snowboarding at Donner Ski Ranch

I finally hit the slopes last week and it was a great time out. We went up to Donner Ski Ranch which is a perfect mountain for beginner and intermediate riders. Perfect because the lift lines are short, the price is cheap, and the slopes aren't too steep. I concentrated on perfecting my turns and by the end of the day I was leaving some nice 'S' tracks. I had a couple of hard falls but that was offset by some good runs.

I also got to use my new Leedom helmet with built-in speakers for my mp3 player. The music kept my energy level up while I was practicing toe-side tracks. The helmet had lots of vents and was really lightweight. I bought it for $75 from costco online and am really happy with it.

I definitely see and feel the improvement and look forward to making a few more trips this season. Here are more pics courtesy of Simon.

snowboarding at sugarbowl

It was first my boarding session of the season (my 3rd time ever) yesterday and I really enjoyed it. We rented a minivan and made it to berkeley around 6 to pick up Jonathan. We pitted at a McDonald's in davis and arrived at sugarbowl at around 9:30pm.

I'm happy to say that I've vastly improved from my previous two snowboarding trips. I can now go down a steep hill on my board rather than my butt. My s-curves are coming around and I hope to go a couple more times this season to practice them. I'm defeinitely still a novice but getting better every time I get some runs in. I brought along my mp3 player and that along with a couple of cliff bars kept my energy level up until closing time at 4ish. I fell hard several times so today I woke up pretty sore but it was still a good trip.