Hiking with Jeff

Brothers. I have two of them. Jeff and Todd. It is always great when we get to go hang out in the mountains together. Saturday morning Jeff and and I met up and went for a short walk up at Alta. The early season snow settled to a hard packed layer on most aspects. The soft fluff from earlier in the week was gone. Jeff and I just talked as we walked up the hill. We took it slow and took in the surroundings. A winter landscape never gets old, it is an endless playground of opportunities. Where ever you look there are possible lines and ideas.

The day conjured up an old memory: Jeff had barely turned 16, I was 14. An early season storm came through and brought some snow, much like this year. He drove us up to Snowbird where we hiked up under the Wilber chairlift. We didn't know much about building jumps with transition or how to land anything really, we didn't even have a shovel. We used a dustpan Jeff found in his trunk to scrape together some snow for a little jump and we sessioned it until it got late.

With our split second of hang time we would do any grab that we knew. My favorite was the "method". I was riding a Burton Custom 160 at the time and I had a picture of Dave Downing throwing one on my same board hanging on my wall.

It was a good time and a good memory. Thanks Jeff.

Here is a photo from that day more than a decade ago.