“Jeremy and Mia bundle up in their sleeping bags while preparing their favorite ramen recipe on the last night of the trip.” Photo: Cody Mathison WATCH THEM GROW and let them go. The thought wakes me from a deep sleep: “I am losing my main riding partner to college next fall.” The toughest kind of riding partner to find. The one whose stoke is not tied to conditions and who embraces less than optimal love of sport days as opportunities to progress. Yester-day we celebrated her end of adolescence with a dawn to dusk splitboard bender. It started with a high peak that appeared out of nowhere on our way to another line. The snow-covered pyra-mid seemed out of place in the rock laden Sierra. Halfway up, Mia took the lead over the steep convex roll to the summit. She dropped first, charging over the blind roll with speed and confi-dence. I took the left side of the Pyramid and mirrored her line. Two perfect tracks side by side down a fairy tale peak. It was only a warmup for the evening encore: across the way a winding, 1,800-foot pinner couloir. We had been looking at it since the first day of our trip, wondering if it connected to the top. The morning’s vantage point confirmed it does. Tucked behind a rock wall, our last safe spot before entering the chute, Mia and I get into full send mode. Climbing up chutes is like staring into the barrel of a shotgun for two hours—any snow or rock fall will blow you off your feet and to the bottom of the mountain. We trade leads up the couloir in a steady, continu-ous push. Three hours later we drop into the top part together, snaking our way through the granite hallway in golden light. The line steepens halfway down, and I take the lead to test the snow. I pull up into a small nook out of harm’s way and call over the radio: “The snow is perfect, sluff is minimal, drain it!” With a setting sun, she comes into view railing turns past me and out of view. Few people I know could charge a line in snow like this with as much power and grace—a testament to all those less than optimal resort days. We embrace at the bottom. The sky is glowing and so are we. Together we wind through banks, waves, and rolls back to camp in the twilight of the day, and the twilight of her childhood. She has earned her Shralpinist badge. It is now her time to break trail and lead. SIERRA NEVADA 061
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 21.3: Page 61
