Since the snow came late this year, our project(Hunting Yeti) was forced to start late as our objectives revolve around finding fluffy soft snow. I drove to Oregon to hang with Pollard and begin the search for that elusive blurry snow monster that many report to have seen yet have only stolen a glimpse. During my stay in Oregon filming was ever so tiresome as it was the Holidays. If anyone has ever been around Hood during the Holidays, it’s fun, as long as you get there for opening (a formidable task), wear the right amount of layering (not to get too hot while taking your run every half hour, and not freezing after waiting in line only to get punished by the wind on the chair), you pack a lunch (unless you are a professional at waiting in cafe lines), you wear bomb proof outerwear (you never know when it’s going to start raining), and you leave by 1:30pm (a car crash is inevitable with so many ill-equipped vehicles). For those couple runs we were able to take, it was almost worth it. The deep fluffy stuff has the ability to turn any frown upside down. While Justin and I endured this fiasco, Chris Benchetler was recovering from a shoulder injury, Mahre was in the process of buying a hefty Diesel truck, and Pollard came down with a debilitating illness that had him bedridden for over a week, so I couldn’t complain.
Prior to Christmas we had a great time night skiing at both Meadows and Ski Bowl with Pastey C(Sammy Carlson). For some reason night skiing has a quality about it that you cannot get out of riding during the day. Maybe it has something to do with the darkness contrasted with the pristine pureness of snow.
The whole crew finally met up in the North Cascades with the exception of Benchetler who was out destroying Japanese elephant poos, pillows and sake. Japan. Lucky. Having a hook up from K2, we were able to acquire 7 hours of heli time for relatively cheap. We rented a house across from the operation and held up there for a couple days as snow came down with unexpected fury. As it dumped we explored some of the surrounding logging trails for some easy access terrain. We didn’t find any. After finding that the trailhead was only a couple miles from our pad, we decided to rally our snowmo’s along the road. It seemed like a perfectly good idea. There were also signs on a small portion of the road that had signs with snowmobiles in the center outlined with green circles which gave us added confidence. green means go…right? Near the end of the day, we ran into a couple police and ranger patrols on sleds as we were out filming. They did their jobs and checked our registration and gave Erin a warning for not having her rented sled registered… not here fault. Anyway, they parted ways and we soon wrapped it up and headed down. Passing them in the parking lot, they didn’t seem to mind I was heading straight for the highway. After we all got to the road he rallied past pointing aggressively to the shoulder. He scolded us as made it very apparent that despite the sign it was highly illegal and worthy of a $600 ticket. That would have been a $4,200 ticket. Come to find we made the local paper blotter. Someone had called 911 and reported us.
The snowfall continued to bless us with snow periodically and we were able to fly about 7 out of our 2 and a half week stint. Check out what went down on www.rip.tv/nimbusindependnet and our other partners Feb. 15th. Our first webisode will be released. Make sure to download the file as it is big and in high def. Watching a streaming version kills the quality.
Enjoy all the snow boys and girls!
– The Nimbus Crew, written by Pep Fujas
