AJC’s USA Trip Report
Just got back from an awesome trip so thought I better do a TR. I started off just by focusing on the snowboarding, but I was enjoying writing about our trip so you’ve got all the details. Sorry if I crap on too much! And sorry for the amount of times I say ‘awesome’.
Got married on the 6th, we’ve both been riding for ages, so for our honeymoon we wanted to go to the States for a snow trip. Our original plan for our three week trip was:
LA - Big Bear - Vegas - Mammoth - Tahoe - Salt Lake - Powder Mountain - Jackson Hole - Vail - LA
As you know, it’s been a shocker season this year. Fortunately, we didn’t pre book anything and our itinerary was flexible. As you’ll see, our trip deviated somewhat from the plan above.
First stop - LAX Dollar Rental Car. I’m a certified revhead, so the car we were going to spend the next three weeks in was important! I’d heard the way to go was to book the cheapest car, then make a deal with the dude. Started off with this:
Drove out with this! Chevy Tahoe. Best $10 extra a day I’ve ever spent.
We’ve both been to LA before, so we did the tourist stuff again anyways, like Hollywood, Venice, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, Melrose, Getty Museum (wow)…In-N-Out Burger. Stayed in the Beverly Hilton, did not see Paris…or Nicky.
Next day we headed out to Big Bear. Snow Summit first. I worked at SS from 98’-03’ and I was really keen to see the place again. Back in the day, SS had the main park, and had top to bottom run park stuff. Place hadn’t changed a bit, just everyone goes to Bear Mountain now (just next door). We did heaps of stretches before we went riding (we both fck-up one year, big day riding without warming up – couldn’t walk for the next three days, lesson learnt!) and rode SS from about 10 – 4. Rode in a t-shirt for the afternoon 
Next up was Bear Mountain. Yep, it’s insane. It was school holidays and it was on for young and old. Not many queues for the park; just everyone goes at once. Regularly saw two people in the air at the same time of jumps, once I counted 5 people at once, including myself, on a long flat, then up box. It seemed to workout somehow. The park covers about 80% of the resort and goes from top to bottom.
Even the bunny hill has a park. These signs are explaining how to do jumps and rails.
We rode all day and tried to check out as much as possible. Lots of really gnarly street style rails all over the place, almost ground level to jump on to the rail etc.
This rail stair thing is on heaps of vids. About .5 seconds after this pic was taken I ran into Jen and knocked her over. Needless to say, not cool, so don’t expect too many action shots from now on
From Bear we headed down the backside of the hill (through meth ville by the look of it) and got in to Vegas 10ish. There was a massive convention (Consumer Electronics Show) in town so all of the big casinos were full up so we had to settle for the Rio which is off the strip a bit.
Next morning we did the tourist thing and cruised the casinos. I’d wrangled tickets to the CES last year (told them I was CEO of a big company etc.) so I spent four hours at the show. Hard to describe the size of the show – massive, would probably take four days to see it all. Heaps of celebrity endorsing stuff. Saw 50 cent signing posters. The line was only short and regret not waiting now.
(Fellas, lets keep the pics of girls on the DL please)
That night went to Cirque du Soleil show. Yes, it was pretty good, worth the big bucks? Probably not, not really our thing.
So then it came time to going out and my CES ticket gave us free entry to the club in Aria (arsehole door dude ripped us off $20 to skip the line, but anyways..). First time exposed to the whole ‘pay for a bottle thing’ that Deano was talking about in another thread. I can see that concept making its way to Aus…. unfortunately. I was stoked with my Captain Morgan and Pepsi mix that Jen had smuggled in for me in her bag.
We didn’t know it beforehand, but there was a product lunch for Soul Headphones that night. So there I am, chilling on the dance floor, I turn around and Outkast step out. Stoked – one of my favourite bands. They played a few songs, then Ludacris came out. Was probably the best night of the trip.
Big Boi:
Ludacris:
Next day we had to head to Mammoth which was about five hours drive. Took in another In-N-Out Burger hit.
Turns out that the Chevy Tahoe had a pretty bad shudder in the steering so I swapped it out in Vegas. Glad I did, got an even bigger car; brand spank Ford Expedition XL. Just to give you an idea of how big it was, my snowboard bag fitted in the boot without folding the seats down.
