Gerry Lopez. There’s nobody quite like him. Photo: Tyler Roemer
Talk about a surfer’s worst nightmare — I was kooking-out in front of Gerry Lopez. This staggering awareness came to me quite literally when, strapped onto my embarrassingly outdated snowboard, I teetered at the top of a decidedly pedestrian slope on Oregon’s Mt. Bachelor, peering down though the wind-driven snow to where the sport’s most legendary surfer balanced casually mid-slope, urging me to follow in his tracks. The run was called “Carnival,” but to be honest, by this point in the day (I say “point” not “time,” because in virtual whiteout conditions time becomes meaningless) I wasn’t having much fun. Especially now, faced with what to me looked like a pretty steep initial drop, requiring an immediate, confident frontside turn, and not much room in which to make it.
From where he waited below, Gerry’s voice came drifting up to where I stood, frozen in every sense of the word.
“Sam! Commit to the frontside turn!”
How to respond to a command like that? I sucked a ragged breath through my soggy balaclava, straightened my fogged goggles, and tentatively pointed the nose of my old board downhill.
Along with good friend Jeff Sweet (a pioneering ocean-sport athlete and accomplished snowboarder in his own right), I had come to Mt. Bachelor for one of my sporadic dives into the snow-sport experience. Mt. Bachelor, an impressive, freestanding dormant stratovolcano rising up in the southern tip of the Cascade Range to an elevation of just over 9,000 feet, pokes up onto the Central Oregon sky approximately 25 miles southwest of the thriving outdoor adventure-and-cool microbrewery hub of Bend, population 106,184.
One of those residents, at least during the winter seasons that see nearby Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort receive an annual average snowfall of over 400”, being Gerry Lopez, who back in 1992 moved here with his wife Toni, where they both threw themselves into snowboarding with a passion. Bachelor’s unique combination of snow conditions, prevailing wind direction and angle of slope has resulted in the formation of many undulating wave-like terrain features, a factor that obviously had a lot to do with Gerry’s decision to move here from Maui; as in earlier phases of his vaulted career at breaks like Ala Moana, Pipeline, Ulu Watu and Grajagan, it didn’t take him long to get it wired. And I mean wired — this wasn’t simply a case of some older guy taking up a new sport to have fun. Gerry Lopez, arguably the best 76-year-old athlete in the world, hasn’t approached any of the sports he’s mastered — surfing, sailboarding, kite-boarding, prone and stand-up paddling, foil boarding, and even terrestrial jags like motocross — just for fun. Snowboarding was no different; displaying total mastery and commitment that to this day belies the man’s chronological age (and, when off the slopes at least, his mellow yogi vibe).
This I was reminded of on our first morning in Bend, when being awakened by a 5:00 a.m. text from Gerry, exhorting us to rise and shine and get ourselves up to the mountain so as to be first in line at the bottom lift. The drive from downtown Bend to the Bachelor resort, climbing from an elevation of 3,600 feet up to the Sunrise Lodge at 7,300 feet, takes about 25 minutes, depending on road conditions. The first lift opens at 9:00 a.m. Up at 5:00 and hit it? Nothing like a bit of pressure to get you out of bed in the morning. Barely morning.
We reached the resort parking lot with plenty of time to look for Gerry, who we were sure had arrived long before we did. Gusting snow flurries made it difficult to see more than a few car-lengths away, and when we eventually tugged into our boots and exited the car the wind became even more of a factor; I’ve seen flickering black-and-white footage of early twentieth-century explorers struggling through fierce, high-mountain gales, and this wasn’t that. But it was close.
After peering into a handful of the wrong tricked-out Sprinters, we eventually found Gerry — parked in pole position, naturally, and even just sitting behind the wheel of his modest mini-van, looking like a man totally in his element. Which he was, of course, having achieved here on Mt. Bachelor much the same sensei status that he once enjoyed at the Banzai Pipeline. Right equipment, right outfit, right place in the lift line…right everything. I, on the other hand, had already begun to feel clumsy, clumping around on feet more accustomed to flip-flops, and a bit claustrophobic, having trouble straightening my balaclava while wearing mittens. Needless to say, I was uncharacteristically quiet on the lift ride up, with our icy chair swaying like laundry on a clothesline. Did I mention the visibility? Or, more accurately, a lack thereof?
