The Stove

Another Verstovia pano.

Since I have been doing a ton of snow boarding lately, I thought why not do a post on it. The last couple of days has been spent in class, and in the backcountry (which is always teaching me new things, so its kind of like class as well).
At the beginning of the season (November 2011), my good friend Dana showed me the wonders that lie on top of Mt. Verstovia. In fact, Dana, Steph, and I have all taken the liberty of leaving our boards strapped to a tree at the treeline of Mt. Verstovia (let's just call it 'the Stove', okay?). It was a wise decision indeed since we have gone snowboarding literally every weekend for the past 3 months (barring a couple weekends)!!


The man, the myth, the LEGEND!! Steve R. on a patented Stove run.

Just this past few days I have had the good fortune to get out two times in three days! This last trip being an exceptional one. The stage: A beautiful blue bird Sunday morning with slight hints of Winter's mischief clinging to eaves and gutters in the town. Upon arriving at the first stop, Picnic Rock (elev. 2,550), I stood and gazed down at the immaculate bowl of the Stove. It looked like I had the absolute privilege of sharing it with only two other boarders, Steve Rifenstuhl (a local legend) and his equally awesome and outdoorsy wife Adriana. They were kind enough to have gotten up hours before me in order to break a very nice trail up this behemoth of a mountain.


Deep powder in the bowl.

The weariness from the 1.5 hour trek up to picnic rock left my body instantaneously as I gazed over the perfection the Stove had to offer and I strapped my board on and had a pretty decent run down into the belly of the Stove. From there I followed suit and started the 'Mt. Doom' walk up to a good drop in point.




I had only been in this 'heaven among earth' once so I decided to get as high as I could. I just kept walking and walking until the pre-broken trail stopped a few hundred feet short of the summit. On my way up I had spied an incredible and untouched run that included a killer cliff drop off a snow bank. I positioned myself directly above this feature and strapped in. Epinephrine filled my veins. My heart started to beat even faster than it had in order to get me to where I was; staring straight down the mouth of a terrifyingly good time. I dropped in, feeling as if I had too much speed I pulled up just short of the cliff's lip. I gulped as I stared down into what I was about to hurl myself off of. I unstrapped and hiked back up to the drop in spot. This time I wasn't going to stop, I promised. I hit the bottom of the drop well but I took a quick seat in the clouds of powder and continued on down for what would be one of the longest and most enjoyable runs I have done in the backcountry. The bowl of the Stove is WHERE IT IS AT!!! On a totally blue bird day the bowl has the absolutely best runs anywhere; or at least the best runs you can access without a helicopter.




I spent the rest of the day killing my legs hiking up and down the Stove and bombing off gaps, down hills, and just enjoyed having a Winter playground all to myself. The special thing about this place is the lack of any signs of civilization. For a good part of the day, I was completely alone. Surrounded by the mountains and left to my own devices. There is something very profound and utterly unique about a place like this that can cause concentrated moments of self reflection.



Snowboarding has given me a chance to broaden what it is I enjoy so much about rock climbing; and that is an experience distilled through a lens of athleticism and nature you get when interacting with your environment.


Mt. Edgecumb, as seen from the Picnic Rock outlook.

As the day turned from blue bird and calm to overcast and windy, I retreated to the shelter of Picnic Rock. This is a huge hill/mountain that abuts the greater Mt. Verstovia. It has more than a few runs to choose from, but for the most part they are all very short. But, what they lack in length they more than make up for in terrain. You can't go more than a hundred feet without bumping into a sweet kicker, drop, or cliff. The features are everywhere and there is usually more powder on this side of the hill since it stays in the shade and when the wind kicks up it gets all of the powder off of the ridge.



A little kicker at the top of a sweet run on Picnic Rock.

I played around on the front of PR for a while before my legs systematically shut down. There was just so much powder everywhere, but I just couldn't manage another (albeit) short hike back up. I grabbed my pack and bid a fond farewell to the mountains and of course the Stove, before dropping in one last time.

