Exposing ourselves - PHOTO COMP

I woke up, mouth as dry as sandpaper and a pounding headache, to my friend Ryan on the telephone. He wanted to know if I wanted to go snowboarding. I lifted my head from my pillow, chugged a glass of water and tried to remember what day it was, let alone what had happened the night before. I looked outside – it was sunny and the birds were chirping. It was definitely summer.

"Snowboarding?" I said.

Ryan picked me and our friend Curtis up, along with all of our gear and a couple strong coffees, and we headed up the Whitewater road. It was June 26th, 2010.

We started the trek up the Summit side of the mountain, when I began to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into. I couldn't see any snow and the sun was beaming overhead. We made it past the first hump when surprisingly my headache ceased – I started feeling alive again! We decided at this point that we were going to hike all the way up to the ridge and see how it looked from there.

We stopped to drink a Lucky lager.

Continuing on, we stopped for snacks and to admire the flowers and streams that come alive post ski season and talked about the festivities from the night before as they re-surfaced in our memories.

We made it up to the ridge and decided to keep going and check out "Pipeline." We got there, and it looked good; there was just enough snow for all of us to get a few solid turns in. Before we strapped in, we found a nice little perch and chilled for a while, letting our muscles relax and letting the sun sink into our tired skin.

Ryan went first, followed by his dog Rocket, who went penquin-styles straight down the run.

Then Curtis went.

Then me.

It was awesome.

We all hit a few rocks and random small trees on the way down, but it was well worth it. We had to hike most of the way back down, because there was no snow, but that one little line we had all found off of Pipeline, fed us something we had been thinking about all summer.