It ain't no thing but a chicken wing

Two years ago Ben invited me on a 5 day Baker shred trip with Temple and Andy Hetzel. I got so stressed out trying to ride with Temp that I pulled out after 2 days. Yea a pussy, but whatever. I'll use the "I got kids excuse." I remember the warm up run on day two. Temple explains to us “Yea we’ll hike behind the church, make some good turns then end up on a little cliff band.” "Cool Temp" and we followed thru the tree’s slashing and having fun. Roll up to this 60’+ face and Temple says something like “uh go here, then bounce over there and I’ll see you at the bottom.” Uh ok? We watch him roll off into oblivion and ending up as a small speck waiting for us down below. Guy Deschanes and Wes Makepeace were with us also and they kind of looked at each other with some questions then muscled their way down with plenty of effort. Hetzels sitting there watching and all of a sudden he starts laughing. Ben’s like “what’s so funny Andy?” “This! How the fuck are we supposed to get down this thing? Seriously???” Ben looks at me and says in a soft voice so Andy can’t hear “would we be pussies if we hiked back up and went around?” I’m shitting my pants by the way, clearly in over my head and out of my league. “Pussies!!!??? FUCK NO dude, let’s start walking.” Then Andy figures it out and falls to the bottom. Eventually Ben makes it down and I’m left hanging up there all eyes on me. I keep screaming at myself “you fucking pussy, you fucking pussy, you fucking pussy” until I convince myself to go. The only thing that played in my favor was the fact I went last, followed others lines AND had my trusty 170 Unity to hold my ass up. Anyway…was searching for something on the interweb today and one thing led to another and found this vid of Andy and Temple from a Fall Line Films. This is one of the all time moments in my opinion of snow shredding on film. Right up there with Johan’s straight line in TB5. Goes to show you that a straight jump indy looks as good as anything.