BoardZ Home - Storm Trooper Index

Storm Trooper RV

Storm Trooper Surf Snow Expedition December 98

Surfing Image Snowboarding Image

Dec 13 1998

Day 0 - We all had to get our urgent work and Christmas preparations done before going to where there are no phones for a couple of days; so our 5 day trip with 1 day notice had to become a 4 day trip with 2 days planning.
Day 1 - We packed up our stuff and piled into the RV. Don't forget camera, laptop, computer accessories, clothes, surfing stuff, snowboarding gear, ect. Opps, forgot sleeping bag; no problem the RV is nice and warm. After some quick grocery shopping at a super market on the south shore, we found a water source near the road. Our hose was frozen so we manually poured 15 or 20 gallons into the RV's water tank 1 gallon at a time. All ready to go; except for the drain value was open. The 2 gallons of tap water in jugs and that gallon of drinking water we picked up at the grocer became key items for the next day and a half. It would have been nice to fill up the other 2 jugs as Adam had suggested; but we made it through by washing our dishes with boiled snow water.

We found our desired destination but first had to drive a few miles down the pass to purchase our snow permit to park in our prime spot where we can hike to some sweet terrain. We parked, leveled the RV, and threw our snowboard cloths on for an evening ride as the December sun set. A beautiful pink alpineglow sunset it was.

The purpose was to have fun and to recon the snow and terrain for the next days riding. The coverage was still early season and the snow was smooth but had a bit of a dust on crust texture where the wind had blow the new snow away. Pizza for dinner with milk shakes smoothies for dessert, then a cozy night sleep in the heated RV.

Day 2 - Here we park at over 8 thousand feet in the Sierra Nevada near Kirkwood. Rise and shine with the sun and have Adams famous breakfast smoothy. Then we dressed ourselves in snowboarding clothes as James jumped out side to ride his snowboard on the best jib he could find in the area.

We packed our backcountry safety gear and necessary camera equipment. Remember some water and to apply sunscreen. OK, all set and ready for Adam and I to hike up and along the ridge in our clicker snowshoes. James took the Dodge around the corner with the heavy equipment to get into position previously scoped out.

Snowboarding Image

The first drop had great potential but the wind was blowing so hard at the top that our boy could not get speed enough to get his grab.

We worked our way down to and beyond the road where we bagged some nice shots. The plan was to keep working down the fall line but the territory did not look as good as we thought it might. So we hiked back out to the road and decided to pack it in for lunch.

PM
The afternoon was still clear, but the NE winds were picking up. We found a protected area to get some pictures with our still photographer James Cole. We then hiked up higher to cover more territory. We found a little bowl where we built a hit and surfed the left hand windlip. It had already been windy, but as we started to launch our hit the wind really started to howl and cut our afternoon session short.

Snowboarding Image

We finished the day with a session of peeps hide and seek. What good is safety equipment if you can't use it properly? I was the newest to the equipment and consequently was the slowest. They finally let me come in from the evening cold when I found the backpack with the peeps in it in 3 minutes.
Stir fry and the ever-present smoothie milk shake for dinner. Living the boarding life style in style.
Day 3 - Snowboard in the morning, drive to the coast, and surf the in the afternoon. The plan was to hike to a stash we had seen on our hike the day before. The sun was just hitting the high altitude peaks as we headed up the mountain. The east wind was still there but had eased enough to make the morning temperatures bearable plus our hike warmed us up quickly. We set up and worked the rays of sun on some naturally undulating snow-scapes.

Snowboarding Image

The natural wind-lip-dip to powder field had a lot of potential but we could not get enough speed to make it worthy. Our stunt boy Adam had a couple of scares. His first adventure involved a picturesque powder spine that he hit with too much speed for how thin the soft snow was; he disappeared down a 25 foot cliff to flat in a cloud of powder. Booth James and myself yelled "You alright?". Adam yelled back "Yea, OK!". The second was just a warning scare as he took a 20 footer to a landing that could have been steeper. He said the landing shock was almost the max for his still healing leg. He had a double femur break last spring up in Alaska. I took a cliff drop for the camera and we packed up and rode down to the RV. Working as a team we had the rig ready to go in 40 minutes. Adam drove the technical slightly curvy Highway 88 very well, but heck it is a large RV towing a Dodge pickup and we had to drive safely. The RV speed, the stop to wash the dirty vehicles, traffic jams, and a stop at Oneill Surf Shop in Santa Cruz to get needed rubber accessories all took up our limited December daylight. We left our temporary mountain home at 9:40am and we were paddling out in Santa Cruz at around 3:40pm.
The surf was chest to a couple of feet over head and was picking up. We quickly choose to surf a not so perfect point/reef break that was not very crowded and our cameraman could get a fair angle of. We scratched our under gunned boards in to a few fun ones as the sun set on our snow surf day. We camped parked in a Santa Cruz neighborhood so we could wake early and surf locally.
Day 4 - The surf continued to build through the night so we took the Dodge for a little drive around the area looking for a break that could handle the high tide and the abundant swell. We also wanted uncrowded surf that had some angle of front lighting so our documentary photos might work as editorial images as well. By the time the sun was in it's position we had found a sandbar with waist to head high surf near 1st jetty at the harbor. The dredge was dredging and the out flow was spilling out down the beach. No problem because our sandbar had upstream green water. That was the case until the little bulldozer came over and pushed the outflow tube up the beach to where we were surfing and ended our fun session.

Surfing Image

No worries because we had already had a good time and bagged some images for our story. Back to the RV in the Dodge and packed up for the trip back home. The trip up the hill took 8 hours. The holiday traffic was bad and we stopped to arrange for a new product for sponsorship deal with Fast Track; a scooter crossed with a snowmobile. Speaking of sponsors; here is a list of the sponsors that make the Storm Trooper RV possible.

Storm Trooper Sponsos

MLY snowboards www.MLY.com
SHIMANO boots and bindings www.SHIMANO.com
FILA outerwear www.FILA.com
SMITH eyewear www.smithsport.com
FREESTYLE watches www.freestyle.com
BOERI helmets www.BOERIusa.com
Points North Heli-Adventure www.alaskaheliski.com
DaKINE packs/gloves www.DaKINE.com
SQUAW VALLEY usa www.SQUAW.com
SWIX wax www.SWIX.com
WIGWAM socks www.WIGWAM.com
Red I Productions www.RediProductions.com
Resorts Sports Network www.RSN.com

Adam is the man with the plan. Others have promised and failed. He has promised and already been delivering timely uploads to the Storm Trooper web site on RSN:
www.rsn.com/cams/trooper/
Check it out regularly!

story and photos by Will Church

BoardZ Home - Storm Trooper Index

URL: http://www.boardz.com/