My Life in the Mountains

As I mentioned, I am from Newport Beach, CA. Although, I was born in Newport, I moved to the Bay Area when I was five. My parents had a condo in Tahoe City and I began skiing at Alpine Meadows. When I moved back to Newport at age 12, my love for winter sports went a bit astray, until I began college at CU Boulder. I went to a ski/snowboard swap, bought a Burton Feelgood and never looked back. Once I graduated college, I thought I never wanted to be cold again, until I realized it was 80 degrees in October in Newport and I was over it. My friend, Amy, and I decided to pack up and move to Tahoe, where my love of winter was rooted in the first place. On the way, we managed to rope two more friends into the journey, Rebel and Lindsay. After my first season as a lift operator at Squaw Valley, I travelled to Australia and did a season in guest services at Thredbo Ski Resort (where I have to admit, I was more interested in the Aussie dudes than I was in their mountains). I spent one more season as a lifty at Squaw, a summer in an epic party pad on the Truckee River, and my third winter there in the uniforms department with one of my best friends, Karen, who will probably pop up in this blog quite often. My last season there was the winter of 2010/11, which happened to be one of the gnarliest Tahoe winters in history. After being beaten to death by resort life, I decided to pack my bags and move back to the beach. I spent a year working at Oakley, but wasn't getting nearly enough riding in, so I quit and began working at Surfside Sports, where I have remained to this day. Surfside helped sooth my wounds from life at Oakley and bring me back full heartedly into snowboarding. It might have taken me a bit to get off my high horse about Bear Mountain, but the older I get, the more I realize, it's not where you are, it's who you're with...and any snow is better than no snow.

Denny Doo, me, and Scotty- Chinquapin, Tahoe City, CA 1994ish