Snowboarding (aka Drinking) at Mammoth Mountain, CA

I have a special way of snowboarding.

By Alyssa Ramos

I have a severely bad habit of thinking I can keep up with boys in several aspects that typically end up being extremely dangerous and painful for my life. Drinking is typically the main one, but last weekend, extreme road trip, sports, AND drinking were the causes. We decided last minute to go up to Mammoth for the weekend, and after hours of arguing about there being no snow, how we would get there, and who was and wasn’t going, we finally traded a Maserati for one of our friends Land Rovers, piled six people and three snowboards in it, and hit the road.

That was bad idea number one. Three guys and three girls who were all intending on drinking the entire way up, and all stubborn about seating arrangements never results in anything good. After re-arranging ourselves in extremely uncomfortable positions in the back seat, and spilling a decent amount of alcohol everywhere, almost running out of gas, and watching every hilarious Youtube video we could find, we finally made it to the Westin in Mammoth around 2am. I think.

The only person up was a young, spooky looking concierge who I named Samuel, and who everyone believed was named Samuel  and called him Samuel as well. “Samuel, hey buddy, how do we get into the jacuzzi?” Jon asked after picking up a random phone on a random floor that we were all on because we were wandering around like stupid mice in a labyrinth for twenty minutes. Suddenly Samuel appeared and instructed us out the doors I had said we should go out from the beginning…except his instructions revealed that we would have to walk through mulch and trees to get around to the back of the building. Not sketchy at all. Turns out he was right, and we made it for about five seconds before the other security guards kicked us out. Losers.

The next morning we had shots of Fireball and beer for breakfast before heading out in our super cute snow outfits to the mountain…that had four lifts open…that the boys were not happy about. I only go on the bunny slopes so I was perfectly fine with it. So we filled our flasks on the way there, then the boys left us immediately to go on the cool kid slopes because they’re just really sweet like that. Luckily Alicia is a nice friend and went on the bunny slopes a few times with me before also leaving me to go on the hard slopes.

Now when I say “went on the bunny slopes” I should probably emphasize on this special little way of snowboarding that I’ve invented that is the complete wrong way of doing it…I’m permanently scared to go on my toes due to years of wakeboarding, so instead, I use both feet to shred diagonally to the right with one foot, then turn on the other and shred diagonally to the left, accumulating shredded snow on my board until I get to the bottom where I act super cool like I know what I’m doing. Not even joking, there was a group of “Disabled Skiers” that were going down better than me.

While I was waiting for them at the bottom, acting like I was having a super fun time snowboarding, I decided to take maybe the first me-only selfie I’ve every taken to send to my mom…right when I thought I was in the clear, some guy walks by behind me and obnoxiously says, “Selfffiiee!” Ugh. Joke was on him when he found the pic on Instagram and commented “Haha #wasthatguy”. Not sure how I feel about that still.

Of course. I found everyone on the bar patio, smoking before the next run, and somehow got convinced that the intermediate slope wasn’t that bad and that I should just go on it with all of them. Right. That happened in the most opposite way possible. Of course when we got to the top they weren’t waiting for us (not that I expected them to), but what was worse, was that it was the tallest lift and the winds were so strong that I could hardly stand up on my board and was getting blown back UP the slope.

I was pretty sure I was going to die. Not only do I weight 107lbs but I’m not exactly what you’d call a professional snowboarder like the boys, in any slightest sort of way. Alicia literally had to pull me up with her little ski stick thing, and when I was finally up, she thought she was helping me by stepping on the front toe side of my board to hold me in place (I was facing sideways/forward going downhill) causing me to go flying forward towards the cliff screaming “Noooo!”

Twenty minutes later I had finally made it down, cursing and swearing at the boys who in return ignored me and threw snow at me. We retreated to the bar to eat and drink more and catch some of the FSU game, but somehow managed to be complete degenerates and turn the table into what a 2 year old’s high chair table would look like, but with beer and wine instead of milk and juice, and a shot of beer/parmesan cheese/KitKat/anything on the table that Jon took for $300, instead of baby vomit. And that was only the first day.

I guess this is kinda cool…Alex discovered slo mo on his phone and filmed himself doing a cool jump thing.

http://youtu.be/M6JpDJhLJrU

My enactment of “Baby see’s ice for the first time” using Alicia.

http://youtu.be/R3u68IkppaQ

The orignial, so f ing funny