Silas Thurman and I are doing everything we can to make a real wake scene in Oregon. Unfortunately, the only person who is actually willing to ride in the winter, Zak Stone, lives in Salem, 40 minutes from me and 2 hours from Silas. And well, we are way too lazy to drive down there. But wakeskating and boarding aren’t the only ways to get your shred on in Oregon. We have a mountain, a ton of skateparks and even an ocean, pretty much everything you could ever desire.

So Silas invited the Nike 6.0 team to head west for a little bit of snow slashing at Mt. Hood. Unfortunately, the snow didn’t show up and neither did Matt Manzari, who was too busy tricking out his new truck or some other equally lame excuse. Ben Horan and Nick Taylor did come though, and I was excited to go snowboarding with them and spray them every time they fell. I figured it would be a lot, since the closest thing to a mountain in Florida is a dark rollercoaster at Disney World. Boy was I in for a surprise.

First off, even without powder, snowboarding is fun. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and the snow was soft. Oh yeah, and Nick and Ben sort of rip at snowboarding. I guess that’s not too shocking because snowboarding is actually pretty easy, but Nick especially had good style, did proper grabs, and slid a front board in the park that made “real snowboarders” literally gasp.

The most fun part of the day was definitely the lift rides though. The entire way up was filled with baseless claims of greatness, and of course, some Manzari mocking thrown in for good measure. It also became a tradition to call whoever was lagging behind Manzari, so really, it was like Matt was there after all.