The End of a Good Board

They say all good things must come to an end, but I had no intention or desire for it to end this way.

I am talking of course about my beloved Venue Onyx 161 snowboard that I bought in January and have lovingly shredded away on for the 6 months following it's purchase. I had been wondering what to do with it for a while, as the tail had delaminated pretty badly, and I knew that I didn't sort it out with some epoxy or something soonish it would begin to get waterlogged and would in time affect the performance of the board. I was also to get the board generally serviced, a nice wax and a good base grind. However, I am now saved the hassle as it is now unfortunately slightly less than fully intact.

The event was to be my last snowboarding action here in Canada, give or take 1 or 2 days working on the glacier. Given that we have now entered the last week of fun up here on Blackcomb mountain, there had been a bbq bash for us lifties. The plan was to kick everyone off the glacier at the normal time (Round abouts 3pm), but keep the lifts running so that the lifties could come up and play with no lift lines, no waiting in a line up for the kickers or anything like that.

All day I had been sweltering in the heat of the village working on the lift from the valley, the Wizard Express. I had tried to cool down by consuming 4 slushies during the day, and running numerous times through the sprinklers placed outside the Day Lodge. So when 3pm came round, my replacement arrived at the bottom, I could grab my board and head up, pretty excited about having some fun up there!

I got to the top and donned my snowboarding boots, and looked in anticipation to a wide open glacier, admittedly beginning to be slightly short of snow, but with numerous kickers and rails to try out, and no people to be seen, save for my colleagues already up there.

With a sense of excitement I strapped in and headed down the cat track towards the glacier. It had been a while since I'd snowboarded, and the deep slushy snow was making it difficult too make fine adjustments to my progress. However, got down the first pitch, steered around the hairpin left hander, to cruise down the next portion of the track before I could drop into the jumps. I was on my toe edge, and to the left hand side were steep walls that I could make a slashy turn on, as if bouncing off the lip on a surfboard (Probably - it's not as if I've ever managed to stand up on a surfboard, but there you go!). I did this a couple of times, gradually gaining more speed. Then I slashed a little too hard, the nose caught in the snow and stopped, while my considerable weight and momentum kept going forward. Unfortunately this was slightly too much for the board, and I heard a dreaded crack from beneath my feet. I looked down, and could see that the nose of the board had folded up, and that the core had snapped.

I decided to carry on to try and ride it to the bottom of the slope. This proved to be very difficult, as, especially with the slushy conditions, everytime I put any weight on the edge, the board folded and put me down in the snow on my backside, which was twice as bad cos I was just wearing a t-shirt and shorts.

So that was how the story of me and my board came to an end. We had numerous good times. We shared our first runs through the halfpipe, our triumphant runs through the park getting bigger and bigger air, shared the increasing confidence I had on a snowboard to just point it straight and still feel in control, numerous days in powder proving that you really could do it all on a single board rather than different boards for different conditions, and of course accompanied me round a selection of BC and Alberta's finest snowboarding resorts.

I didn't let this upset ruin the evening though. I headed down into the glacier, and decided to be the photographer for the evening. A number of the other lifty's are really good boarders and skiiers, so I managed to get some pretty decent photographs.

Once the snowboarding was done, the lifts were turned off, and the bbq was fired up. We were allowed to raid the fridge for beer and juice, and the burgers were big, juicy, tasty and most of all free. The ride down the lifts was entertaining to say the least with 30 or so lifty's drunkenly riding chairlifts and buses to get down to the base, before once again heading to the old favourite, Merlins.

It really does have it's perks being a lifty sometimes. In whatever type of job could you have a staff party at 2200m up, a glacier all to yourself to ride however you like, and then a free bbq, with amazing views across the Coast Mountains unitl the early evening. Even on the way down the lifts at 8pm, it was still more than warm enough to sit in shorts and a t-shirt. The views to they valley on the way down were stunning again, and it really was quite a magical evening.

Man, I'm gonna miss this place.