110 T
OCTOBER. Right about now, something in the
Pacific is changing. Cold air comes swirling down
from Alaska as the jet stream dips south. The
storm door opens, and it begins to rain.
The sign of a good winter is how many sets of
bearings you go through. During a good winter, you
give up on buying new ones because it's raining so
damn much. But every cloud has a silver lining and
where there's rain there's snow. Lots of snow.
Sometime this month, the first snows are going to
fall. Maybe only a few inches at higher elevations,
or maybe it'll start dumping down to 4000 feet.
Whatever the case, you'll be taking the first powder
turns of the season very soon. With that in mind,
here's some ice-cold shots to the face to get you
stoked for what lies ahead.
cold snap
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:
Every year Lake Tahoe gets at least one
storm that just won't quit. This particular
storm dumped 9 feet from a Wednesday to a
Friday. That weekend several Bay Area skiers suf-
focated to death in tree wells. Fortunately, no one was
dumb enough to go into the backcountry.
Photo by Dom Callan.
Tex Davenport lays down on the job with this speed-
sloughing powder blaster on White Wolf in Tahoe.
Photo by Aaron Sedway.
Jason Brown takes a leap of faith off Olympic Lady at Squaw
and is hoping for a fluffy landing with no sharp rocks lurking
beneath the surface.
Photo by Aaron Sedway
Sadly, truth is most years it doesn't dump all that often.
Odds are your local hill won't get as much powder as you
want. This isn't a problem if you're either a globe-trotting
mega-pro or a very rich snow hound. You'd just book a
week of hell-boarding in British Columbia. Jason Brown.
reaps the rewards at Selkirk Tangiers.
Photo by Sean Sullivan.