Like A Good Hump In The Woods: Tumalo Snake-Run Rally
Some Decisions Are Harder Than Others - Golf, Godiva Rabbits, Or The Tumalo Snake-Run Rally
This past Sunday, while folks were either busy getting their second Seder on, eating the beady sugar-eyes off of Peeps or milk chocolate rabbits named Carl (what’s up with the eyes, people?), or out golfing in skorts, another kind of cultish ritual was simultaneously unfolding in a semi-shaded pitch of woods on the southeast flank of Tumalo.
Two parts childhooded garage-punk joy, three parts unnerving, and all parts fucking awesome, the Tumalo Snake-Run Rally was exactly what you wanted out of an impromptu hand-dug banked slalom event. Maybe it was the newness of the whole thing that left me swooning (it’s true, the TSRR popped my slalom cherry), but… I don’t think so. With its snow and snowboarding and good people, its supportive atmosphere, sun-filtered Ponderosa, and grassroots ethos, I’m pretty damn sure I’m not the only one whom the Snake-Run Rally left in postcoital glow.
One day prior to its weirdo gathering, I came across Tumalo Snake-Run Rally on Instagram. Don’t ask me how, these things happen. In the account were a few photos and some shaky video, an event date that hadn’t yet passed, and a vague map of the rally location. Random, cryptic, and you get to slide around in the woods? Tell me more. After leaving a comment inquiring whether or not one could just show up and do it to it, the ether hearted my comment and replied: bring $10 and a snack for the jefes.
Skrr Skrr. Or: How To Approach Your Local Hand-Dug Slalom Event
Because I’m intrinsically drawn to misfit gatherings in wayside locations, especially if they involve feats of strength and skill in semi-sketchy patches of snow or dirt, the Snake-Run Rally sounded like a reasonable thing to check out on a holy day in April. Less than 24 hours after coming across the serpentine internet enigma that is TSRR, a good friend and I found ourselves edging along a cindery Cascade Lakes Highway before hiking some bulletproof to arrive at something we weren’t even sure was going to happen.
C’est la vie. Always say yes.
Hm, you don’t say.
We showed up—two snowboards, some SPF chapstick, twenty bones, and a paper bag full of homemade peanut butter cookies between the two of us—just as the first of 50-ish other stick-draggers was starting to emerge from who the fuck knows where. With a collective kindness and ease, those already present at the mini-gap finish area welcomed us in. And just like that, a small slice of Tumalo was populated with goggle tans, boot packs, scraping sounds, and snacks.
Akin to the historical and ever-popular banked slaloms we know and cherish here in the Pacific Northwest (and which I have yet to attend…), the Tumalo Snake-Run Rally was all about having a blast and pushing past some self-imposed limits with pals and new friends alike. No egos. No assholes. Just high-fives and bragging rights.
After an initial survey of the Snake-Run scene, I knew I was in love. From course stakes stapled with laminated TSRR flags and snowboard chicks sunning themselves alongside the finish ditch (and who would, mind you, dominate the course later on), to walkie talkies, stopwatch timers, and weed, the DIYFS-ness of it all was heartening, to say the least.
Down The Scrape-Chute or Bust at Tumalo Snake-Run Rally
As for my first test run down the pre-sun scrape-chute of death, it was… intimidating. OkOk, it was fucking terrifying. With the race delayed until things warmed and softened up (a lot more), I east-coasted my way through the turns and straights, collecting an ass-hematoma and an uptick in cortisol levels along the way. It was not pretty.
Fast-forward an hour or so, to when the sun’s teeth had sunk firmly into the frozen corn snow and a riders’ meeting informed us not to litter and not to get hurt, and the Snake-Run Rally was a go. At this point, navigating the course was still slightly terrifying, but also kind of addicting in that each run down the snow-snake prompted new and unexpected micro-progressions.
Weirdo gatherings in the woods—my people!
For the remainder of the day it was all hoots and hollers and slashes and close calls. Post-holing and puffs of smoke and peeing in the woods. Helmet sharing and babes on sticks on snow supporting other babes on sticks on snow. It was like the Island of Misfit Toys and you were King Moonracer or Yukon Cornelius or Queen Camilla, but everyone called you Bill or Charlene or Cheryl. And no one gave a fuck whether or not you bagged the winning time or made it past turn three.
If you missed the inaugural Tumalo Snake-Run Rally, that blows. But don’t feel too shitty, the only reason I didn’t miss it is because Instagram’s creepy algorithms worked, and I decided to show up. Plus, the sweethearts in charge of the whole shebang assure us there will be more snakes in the grass in the near (snowy) future.
Cheers to that…
Technically the grass is under the snow, so…