up on him. He was PISSED and looked like he was ready to throw his board off the top of the mountain as we started down the run. After stumbling a bit getting down, he went to the repair station and they hooked him up with a free adjustment and he was good to go for the rest of the day. After a couple of more sweet blue runs, it was time to make a run for the truck for a bit to eat. At June Mtn. there are two ways down to the parking lot: take the slow two-person chairlift or board down the mountain on a narrow 4X4 trail. On our last trip to June, that road hurt me! I ended up bruised and battered and there was a crash that left me twisted and planted in a roadside snow bank. This time it was much different! David, Brauning and I hammered down the road making short quick turns, riding up the banks and throwing snow with the edges of our boards. It was so sweet and such a feeling of accomplishment! Poor Chris was done for the day after spending the morning falling on her first runs. She opted to sit at the lodge, shop and guzzle hot coco until we were done for the day. After a quick bite Brauning Ed, Kei and I were back up the mountain and standing on the edge of a black diamond run. We dropped strait into it and just had a ball all the way down to the lift chair. We ran it again and again that afternoon, linking it to this run and that all the way down the mountain. The whole day was an absolute blast! Brauning set the singe day group record for smacking trees: two. Though he hit both trees with grace and style. The second one wasn’t really a hit; it was more of a gentle hug, a sweeping turn and a belly flop into a trail-side snow bank. Ed turned the face-plow fall into high-art! His best ones were right at the end of the runs by the chair lifts, so that everyone could see his grace, balance and ability to be upright one second and breathing snow the next.


The fire that was going during dinner the second night.

We were off the mountain and back at the cabin by 5:00 and Ed started marinating the steaks and chicken right away. Scott and Chad rekindled the fire, as they should since they were firemen and David and I tried to get the two grills lighted. Easier said than done. One grill got burning pretty quick, but the other was a huge pain in the ass to light. We tried three separate times and even gas from Brauning’s one gallon “Oh, shit! I just ran out of gas” jerry-can wouldn’t help. We ended up just putting all the charcoal in the one grill and squeezing all the food for 10 people onto one medium round grill. As side dishes we had potatoes, and mac & cheese. There were supposed to have been sweet potatoes as well, but the microwave was uncooperative and they were not done until well after dinner. The meal was great, regardless. The fireplace was ablaze, the food was plentiful and we laughed and joked about all that had happened during the course of the day. After dinner, Joann gave board tuning lessons, some of us played poker and other’s watched TV until about 8:30 when Chad, Scott Julie, Brauning and Chris all went out to one of the local après ski bars in Mammoth Lakes. David and I sat on the couch watching Comedy Central’s Chappell show. There was the skit about a true-life incident between Rick James (singer of Superfreak) and Charlie Murphy (Eddie Murphy’s brother) that had us rolling and we quoted a bit from the show for the rest of the weekend: “…SLAP!!…I’m Rick James, bitch!” Some of the sleeping arrangements were changed around before the other group left (meaning Brauning slept alone and far away from others) and I hit the bed around 12:30, shortly after everyone that went out came in for the night.


Brauning and Kei

We had planned to be up early the next morning and at June Mtn. before 8:00 so we could avoid the lift line to get onto the mountain. I was up at 6:15, ate breakfast quietly and was dressed by 7:00. Everyone else got up late. Joann cooked some really good pancakes and we weren’t all ready until 10:00. Because of the late start, some of us decided to buy ½ day lift tickets so, we had to sit around at the lodge for about 45 minutes. Brauning and I ate hot grilled burgers for lunch outside and did some shopping in the lodge gift shop to kill some time. Poor, long suffering Ed: one of his binding buckles fell off somewhere in transit and he didn’t notice it until he was about to get on the lift. We made a run and met him at the bottom of the lift after the repair shop installed a new buckle for him. The weather was a little colder than the day before, but the boarding was still wonderful! Each of us took a turn with Chris and by the end of the day she was making it down the mountain on one of the green runs easy enough. Scott and Chad went off and did their own thing again, but Julie rode with us for most of the afternoon. We hit black diamond run after black diamond run, made pictures and video. At the end of the day we dropped into the 4X4 road to the parking lot and were down in a flash, laughing and talking shit to one another the whole way.


