No More Shredding Snow This Season

The weather is slowly warming up and spring it trying to become more prominent here in the Metro Vancouver area and when the weather beings to warm up the local mountains begin their closures. One of the first mountains this year to close their ski hills is Cypress Mountain and thanks to one of Robyn’s close friends we were able to hit the slopes one last time.

Cypress Mountain is located in West Vancouver which is north of the downtown core next to Grouse Mountain. The nice thing about Cypress is that it has two mountain sides the come down into a valley which creates the ‘bowl’ for which some locals call it; Cypress Bowl.

Looking up the West Bowl

As some of my visitors know I am relatively new to the world of Snowboarding and I have enjoyed every minute my feet have been strapped into the bindings of the snowboard. This past Sunday I was able to be take another lesson, but this lesson turned out to be a private one. No one else seemed to be doing snowboarding lessons during the last day of Cypress Mountain was open. I can see why, but it allowed me to have a one-on-one time with an instructor to better my skill.

My instructor thought it would be best to go over and improve technique than anything. He was thoroughly impressed that this was my 3rd time snowboarding and wanted to help me reach my goals for the day. Pretty much my goal was to be able to do more challenging runs (moderate blues) but he wanted to take it further.

We went over the fundamentals of a good turn, as well as good strategies on when to do wide turns as opposed to narrow turns. Since this was a private lesson he watched me ride down the hill commenting along the way pointing out things I needed to work on to improve my riding; such as keeping lower to the ground so the board doesn’t chatter when I go to slow down. When we reached some flat sections he suggested to have fun and get to know the board more. He had be run some exercises like balancing on the back of the board while bringing the nose up. He also got me into doing ollies which is the basis for jumping (like in skateboarding). Even though I could only bring the board off the snow just under a foot in height it was definitely something that I enjoyed doing. After all isn’t that what I want to do snowboarding? Jumps? Of course!

Metro Vancouver as seen from Panorama Ridge

After a grueling, but positive, 2 hour private lesson I met up with Robyn and we rested for a little while. I was tired after going down moderate blues, learning how to take steep terrain and even riding through trees! After our brief rest I was ready to hit the snow again but this time with Robyn. After a run or two Robyn suggested we hit the West side of the bowl since I had not been on that side yet. We did a nice green called Panorama Ridge which offered a decent view of the Metro Vancouver area below.

Going up to Cypress Mountain has continued my enjoyment of Snowboarding and wishing that the mountain was not closing for the season. Sure Whistler is open until April 20th, and Blackcomb is open until June, thought the local North Shore mountains will be closing their runs shortly as I am sure the other mountains in BC will as well.

I do realize that my previous posts regarding my snowboarding on Cypress I have spelt Cypress wrong. I was able to catch it when I tried to look up ‘Cyprus Mountain’ and not ‘Cypress Mountain’ via Google. Oh well!