12-21-12 /// End of the World Storm – by John Wells Where will you ride on your last day on Earth? Well, hopefully it’s a powder day and you are riding at your favorite resort or your choicest line far away from civilization. For me and Carl Wollschlager we decided to head into the eye of humanity and venture to Cypress Mountain just outside Vancouver, B.C. for some deep pow turns before our time here on this planet is over. With Mt. Baker acting like an apocalyptic wicked step sister (with 80 inches in 6 days and 100 downed trees in the road) she closed her doors to us and we headed north for some End of the World turns. Shit, no time to sit at home and sulk when the world is going to end in just a day or two. We mounted up, braved Vancouver rush hour traffic and mashed through 6 inches of snow, blasted around front wheel drive cars stuck in the coastal mush and got to our destination ready to shred. Meanwhile in the rest of the World mayhem ensues; Schools closing early, NASA giving scientific reasons countering the predictions of the Mayan Astronomers, people jacking up their credit cards in hope they won’t have to pay them off, and students praying for a 3 day weekend. All the while 22 inches of snow fell while we carved deep trenches in the trees and got blasted by 40 mph winds full of that lovely B.C. coastal velvet. Remember Y2K ? I think my clock radio from 1984 was the only thing affected by that multi-billion dollar fear campaign to stimulate our society into spending more money to add some more zeros. Zeros should be cheap, even free, hence the zero, duh. Society was at its best on December 20, 2012. Traffic up the ying yang, lots of people pushing Prius’ in the snow (electric cars are great in the snow, good torque) smart cars parked in plow lanes (not so smart) and generally a feeling of doomsday filled the air at 9 AM in Downtown Vancouver. Lightning bolts cracked the sky heading up to Cypress as the coastal air masses mixed and dumped heavy snow. Transformers blew with heavy winds knocking out all power; Cypress Mountain was running strictly on Diesel generators and none was the wiser. It truly felt like the end of the world for most urbanites but for us it was just another day riding pow, and boy did we ride. The trees were tight and magical, huge clouds of snow blinding every turn, mini avalanches in the trees, and pushy city folk wondering why we had backpacks on. It could have all ended then but they popped on the lights and pushed on into the darkness as Cypress was engulfed in a warm up and we left as the storm subsided and the fog rolled in. The End of the World was a mere hours away. It loomed near in the form of a shwarma /Donnair wrap in a crusty Falafel shack on Denman Street where in only hours the departure from this world was only too real!