Who, Where, What, Why, How?
I was livin in Maui working, Windsurfing, Kitesurfing, Wakesurfing and Surfing whenever I could. No Snowboarding master yet! A buddy of mine asked me if I wanted to hit CANADA as he had a place near Red Mountain BC.
He said come check it out, I said OK.
So I ended up in Red Mountain with my old pow pow skis and gear, leaving wakesurf board also surfing gears, with other things. I spent my first day at Red Mountain powder skiing some killer deep and fluffy pow pow. After an early lunch my friend set me up on his rig and the rest is history.
I gotta laugh when I look back on that. I definitely was not the snowboarding master more like snowboarding disaster.
Now my first 4 hours 11:30 am to 3:30 pm. It was snowing hard and lots of deep pow, lucky for me as I crashed and burned getting off the mid -lift and again on the TOP LIFT.
My friend laughed and said its cool dude. You will get it son. I spent the next four hours learning to ride and turn and was getting the hang of it.
My friends?? bailed on me after about 15 minutes, they said we will meet up later and then take the 5 km cruise to the lodge around 3:30 pm, ok cool.
I crashed about 100 times average 25 times every hour about once every minute in the first hour and slowly improving my up time minimizing my down time.
Yah I thought. Im a snowboarding master….Not Yet.
Well the 5 km cruise went well until I got tangled with another grom newbie and went down hard on my face.
This time I had cracked my goggles all the way through both lenses. I had to cruise 2 more km in blinding snow with no goggles.
I called it a day and we went off to the pub to celebrate not having to go to the hospital in TRAIL…
Snowboarding master??? no way not even close!
…Next DAY…
The next day I was so sore I couldn’t sleep. I slid out of bed onto the floor and crawled /dragged myself to the bathroom from 5 am to 7 am sank into the hot bath and tried to massage a million aching muscles from my fingertips to my toes.
ASPIRIN….ASPIRIN……MORE ASPIRIN…Snowboarding master??? NO WAY!
I couldnt barely walk or drive!!! I had to lift both my legs into the car to drive.
My friends rolled up a BC green fatty and said you just hang on to this and take some hits, you will be fine soooooon, ok YUP.
they were right… sort of !!!
Time to hit the slopes all day on my rental board. My friend wanted his board back. Sorry the snowboarding master has gotta go rent some gear today.
The second day went alot better with plenty deep powder and alot less falls. By then I was hooked. I knew then I had fallen back in love with an old flame but in a new way.
I felt so alive that week, sore but alive.
I soon started going to Canada alot and hitting lots of the smaller resorts with deep pow, every chance I got. Got to the point I knew what I was doing and had a handle on it.
But a snowboarding master ??? NO WAY JOSE…not yet… 2 years ago…I cruised over to Asia cause Canada was havin a drought season, met my wife on a chairlift in a blizzard and in my killer Japanese, said. I am an earthling, please take me to your leader. She and her friend laughed and said in english.
Where are you from??? I said I am from PLANET EARTH and I have come to sample the deep powder please take me to your stash. They did and we cruised all day in some incredible pow.
They said you are pretty good at snowboarding… mister…Of course I thought they said snowboarding master.
So for 2 winter seasons I came back here to snowboard. I made the move permanent and I am living here in Hokkaido Japan. Snowboarding master in snowboarding paradise, snowboard heaven.
I get lots of deep pow all the time because south western Hokkaido is one of the snowiest places on earth.
The storms come from SIBERIA across the JAPAN sea and slam us with snow, snow and more snow. Its not too cold here , but it snows almost every day and I mean alot of snow. I sometimes have to shovel 2 times a day.
So while doing the teaching thing. I always had people ask me what to buy and what to wear and what to do. I decided to start this website to give people good solid KNOWLEDGABLE INFO ON SNOWBOARDING.
ONE OF MY FRIENDS said to me one day while hiking out after a super deep and steep run off the top of ANNUPURI… “YOU are a SNOWBOARDING MASTER !” I told him,sure man, sure I am…This time he was right !
I decided to base this snowboarding info site on my years of knowledge of powder skiing and backcountry and snowboarding so people can enjoy snowboarding as much as I do. But I want to say you gotta BE CAREFUL.