Features

Turning to toeside & learning to boardslide

Burton Women’s Learn to Ride camp hits Northstar at Tahoe for three days of sun, fun and learning new skills
Day Two: Seeking out The Stash

Words and photos by Katie Bailey

The schedule for the day is a busy one. After we pick up our photographer for the day, IJ Valenzuela, we’re to check back with the first group to see how everyone is progressing on their turns. Then it’s off to meet up with Northstar terrain park manager Chris Castaneda to check out The Stash, the “hidden” trail of natural terrain park features, with the Liz’s freestyle group and end the day off with a Boarding For Breast Cancer fundraiser.

The first group (the never-evers) has dwindled slightly as two participants decided they just weren’t up for another day and decided to call it a weekend. But still in the learning trenches are Jen, Dorothy, Roxy and Jody. Today is the day of turns. As they “fall like leaves”, glide through S’s and learn to initiate turns with their feet (“NOT YOUR HIPS” as Meredith constantly reminds) it’s exciting to watch. So close! Meredith remains super upbeat and patient throughout this critical learning phase and the girls vary between being elated at progress and a bit frustrated they can’t fast-forward to high-speed turns.

There’s a lot going on at the learning area—the resort is mobbed, as the heavy snowfall has kept many away from the resort for weeks—so I volunteer to run alongside Roxy and hold her hands for balance as she makes a downhill attempt. Apparently, helping people is way, way harder than it looks. While I’d like to think I helped Roxy (she nailed some turns soon after), Meredith politely cautions me to be careful with her students’ limbs as we careen our past her, giggling and flailing around. And that’s that—I’m outta there before I accidentally dismember someone in a country with no universal healthcare and well-developed habit of litigation. We grab a quick lunch in the lodge, and then it’s off to find the Stash.

The Stash is sick. You duck in off a main run to a terrain park built to mimic freeriding through the best natural-hit run ever. (You can check it out at thestash.com) The new beginner features are perfect for our group, so we settle in for a session on the hand-hewn logs constructed into flat downs and up-flats. The girls even get to session the CK cabin, a wee cabin built in the middle of the Stash to memorialize legendary Burton rider Craig Kelly. You can wall-ride the outside of it, ride clear over the top if you’re of the calibre or slide the handrail to the staircase leading the way down. Very cool.

Time flies in The Stash and after one more run, time’s up and we’re ready to grab some sushi and hit the fashion show.

The evening’s big ticket is the Boarding for Breast Cancer Fashion Show and Auction at village shred shop Butterbox. Organized as part of the camp, it’s a catwalk event with a twist—the models are male snowboard instructors wearing the latest women’s line of Burton outerwear. Then, said instructors will be auctioned off for private lessons on Sunday morning before the camp starts (cue dirty jokes about ‘private’ lessons).

As it turns out, the fashion show is fairly tame compared by the auction to follows. The first bid is a mellow affair, pioneered by the definitely-not-mellow Nancy Lichtle and her pal Beth Matsui. Things heat up a bit for the second auction and the third gets positively competitive, as the stakes get raised and instructor Shep goes for a $115. The fourth and final auction—aided by enthusiastic bidding of one campers’ young daughters—ends at an exciting $130. And the winner is… Roxy! Whoo hoo! She and three friends flew up to Northstar from New York for the WTLR and, by the looks of things, are ready for anything. Thanks to everyone’s hard-won bidding, the auction raises $500 for B4BC.

The outfits of some campers indicate a night at the bar is on tap, but we, on the other hand, decide to take advantage of the bottles of red wine leftover from the night before and retire to the condo for girl talk and the ultimate girly revenge movie, Sleeping with the Enemy.