HB's Day Off- Snow Day in LA.

So when you think of LA, you usually don't think snow. You definitely don't think powder paradise. The snow down here is usually crappy- man-made, groomed, a pretty synthetic experience all around.

But there's one place here that goes off when we do get snow, and it's the closest mountain to LA. This, folks, is Mt. Baldy, SoCal's greatest ski area when it snows. And after a bunch of recent storms that cleared out yesterday, today promised to be a very very fun day.

Baldy is no frills- rickety old double chairs, precious little grooming, a few tweaker employees running things on a shoestring budget. It also has by far the best steeps and trees in the region. A little photo essay if I may.

Looking up the lower mountain from the parking lot- these runs are only open in good snow years, and this is an excellent snow year.


My tracks down this ridge, which I had to myself all morning.


Picking a line at the top of my ridge. Call it Bruin's Run.


The official Baldy snow depth gauge.


My doppelganger is so happy he's waving shaka.


This wave thingy runs halfway down one of the runs- surfers can practice off-the-lips for hundreds of yards.


Great view coming up one of the chairs.


Again, this place is 45 minutes from downtown LA, 1 hour from the Westside.


One last run on the day- getting ready to drop into a little chute that runs down to the parking lot.


View of 10,064' Mt. San Antonio before dropping in. An hour after this picture was taken, I was opening my first Mardi Gras beer back in Brentwood.


Great great day, now looking forward to a two week vacation at home in Hawaii where I'm gonna surf my brains out. For this intern, life is temporarily very very good.

Happy Mardi Gras everyone.

Thanks Noy. I've had the same setup for years, haven't felt the need to change my board (especially during med school in New Orleans)- Burton Balance 157.5, which I find takes me where I need to go.

And I don't really mind riding alone- definitely not as good as sharing the day with like-minded riders, but honestly it's so hard to find people to ride with down here that usually I have more fun by myself. Get to do a little meditating and soul cleansing or whatever. Though it's sketchy sometimes to go disappear in the trees without someone with me to help out if I go Bono-style.

I've seen the pix of the split boards, and I would love to get my hands on one and go exploring. It's hard to get up to San Antonio in the winter I hear, no easy approaches, but the highest peak down here, 11,499' San Gorgonio, definitely lends itself to that kind of thing. Gonna try and hike it at some point this spring.

San G as seen from a nearby ski resort-

I've always wanted to get on a bike, looks fun as hell.

I once had a bat$hit insane neighbor that had a Ninja- with a tank of nitrous opposite the exhaust. Scary scary thing.

He ate it once at about 50 MPH around a turn and was lucky to live- huge road rash, multiple broken bones, good thing he had his helmet on.

No riding for me after seeing the aftermath of that. That, and having two DAI pt's on my first SICU rotation as an MS4 who had eaten $hit off their bikes.

I'll keep my thrill-seeking to dodging trees on double blacks, getting in barrels, and jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.