Mammoth Mountain
Wow, Mammoth Mountain is depressing without snow. Last time I was here we were digging the car out once, sometimes twice a week. To make matters worse our room sucked. Mammoth was the only place we had pre booked accomm because it was a long weekend and I wanted to stay somewhere sweet – paid pretty good coin too. When we got to the States we noticed prices everywhere were cheap as due to the crappy season, so we cancelled our booking and rebooked at the cheaper rate. This is probably why we got a sh’ty room.
Turns out reception was staffed by aussies and all I had to do was ask nicely and – bam, we got upgraded to a sweet room!
Not only was there no snow, but hardly any aussies working on the hill either (no visas this year apparently). The parks were perfectly shaped however, but the snow was concrete and to be honest…I got a bit scared… Usually I make a real effort to at least straight air every jump on the hill, but when minor mistake = hospital, I cut that away real quick. Here’s a few pics of the park:
Park was big and perfectly shaped, but the snow was concrete. I got scared.
This park has artwork on the rails and stuff.
Much higher level of respect for pipe riders after seeing the super pipe! Pic doesn’t do it justice, Mammoth has the biggest pipe I’ve ever seen. Two storey wall of ice!
The snow is supposed to be up near the sign.
This is a snow gauge…… enough said..
Oh yeah, if you’ve noticed I’m wearing the same clothes in every pic thats because I only packed a pair of pants and a couple of tshirts. Don’t worry, planned to go sick on the credit card at the end of the trip…
Utah
This is where our plan took a right turn. Our plan was to go to Tahoe from Mammoth, but the snow situation was even worse there so we headed straight to Salt Lake City. Eight hour drive…nothing to report.
Got to SLC, no change from when I was there last time, still ‘weird’. Went to a cool shop called Salty Peaks. I recommend you go there if you’re ever in town. Not only do they have a snowboard museum stuck on the roof (about 200 boards dating back to the 70s), they sell lift tickets 30% off too.
One of my favorite riders is JP Walker and I’ve got this pic blown up, signed, on my wall at home:
So I’m faced with a moral dilemma. On one hand - I know this rail is somewhere in SLC, on the other - I’m on my honeymoon and shouldn’t be dragging Jenni accross town to go look at rails.. decisions, decisions…
So anyways, here’s a pic of the rail:
(Was on the way. No, didn’t dare bring the board out)
Went to Park City the next day. Awesome mountain, everyone was really friendly. Rode all day, park was awesome. Still hadn’t snowed properly and the snow was hard. Here’s some pics:
This is where Sarah Burke fell the day before:(
<img src =“http://i1111.photobucket.com/albums/h462/aj2thec/IMG_0709.jpg” width =“800”>
The big jumps at Park City are big.
At about 3.30 the weather came in….and it started to snow. Jumped in the car about 4ish, rolled into Jackson, WY 10ish. Pretty much didn’t stop snowing the whole time we were there.
Wyoming
Wow, I’d been told Jackson Hole was awesome, and they were right. Got woken that morning up by the avi cannons. Got about 50cm overnight so there was a buzz around the mountain. Hit the hill about 10ish, rode to last lifts. JH is a very rocky hill and takes heaps of snow to fill in so I hit a bunch of rocks but didn’t really care. Was about lunchtime before we remembered to set our stance back.
This is the tram to the top. Fits about 100, swear they pack 150 in there. It only became apparent to me at the top, when looking around at all the warning signs, but when I was waiting in line at the bottom, not only did everyone have a helmet, but lots had avilungs and bags, several had both… Whoa, in over my head! And I had brought Jen up with me! And whilst she’s a really good rider, she’s not exactly confident. Anyways, we stayed away from the chutes and got down no probs at all. Here’s a few pics:
Burton Stash Park.
Halfway down one of the Stash Parks. Features are hidden in amongst the trees. Rad.
This is a moose carving rail you might recognise from pics.
Jackson is such a cool place. No problems leaving board, gloves and goggles outside when we went in for lunch. Wouldn’t dream of doing that in California, let alone Australia.
Jackson was surprisingly cheap too. Our condo, which had everything, was only $121 a night. We loved JH so much we extended our stay by two nights.
Didn’t mind having to dig the car out each morning believe it or not
The Jackson Moose went down to the Casper Miners 5-6, much to the disappointment of ‘Knuckles’.
