The Lonliest Highway in America

Highway 50 is supposed to be the Lonliest Highway in America, but I would say that Highway 6 in Nevada puts it to shame. The drive from Mammoth, CA to Ely, NV is a long and quiet one. We went an hour-plus without seeing a soul. When a car would pass we would curse it for blinding us, then dip back into the darkness. The Great Basin is so vast. Dry valley bottoms stretch endlessly, interupted by islands of mountains sprinkled with snow. I remember the mountains and snow from the drive west, but driving east we had no light, no moon, so all I could see was the dry roadside whizzing by. Yellow lines to the left, white on the right, asphalt peeling through the high beams. Jack rabbits would occasionally sprint across the path, narrowly avoiding an 80 mph Subaru massage. My co-pilot, Little E, was engrossed in games on his iPod while I scanned the narrow scope of my vision. Jacked on caffeine and suger but totally pooped from riding so hard in CA for the past three days made for a electric, slow motion mind frame. Sing alongs with good music mixes and the instantaniousness of reacting to a bend in the road or a bush that looked too much like a deer grazing on the side of the road kept me conscious and awake.

At one point we pulled off on the side of the highway for a pee break. So quiet. So many stars. Crested Butte is isolated and relatively free of light and sound polution, but standing in a desert in the great basin late at night really puts things in perspective. We left Tonopah a couple hours ago and won't reach Ely for another hour and a half and there is not a street light, mailbox, or Kinkos even remotely close by. The way the stars hang overhead in the high altitude desert is like nothing I have ever seen - so dense and tangible, like you could run your hands through them. I shivered with a combination of delight and the cool desert air.

We travelled more than 2000 miles on this trip. Through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Wastach Range in Utah, across the great basin and into the Sierra's in California - and back. Spring break 2005. We rode Copper Mountain, Park City, Brighton, Snowbird, Snowbasin, Mammoth, and June Mountains. Powder, parks, and freeriding. The snowboarding was exceptional, but only a part of the overall mission. Driving through tiny towns surrounded by ocean sized nothingness dotted with sage, and seeing that people squeeze out an existence there, gave the trip deeper dimension. Wrestling matches, tight quarters, meals, picking on each other, sharing, conversation, music, and miles upon miles of highway fill out the experience. Christian and I got hugs and handshakes from just about all the kids on the trip when we disbanded last night - a very nice topper to ten days on the road.

I thought about trying to write more detail about riding at the resorts, but there is a language barrier that many people can't understand when it comes down to the specifics that made each member of our crew a shining star. Personal progression in a foreign setting made the experience more exciting. We had digital still and video cameras rolling every day. Wading through the content is going to take days, but it will get processed into the Macs in the snowboard office and used for creating marketing content, personalized and team videos, and whatever else we can utilize it for. I will try to get some photos onto this site for whoever might want to check it out. An image will never replace the feeling of vertigo I still get standing on a knife ridge staring down an impossibly steep chute before dropping in. And there were a lot of those moments on this trip. Getting pushed to the limits of my abilities in the steeps by Christian and in the freestyle arena by the kids and hoping that I am a part of driving all of them to ride harder is another important aspect of this trip. Trying to become more than I am and pushing the kids to open up to become more than they are. Experience...