Struggling to shove an extra set of goggles into a bulging board bag hours before a flight from DIA to Sea-Tac, I was overwhelmed with anxiety. This would be my first time attending something I’d read about since I was a kid. I should’ve been excited, but instead I felt shitty. The uneasy and unwelcome feeling in stomach stemmed from reasons unrelated to the event. I imagine it’s a feeling pills are prescribed for, if you’re into that sort of thing.
But what’s always worked better for me than Xanax or its generic forms are snowboarding and being around people who value it in a similar way as myself — those who have used it to solve their own problems at one time or another. Each day further into the six I spent at Baker, the issues which seemed so imminent as I packed dissipated further. My stomach knotted only when I heard my name announced in the start shack, and if you don’t get butterflies when that happens I don’t believe you’re human.
Shortly into my time postholing around the perimeter of the course pointing my camera at the riders on its berms, I decided I’d let others display the action at Mount Baker while I focused on the faces that make this event unlike any other in snowboarding.
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