So we thought we would take a ‘break’ from riding and go snowmobiling. Rang around town and found this guy ‘Buffalo Dave’ (was packing a .357, but that’s another story) who would take us out for the day. ‘Break’ – were we wrong! I’ve putted around on the slopes before (yep, almost as ghey as jet skiing), but riding these things in powder is super hard. Have to fully hang off it and stuff to turn etc. Never fully got it over the course of the day. Had to dig it out at least seven times. If you’ve been there, you know how exhausting that is… Was totally wrecked.
Sled ‘did a belt’.
On the tail end of our trip now and we had to slowly make our way back to LA. We had planned to go to CO, but the snow had only really hit UT and WY so we went back via SLC again.
Rode Park City again, whole mountain was open this time. Bluebird day – was awesome. Hung out on the backside of the hill mainly and got fresh tracks all day. We would have stayed the night, but the Sundance Film Festival was on and the whole town was booked out. I was looking for the Chase brothers all day but didn’t see them; might have seen Turtle but.
UT is trialling 80mph on the HWYs at the moment. That means traffic speed creeps to about 90mph, that’s getting close to 150kph! The Ford was chewing about $100 a day on gas, but…meh.
Hit up Vegas again. Did a mystery deal thingo on priceline.com and scored a top floor suite in the Mandalay Bay for $80. In one spot I could stand and watch four different TVs at the one time. Shame we were only in the room for about seven hours. Hit the casinos that night. Had a winning streak between us and multiplied our money by 10!*
Raided the outlet malls in Vegas. Last time I was in the States our dollar was worth 50c, so I was going nuts. Bought six pairs of shoes for some reason? We latter discovered that having a car to throw your shopping bags in the back of is bad when it comes to packing your bags for the airport. We were well over.
We then went from Vegas to LA, via Big Bear for two nights. Rode Bear Mountain again. Not so crowded this time. Thought I had better pull out the GoPro since I’d been lugging it around the whole time. I had a giant beer at lunch that I’m blaming for some wicked stacks I had (caught a heal edge on a rail, and speared in head first off one of the big jumps). I thought I had them on film but the cam was stuck on that 3 pics/sec setting so nothing turned out – hate that. This is the only run I got:
Finished up with a day in LA and decided to go to Universal Studios, crowds were down, but for some reason it wasn’t as fun as I remembered it….getting old?
I purposely didn’t buy any snowboarding stuff during the trip because I wanted to deck myself out at the Burton LA store. I had my jacket and pants all picked out and everything. Got to the Burton shop on Melrose and they were sold out of what I wanted, and sold out online as well? What’s with that?
Dramas at check-in with being overloaded. Got told off by Jen for pulling clothes out of our check-in and putting them on until she let us go (AIR NZ, lame).
That’s the end of my TR. All round we had an awesome trip. Wouldn’t have changed much, just bad luck about the snow I guess. Would highly recommend you get to UT and WY if you are ever in the USA. Been back a week now…so sad.
Thanks for reading!
(*)only started with $10, lame I know.
nice TR, im def hitting up Jackson when i go back.
Mates are talking about doing the whole road trip thing from LA to all of teh above.
Tempting i tells yah, we also had a brand new chevy tahoe. i effing loved the thing!
Holy crap dude I didn’t know you were freakin Legolas on a snowboard. Nice report, shame about the early conditions but at least you got some good snow.
Great TR. We have had the same prob in the US with crap snow two seasons ago. Got Vail good and then went to Copper which was like concrete. Saw a kiwi guy break his pelvis. Not cool at all. I love their trucks and SUVs over there. Wish we had the big tanks here except the fuel bills would be obscene.
Sick TR man, looks like you had a rad time. US is defs on my list of places to ride! 
Great TR. We have had the same prob in the US with crap snow two seasons ago. Got Vail good and then went to Copper which was like concrete. Saw a kiwi guy break his pelvis. Not cool at all. I love their trucks and SUVs over there. Wish we had the big tanks here except the fuel bills would be obscene.
I actually looked into getting a Chevy Silverado over here. Around $100,000-$120,000 after purchase, shipping, conversion and compliance.
Damnit…
Awesome TR!!
Awesome stuff, AJ. About to step out so I had to skim through it. Looking forward to reading it in detail when I get back. Great stuff! 
Cool TR AJ! Will we be seeing you again at Falls this year? 
Thanks for the comments. Was such a great trip. Almost seemed as if the crappy weather was during the travel days, and the sun came out every time we were riding!
Cool TR AJ!
Only every weekend!