My buddy, Matt Brauning, and I had this communal calendar where we planned our weekend outdoor activities out almost until the end of the summer. This past weekend was a classic multi-sport road trip that started out like all good road trips do: We were up too late Friday night drinking and dancing with some friends at a club. There was late night Mexican food after we got back to Brauning’s place and our original departure time of 6:00am was shot to hell. I woke Brauning up (and the young lady next to him) and we hit the road at 8:20am. An hour and a half later we were in Joshua Tree National Monument looking for an old mine off of some back road. After spending 45 minutes searching, we gave it up and went to look for a camping/parking space at the Hidden Valley Campground. We found an empty space next to a group from the Seattle area who had been in the park climbing for two months. They were amazed with Brauning’s truck. It is a big, gas guzzling, non-earth friendly bastard and the only reason he was able to squeeze into the tiny space was because his Chevy has Quadra-Stear four wheel steering. By their reaction, you would have though we were showing those ol’ boys fire or women for the first time.

Brauning needs 10-12 hours of sleep every night so that he can go into the office, talk on the phone and surf the net fully rested. His activities the night before had robbed him of that quality coma like state, so he started drifting off to sleep while cooking and in the middle of conversation around 8:00 that night. We met a couple of Marines on weekend leave who were in Joshua Tree climbing and talked to them for an hour or so after supper. Brauning dozed off during the conversation with them as well. We turned in before 10:00. Brauning’s eco-destroyer truck has a camper shell and thickly padded sleeping platform in it. Screw a tent; sleeping on that thing is like sleeping on your bed at home. It only got down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit that night, so we were warm and comfy in our bags under the topper and were lulled to sleep that night with the tink-ping sound of someone setting a late night clandestine bolt somewhere in the valley. We got up at 5:30 the next morning, crawled out of the back and into the front seats. We hit the road right away and had a breakfast of icing covered strawberry Pop Tarts and fruit in the cab of the truck on the way to Big Bear.

Just before lunch, Brauning made friends with an old guy working one of the lifts and he hooked us up with runs where there were absolutely no lift lines. Brauning had just bought a new board and bindings and he loved them, bombing down every empty run that we hopped on. I was about 30 yards behind him on a steep clumpy emptyhill when he went down hard. On our last trip together, Brauning had a horrendous face plant on at jump that blacked his eye. This one wasn’t quite as bad, but he saw stars for a few minutes. We pulled to the side of the run while he collected his thoughts and snacked a bit. I only screwed up once, but it was a good one: coming into on of the lift line areas, I came in too fast and didn’t see a skier standing there. I tried to stop, but it was too late… I nailed her right in the boots with my board edge and she flew over me and landed square on her butt. I immediately checked to see if she was OK and apologized again and again for my mistake. She turned out to be fine and understood that it was an accident, so I didn’t get a cussing.

Snacking is the key to spending quality time on the slopes. Screw going to the truck or the lodge for lunch. Throw a few Power Bars, some jerky, a couple of bagels, craisons, little packets of cheese and cookies into your hydration pack and just keep going. There is plenty of time for eating on the lifts. I came up with a concoction of a Clif Bar topped with strawberry Gu on one lift ride that day that REALLY hit the spot!

After spending some quality time on the empty runs and lifts, we headed to the other side of the mountain and hit the terrain park. Man, we had a ball. We hit small jumps, shelves, features, big jumps and dropped into the half pipe and played. I caught some great air on a couple of the big jumps and Brauning really hammered the half pipe and a high bank just as you come out of the pipe. The only real drawback to that side of the mountain was the crowds. The lift lines weren’t too bad, but there were idiots sitting in the middle of the runs, on the face and in the landing area of jumps and at the edge of steep sections of the runs. It was sort of an obstacle course getting to the lifts. We ran the terrain park until we were just beat and headed to the truck around 4:15. We loaded up pretty quickly and started back to Orange County. There were some Pop Tarts left from that morning’s breakfast and Brauning had a couple packages of tuna salad & crackers. My buddy Mark Flood used to live on tuna and Pop Tarts and at the time we all thought that there couldn’t be anything nastier, but having now tried the combination I can see why it appealed to him: It was downright tasty! Cheers Flood!

