I have been thinking about posting these old photos for a while now. There is a memorable story from this trip which I will get into soon. Combine that with the fact that I have had a few strikeouts at the photo lab in recent weeks. One blank roll and one questionable roll that was massively underdeveloped with unrecognizable images on it… Well that leads me into talking about these photos from a snowboard trip 20 years or so ago.
So this is what happened on that trip. Me and a few of my friends drove down to Vermont to go snowboarding at Jay Peak. A legendary mountain by all means. I know I was overwhelmed at the size of the mountain. I had never been to anything that big on the east coast. I tried my best to take some photos to capture the size of the hill compared to the surroundings. As it turned out my camera got jammed up a bit at one point. I overexposed everything like crazy. It was a self rolled film that suffered from light leaks. Combine that with the manual focusing and frozen fingers it’s amazing anything turned out!
As best as I can remember… It was a really nice day and we were having a lot of fun. From the top of the mountain we had been eyeing this ridge that went out the back of the resort. We had heard that it was common for people to hike out and ride the down the back of the mountain down to the road and someone would give you a lift back to the resort. We were game. It was a perfect day and nothing was going to hold us back.
We started out on the ridge excited to get some fresh turns in somewhere. Along the way we were all walking and our legs were dropping through the snow. All the way to our knees and our groins. It was a little crazy but we were determined. Around this time we noticed some other people were using snowshoes… All of a sudden I hear my buddy Rob yell out. I couldn’t make out what he said but I do know I had never heard him yell like that. We all turn around to see what is going on and cannot see him! We call out and hear him again and realize that we can see his head poking out of the snow! We run back and he is hanging in a hole in the snow, holding on to a tree branch and his snowboard. He is freaking out, his feet are dangling in this giant hole. Luckily these guys show up and help us drag him out of the hole by his jacket. One of the guys made a comment about “no snow shoes”. We were all deeply shaken and very carefully hiked back to the safety of the resort.
A few of us were talking about this story this past summer and I dug these photos out of the archives. I wish I documented the whole or should I say “hole” ordeal but was terrified and just wanted to get Rob back to safety!
Take care out there,
Jeremy Shane Reid
Dusty Negatives 