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my second winter in the cascades kicked off in a similar manner to the first--a long day off mt baker higway with scott and a few other intrepid locals.

the day was friday, october 27th, and i was full of excitement. yeah, the first tour of the season always gets me amped, but i had also just located a potential replacement for my old two-wheel drive van, after an entire summer spent searching for the elusive 4wd vanagon "syncro".

what better way to celebrate than to take my old van and drive as far as possible up an increasingly snowy hill?


well the combination of 2wd and summer tires didn't get us that far. fortunately the group was quite amenable to long approaches and bushwhacking.


scott rated this approach as a "C2 with occasional C3 cruxes" on the CDS (cascadian decimal system of bushwack grading)


in a mere 3 hours we gained the ridge (that we'd been hoping to drive to).


5 hours from the car we got sick of breaking trail and decided it was time to ride some pow.


we started around 6200 feet and rode just over 1000 feet of the deepest snow i've ever opened a season with.


then it was back to trailbreaking.


climbing back up towards our exit.


looking back at our line (just right of the center rib of trees)


thanks to my van's inability to navigate the entire access road, our mellow day turned into an 11 hour bushwack fest...


so needless to say, the next day i went and bought myself a syncro!


and since then, i've spent pretty much every free moment trying to fix her up for harsh winter service (hence the delay in writing this TR). look for it soon at a trailhead near you!

Always love your tr's and glad to see you guys got some fresh! Love seeing syncros on the board! I have a passat wagon syncro that hauled me and my gear around. Have you dealt with North Westy? They seem to always have a butt load of syncros and parts at the shop

I like it. Up with v-dubs!

Hopelessly addicted; 65' ghia, 68' westy, 72' s beetle, 75' kombi, 85' vanagon, 02' beetle.

Nice snow too...

Good write up, I'm still pumped on how good that snow was. Hows the synchro coming? I hope you get it going soon, as the season is upon us.

VW T3 syncro rocks!

My dream is a VW T5 4motion camper with dif lock and stand heating, so I can sleep anywhere under the peaks

nice, i'm glad to see that i'm not the only splitboarder stoked on old volkswagens.... sometimes i feel kind of crazy for dumping my savings into a second 26 year old van, but i know the first time i charge through a snowbank it's gonna be worth it. i've already got the steering replaced, fixed the sway bar and rebuilt most of the shift linkage, so it's getting close. i was thinking of giving kirk at north westy a call about some body repairs that are looming.

have fun out there this weekend everyone.... i can't wait to get back to the northwest next week; there's no snow here in sonoma county!

Gopro that shit!

Happy thanksgiving. Hope the rest of you artisan grub turned out as well as the superb bacon.

I had a very nice 1980 MK1.

Sold it to travel and make room in the garage. Still wondering where that car ended up and if I could find a way of getting it back.. Damn thing was rust free which is unheard of around here.

Check out Rocky Mountain Westy in Fort Collins CO. for parts and such. Good friends of mine own it. They do a ton of suby conversions and just test drove a TDI Syncro camper van up here, such a rad van. Love the van stoke, but I'll stick with the rings.

after a great season opener tour in october, i almost went the whole month of november without riding. but that wouldn't be right... so on the very last day of the month i hit up crystal resort.

the conditions were, uh, "a little wet".


but we went touring off the back of the mountain and found some darn fun snow. thank god for gore tex or this day would have sucked!



took a day off to work on the syncro, but scope creep set in and she was relegated to the driveway, so i caught a ride back to the mountains to do a trial day on my recently-reshaped TLT5 hard boots.

avalanche safety experts recommend that for optimum protection, ABS airbag packs should be deployed before leaving the parking lot. "on at the car, off at the bar".


the rain had turned to snow and things were looking good.


john cocci gets his first bc pow turns of the season.


more pow...


after 3 reasonably short laps, my feet were still feeling good. proski did a did a good job stretching my boots out to accommodate my wider feet. i think i'll take my split setup to the resort this weekend to get some practice riding in the hardboots... it feels pretty strange, but i think i'll grow to appreciate the difference.

Nice update---I love the slash through "the wet" action in the fist photo.

The airbag incident was unfortunate ---but very funny! That is a good lesson to keep in mind.

with lots of overnight snow and more in the air, it seemed like a good day to get in shape at the resort. and with the driveshaft just reinstalled and the snow tires mounted, a good day for skadi the syncro's first trip to crystal!


i still got to do some posthole touring though, when the northway lift shut down while i was taking a safety break in the woods and i had to walk out the ski traverse back to the resort.


i took saturday off to rebuild the shift linkage and let the snow settle up at steven's...


and then it was off to break some trail! (or rather to let scott and kololo break some trail while i took pretty pictures of snow)


altruistic splitboarders occasionally let tele skiers drop first.


the pillow lines i remember from last year somehow got even better, and saign made the most of them.


there was plenty to go around...


even kololo got to charge some pillow drops!


the snow was ideal right to the bottom.


no question as to why scott is smiling!


it was so much fun we had to go back and try a different peak.


the pillows are a little bigger over here...


the right way to cross a narrow, snow covered log.


the other way to cross.

Thanks for the PNW stoke!