Month: March 2025

Backwoods boarding 2025

Here’s a little video of some backwoods boarding in NH mostly in February and early March 2025. We got more snow than normal and actually got enough about a foot or so settled to finally ride some slopes by my parents house that I always wanted to.

So the east coast was doing pretty good till mid February then it didn’t do much for a while and then came the March meltdown.

Like if you look at the current thumbnail of the video below you’ll see a treed slope that I cleared a bit to ride and I was pretty much thinking it would never snow enough to cover all the rocks on that slope. It’s mostly beech trees and lots of rocks.

I hit a few little ones on the bottom of that run at 00:34. Rocks buried under snow can be a problem because if you hit one it can throw you off balance and if there are trees around then that’s no good.

I fractured my arm a long time ago doing backwoods boarding like that. I hit a sharp rock hidden under the snow. It pitched me off balance and I was near a pile of stumps and brush and it was either go into the hawthorne tree and rubble or do a hand plant to stop so I put my arm down and then kapow it was fractured at my wrist and elbow. Wore a cast for a long time and that elbow still bugs me sometimes.

We also say in judo and bjj “an extended arm is a broken arm”. It’s true in snowboarding too. Don’t fall on an extended arm.

Try to know what’s under the snow. Know there are things under the snow and be light on your feet and don’t edge too hard if you know there are rocks under there.

There’s another clip of that beeches run at 2:03.

I finally got to jump off the ledge.

See the ledge jump at 00:45.

I always wanted to do this, so if you look at the pic above you can see the back of this ledge which is shaped like a near perfect takeoff and I didn’t have to do any work on it except pack the pow down with snowshoes. Then there’s a little gap and then another ledge to the driveway.

I knew if we got the snow you could build a landing since the snow gets plowed near there. So I did a bit. It was a little short and steep though. Too much speed and you land flat in the driveway. Too little and you land flat in the gap.

The run in was a little sketchy too as there are stumps and bushes but I snowshoed a run in and we gave it go. I didn’t die and got the speed about right on the 2nd try.

Logs are fun

Logs and wood features are like so underused in terrain parks. If you ask me terrain parks nowadays are so cookie cutter and almost every ski area has their boxes and rails, mimicking urban skateparks. I’ve been working in terrain parks for the last 4 years and sometimes I hit those boxes and rails, but they’re not my thing. Wood looks way cooler, it’s more natural and it’s fun.

There are some wood parks though. Some cool wood parks are Burton’s The Stash parks which are located at a few mountains around the world including Jackson Hole and Killington, VT has a cool one and then the wood jumps they made at Baldface NST.

Hiking

Hiking has always been a part of snowboarding for me. Whether it was hiking into the upper bowl of AZ snowbowl, off the Bluebird lift at Brundage towards Hidden Valley and Sargents, early season, late season, Tuckerman’s, hiking a jump to work on a trick, or backwoods boarding like this.

Even at the ski area I’ll hike. Sometimes it’s too stay warm and/or to work on a trick. I like the exercise.

The doors I made for my step van

Man these doors have been a lot of work. I made this video probably close to a couple years ago and I have since updated these doors with more rivets, new hinges, a window, plywood interior and insulation.

So originally these vans have a roll up door which I took down and replaced with some doors I made from the cargo shelves that these vans come with. And lots of rivets. Like over 100 per door, plus a few screws and bolts.

The shelves I used from my step van to make doors

Originally I thought of cutting up the roll up door and turning them into swing doors but decided not to. It wasn’t in great shape and was heavy as hell.

I wouldn’t do it this way again as it took a lot of time and they are flawed but I’ve definitely learned something along the way.

Recently I replaced the rusty steel hinges with aluminum. I went from 2 per door to 4 per door. The aluminum hinges were like $30 a piece so kinda expensive.

In this pick you can see only 3 aluminum hinges and the rusty hinges still on the door but they are gone now.

Step van door exterior replacing the rusty hinges.

So I left the old hinges on while I added the new ones which means I didn’t have to take the door down which is a huge pain. Not fun. Well easier to take down than put it back up.

I used some bike inner tubes to weather strip the outside and under the doors which worked great. I riveted it to the outsides and stapled underneath. But I couldn’t use it above as the space was smaller or in the center for the same reason so I used some commercial stuff instead.

I was thinking 2 hinges was probably not enough and I couldn’t put a third hinge in the middle since the lights were there and I saw some step vans had 4 hinges per door so that’s what I did. Two of those steel hinges were probably better than two of those aluminum hinges though since they were longer and had more surface area, but they are steel and rust.

Lots of work went into these doors. I’ll see how they’ll hold up overtime.

Hanging the doors was super hard and they are still not aligned perfectly but best I could do. Too tight where they come together on the top when you close them.

The sides of the doors are strong as they are made with folded aluminum that was on the edges of the shelves.

In this pic you can see a bit of the door on the interior. There is a deadbolt on the top and bottom. I haven’t figured out how to do one in the middle yet. I don’t need a handle outside. I prefer it without yet another lock there would be good yet not sure how to do it since the door isn’t solid.

Van door interior in April 2024