First Run of the Day! [Snow Summit, 01.23.10]

With only a handful of people on the mountain with us, perfect weather all around us, and awesome fresh powder beneath us, we had one amazing day on the slopes.

I thought leaving at 4:30am might have been too early, but it turned out to be just in time.

Only one of the three routes to the mountain was open and we found our way without much delay. Before I knew it, we were 2 miles into the Forest on hwy 18 and I was putting on chains in 28 degrees of coldness just before dawn.

We had a near accident halfway up the mountain, a Saturn with no chains almost spun right into us--and then another near accident, going 10mph and only 2 miles away from the slopes, we hit a super slick icy spot and our back end slid sideways and we ended up facing the wrong direction and stuck in a snow bank. Luckily we were going super slow and there was about 10 feet of powder between us and anything that could damage the vehicle.

We tried to push the car out of the bank but to no avail, we were four feet deep into the snow bank and our front right tire was stuck and nearly on the axle. Luckily a tow truck driver drove by two minutes later and helped us out of the situation and we were on our way--only 20 minutes had elapsed from spin-out to being back on track.

As we strapped on our boards at the top of the mountain, it felt like we had already been on an epic adventure, and we realized how lucky we were. That's when I pulled out my camera.

It had snowed for 5 consecutive days and then opened up to blue skies and sunshine on the morning of our arrival. The rest of the day was ours to enjoy with freshly groomed powder and crisp 35 degree sunny skies.

It was the best snow I had ever been on, with some of the best people I know . . . and there was hardly anyone on the mountain :)

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People & Blogs

[Miez64]

I had the same incident at mnt high about 3 weeks ago...we just found a good place down the road, hiked up, drank some beer and boarded down.

[yayitsshella]

About 30 mins on the 18, we found some idiot got into an accident. So we just went back home; drove 8hrs and didn't even get to board. My friend worked patrol that day at Summit and he said that the mt. was really empty.. so empty even the patrol staff were hitting some runs. *sigh..

[yayitsshella]

You are so lucky! My friends and I were on our way there & we actually left at 4am coming from San Diego. We thought it would be ok to take the 330 because they mentioned on the site that they were gonna open it on the am. When we got to Snow Valley, there was an 8ft wall of snow blocking the rest of the way to Summit. We decided to head back down and take the 18 (back way).