Riding Mount Baker is an experience that will etch itself in your memory. Thick snow covers steep, rocky terrain, setting up lines and options matched by few destinations. Like the mountain itself, the Legendary Banked Slalom is not something easily forgotten — especially when you fuck up. As Lucas Debari puts it, “One turn that I didn’t nail is the difference between winning and not winning. I think about that turn or that hand drag or that scuff or that missed rut; I’ll think about that for months after.”
The great aspect of a banked slalom course is the opportunity it provides for anyone from pros to five year olds to compete on the same course. but not every banked slalom draws those pros from halfway across the world to compete. The community vibe that stretches from the campers lined up in the lot to the mass batches of paella at the top, reminds anyone in attendance that being a snowboarder is being a part of something.
The history made at LBS puts in a category of its own within our culture, and as a man who has logged extensive time at Baker, Liam Gallagher is the perfect person to tell the story of an event which has become — to the outside snowboarding world — synonymous with the place itself over its three decades in existence.
