First days of snowboarding!

Well, the winter season has started! Sort of…. There’s still not much snow, but as of recently we’ve been starting to get hit by a few storms, leaving up to a foot of snow on the ground. Isaac and Jadyn had the chance to ride the first Gondola up the mountain at Keystone a few weeks ago, thanks to our friends the Tyler’s, who invited them. I’ve been boarding for 5 days so far, and it’s been great. I’m starting to lay out my plans for the season, such as planning my competitions, what tricks to learn this year, how I’m going to (hopefully) podium at some competitions, and how much I want to push myself.

Even though not many runs are open, Copper Mountain still has a small park open, which I’ve been riding at a ton. Although we’ve only been boarding for a little less than a week, it seems like we just picked up where we left off last season in terms of skill, and Isaac and I have both learned many new tricks on the rails that Copper has available in their park.

Right now, I’m looking at the past 3 seasons of snowboarding as preparation for this one. This, at least I’m hoping so, will be my “big year” in terms of competition and learning. Our first season (The 13/14 season), was when we learned how to get down the mountain, carve, get comfortable with a bit of speed, and hit a few small boxes and jumps. Our second season (14/15), our first on Team Summit, helped jump-start our snowboarding. We learned how to ride switch, spin off of some small jumps, hit bigger jumps and started to slide rails, overall getting more comfortable in the park. We got an intro to competing, with Jadyn winning multiple competitions, and ultimately qualifying for the 2015 USASA Championships in boardercross, and placing 7th. As for Isaac and I, while we didn’t get the results that Jadyn achieved, we did start competing with a few boardercross races towards the end of the year (I didn’t place well, as I didn’t really know what I was doing :P).

Now, last season was a big season for us, setting us up for this year. We learned how to spin 180’s, 360’s, and even one or two 540’s off bigger jumps. It was a big competition season, where I competed in 7 boardercross races at Ski Cooper and Crested Butte, taking better placings, learning how to race, how to maintain speed around turns, how to generate more speed, how to pass competitors, and how to fight off competitors trying to pass. My final boardercross competition, at Crested Butte, went relatively well, as I barely missed qualifying for the finals, but won the consolation final, taking 5th place overall. Because of that final race, I ended up qualifying for the 2016 USASA National Championships in boardercross, where I took 42nd out of 74. To end off the season, I even landed my first backflip!

Who knows what this season has in store for me? A gold medal? Top 20 at Nationals? Spinning a 720? Tons of backflips? Well, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see! In the meantime, here’s a video of me on my second day back on the mountain:

Before I finish off this entry into my ever-expanding collection of blog posts about various parts of my life, I wanted to outline my goals for this season, so I can look at them throughout.

Competitions:

• Top 20 at the 2017 National Championships
• A medal or two
• Win a race

Tricks:

• 720’s (Backside and Frontside)
• Frontside 540’s
• Master backside 540’s
• Switch backside 360’s
• Cab 540’s
• Underflip?
• Layout backflip
• 270 onto rails
• Master frontside boardslides

And that’s it (for now, at least)! If you want to see videos of Isaac, Jadyn and me snowboarding, check out my snowboarding YouTube Channel, which I plan to start posting on more (last season I just put videos of our boardercross races on there, not really using it for anything). Visit it here, or search for GabeShreds on YouTube.