Gnargasm 5.0

Although other adventures take place in the interims, the annual gnargasm is the pinnacle trip of the year, combining an exciting winter locale, nightlife, and world-renowned ski slopes. It is with great pleasure, I announce the fifth annual installment of the gnargasm has been scheduled, participants confirmed, and airfare purchased.

Previous voyages have taken us to Winter Park, CO; Park City, UT; Whistler/Blackcomb, BC; and Lake Tahoe, CA.

After some deliberation (plans were tentative for Tremblant, QC and Killington, VT) it was ultimately decided that this year takes us to Jackson Hole, WY. The primary reason we chose Jackson Hole over other destinations:

Jackson Hole kicks ass.

Secondary reasons: we don’t have to spend 10 hours driving there, which means we don’t have to take as much time off work, and it is only marginally more expensive. Despite a desire to go to Jackson Hole ever since the first gnargasm in 2003, I’ve never seen airfare from Detroit for less than $500. By Thor’s Hammer, the stars have aligned this year and airfare on a particular set of dates in late February is considerably cheaper. The opportunity could not be denied.

With 50% of the terrain rated “expert,” including in-bounds bowls and chutes, I’ve heard that Jackson Hole is the type of place you go for one of two reasons:

1. You are a badass and you know it.
2. You think you are a badass and want to prove it

Also, it’s a pretty cool historic little cowboy village, and the scenery is amazing (I was there in the summer, years ago). Coupled with 450+ inches of snow per year, and amazing terrain, it’s a no-brainer.

Pictures, videos, and updates to follow.

dz

Otsego Club – St. Patrick’s Day 2007

Last year’s end-of-season foray to the Otsego Club was the first time in a long time I was able to shred gnar with Chris D., one of the “founding fathers” of the Gnargasm. Chris went on the inaugural trip to Winter Park, CO in 2003, and hasn’t been back since. Who knew that buying a house would restrict one’s travel budget?

The Otsego Club is a semi-private resort in Northern Michigan, which caters to golfers in the warm weather, and skiers/snowboarders in the winter months. It opens to the public on the last weekend of the year, where people are encouraged to don their neon unitards, and Redford-esque downhill racer tights, drink green beer, and partake in the slush-cup. A friend of ours works there, and hooked us up for the weekend.

I won’t tell you about “the incident” with the old man at the bar on Friday night.

Tahoe Area – January 2007

I have been delinquent in posting here, I’ve owned the domain since April 2007, but haven’t made a single post until January, 2008. These pictures are already a year old. I feel like the trip to Tahoe took a few weeks off my life.

Tahoe’s nightlife was second-to-none. Some of my friends wanted you to check out their new haircuts. Fuckin’ skanks!

Brad’s plaid coat was a real lady-killer.

Here are some scenery pictures, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Whistler, BC – 2006

The trip to Whistler was remarkably painful: an 7am flight out of DTW on no sleep (we left the house at 4am because of inclement weather) with a 2 hour layover in Chicago, finally on to SeaTac, from whence it was a 5 hour drive to Whistler/Blackcomb. Coupled with the time-change, and a night of rocking out hard, some of us went close to 40 hours without sleep. Heading out to the slopes a mere 5 hours later, was something from which most of us never really recovered — that, and being out of shape on the largest mountain I’ve ever seen.

Six hours riding on a sheet of ice (no freshiez to speak of) taxes your legs in an unimaginable way. Four hours monopolizing the hotel’s only hot-tub with a case of beer afterwards, as we would learn, doesn’t exactly help.

TheCoast, on his introductory Gnargasm, had literally been like 3/4 of the way around the world in two weeks, having come back on R&R from his post in Baghdad a few days before, he was now on a mountaintop in British Columbia. On that mountaintop, he almost died when he caught an edge and flipped upside down, landing on his head.

David Z was trying to get back to the Condo on the second afternoon, when he saw what he thought might be a shortcut. About a half-mile down what he then learned was a fire-trail or access road for snowmobiles, covered in solid and chunky ice, he was forced to unstrap his board, and hike it out. Too embarrassed to flag down the local transit bus, he booted it back to the room — all told, turning a 5-minute trip into a 45-minute trek.

The Highlander was humiliating himself (falling down on the approach ramps to rails) in the park on the last day. Then, he suffered a major set-back: he decided it would be funny to jam his shins right into a metal rail. It felt like there was a serious divot in his leg bone. A month and a half later, he was still hurting. If the video from this momentous occasion ever surfaces, it will find its way to this website.

Here is a video clip of David Z getting some air at Whistler. It’s not much air, because it was the last day of 3 straight. All told, an extra day would’ve been beneficial. A 4-day trip allows the vacationer to ski or ride for 3 full days, while taking a day off to recover in the middle. No matter who you are, 3 full days of riding back-to-back-to-back is an amazing feat of strength and endurance.

I don’t have very many good pictures from Whistler on account of my camera doesn’t work well when it’s 0 degrees. It was often 0 degrees, especially close to the peak.

Winter Park, CO – January 2004

The trip to Winter Park eventually spawned the Gnargasm theme. Most of us had graduated from college at the time, and were working jobs that we hated so we could buy shit we didn’t need. I had always wanted to go West, and so I coordinated a trip with a handful of close friends. We found affordable airfare to Denver (I think we flew r/t from Detroit on SpiritAir for $175), and chose to go to Winter Park, about an hour North of Denver, to avoid the crowds and expenses at Apsen, Vail, or other large resorts. When we arrived at the rental car counter, they were conveniently out of whatever car we had reserved. Of course, they wanted to put us into something smaller, which I told them we would accept if they gave us a ski rack or a rooftop luggage carrier for our gear.

In the end, I think it was laziness that set in on our young salesman. He hemmed, and hawed about the trouble of removing the roof rack from one car and putting it on another for us. At this point, Chris asked him in no uncertain terms if we could just “Get the car that Shannon Sharpe drives when he’s in town.” The salesman finally buckled under the pressure and gave us a pimp Suburban with leather interior, surround speakers, etc., at no extra charge.

Sadly, without trying to fire up my old laptop (which I haven’t so much as turned on in a good 2 years) I have a dearth of pictures from the Winter Park trip. Strangely missing from the picture below is Chris D., which I suppose is appropriate because he’s been strangely absent from every subsequent trip. From left to right: Brad G., Adam M., David Z.