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December 21, 2003

Split Negatives

Better late than never. Last wednesday, my roommate Brandon and I borrowed some split boards from a friend who works at another snowboard shop. A split board is a snowboard that splits apart to become two skis in a randonee or tele setup. You put skins on the bottom of those skis and bam! you can skin up mountains in deep powder. Brandon and I had never done the negatives so were a little unsure of where to go. To get there, you go to the top of the June Mountain Resort and drop out of bounds behind lift J7. At this point we ended up farther right than we were supposed to. This brought us down into a valley we had to skin out of just to get back to the path we were supposed to be on. In the end, it took us over 4 hours to skin to the very top of the Negatives which are higher than Mammoth Mountain at over 11,000'. Once there, we were both able to choose our own completely non-tracked chute. Neither of us crossed a single other track in our descent. Once down, we had to re-split the boards and skin back up to June and the bottom of J7. It was a very long day. We left at 8:30 and got back at 4. We were actually worried we might not get back in time for the last lift, but we did. Neither of us had skinned much, so we were both wiped.

I've seen the light though. A split board is such an ideal setup for trying to get to back country riding destinations. We were able to move so much faster. I can't imagine how long it would have taken if we had had to walk. The snow was pretty deep, if we were walking we would have been post-holing at least 2-3' each step. Now I just need a split board.

Posted by wonko at December 21, 2003 07:14 AM

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