Snowboarding on ice

Saturday afternoon I braved some seriously cold weather to go snowboard at the closest ski resort, The Summit at Snoqualmie. There isn't much snow, and my board now has some scrapes from all the exposed rocks. This was also the first time I have had to cope with ice since moving out to Seattle. Ice + Snowboard = Bad. Fortunately, I have enough experience skiing on icy slopes (I learned to ski in New England), to know how to avoid the worst of the ice patches.

The good side of crap snowfall is that the lift-lines were empty. I got almost 4 solid hours of boarding in. I am not an expert, but am a decent intermediate. I rarely crash, but rarely make it through the moguls without some minor incident. I discovered unintentionally that I can handle small jumps, after dodging some ice lead me over a bump that had a steeper trailing edge than I expected.

The only downside is my car. I've got all-wheel drive, but with sport-tires. Not a great combo in snow. They handled light snow reasonably well on the way back from the mountain, but I don't really trust them to handle real snow/ice very well. If I went more often and had more cash on hand, I'd just buy some cheap wheels and tires for the winter. I guess I'll just have to find other people to drive.