Photos by: Brooks Fritz

With rain in So Cal  it generally means no skating unless your indoors and since we really don’t have much indoor stuff around here in Southern California means no skating for a few days I guess. So what to do? Go fish? Nah, that shit is for old people. Hang out in the house? Now way! I do that way too much already taking care of my two kids. Just sit around and drink? Booooring! So what to do? Go snowboard I guess. Yeah, you might be too cool or think it’s lame but this snowboard stuff if a hell of a lot of fun. Yeah, it isn’t free but every once in a while it’s great for the soul. At least it is to me. I don’t know any other sport that is as close to skating that can be learned in one day. No you wont be a master in one day or even five days but you definitely will be shredding the hill top to bottom your first day. Think about it. Do you see families going on vacation to learn how to skate.? But with the snowboarding people do that all the time. I think my friend Richard said it best. Snowboarding is like golf. It’s kind of annoying and painful to watch but the actual partaking in the activity is a blast! If not the best!

So with over 6ft of snow puking down and pounding are local mountains I decided to drive up to Bear Mtn in the San Bernardino national forest and get my shred on. Sorry for the lack of action shots. It’s kinda hard to set up a pow turn on the self timer.

Inland Empire has mountains

Are there pools in those hills Salba?

Buggy Life

Look. That’s real snow.

Looking good

As soon as I got up to the hill it was socked in with clouds. The moutain was pretty empty all day. Maybe it was because of the flat light. What’s flat light? It’s what it sounds like. Light that is flat. Makes it hard to see anything. That’s one thing you never hear someone complaining about while skating. “Damn this mini ramp is hard to grind with all this flat light”

Art of filler you decide.

Powder in So cal? Believe it!

Ok, so this is what it’s all about. It’s not about the 80ft kickers, the rails or even the half pipe. It’s about the champagne cherry cherry pow pow! I’m joking. Actually, i’m not. Powder is the shit. If you have never rode one of these things or rode powder at all just picture it like this: Bombing hills with your friends at top speeds in complete control doing 40 ft ollies with out even 2nd guessing and then doing turns like your Rick Kane at the 89′ Pipe masters .

Those trees were some good riding. 4 0r 5 days after the big dump and there was still fresh tracks. In Big Bear! You just had to work for it.

The keystone waterfall is in the San Bernardino Mountains too!

I had a blast. But after riding a half day solo I was ready to split. On my way home though I stopped by the infamous Pala pool to see what kinda shape it was in.

Yup, it’s still there.

But it will never be ridden again

I even made it home for the sunset. Have a good week. Looks like we might be getting more snow this week brodunkles!