Most Memorable

This past season turned out to be pretty damn EPIC!  It started off slow but it sure did turn around.  There was some serious POW days all over the Rockies, but the most memorable areas were Vail for me and the Shift'D crew!  In my opinion, (and I'm sure most people would agree with me here) Vail offers the best terrain out all of the Rockies resorts!  In case you missed one of our previous blog posts on how Epic Vail is, click here to read up on why I say this.

So I wanted to right up this blog post to showcase what our most memorable experience was for this past season, which just so happened to take place at our favorite shred spot, Vail.  But first, let me briefly explain the situation here.

We were running through the trees over at Blue Sky Basin off of Pete's Express Lift.  This is a place where you can almost 99% of the time see the Shift'D crew cuttin loose.  The trees are well spaced with great vertical drop!  Long runs too.  On this day it was dumping and it picked up super heavy around 12:30 PM.  Seemed like it was dropping an inch or more every 30 minutes!  So I was riding with my buddy Nick.  The other two, Donald and Lucas were behind us a little ways so all I could see was Nick at this time.  When I came out of the trees around lift #11 under Pete's, I couldn't see Nick.  I waited and waited until Donald and Lucas showed up but no Nick.  They said they hadn't seen him.  By now 10+ minutes had passed and I was starting to get concerned.  Then I get a call from Nick saying "where you at"?!  Nick was already at the bottom waiting at the lift.  When he told me this I noticed that there was nobody riding the chairs.  He then said they closed down everything to Blue Sky due to the super heavy snow.  This was a first for me, I mean, usually chairs shut down due to wind but not heavy snow.  It wasn't windy at all in fact, just snow.  So me, Donald, and Lucas head down and meet with Nick and continue on down the mountain to figure out where we should ride next.  We were on the cat walk headed to Skyline Express lift and we see a crowd of people walking in our direction.  We asked what was up and they confirmed that Skyline Express was closed and the wait to get to the front via Tea Cup Express lift was an hour plus so they were outta there.  We followed suit and hiked to the next closest lift, Orient Express, which had NO lines.  We got there right in time because after hiking the hill to this lift, this is what was following us.

(Click the image for a large view.  See how hard it's snowing?)

When the four of us got back to the parking structure and called it a day, we all talked about this experience.  We all agreed that this what we loved about our sport, snowboarding or skiing and the people involved.  We take joy in being outdoors in nature, working physically to have fun.  When something like this happens, we could've waited hours to get out of there, but NO!  We unstrapped our boards and hiked to the next best option.  Nothing could hold any of us back as we were all on the same wavelength.  We were all in this together.  Hearing these good folks hootin and hollerin at all the snow coming down, hiking this hill, helping each other out.  Wow!  This by was our "unforgettable moment" of the 2012/2013 season.  What was yours?

-Brandon