Less than ideal conditions? Use your imagination
Snowboarding is a physical activity, to be sure, but attitudes and thoughts can play a large role in your riding experience.
I’ve been blessed to visit some mountains with fantastic scenery, including A-Basin:
Aspen:
and Vail:
On the other hand, my local conditions aren’t nearly as spectacular. Our plunges around here are a mere 300 vertical feet, the largest of the several ski areas reports 250 acres (respectable in acreage alone, if placed in New England, but small by Rocky Mountain standards), and most of the trees that we lose their leaves in the fall. Now, a summer walk in a deciduous forest can be fun, but for winter enjoyment, evergreens are best.
But when I paid a visit to a local hill recently, I caught a hint of an evergreen forest. Not an actual forest, mind you, but enough green to set my mind thinking of grander vistas.
Here’s a photo from much earlier in the season:
The trees in the photo are not the ones that I’m talking about; they’re further down the hill and not as visually pleasing. For one thing, they’re lined up, single-file, serving as a lane marker in an otherwise wide-open space rather than elements of a true forest.
Yet somehow, their cousins further up the hill, guarding customers against a 100 foot drop-off to the parking lot below, put me in a peaceful state of mind. I would stare at one tree as I passed it by, or even just a few branches. And then I would close my eyes and imagine myself on a lift that was cut through a massive evergreen forest, not running up against a thin strand of trees.
And for a short time, it worked.
Here’s a photo, same ski area, that briefly reminded me of the west side of Aspen’s Butermilk Mountain:
Obviously, not the same experience, visually or otherwise. But for me the winter alternatives are ice fishing (too stationery), cross-country skiing (usually not enough natural snow cover) or staying inside (too fattening and unhealthy).
So if, like me, you’re faced with less than ideal conditions, exercise your imagination.