Powder Daze Part 1 and 2

Snow has come to Sitka, and like so many children flocking to the brightly lit windows of a Christmas display the hardcore snowboarders emerge. The die hard, the grizzled, the desperate! In small towns there are always old timers. The guys who have been there since the beginning, since before there were stop lights, since before there were snowboards, since before there was snow, since before there were even ole timers. When snow comes to Sitka this early in the year, the ole timers like to sit back and say “I haven’t seen a snow storm this bad since the time Big Jon was knee high to a grasshopper.”, and that my friends is a long time ago. The snow forces us all to exist on a slower, more pensive plane of existence. It can literally, as well as figuratively freeze you in your tracks. Whether you are actually frozen there because of the temperature; or because you are lost in a trance, meditating, day dreaming. For some reason the snow has an insular effect on me. I start to ponder the ways in which all of that pow collecting on top of Mt. Verstovia a.k.a The Stove, could be shredded by my righteous inclinations of gnar.









Each weekend the snow just kept building it’s strength. Until finally the perfect storm culminated in a most excellent base layer of sea sweetened powder. The Stove was ripe. It was practically begging us to climb its newly powdered bosom and dive deep inside to explore its delicious womb coated in the post-coital ejaculate the last dark and stormy lover had left inside of her. Like any worthy and seductive rainy day woman, The Stove is no easy mistress. With our packs filled with the tools needed to abstract a good time from the day, we slowly began the climb. Three hours later we were standing near our destination. At tree line we ran into a few acquaintances from the previous day’s SAR field exercise, which eventually turned into a real mission.













While we were psyched to get to the top before anyone else, running into a few people at this juncture was actually a little bit of a relief. It was nice to have a pre-broken trail for the majority of the hike but now it was our turn and as I sank 4 feet into the fresh butter that lay in front of us I felt the icy fingers of The Stove creep up and down my spine, tickling dirty thoughts into sight, and coaxing my snowner from its hiding place. We finally came to rest at the base of Picnic Rock, where subsequently a dense soupy mess of clouds rolled in accompanied by a dirty and unrelenting wind. That pretty much ruled out the glorious lines of the bowl, so for our first time up The Stove we ended up sticking to the front side where we re-learned how to trace the life lines of our lover’s palms. We hit the north ridge but were turned away by the harsh winds and deep powder that threatened to bury you if hesitation began to take over. Our friends had made a nice little snow cave to hang out in and paved the way to a sweet little jump. After taking the plunge a few times we had lunch and buried our good intentions in a few short runs in perfect powder on a nice little slope that ended at tree line.



We stashed the boards since we knew we would be back soon and skipped down the unfolded legs of our newly acquired mistress. As first days go, this one knocked a lot of them down a peg. The standard was now set, and I felt spoiled.

Powder Daze Part 2



A few days passed. Thanksgiving came and went like an annoyingly enjoyable lush who shovels all of the right words down your throat in the wrong order. The food sickness eventually passed, and now that my stomach had survived being stretched four times its maximum capacity, and my brain had recovered from the horrifically boring tale of Edward, Jacob, and whatever the hell that useless anorexic bitches name is; we were finally able to make it back to the loving embrace of The Stove. Her embers were stoked white hot by the revolving door of low pressure lovers that seemed to visit just as frequently as food filled forks had visited my mouth lately.



Our trio (Dana, Steph, and I) had grown by one; we were accompanied on this trip up by Dana’s ridiculously hardcore dad Steve. He jimmy-rigged his snowboard onto his old school pack and stomped up the trail with the rest of us. We made slightly better time but came to a snail’s pace once we hit the last ridge which was a stew of snowy quicksand. Luckily we had run into a gang of youngsters who had the same snowy-eyed visions of pow pow that we had, and we took turns letting them break trail for us.







We snagged our boards from the stash spot and managed to break trail all the way to the top this time. The weather was a lot more agreeable than last weekend when we had come up, but the bowl was still clouded in. No matter, we had endless lines of uncut powder to inhale, and on that note, I have to say that the first run of the day for me was nothing but sweet salty powder! Eight foot rooster tails. We glided over the ten foot base like surfers. I hit a carve so long I put two fingers down in the fast passing cream just to keep my balance. One of the coolest lines I hit was this sweet run that started on a steep drop in that led immediately to catching a small amount of air off a hip, and then a smooth ride led to a kicker between the trees, then a delicious slope to the end. Once we had stomped out a trail back up to the drop in spot at Picnic Rock the lines became more defined and we were joined throughout the day by three more snowboarders who all got a piece of the action.








It was a glorious day to say the least. At the very end of the last run of the day I bit it hard and ended up turning my knee in ways it is not meant to turn. Nothing major, just a sprain, but it did keep me off the slopes the next day, which is really a little heartbreaking considering the current state of the weather today. The Stove must have had her fill of little lovers because this week the warmth has moved back in and the town looks as bare as it did when I arrived in the summer.