Gerry, accompanied by an affable younger riding buddy introduced to us only as “The Colonel,” slid gracefully off the lift, but after assessing the blustery conditions (and the way in which I got off the lift, no doubt) counseled that, while he and The Colonel were continuing up the mountain, Jeff and I should probably “warm up” on a lower run called “Marshmallow.” Ouch.
As mentioned previously, my friend Jeff is an experienced snowboarder, the kind who can talk about his last Alaskan heli-skiing trip without even a hint of braggadocio; he generously joined me on Marshmallow. And over the years, I’ve done a fair bit of snowboarding myself, at a number of perfectly legit locales: Mammoth Mountain, Lake Tahoe, Park City, Whistler, even Sestriere, in the Italian Alps. While no powder hound or speed merchant, call me an enthusiastic intermediate. Enjoy carving turns, ride well within my limits, stay firmly on the ground, rarely, if ever, fall. But I hadn’t strapped a board on my feet for some years. And now I could barely see my feet, let alone the slope ahead of us. Leave it to say that my first few runs, even here on Marshmallow, were somewhat shaky, adjusting not only to being strapped in again, but what was, for me, the new sensation of riding in eight to ten inches of powdery, freshly fallen snow; I was more of a wide-open, “groomer” guy.
So I wasn’t feeling all that confident when a couple hours later Gerry and The Colonel caught up to us at the bottom lift. Turned out that while we warmed up on Marshmallow, Gerry and the Colonel, unfazed by the closure of the higher lifts due to sketchy wind conditions, had hiked to the top of the mountain, strenuously “post-holing” through knee-deep snow up to the 9,065-foot summit. Gerry matter-of-factly explaining that he had to do so very slowly.
“Yeah, right,” said The Colonel. “Every time I turned around, he was right behind me.”
“How was your run?” I asked, glancing up toward the mountaintop, hidden behind a curtain of dark clouds and swirling snow.
“Worth every step.” said Gerry. But then added that now he thought he’d ride with me a bit, see how I was doing, maybe give me a few tips. And this is when the bad stuff started.
While under Gerry’s benevolent scrutiny, I had apparently completely forgot how to ride a snowboard. Floundering in the deeper snow, my turns transecting the fall line and steering me back uphill, to eventually slow and flop down face-first; struggling mightily to regain my feet, panting through the balaclava, cringing away from the hordes of tiny ski school tots, who, sensing my weakness, crowded my line with no compunction. Gerry, all the time riding ahead, a kinetic portrait of grace, style and verve, to where he’d stop and regard my efforts, offering pointers as if to someone on their first day. Eventually to the moment at the top of “Carnival,” where, my confidence shattered like a thin pane of ice, I hesitated before dropping in.
“Sam, trust your toes,” Gerry called up. “You have to commit to the frontside turn.”
Serious decision time. Because regardless of how badly I wanted to take this extraordinary opportunity to follow in Gerry Lopez’s tracks, I just couldn’t take any more kooking-out in from of him.
“No, I don’t, Gerry!” I called back, not sure if he heard me or not, and proceeded to sideslip down the face to where he stood; if I was going to disappoint him, I’d at least do it standing up, not flat on my face.
Was it a small victory? Certainly. Yet by asserting myself, even in this low-amplitude effort, a spark of ego somehow fanned to flame. Passing Gerry, where, admittedly, the slope had leveled out a touch, I finally committed to the requisite frontside turn. Then, trusting the toes to point the nose downhill, I transitioned to my heels and continued to the bottom of the run, effectively (if not exactly expertly) applying every other tip Gerry had offered.
Skittering back into the lift line, I found Gerry waiting for me. Of course he had beaten me down, elegantly racing through deeper snow in the adjacent tree-line. There he stood, cool, relaxed — like I said, totally in his element. Pulled down his neck gaiter, smiling at me through his fog-free goggles.
“Better,” he said. Then more seriously, “Now, wipe your nose.”
I did, scratching the drip that hung off its tip on the back of my glove, like some kid obeying his stern but well-meaning dad. But smiling myself, here on Mt. Bachelor, at having made that run, and who I made it with; at the realization that rather than something to be ashamed of, what an honor it was to be kooking-out in front of Gerry Lopez.
