Leading up to the Splitfest Tyler and I were thinking we’d have a nice leisurely week getting ready. But again, true to form we cut it down to the wire. Our new boards for splitting didn’t show up until Thursday night, some stainless parts we were waiting for were finally ready Friday morning, and our new straps arrived in Issaquah at 1:00 pm Friday afternoon. We were mounting t-nuts at 5:00 pm Friday.
At 7:45 pm we were finally ready to go. We got on the road and made it up to Mt. Baker around 11:45. We met a couple of people who were still up and brought a split system in to show them how it all worked. After talking bindings until 1:30 am we finally crashed.
We were up Saturday morning around 7:30 ate some breakfast and found a group to tour with. Our crew, the biggest splitter group I’ve ever seen, headed out to Mazama bowl. John and Fritz served as our local guides showing us the goods.
The tour up hurt a bit from my lack of sleep, but I started to feel better after a few white room turns on the first lap. I barely got my camera out in time to snap this sequence of Tyler slashing his way down the first run.
The second lap had a perfect back drop of Mt. Baker waiting for toe side slash.
Cruising up for the third lap.
The crew from left to right: Fritz, John, Alex, Aaron, Wade, and Tyler
The third lap was by far my favorite. We skinned over what I think was Mazama Peak and encountered a cool little 5-6 ft cornice that most of us attacked in tour mode (photo from Alex).
Tyler, Wade and I went for a nice little chute that we had spotted on our lap. Tyler got the honors of dropping first. He ski-cut the top and released a 6 inch wind slab that washed down the chute and then followed it down. (photo from John Cocci)
This past weekend at Baker was Karakoram’s first public demo of the Split30 Splitboard System. We received a lot of good feedback from those that checked out the system. Thank you to everyone who took the time to tinker with the gear and give us feedback; your input is very important to Karakoram’s success. This was an incredible weekend getting to meet and tour with so many passionate splitboarders. Tyler and I had so much fun we’re planning on attending the Kalifornia Split Party April 16-18.
