LA to BEAR gnarled up

 

I finished up shooting in Salt Lake City on Friday evening when the call came in to hit Big Bear Lake, Ca for a quick two-day shoot with Keegan and Mikkel (starting the next day). The plan sounded good to me, so my flight was booked for a 6AM departure, direct to LAX.

 

Upon landing, the heavy rainfall was very apparent and I thought to myself "...maybe we should have checked the weather..." But the thing is, when you're headed to Big Bear you never check the weather because it's Los Angeles, it's tropical, it's going to be sunny. Not this time. As the rental car hit the 105 East, Keegan called and said "...we should have checked the weather..." He asked what my 20 was and I let him know “already on the way to Bear.” Seeing how it was only 8AM, Keegan may have assumed I hadn't left Utah yet. He said he felt bad about bringing me out here, but I told him it was all good because it’ll turn bluebird sooner than later in SoCal.

 

With that said, we all hit the road up into the San Bernardino Mountains where the non-snowboarding adventure began. You may or may not know that Big Bear Lake received about eight feet of snowfall around two weeks ago. It was chalked up to a ‘once in a lifetime storm’ so you could imagine the chaos it brought on initially, along with the lingering effect of too much snow. The rain dousing LA that morning ran all the way into the mountain zone and the effect that has is a lot of snowpack melting away quickly, combined with multiple inches coming down. The road was absolute mayhem with the weekend warriors on their way up in two-wheel drive vehicles, floods, mudslides, avalanches, low visibility and my favorite part, the chain-up area.

 

I figured having a 4-wheel drive vehicle would suffice in accessing the top of the mountain, as it usually does…not this time. After waiting in the chain inspection line 30 minutes, the officer informed me that even though my car was 4WD, I still had to “carry chains.” I then asked him: “…dude, are you for real…” and he came right back at me with “…dude, for real…now make a u-turn and buy some chains.”

 

The frustration definitely mounted because he didn’t care about my side of the story…waking up at 4AM, catching a flight to another state, renting a car, driving up some sketchy roads with sketchy drivers, waiting in line, then being turned away at the last leg of the journey because I didn’t have chains in my car that would never ever see the outside roadway. Meanwhile, tiny two-wheel drive passenger sedans are making their way up the mountain with chains…assuming that’s a safer mode of transportation rather than a 4WD truck with snow tires. Go figure. I made the u-turn and thought to myself…’there’s no way I’m driving one-hour back down the mountain to buy chains, I gotta do something!’ By some miracle, this truck pulls up in the chain-up area, drops his tailgate and starts selling used chains! Seventy bucks later I had myself a crappy pair of used, missized chains to put inside my car. Wow!

 

So we made it to Big Bear and were greeted with 40-mph winds, sleet, snow, more crazy roads and crazy drivers and an underlying thought in the back of our minds…we should have checked the weather.

 

Not to be discouraged, we formulated a genius plan of getting a spot ready for the next day, giving us some sense of accomplishment for the day. It was determined we’d session the Jeff Anderson 20-flat-22 rail, but we’d have to dig it out first. Yea, that sounds like a great idea until you show up and eighty-percent of the rail is buried under snow and the stairs are one hundred percent buried in ice and snow. Now the day is getting really interesting…

 

We started the dig and it was relatively easy to move the top layers of snow and we actually made good progress over two hours time. What really killed the motivation was in that two-hours times we managed to de-ice five stairs, meaning we had a measly 37 stairs to go. Now if you do the math, that would mean we’d need to spend another twelve plus hours to have the rail ready to go. Not only is this physically impossible to do with four snowboarders only having one day left to shoot, but the mental fatiuque would be richter. We looked at each other, had nothing else to say and walked away.

 

That was our Saturday, February 6, 2010 day. We’ll try again tomorrow. Cheers, Blotto

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All photos © Dean Blotto Gray / Blotto Photto 2010