It should only take an hour and a half to drive from my place to Big Bear, but the trip home that night was a bit longer… by 3 more hours. Traffic sucked and there were two rollover wrecks on the mountain road. We didn’t roll into Brauning’s garage until almost 9:00 that night. The traffic didn’t take away from the trip though. I really did have a GREAT time and the only thing that I would change for next multi-sport trip is to board the first day and climb on the second: Drive into Big Bear early Saturday for boarding, havea big hot meal in town before driving to Joshua Tree and camping out, climb hard all day in the park and then making the drive home Sunday night on a very uncluttered 6-lane highway.

Adherence to that plan started going south almost as soon as we made it. Brauning had a small “friends-only” get together at his place to finish off the keg of beer left from one hell of a St. Patty’s Day party the Wednesday before. The gathering soon ballooned into confusion with strangers drinking all the liquor, an obnoxious ex-girlfriend or two, carpet stains, too much beer and high drama involving a particular lady that was infatuated with the host. I crashed around 3:30am and Brauning went to sleep about 4:00. I was up at 6:00 the next morning and had to practically winch Brauning out of bed. He staggered/lumbered to the truck, threw me the keys and fell into the passenger side seat. We rode Snow Summit Resort two weeks before and wanted to hit the terrain park at Big Bear Resort this time. We parked at the base of Snow Summit and planned to take the bus over to the other resort, but when we saw the snow; neither of us seemed to remember the bus ride plan. We just hit the lifts. The snow was a little hard and icy that morning, but by 11:00 it had softened up considerably. Brauning and I spent all morning hitting jumps, banks and bumps, doing fairly well on them ( not landing on our asses too much). At the end of one really good run stood a massive twelve-foot high launch ramp that I hit once, timidly, and got about two feet of good air. Brauning and I decided to hit the thing the next time down like men, big mistake! Brauning hit the incline going REALLY fast and shot strait up and out, landing on his belly and face from about five feet up. I didn’t see him wipe out and I hit the jump hauling ass. As I crested the lip, there laid Brauning in my landing area/impact zone. If I had been a cartoon character I would have held up a little “Help!” sign right before twisting in the air to avoid the sad pile of flesh in my way. I somehow managed a wonderfully executed face plant with a ¼ twist on top of the jump that left me seeing all the pretty birdies flying around my head and a taste of blood in my mouth. We both limped down to the lodge and for a short rest and a hot meal.

The stars that night were gorgeous and my last sight before sinking off to sleep was the belt of Orion shining down from the night sky. The next morning, I awoke in pain and I just laid there for an hour, not wanting to move and not wanting to be awake anymore. I was so sore and stiff from the falls I took boarding. I woke Brauning up just before I crawled out of the camper and he laid there and moaned while I made breakfast. There was some serious thought given to sitting in camp all day and napping in the shade. We pressed on, got our gear together and started climbing around 9:00. We both felt REAL bad, so I decided to give an easy little 5.7 a go to warm up and get our blood flowing. Well, that route WAS NOT a 5.7! I was up twenty-five feet on a slab with no place to put protection in and nowhere to hold onto, no safe way to get down and no real good way to go up. I stood on a two-inch by half inch pencil ledge for a minute or two, weighed my options, screwed my head on strait, pulled up my balls and went for it. The 5.10 move was CRAZY scary on a featureless slab and up another eight feet of more featureless slab to a jug hold and into a crack. I made the moves and set a bomber piece in the crack. There is nothing like setting your first real piece thirty-five feet off the ground to make one hyper-aware of all the stupid shit that one has done in the last six months. Brauning cleaned the route and commented on the mad scary slab moves. We walked off the top of the route and set up a 5.11b top rope route in the shade. I tried the route first (3 times) and couldn’t get past a dyno fifteen-feet up. Brauning tied in and sent the dyno and the first ¾ of the route before resting on rope. It was an impressive show. He topped out and I gave the route one more go. I nailed the dyno and got ½ way up before losing the hand/foot sequence, getting tired and finishing the route like a whipped puppy. We had spectators the whole time we were both on route. Apparently, the dyno looked very impressive from the ground.

Lesson learned from this trip: The trip order needs to be climbing on Saturday and boarding on Sunday. The key is: stay in town après boarding, have a beer and a big dinner while the traffic clears going down the mountain. This way we could be home by 10:30 or 11:00, still a decent hour and not have to fight the homebound weekend traffic.