I have never raped a snowboard quite like this before.

Looking back, it does make sense that the amount of force on my board would be much higher while riding uphill. It also makes sense that riding uphill over sharp exogenous volcanic shrapnel with such increased force could violate an intense new topography into the base of my board. I should have considered some basic physics upon realizing that I wasn’t going to make it onto the thin strip of snow between the rocks. I should have used those 35 milliseconds to calculate that those little rocks – rocks that might not be such a problem on the way down – could be a big problem on the way up. Just consider, for a moment, the vectors. On the way down there is the vector pointing down created by gravity, and the vector pointing out, away from the volcano, created by sliding across the slope of said volcano. There are of course also some vectors of the frictions of the snow, the resistence of the air, photons bouncing off my goggles, the rotation of the Earth, and the pull of all that dark matter that I don’t believe in. But nevermind those. Mind, instead, the vectors involved with being pulled up the volcano by an accelerating snowmobile. There is again the vector of gravity, but this time it is being more than canceled out by the four-stroke two-stroke Yamaha snowmobile ahead of and above me. Let’s say the rope with a seven-inch stick tied to the end, to which I’m gripping for dear life, is at a 25 degree angle. Now tighten that rope across the hypotenuse of the right triangle in your mind and pretend for a moment that I know what I’m talking about. The base of that right triangle ought to be some sort of vector, pointing into the volcano, translating into some serious gouging power should we start dividing volcanic debris into our equations. And, of course, some very tired forearms.

Lack of foresight in not letting go and just walking over the rocks aside, getting pulled behind a snowmobile waterskistyle is not my preferred method of getting up Russian volcanoes. I want a helicopter, of course. So far, however, arranging one has been surprisingly difficult – especially considering my willingness to pay. We had a good storm the second and third days here, depositing about a foot of snow. But, since then the weather’s been great. Clear skies, not too windy, and at the coldest maybe in the upper ‘teens (for my imperially-challenged readers, let’s just say that you’d be okay with a centimeter or two of insulation, though your deciliters would freeze in a cool metric minute).

February, I’ve been told, is usually however the snowiest month, and most operators don’t plan trips until March. So if we are to fly it would most likely be in a small helicopter arranged privately and paid for proportionately.

In the meantime, alternate belt-based ground transport has been the name of the game. On Sunday, being that there was large enough group, this meant a funky old, crawlingly slow but better than walking Chinese-made snowcat. This being more reasonably-priced than heliboarding, Harold and I split the cost to pay for our gracious host Julia’s way as well – her first time riding on the volcano.

She, her friend Nadia, and the ten-or-so other locals who had been up there since Saturday all had to go back Sunday night, job-having suckas. This left a large cabin at the base of the volcano, as well as piles of left-over food, all to Harold and me.

Only two of us to ride on Monday, it was left to Vidally, his snowmobile, two ropes with two short, stubby sticks tied to the end to get us up the volcano. Much faster and more agile than a two-ton snowcat, we were stoked to try and get up to some nice-looking bowls we’d been eying the day before. Unfortunately, we soon found that staying atop one’s board over two foot wind-carved ice crust ridges (while fighting those aforementioned vectors, of course) to be painful at best and impossible at worst. Vidally didn’t seem too happy about getting buffeted around on the snowmobile neither. So at Vidally’s wise suggestion we gave up and got dragged up the much more forgiving snowcat tracks into the same bowl we’d been riding the day before.

After a good afternoon of riding, we were given the option of getting pulled on our snowboards for 15kms back to the road. Despite the amazing forearm workout that would be, the choice was clear: Hell no, let’s ride the sled. Harold sitting, me standing dog sled style on the back, and snowboards lashed to the front, we rode that home-made looking sled behind not the powerful Yamaha, but instead an ancient and easily over-heated Russian beast. Straight out of an old Bond film, the speedometer on this Soviet snowmobile went up to 140km/hr, but the needle just flopped around with the bumps.