Oh, my aching tusch!!!

After the big snow fall on Wednesday of this week, we decided to head up to the Washington to have a little fun. There was about 2 feet of fresh fun stuff all around and there is no other word to describe it other than AWESOME!!!! The alarm went off at 4:30am on a Saturday... we are hard core... and we packed up our friend Sam's car (he's moved past just real estate agent) and we headed up to the big mountain. We got there before the sun had risen over the mountains and it was a blazing 2 degrees outside. It was COLD stuff!! However, once you start hiking up a mountain with a pack on your back, it warms up real quick. Here are some pics from the day:

Nate and I as we started off. Thankfully we took this before everything started freezing.

Pretty snow on the trees. I was trying to be all artistic, because you could see the snow flake crystals, but my camara didn't want to be as artistic as I wanted it to be. And there was a guy with snow shoes coming up behind me so I had to get moving. This is the best one that I got! :-(

Nate skinning up along the Cog Railway with Bretton Woods in the background. We should've stopped by the Woods on the way home to see our friend, Buck... but we didn't know he was there... Sorry Buck, next time!

Sam dredging up the hill. You can see Jacob's ladder behind Sam. That's as far as we got the last time we went because I was a huge pansy. We made it much further this time. Still no observation deck, but we are getitng closer!

Nate and Sam at Jacob's ladder. Pretty dope!!

Jacob's Ladder sign...

The other side of Jacob's ladder.

Nate's pack and you can see where we ended up in the middle of the screen. Those aren't our tracks but that's where we ended up going down.

Scout, as king of the mountain!!

Nate waiting to rip it up!

 

Nate shredding the gnar gnar!!!

After we came down to the middle, we had to go back up a litte. We booted it up and I gave up after a bit.  I felt like I was on an eliptical machine and I was getting a little frustrated. I need to get some traction on my snowboard boots or carry some snowshoes with me... Nate and Sam are the little people near the rocks in the middle of the picture.

That's my traverse line and the doggies tracks as they bounded towards me from where the boys were.

Oakley trying to seek cover from the winds. It was probably 1 degree at the top of the mountain by the time we got up there and the wind was cooking, so with the wind chill it was definitely below freezing. Plus with all their goofing around, they got snow in their jackets. When we took off their jackets at the bottom of the mountain, we discovered that the underbellies were completely frozen. :-( Poor things!!!

From the top-ish... There's Bretton Woods again!!

After all the fun we had coming down the top of the mountain, the real mis-adventure came at the end of the day. Today, there were 3 parts of our journey. The first part, you hike along the right side of the train tracks near the trees. Then, the tracks start to turn off to the right a bit, and you cross the tracks and head left over a narrow steepish trail. Then we crossed under Jacob's ladder and hiked up a bowl area. As we were coming down, I got through bowl fine. I think Sam tried to huck over a rock and landed on another rock and hurt himself. Then through the narrow part, Nate made a sharp turn and went down. He hurt his ankle pretty good. Then at the last part, Nate and Sam stayed to skiiers right of the tracks and went to the left to play on the left side of the trail because I'm goofy footed and the left side is always best. I was having a splendid time until I dried to do a jump and landed completely wrong and ended up eating it. I wasn't hurt and I laid in the snow for a bit, but I was like, 'huh, where are those boys?' I got up and saw that they were on the other side of the tracks. I saw a way to get over the tracks and went to go hang out on their side. I hit the track COMPLETELY wrong and did a very unintentional rail slide. My board flew out from under me and I hit the track squarely on the top of my bum!! It hurt like all goodness. Thankfully, I was wearing my backpack so I didn't hit my tusch as hard as I could have and my head never even got close. I had to ride about another 1/2 mile to the car.  I tried my hardest not to fall again because getting up was extremely painful. I ended up getting to the car and only fell twice... With how bad it was hurting, I thought it was definitely broken. It was a long 2 hour ride home, but we got home, I looked in the mirror and the bruise is definitely all muscle!! Thank freaking goodness!!!

All in all, it was an awesome day of riding in 2 feet of freshies! I would love it if every time could be like that. I also learned to stay away from that track or maybe learn how to rail slide on something other than a piece of frozen iron.