Grit & Glory: just keep going until it doesn’t make sense anymore

I’m writing this blog from Tahoe, CA. After Kings and Queens was cancelled, we saw a storm forecasted to hit the Sierras — the first big storm of the season — and made the decision to go for it.  

Storm chasing is always a risk. It’s a 12 hour drive from Jackson to Tahoe, and once you get close you’ll be driving directly through some winter chaos — hopefully. Not to mention that winter weather is unpredictable, and while you’re on the road you’re praying that the storm doesn’t come in a few degrees too hot or get pushed off course to miss the mountains entirely.

So of course, after our long drive, as soon as we unload our bags into our friend’s Tahoe cabin, we see on instagram that everyone in Jackson is posting about the “best powder day of the year.” Of course. So we had basically just run away from the first real storm Jackson had all season. Of course.

Luckily from our friend’s cabin we watched the snow pile up high through the night. Young freerider Josh Gold was taking us to one of his favorite jump spots the next day, I went to bed feeling excited and ready. We had already driven 12 hours, there was nothing we could do about missing that powder day in Jackson, so we might as well make the most of being out in Tahoe and enjoy the snow that was rolling in.

Morning comes and as we’re driving to the trailhead we notice that this storm hasn’t fully cleared. The clouds are racing over the sky, the light is grey, and the wind is relentless. Not exactly ideal jumping conditions. But the weather says it will get calmer and clearer throughout the day, so we decide to start hiking anyways.

The route to the jump site is along a ridge line. The wind is whipping and we can barely see 10 feet in front of us. We continue on with the hope that it will be more protected in the bowl -  where our jump spot is - and that the weather will start to clear.

When we finally make it to our spot, the wind has died enough to jump safely, but the visibility is so grey that it’s hard to tell sky from snow. Again, we decide to start building with the hope that it will clear soon.

With little to no visibility, getting the right speed is more difficult than usual. Josh and I spend at least three jumps each landing on our faces because we can’t tell where the ground is. Luckily, the snow is soft and deep so neither of us want to stop trying.

After a little more jump shaping and some more pine boughs, we decide it’s time to start going for the double backflips.

For the first attempt of the day, I’m more nervous about under rotating so I take a good ten steps up from where we’ve been dropping in. I tuck the whole in run, pop as hard as I can, whip my hips around and stay tucked until I spot what I think is the landing. The landing goes passed my feet, just barely, and I hit the snow with my backside, pop up immediately and ski away. That’s the closest I’ve ever been to landing a double backflip!

I check the clock and it’s already 4PM; hiking through the wind, building the jump, and hoping the sun would come out has taken up our whole day. Usually I wouldn’t want to try something risky this late in the afternoon but I was so close there’s no way I’m stopping now. Luckily my filmers are amazing friends and they were all happy to stay out for one more attempt.

It’s a long hike up to the drop in again but I don’t feel tired anymore. I know I’m so close to landing it, I know all I need is one more try.

On this attempt I plan to do almost the exact same thing: hit my pop as hard as I can, stay tucked, and then just look for the landing a little earlier and kick out when I see it.

Here we go: in the air my mind is blank, I turn off my thoughts and just trying to feel my body in the air and react without thinking. My legs stretch out, I put my feet down and next thing I know I’m skiing away! 

I can’t believe it! A happy scream escapes my mouth and I can’t help but throw myself into the snow in elation.

There were so many times on this adventure that we could have given up and gone home. When we saw that our home mountain was getting an amazing powder day, when we got to the trailhead and saw that the storm hadn’t cleared, when we were on that ridge top getting hammered by wind, when we kept crashing because we couldn’t tell the landing from the sky. Any one of those would have been an acceptable excuse to throw in the towel and go home.

Our resilience didn’t come from a decision that we absolutely had to make it happen that day no matter what. It came from studying each obstacle, and deciding we could keep going just a little bit more. We knew we would keep going until it unequivocally didn’t make sense anymore. If you can adopt the mindset that at each obstacle, you’ll see if you can go a little bit farther, then you might just make it to where you want to be.

P.S. Here is a behind the scenes iphone clip for your viewing pleasure: