Killing it at Home, Splitboarders Across the World: Dan Mingori
Our next stop is to a place where the local ski hill has been known to stay open 9 months in a single season, this place happens to be in Southern California. Dan Mingori has explored these vast high alpine slopes for so many years that he decided to write a guide book filled with numerous gems in the Eastern Sierras. In this interview Dan takes about what its like solely riding a splitboard, long approaches and first turns of the season.
Name: Dan Mingori
Primary Location, Home Mountain, or Home Range: Eastern Sierra, CA
Age: 33
Primary Solid Board: Haven’t been on a one-piece in almost 5 years.
Preferred Binding System: I alternate between Spark’s and a pair of homemade bindings I crafted a few years ago. Both have their advantages/disadvantages, but I find myself using the Sparks more often now.
Boot: I’m still waiting on a manufacturer to produce a splitboard-specific boot, but in the meantime I’ve been scoring old Koflach Oxygen and Superpipe boots on eBay for the last few years. They are a soft-boot upper with a hard mountaineering sole, and are infinitely more durable than modern snowboard boots. But they were only produced for about 2 years back in the mid 90’s, so finding them isn’t too easy.
How Long Have You Been Snowboarding? My memory is starting to fade in my old age, but I think it’s been about 25 years.
How Long Have You Been Splitboarding? 9 years
What Compelled You to Begin Splitboarding? I flailed around on snowshoes for a few seasons, and quickly figured out that I needed to find a better way. The skin tracks always seemed to be going waaaaaay far out to the places where I wanted to be. At the same time I was growing tired of the resort. Mammoth Mountain is a lot of fun, but it doesn’t have anything in the way of steep terrain. So I realized that the only way to get that was to either move to Europe or head into the backcountry. The latter seemed like the more reasonable of the two options. I’ve always enjoyed hiking and climbing, so combining that with snowboarding just came together naturally. I’d never even seen a splitboard, only heard about them from a skier friend. So I decided I would be a guinea pig and buy a split kit.
Gnarliest or most Extensive Approach for a Single Line:Mt Lyell. A few years ago I decided to extend the season one more day by heading out there at the end of May. It’s about 13 miles to the base, which really isn’t too bad, but I expected to find a lot more snow. That is, I figured I would have been able to skin (and ride) a lot more of it. Instead, I ended up carrying my board and boots for the round trip of 26 miles, and only skinned a little bit on the glacier. I made a few turns that day, but basically ended up taking my snowboard on a really long walk. Going in wasn’t too bad, but coming out that afternoon (and into the evening) was kinda brutal, after only riding a short distance. The trail is pretty popular among backpackers, and I kept running into groups of people who would give me the funniest looks, and ask the obvious question: “Did you go snowboarding today?!?!?”. So the comedy of having to explain myself over and over is what kept me going for the long hike out. And of course I kept telling everyone that the day was awesome and totally worth the hike.
Ideal Backcountry Day: Glorious summits, steep narrow couloirs, and perfect powder followed by some nice trees back to the car. Basically, the stuff dreams are made of! Lately I’ve been going more for the mountaineering aspect of the sport. So an ideal day would be spent on a peak that I’ve never climbed before, with a little bit of rock scrambling and exposure mixed in. But I do also like riding steep trees on storm days. I grew up on the east coast, so I feel at home in the trees.
Lifetime Goal or Objective, a Line You’ve Been Eyeing for a While, or What Would Be your Dream Trip? Oh, geez. Too many to name. I always have this running “tick list” in my head of all the things I want to do. And every time I tick something off the list, I end up getting views of 5 more peaks that then get added to my list. It never ends! We have to contend with a lot of wind around here. So there are a lot of lines that rarely fill in, just because they get hit so hard from the winds at the end of each storm. So I have this “once in a lifetime” list going right now: Middle Palisade, Seven Gables, the NE Couloir on Split Mountain, Picture Peak, and so on…
Favorite Backcountry Meal: I’ve been known to carry fast food and slices of pizza in to a basecamp. Once I started lugging around a bunch of camera equipment, “light and fast” got thrown out the window, and got replaced by “heavy and comfortable”.
Favorite Piece of Gear (and Why): My rock board. I only use it one day a year, but that’s usually my favorite day of the season. It gets taken out after the very first storm of the season, when there’s just barely enough snow to slide on. And the first day of every season is always the most memorable. After a long summer of no snowboarding, those first few turns are always a treat.
Where has Split Boarding taken you? For starters, it got me away from the shitshow at the resort!
Being out in the mountains renewed my interest in photography, which is now what I’ve been focusing on more and more recently. It also led to writing a backcountry guidebook for the area, which was something I never imagined I would do. I guess you could say it turned my love of snowboarding into something more than a silly hobby.
Tell us about your book, what prompted you to write it: The main reason was that there was a need for updated information on the skiing of the Eastern Sierra. That’s what kicked it off, but as we started working on it I found other sources of motivation. I remember reading a quote from a climbing guidebook author that said “putting together a guidebook is a labor of love”. And as I got more into it, I realized what that meant. It’s a lot of work, for not a much money. But I love helping people out, and I really wanted to get new information out there, and get people excited and motivated to ski. Guidebooks do a lot more than just point people in the right direction. I always loved flipping through my climbing guidebooks, forming plans in anticipation of the upcoming weekends. So as the hundreds of hours of work started adding up, I just imagined all the people flipping through my book, getting excited to ski something new.
Other Stuff You Do (music, volunteerism, art, school, etc.): I do enjoy taking pictures of mountains. So I’ve been slowly working on findings ways to possibly do that professionally. Most recently I’ve been doing local art shows, and learning more about printing and framing.
