For the Love of the Board
by Kristen Collier

"Our plan this year is to add terrain elements and make good free-riding lines." -- Snow Summit

Snowboarding in Southern California? Maybe not here in San Diego, but a mere 2-1/2 hour drive will get you to the slopes of San Bernardino, which are sure to be ripe with snowboard action from opening day until next spring. Opening should happen any weekend now, and San Diegans are ready and waiting as local surfers and skaters trade in their summer sticks for snowboards, liquid waves for frozen powder.
To find out what we can look forward to this season, SLAMM talked to the three Big Bear Lake resorts: Bear Mountain, Snow Summit and Snow Valley. To get a preview of the latest hardware, we went behind the scenes at the snowboard expo SnowJam '97 held November 8 and 9 at the Sports Arena.

San Diego Storms the Scene

Not all surfers ride snowboards, but San Diego has a healthy share of moonlighters for a town of its geography and climate. "It's the whole surfing/skateboarding aspect that goes into snowboarding," says Shelly Ueckert, 22, a Pacific Beach resident who captured the bronze medal for Women's Big Air Snowboarding at the ESPN Summer X-Games '97. "People just want to get bigger, and in the snow its fun."
Crested Butte, Colo. will host the upcoming Winter X-Games, and Ueckert will be there to compete. She admits that moving to the Rockies has crossed her mind for a few reasons: "The powder and the mellow people," she says. "I think Crested Butte is going to be awesome cause they have it all there. [But] this (San Diego) is where I want to be for the summer."
Originally from Seattle, Ueckert has been snowboarding for four seasons and moved to Pacific Beach seven months ago from Mt. Hood, Oregon. "It's just amazing where its all going," she says.
Snowboarding will make its competitive debut at the 1998 Winter Olympics, with qualifying competitions starting up this month. "It's just another alternative sport. There's so many people out there that like to be active and like to have fun, but there's not always a sport out there that suits them... and it all has to do with the skateboarding and surfing."
Although snowboarding has seen an explosive growth in popularity, Ueckert isn't fazed at all. "I like the positive vibes, and I don't need any hype and trends," she says.

Comin' Down the Mountain

Those in quest of air time will find tons of improvements just for snowboarders at all three Big Bear Lake resorts. At Snow Valley Mountain Sports Park, for instance, park designer Josh Chavet directed the installment of two new halfpipes and the return of Schighridj, an excellent park for beginner through advanced boarders
"They have made the Schighridj wider and longer with more hits," says Jay Reed, Snow Valley Public Relations manager. One of the halfpipes is completely lift-serviced, Reed notes, "and that's right by our skatepark. And the concert stage is right there, too. So you have the concert stage, halfpipe and the skatepark right there in a stone's throw of each other."
The good news at Snow Summit is they have added snowboard terrain features to the east side of the mountain, formerly a cruising haven mainly for skiers, and ticket prices have dropped from $42 to $32.
As Snowboard Director at Snow Summit, Chris Gunnarson runs the snowboard department, builds and designs parks using Sno-Kats, creates halfpipes out of dirt, and does off-hill snowboard marketing as well. The Westridge Snowboard Park has been expanded and terrain features have been added all over the place. "We've been using lots of heavy machinery to make the park even better," Gunnarson says. Parts of the park have been regraded, and more hits will be found in general throughout the mountain. "Our plan this year is to add terrain elements... and make good free-riding lines on the east side of the mountain."
The 25% drop in prices -- which applies seven days a week except for holidays -- should bring in big crowds this year. According to Genevieve Paquet, Guest Relations Communications director, the strategy is to do away with making people run around looking for coupons and promotions and set prices as low, across the board, as the mountain can afford. "By doing that, we've eliminated all our discount coupons," says Paquet. "It's just to make it easier."
Snowboarders can look forward to skying over more tabletops, wave hits and volcanoes at Bear Mountain as well. The Outlaw Snowboard Park has returned after a three-year hiatus, according to Danny Ower, Grooming and Terrain manager. "We took a 225 excavator backhoe and a D6 dozer up there, and we cut out the area where we'll have a serpentine," he says.
The serpentine is a winding stretch of about six bank turns. Midway down the mountain, the hits begin. "We're going to keep the smaller stuff over in the front," Ower says. The beginning of the park will be more intermediate, but the jumps are where the big boys will play. Altogether, the park is comprised of 10 to 12 jumps, with double-barrel halfpipes at the finale underneath the Goldmine double chair. Two snow guns have also been dedicated to the park to augment the natural snowfall. Bear, too, has lowered ticket prices: Adult tickets are still $42, but young adult (ages 13-22) tickets are now available for $32.

Shows in the Snow

Word is positive on the music scene at Snow Valley. Last year, bands giving slopeside performances included the Skeletones, Voodoo Glow Skulls and Common Sense.
"I can tell you it's going to be some of the local bands from Orange County, San Diego and Inland Empire-type bands," says PR-man Jay Reed of the upcoming lineup. The resort sets up a stage nearly every weekend at Deer Meadow Terrace, and Jnco Clothing is sponsoring a new soundstage at The Lot skatepark, located in the parking lot beside the main baselodge.
Punk rock fans will want to track down the Snow Core Tour, coming to several West Coast resorts this winter, and the H2O Winter Classic, a two-day snow/surf contest coming up February 14 and 15 in Huntington Beach and Snow Summit.
"That's a huge event," Paquet says of H2O. "I know they are bringing in a really good band. New Year's Eve is always a good entertainment bet at Snow Summit, and the U.S. Snowboard Tour and Playboy Winterfest is scheduled February 6-8 here."

Bells & Whistles

Gleaned from the November 8 SnowJam at the Sports Arena, here are few innovative designs you might spot during ride time:

• Fishpaw has a mitten with a squeegie on its index finger. No more foggy fingerprints on your goggles. And it's toasty warm, too.
• Two former Aztecs, Chris Johnson and Scott Bumgarner, have patented internationally the Sinch Strap, a ceramic nylon injected plastic binding enhancer. It basically makes soft bindings as simple to lock down as clicker (hard plate) bindings. "It enhances your binding performance without any major changes to your binding," says technician Christian Lass, 28. "We're trying to make this the industry standard and get rid of traditional straps." For more information call Belligerent, 583-5772.
• Identity Snowboard Company, out of Whitefish, Mont., has unleashed a line of translucent, plastic injection snowboards available in soft, medium and stiff flexibility. Carbonite composites are used instead of the traditional wood core. Their boards also feature a parabolic sidecut, which is designed to distribute your weight more evenly, kind of like a suspension bridge. Sales coordinator Eugene Hutz describes the model as "a freestyle board that carves like a longer board... These boards are already all over Japan." Identity president John McGinnis says, "If you are an intermediate or beginner, you make progress so fast with our boards." For more information call (406) 755-6021.

Shelly Ueckert has a few words of wisdom for those in the equipment market this season. "Sometimes it's hard using new stuff," she says. She doesn't want to lose precious ride time because of equipment technicalities, she adds. Ueckert prefers soft bindings to clickers. "I kind of like to keep it as simple as possible. If it's comfortable." Clickers are convenient, that's for sure, and great for downhill speed, but the consensus is that they bring a loss of performance to freestylers.
Old school, new school, hey, even if you're still on a pointy board, the bottom line is, Snowboarding is intense fun. Whether you catch big air, or make it down for the first time, it's all just another way of going down the hill.
"I think it's all a mind set," Ueckert says. "You have to have your head completely in the game."

Kristen Collier lives in Middletown and edits the Peninsula Beacon.