Photo by Peter Parra

After returning from an amazing week-long vacation in Vail, CO, you’d think I’d want to spend the weekend resting (and doing laundry), right?  Well, that was the plan, but apparently it didn’t last for long. When I received a text Friday night at 8pm from my snowboard friend Matty asking if I wanted to ride Saturday, how could I say no?  My fifth day up in one week?  I’m on a roll!

I haven’t been up to Mt. High yet this season, so I bought a six time pass (pretty sweet deal, btw) and left my house at 6:15 am (ouch) to meet Matty at our little meeting spot on the way up to the mountain, right off the 15 fwy.  A few cups of coffee and one beautiful sunrise later, I knew it was going to be a great day!

Admittedly, after spending four days riding in the Colorado Rockies, the 12 inch base and slushed-out snow at Mt. High seemed a bit unappealing at first (the snow started out very grainy), but once the sun came out and softened it up a bit, it turned out to be an awesome, very fun day.  Riding High is just a lot different than riding at bigger resorts, namely because Mt. High is basically one, huge park, and there’s really not much free terrain to ride.  But I love park riding, so spending eight hours in the terrain park is fine by me.

The jumps and jibs were perfect, and the sunny, spring-like weather was even more perfect.  One really cool thing about Mt. High is that you can check out their interactive park layout before you go (which I did) and see photos/videos of all the jibs.  There was a lot of variety, and a good mix of easy to advanced features (and a lot of them!)  For example, if you start at the top of Chair 4 in the West Resort and head toward Upper Chisolm, you can ride down and hit 11 tables and several rails before you reach the bottom.  We spent most the day riding this run, followed by a nice, long break for BBQ in the parking lot.  The park crew was setting up for the Gatorade Free Flow tour slopestyle event (which takes place today) in the morning, so by the afternoon the course was open and we finished with a few runs through that park before heading home.

All in all, awesome day!  Oh, and it ended with a stop at grandma’s for dinner and laundry, so don’t worry, I did get a few good hours of laundry time in as well.

Now, I’m headed to Newport for an afternoon of skimboarding and sushi … I love living in a state where you can go snowboarding one day and to the beach the next