Ate it

Freak weather, the earliest snow at Crystal Mountain for 28 years, meant I was fortunate enough to enjoy a day's boarding on my last weekend in the US.

I learnt to board on artificial snow slopes which only usually had around a 5cm snow depth and made turning hard work, but starting out tough meant it was easy to get the balance, stops and turns right, because here I had about 25 - 30cm of snow to play with.

Starting out on the shallow trainer slopes was a great warm up. Despite me investing in some decent goggles, the snow was coming in fast meaning frequents stops to clean them and whiteouts once I got to the higher, colder slopes. I had to follow a few people down to guide me back to base. I also made it off piste, thanks to some sloppy steering and screamed into a snow drift, landing on my front, looking like a toy soldier clamped in polystyrene. Pinned into the drift by my body weight on the soft, giving snow, I spent 10 minutes trying to reach down my inconveniently long gangly body to my bindings to release the board. Exhausted, I got hold of the board and dragged myself out of the drift. Had a small heart attack, then wrestled with the accursed rental boards quick release mechanism to get back on. Had to spend another 5 minutes digging out compressed snow from the machinery. Avoid these unless you've road tested them.

I ache all over and will be walking like a cowboy for a week or so, but it was all worth it for the 60 seconds where it all came together and I got to shoot down a real mountain at huge speed without tumbling.