Summer snowboarding is like squirty cream in a can: a delicacy that shouldn’t really exist, but once you’ve rammed a whole cap-full in your mouth and run into the streets pretending to have rabies, you’re a lifelong convert.
Of course I’m not talking about late-season riding – those April or even May sessions when a heel edge catch shovels enough slush down your bum crack to build your own full size Xscape replica (only with cleaner snow). And nor do I mean some late-season splitboarding, our new-favourite-sport that’s the missing link between cross-country skiing and Ikea cupboard building. In the wind. At the top of a mountain.
“Few things are as horrific as ragdolling down a freshly-salted summer funpark wearing just a t-shirt and some park gloves”
No, I’m talking about proper summer snowboarding: between June and August, on a glacier, in a t-shirt. For those who’ve never experienced it, here’s what to expect. You’ll have to get up at the crack of dawn to catch the small window of riding opportunity, and when you get up to the icy kickers and a bulletproof pipe it’ll turn into un-ridable slop with the ripening speed of a pear, on a dashboard, in Mexico. You’ll get burnt to a crisp by a stronger sun than Clint Eastwood in The Good The Bad and the Ugly, and you’ll likely have to buy sun cream that’s more expensive, ounce for ounce, than thoroughbred stallion semen.
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