Alan Mt Hood 2011 summersnowskatepartytime

July 28th 2011 about 6pm I packed up cherries, blueberries, potatoes, watermelon, corn, and cantaloupe as usual, everything into the crimson minivan, folded up the tent canopy tops as usual, but this time instead of simply going back to the farm and unloading to prepare for another long day of produce monotony, I ripped my shoes off, backflipped off the minivan, and turned on Young Jeezy because I was going to Mt. Hood tomorrow!

Four days after my last day of work, I was snowskating on the deepest summer snow base that Mt. Hood had seen in years. I rode about eight days between High Cascade, Windells and the public park, all while camped in the grimiest garbage-filled camp strip I had ever seen, a stark contrast to the beautiful Trillium lake just a quarter mile away. The snowskating was good on mountain, and surprisingly, was great off the moutain as well. Windells has a dryland snowskate park down in the valley so some evenings were spent on the boxes with some stoked campers, as well as hitting a giant dryland jump into an airbag. Word of the snowskate on the jump got around and I became a bit of a spectacle one day until it ended badly after about 5 hits when I slipped trying to wind up, caught my shoulder on the end of the lip and ragdoll flipped into space. Luckily I only bled a bit and got back to riding again the next day to stack a little more footy for the Mr. Skrilla beat edit, harvested straight from the dungeons of swamp rap.

The final day of riding, Bjorn and I hosted a demo at High Cascade for campers to try snowskating. Some of them loved it and one kid rode an Ambition all the way down the mountain (which is a good mile run) at the end of the day. Pictures from the demo and Trillium Lake

Following the two weeks at Mt. Hood, I travelled up the Oregon and Washington coast, into Canada, and then home a month after I had left, but not before getting another day of snowskating in, this time at Glacier National Park. Glacier's mountains are majestic and beautiful and there was plenty of snow left for late august. I found a log, stuck it in a hole with some rocks for support and had an instant polejam. It was surreal to be sessioning under a waterfall surrounded by green plants and giant peaks, then riding the same snowfield that a mountain goat was relaxing on.

All photos by Kaitlin Moen and Alan Gerlach. Thanks to Bjorn RG, Corey and Preston at High Cascade

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