Day at the Mountain


The crisp mountain air, refreshing my lungs and body with every breath. It was an epic day at Mt. Hood. The sun was shining, not a cloud in sight, and cool crisp air that kept the snow perfect. I had never been so excited in my life, and I still had to walk across the whole parking lot to get to the lifts. I had this feeling a lot when I went to the mountain, I would soon find out that today was no ordinary day.


Approaching the lift I had the biggest grin on my face ever. I was pushing my way up the lift hill, crunch, crunch, as the crisp snow pushing against my snowboard. It was cool outside but the sun was so bright and was making me warm, I unzipped my jacket and I could see the steam come out of it as I cooled down. The air had a taste or just freshness, like something that didn’t have even a tiny bit of dirtiness to it. As I went up the lift line, getting more and more excited, I was finally on the chair lift, the seat stiff and hard because of the cold and the seats hadn’t softened yet. Getting near the top of a crest we come over the top of it and the bright sunlight hits me like a laser right in the eyes, but a warm nice feeling comes over my face at the same time. I look to the right and see the other mountains, just looking down on them like they were tiny little mountains and that I was on top of the world. I knew today was going to be a day I would need my goggles, not for the snow or weather but for the sun. The snow was so bright, almost blinding from the sun reflecting off it.



The buildup was finally over, the top of the chairlift, all the drive up to the mountain, the walk across the parking lot, and the chair lift ride up. Pushing my way over to the bench I sit down and push the snow off the binding, put my foot in and strap my boot in. I stand up, gazing down the hill feeling like everything was perfect and having no worries. The cold snow going up through my board and up my body giving me chills, I turn my board down the hill, and I’m off. Making turns back and forth, light powder flying up as I cut through the cold dry snow. Ssshhhh ssshhhh sssshh sssccchhh, swooosh, coming to a stop a huge cloud of powder flies over my head and coats my face. The cold dry granulated snow goes up my jacket and makes me shiver. I look back up the hill, pause for a second to admire the mountain, and then continue down the hill. As I approach a jump off the side of the trail by the trees I bend my knees and get ready to pop off it, all of the sudden, a huge rush of cold air goes up my back and chest, I feel snow rush up my back and down my snow pants, goggles flying and covered in snow, in the middle of all of this I realize I am flipping and rolling down the hill. I come to a stop in a huge flat area of waist deep powder. Even though my clothes have just been filled with tons of cold dry snow, I lay there for a second. The snow feels like a big bed, forming to the exact shape of how I was laying. For the first five seconds I felt amazing just laying there, but by the sixth second I had jumped up and was standing in the waist deep powder, covered in snow, laughing knowing that it was only the beginning to a beautiful day on the mountain.

As I walked into the lodge, I heard lots of people talking and it was hot and steamy from all the people in eating lunch. I could feel the wet snow in my jacket melting and dripping down my legs and even though I was hot I got the chills from the water dripping down. I scanned my eyes over all the tables packed with people to look for a place to sit and eat lunch. I didn’t see anywhere and on top of that the lines for the food were so long. I wanted some pizza so since I hadn’t found a seat yet I just carried my stuff over to the pizza line and started waiting. I could smell the pizza tickling my nose; I was so hungry and couldn’t wait to eat. While standing in line I saw my friend jack in the corner of my eye. I yelled to him and said what’s up. He told me he had a table saved already and that I could join once I got my food, so I got my pizza and went over to his table. Jack was a sophomore at Jesuit and I hadn’t seen him in awhile, he was staying in Government Camp for the weekend. After lunch we decided we would all ride together for the second half of the day.

It had gotten a lot more stormy and cold while we were in eating lunch and as we walked out the doors my body went numb from the cold. Within minutes my cheeks were numb and my lips were purple. My hair hanging out of my beanie was frozen. I grabbed my snowboard from board check and headed down to the lift, trying to defrost my body. I strapped in my front foot and got on the lift. The lift lines were considerably smaller as people had gone home because of the stormy weather. The seat of the chairlift was so cold, it didn’t help that I was already cold before I got on the chair but to sit on a sheet of ice was horrible. As we came up over the crest of a cliff, a strong breeze began to blow, and then changed to a heavy wind. The wind was penetrating my jacket and I really thought I was frozen. I had never felt the wind through my jacket before, that’s how cold it was. Finally we were at the top and I rode down the unloading lift ramp and went over and sat in the snow at the top of the hill. Great, I thought, more snow in my pants and up my jacket, and the wind was blowing up my jacket to. Freezing, I bent down to hook up back foot straps, as I reached down I noticed one of the straps had fallen off and that I wasn’t going to be able to ride my board like this very easily. I told my friends to go ahead without me as I rode slowly to the lodge at the bottom to try and see if I could get a part to fix my binding. Riding slowly down the mountain sucked, it was bad enough with the weather but with having to go slow that only meant I had to spend that much more time in it. Finally reached the bottom and headed for the lodge to the repair shop.

Walking into the repair shop was like walking into a fire only it felt good. I was so frozen from being outside that I just started to get all wet and damp as the snow and ice melted. There wasn’t a waiting line so I was happy, I told the guy what had happened and what was broken and asked him if he could fix it. He told me that they didn’t have my binding and that I was going to have to use a different kind of part and see if it worked. That wasn’t all either, this was the mountain shop so I would have to pay premium prices just to have them put a piece on my binding that didn’t even fit right on it. I thought I was prepared to hear the cost of what it would take to fix the problem, I wasn’t. One hundred dollars the man told me. No way was I about to pay that much, that was more than half the money that the bindings were worth when I first bought them, plus I didn’t have the money so there wasn’t anything I could do. I called my friend and told him I was just going to head home because the weather was so bad and I my bindings were broken and it would cost me way too much to get it fixed at the mountain.

The ride home was nice, I turned the heat way up in my car and changed out of my once frozen clothes that now were just sopping wet. I pulled off the road and had some dairy queen on the way home. I had so much food, 2 double cheeseburgers and a caramel shake. After all that had happened that day, from the perfect beautiful morning I had had, to the horrible stormy evening I had just had, it all worked out good because I had gotten my dairy queen.