David	Julie

Back at the cabin, Ed and Joann fixed tacos and Ed made some FANTASTIC quesadillas out of the left over chicken and steak from the night before. Man, they really hit the spot!! When we started planning this trip one of the big draws were the natural hot springs in the area. I was looking so forward to soaking the day away in one of them. After we ate, we were supposed to head for one of the springs, but someone else decided that a Jacuzzi would be better and I was out voted but, what the hell, a hot soak in a Jacuzzi is better than none at all. Joann knew a guy in Mammoth Lakes and we went to the hot tub in his condo complex. Scott, Chad and Julie were supposed to come along as well, but after dropping off David they left for a club in town. I guess that they wanted to do their own thing. We hung out at Joann’s buddy’s house for a bit and then headed back to the cabin. It was the only time during the trip that I got a case of the red-ass. Some of us wanted to go out after the soak and others didn’t, but because we were all in one vehicle no one could go. By the time we got all the way back to the cabin, it was too late to unload and go back into town before the bars closed. Road trips and long weekends are for having a good time. For whatever reason there was a strange negative vibe in the air that night and I don’t think that anyone was happy with the outcome of the evening. One bright spot in the gloom was when Ed baked a package of cookie dough that he had brought along. Throughout the weekend the others had caught a glimpse of my unnatural addition to chocolate chip cookies, but when those fresh, soft, gooey morsels came out of the oven, I unleashed my inner beast: I had 10 before I was made to share, but I snuck a couple of more before they were all gone…


Brauning, Kei, Ed, Joann, Me (the pasty white one) and Chris.

Monday morning we were up and checked out of the cabin by 9:15. There was an incident with a cookie that had been left out all night (OK, maybe two nights) but, I won’t go into that here… Lets just say that it was taken care and that cookies should never be wasted… We had decided to go to the Little Eagle Lift Area at Mammoth Mountain. When we arrived and got on the first lift of the day there was a little halo of white around the top of the mountain. With each run that halo got lower and lower. The weather didn’t matter to me one little bit. There was powder everywhere! It was a little chunky, but man it was fluffy. On the first run I followed David down a steep blue diamond that had me carving, edging, hopping and jump turning. I loved it! Not one fall! On the next lift up, Brauning and I spied a semi-big jump coming out of a gully. David hit it first and I was right behind him. I wish that I could brag about the killer eight foot jump that I nailed, but I can’t... I hit it just right, going balls out and when I was about 5 feet in the air I freaked out and managed to fall right on my ass. Thank God and retail Internet sales for my butt pad (www.watchyourass.com). David rolled with laughter. On the next run I hit the same jump with similar results after David had made it look easy with a jump/heal side grab. I boarded over to where David was watching the jump and asked what happened to Brauning, who had been right behind me. David looked at me with a face in deep thought and said, “I think he crashed. He went in to the jump but hasn’t come out.” After a minute or so just as we were about to board over to see what was going on, we saw Brauning crawl out of the gully an inch at a time like a dying man crawling to water and flop over into the loose snow. He was rattled when he finally reached us. He said that he freaked out on the approach caught an edge and slapped the face of the jump with his head. He hit so hard that he couldn’t see for a couple of seconds and his goggles had blacked his left eye during the fall. He was done for the day an in his own words “… I felt woozy, so I grabbed a piece of pizza and a beer and the mini-lodge…” Just as any ER doctor or neurosurgeon would have suggested he do after head trama...


Chris	Joann coming in to take video.


Brauning seconds before an outstanding fall and during fall.	Brauning and Kei on a lift.

The halo of driving snow got fiercer and fiercer every time we went up. Joann got maybe three runs in before heading to the truck. She got cold and was in a foul mood, so boarding anymore that day wasn’t in her cards. David and I loved it and Ed and Kei were standing it, so we just kept boarding. I nailed a little jump near the start of the run, jumped a small sapling, followed David though the trees and on my 4th try nailed the big jump that had so assaulted Brauning. After that jump, it was ON! I was so stoked and David and I hit every jump and bank that we could find. He nailed a jump-360 and a backside-180 for the first time during our jumping section. During this time I had probably the most spectacular crash of the weekend. I was coming down a steep powdery face and David said something to me, I looked over, the tip of my board caught the chunky powder and I did a full front flip, landing back on my board for a millisecond before being folded like a taco and sliding down the hill about ten feet on my shoulder with my board touching my forehead. The powder was soft and I saw it all coming, there was just nothing that I could do about it. Ed said that as I started to go over I started laughing and continued laughing until I slid to a stop. It was one on those People’s Funniest Home Video moments. Around 2:00 the wind and snow were coming in sideways at the top of the lift. On our last run of the day, we buckled our boards on, stood up and spread our arms out for the howling wind to give us a little push. It was more than a little, It was like we had unfirled the sails on a yacht. I looked over at Kei and the wet spindrift snow was so thick and moving so fast near the ground it looked as if she was boarding in and on a cloud. It was amazingly beautiful. On our way back to Orange County, we stopped in Bishop at the beef jerky store again and everyone loaded up. The entire drive home was uneventful and we didn’t hit a bit of holiday traffic. For all its ups and downs and moodiness, everyone had a good time and we all got just a little better at boarding, everyone came back safely, and no one was stuck at home watching the TV. Good times!!!