First Time Splitboarding

Last weekend I finally managed to get out on my splitboard. The weather here has warmed up a lot since the beginning of January, and we had a bit of a dry spell snow wise. But last weekend I was determined to at least get out and try skinning, and if I could... find something to ride down.

I went out to the Lockett Meadow road, and there was still enough snow to at least go up a bit. I put together my pack and threw my skins on, and started up following this snowmobile track. Used that to get up past the locked gate, and then just went up the road itself. It took me about 5 minutes for my foot to start killing. I don't know whether it is just that the boots are new, or the new bindings, or the boots are just plain too small (maybe too narrow). Anyway... I stopped, sat on a rock and pulled them off, tried to loosen some of the laces a bit on the inside and out. After putting them back on it seemed a little bit better.

Back onto my skis and onward up the road. When I got to the first sharp right turn, I noticed a little bit of a problem... there was no longer snow on the road up there. This caused a dilemma... I was trying to get to Lockett Meadow which was W-SW of me, and the dirt road goes around this hill North then West then South... so the shortest path as the crow flies would be straight over the mountain. And right where I was, there was a gully that had good snow right in that direction. So I decided to try to make my way up this.


Was pretty easy going at first, but then I had to work my way around a fallen tree... my first kick-turn (I think). As I got higher up the gully, it got steeper, so I had to start doing switchbacks instead of just going straight up. Then I got a little too aggressive with even the switchbacks, and managed to fall backwards a couple times, losing traction with my skins. After managing to extract myself from the snow a few times, and a lot of work... I got to a point where it seemed like I couldn't keep skinning... just got frustrated and decided to post hole up a bit. Got up to where it started to level off, and put my skis back on.

Now I was on top of this knoll kinda thing to the south of the mountain I was trying to get over, and to the north of this bigger mountain I wanted to skirt. But looking that direction, everything was melted and thickly forested. I went down and around a little to the northeast, but same deal there... didn't look promising for getting down that way... and I was probably too tired to continue all the way to the meadow anyway.

So, I said to hell with it, and un-split my board. I still haven't rigged a nice way to hold my poles (I got 2 piece telescopers when I probably should've gotten the 3 piece ones). So I just rode down holding them in both hands like a paddle. It was actually pretty fun going down the little gully, even though it wasn't terribly long vertically. Made a few jumping turns and busted through some branches, then back over that fallen tree, and I was back to the bottom of the gully and out onto the road. I managed to carry speed pretty well and rode just about all the way down to the gate. I was already pretty beat, so I just packed up and headed home. I think I was out about 1:40 total... which is not very long.

When I got home I fired up Google Earth to see how far I had gone... and it was a whopping .5 miles...haha. Took about 1:20-1:30 skinning up those .5 miles, and maybe 10 minutes riding back down :). Overall it was pretty fun, and I'm looking forward to going again, but I'm not sure when I'll have time really.

It's New!

Well, I'm starting another blog... and just like my triathlon training log, I think this will probably be of no interest to anyone other than myself. Unlike that blog, I'm going to try to actually write in this one, rather than just list off exercise stuff I did / plan to do, etc.

Since this is the first post of this "brand new world" (that a billion other people do already)... I guess I'll start by talking about what is going on in my life (probably should explain the title I suppose).

I am a 32 year old divorced dad. My son is nearly 5, and his favorite activity seems to be "try to drive daddy insane". I'm a software engineer and I work from home... which is a pretty good job and situation (especially in this economy), however, I still seem to be miserable about it all the time (yeah, yeah... I'm a baby). I have a lot of other interests, and I want to try different things for work, but right now I'm not financially able to do that.

See, I'm one of those dummies who bought a house because they gave me the loan for it, rather than figuring out what I could really afford. At the time I had reasons for buying the house (any house really)... but in hindsight it was probably the worst decision I've ever made (and hopefully ever will). I was trying to take steps to save my marriage, but unbeknownst to me there was apparently "nothing left to save".

I am now in terrible physical shape, even though I've been training/exercising a lot more often the last couple years. I started training for and running triathlons in hopes that it would force me to get into shape, but so far I have managed to do them without really getting that much better. I'm 6'0" and hover around 215-220lbs... when I really should be around 190. This year I am starting earlier in my training / racing... and I'm going to up the frequency a lot... hopefully I will see some improvement. Oh, and after doing them, I found them to be fun in and of themselves (rather than just training goals)... so I'm going to try to see if I can manage to do an Ironman at the end of a 3 year plan. The Ironman is just one of those accomplishments I've always thought was incredible, so I'm going to give it a shot.

So, lets see... it's been a bit over 3 years now since I got into this house and found out my marriage was done. For the first 2 years plus, I more or less hid from the world and my problems by spending all of my time in an online video game. I have no problem with video games, in fact writing them is something I toy around with, trying to learn. But, I did come to realize that that was not the healthiest way to go through life. So, for the last 8 months -ish, I've been trying to recreate my life, since I don't really know what it is anymore (hence the title). There has to be more than work / take care of kid, eat, sleep, repeat.

Well, I guess that's about it for now. I'm going to post pretty much whatever I feel like... stuff I did, things I'm thinking about doing... philosophy/politics/whatever I think of.