FLY BY 5QLTB4BSFPFQBA Words Ben Shanks Kindlon THE PLACES YOU KNEW as a child aren’t often as big as you remembered them. Whether it’s the backyard pool where you first learned to swim or that hill you used to bomb on your skate-board, the scene is usually smaller than the version that lives in your head. But that hasn’t been the case in my return to Stowe Mountain Resort, VT. Rolling up the resort’s service road in the shotgun seat of Ralph Kucharek’s trusty gray Toyota Tacoma, I decided to keep my expectations in check. I thought back to the couple of times I was lucky enough to get this far north as a grom. Stowe is roughly 35 miles east of Burlington, which is nearly five hours by car from where I grew up in Albany, NY. That meant weekend trips were out of the question, and I only got to ride here a total of four days during two choice vacations. At the time, it rocked my world. The memory that sticks out most is my brother and I braving the bit-ing cold on a painstakingly slow chairlift. My fingers were never quite the same, but that freezing ride was worth it because it led us to endless lines with untouched powder throughout sustained glades of quality, all things that are much harder to find further south in the Green Mountain State. But I’ve been to a lot of amazing places since then: Mt. Baker, WA, Whistler-Blackcomb, BC, Jackson Hole, WY, and more. I wondered if Stowe would still hold a candle to my memory of it, or if it might pale in com-parison given my experience in grander locales. We pull into the parking lot and link with Ralph’s friends, a group of locals who frequent Stowe. As we set off it’s clear these dudes know the mountain better than the backs of their mitts. The first thing I notice is how fast they ride. Unlike the regulars you’ll find at other Vermont ski areas like Mt. Snow or Sugarbush, park laps are not this crew’s primary focus. With finely sharpened edges and slightly setback stances, these Stowe locals remind me much more of the riders I’ve met out west. Their favorite trick is turning and right now they’ve only got one thing on their mind: scoring some sweet, untouched snow. Fortunately for me, they know just where to find it. We cut off one of the cat tracks and into the trees at an un-marked opening in the woods. In single file we traverse over rocks and roots for what feels like 10 minutes straight. Without a solid understanding of the mountain, it would be extremely easy to get lost here. I think back to my brother and I following tracks in and out of the woods without such an understanding and feel grateful that our childhood memories from Stowe are positive ones. After traversing, we drop into a zone known as Stoneface. The trees are tight enough to keep things technical, sparse enough to open things up in a few spots. Ralph points it through a path “Over the last few years, I’ve enjoyed getting to know Lukas Huffman while riding together at Stowe, VT. His passion for snowboarding seems to be re-ignited after moving back to Vermont from New York City. It’s rad to see him stoked at Stowe again, especially after all the world-class locations he has been to and all the amazing things he has accomplished in his professional career. Here, he found this natural cross-court over a fallen birch at the top of a zone at Stowe I call ‘The Caves.’” Photo: Nathanael Asaro with little wiggle room before digging into a heelside turn that sends him directly into the white room. Nathanael Asaro, who spends a lot of time behind the lens when he’s with these rid-ers, is without his camera pack today. He hits a zippy little drop, turn, drop on a few 5-to-10-foot ledges. Everyone is scoring, and everyone is stoked. I follow the group to the end of Stoneface, which eventually leads us to a small creek that we cross on foot, then a short hike back up to the parking lot. To think that what we just rode is only one small part of Stowe puts things into an entirely new perspective for me. Despite having spent most of the past decade snowboarding massive mountains along the alluring west coast, I’m genuinely blown away by the terrain in this part of northern Vermont. Truthfully, it’s even bigger than I remembered. 030 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 22.1: Page 30
