Closer- Camping without a cause

For the month of February, three friends, Chad Otterstrom, Colin Spencer, and photographer Jeff Brockmeyer have been caravan-ing around the northwest in search of elusive powder. And now two weeks into the trip things couldn’t have gone smoother.

For the first two weeks we couch surfed, floor surfed, and powder surfed the great state of Washington. On our first day of arrival the snow gods gave us three days of top quality powder. We rode back and forth between Mt. Baker and Stevens Pass. We did everything we could to capture “just one more run” for a week straight of fresh snow. We rode the lifts, we boot packed up steep faces, and we split boarded surrounding mountains. All so when we got to the top we could ride down.

However, we couldn’t let the epic proportion of this trip begin to dwindle with the sun. So we packed up our two cars and drove north of the border to Nelson.

After getting heckled at the border (like usual, maybe because we have too much stuff) we claimed our freedom in Canada.

We have been keeping our eyes on the Ultra Natural event at Baldface. Supposedly you cannot spectate the event because the access is so hard. But when we woke Sunday we heard rumor the event was on and dashed into the woods to skin our way in. I guess you could consider us super fans cause we worked to spectate. Lets call it a two hour mix of skinning and snowboarding to view the most awesome event in backcountry snowboarding to this day. When we arrived, the magnitude of the course blew us away. We couldn’t believe the variety and size of the  features. And everyone hosting and riding in the event was stoked to see some fellow snowboarder coming in to check out the event.

With the departure of the Helicopters we worked our way back to town.  For today we are setting up our camp in the Kootney’s so we can wake up in the morning and pop out of our tents already shining with the mountains. Totally disconnected and totally free. Good thing we have -40 sleeping bags.

— Jake Black

Jake Black is on the Breck Pro Team and currently travelling around the country to take advantage of winter.