Snowboarding at Alyeska lets the imagination flow

Kris Weldon
Turnagain Times Correspondent

Good morning skiers and riders, the current time is 7:45 a.m. and this is your Morning Snow report.

This is a welcomed phrase among the snow-enjoying community. I called the snow phone the other day and was pleasantly surprised at the cuteness of the voice on the other end. Whitney, I believe, good way to get the riding day started.

With the season getting off to a little bit of a slow start I can't help but to keep looking ahead to what is to come. Anything that I can slide down right now sounds like enough though and that's the biggest part of it, but to look toward the future in the resort world puts a big smile on my face.

I started snowboarding about six years ago; it was a rocky start like anything, but I do remember kind of figuring out how to do things during that first session. The worst part was definitely the morning after. Not being able to walk upright because you had to pick yourself up about a hundred times, and whenever you move your neck it feels like it might fall off from trying to keep your attention down the hill to avoid an inevitable catastrophe.

However funny it was for my friends, it was definitely rough.

So the first thing that I have to say to people that are at that stage is that I am sorry because I will laugh when you are sore in the morning, but just remember that after that first time, things get better!

Now on to the more advanced crowd.

This year there is some new terrain over on the North Face that is waiting to get shredded.

A few questions come to mine with that. How steep? And how often will it open? Hopefully when they were plotting it out they took those into consideration, there is nothing like awesome pow on a steep slope on the snowboard, it makes life feel good.

Also, Alyeska dug a Superpipe this year, that's really exciting! Being from Mt. Hood, Ore., where when spring riding hits the parks spring up all over the mountain with multiple superpipes.

There were a lot of things that I heard about the resort not having a park, that worried me, but then I realized that I had come to Alaska. If I wanted a baby mountain and a park I should have stayed home like all the other park rats.

So the mindset changes, watching all these snowboarding movies with big lines most of which were located in Alaska, New Zealand and Europe, not Canada… just because.

Taking all of them into consideration and looking at the terrain that Alyeska offers, it just showed me that I need to let my imagination take over.

Turning the wind lips into a table top and the trees into rails and then there is cliff dropping which puts any 80-foot table on Mt. Hood to shame because the risk of rag-dolling for the duration of your line and not knowing which way is up at the end of it all.

Good times though.

So, anyway, you just go load up the ipod and do your thing. Whatever stage you are at, the mountain is ready to take care of you! I'll be honest, I miss home right now but with what is to come I think I will survive.

Go Ride people. Game on!