Eric’s snowboarding career began on Palomar Mountain!?! How fun is that! Do you have the snow levels recorded, or know someone who does? Thought you might find his note and request interesting and hoping a fellow subscriber can help him out. Keep reading for the details and be sure to check out Eric’s website below:
From: Eric Blehm <eric@ericblehm.com>
I hope you’re doing well, considering all that is going on….
This is Eric Blehm, I’m one of your subscribers … you may recall my name from a few emails a couple years back when I was considering property up on the mountain. I’m an author in Encinitas, but grew up in Valley Center… I’m working on my next book right now, and it includes some reference to time spent up on Palomar Mountain around 1985 to 1989… One of my friends and I used to snowboard up on the mountain before hardly anybody had heard of snowboarding, and I remember the first time was either early in the winter of 1984/85 or 1985/86
There were big storms then, as I recall, and I remember waiting for the first one to hit where it snowed on Palomar, which was our closest place to go “surf” the snow…
Snowboarding ended up guiding my career, as I ended up moving to Colorado, giving it a shot to become a pro snowboarder in the late 1980s, and ultimately getting my degree in journalism so I could write for a snowboarding magazine… I ultimately became the editor of TransWorld SNOWboarding magazine in Oceanside, and it was my ticket to travel around the world snowboarding…
And it all began, for me, on Palomar Mountain!
I am contacting you, just because you are the local history expert, and thinking you might have an idea where I could locate records for snowfall back in those early to mid 80s period. I have not had success with my own internet searches, and felt you might be able to point me in the right direction…
I know, if I can find when the first significant snowfalls occurred in those winters… At least four or five inches, I will have nailed down the dates of my FIRST time snowboarding. I believe it was November or December in 1985, or January 1986…
Much thanks for any help… Eventually, I’ll nail it down. It is all part of a bigger project that will be my next book to be published by HarperCollins probably in 2021. My own biography is interweaved sparsely within a bigger story of a pro snowboarder who is ultimately killed during an avalanche in 2003. He was a friend of mine. But, my early days of snowboarding (renting a snowboard from Ocean Snow surf shop that was in the Escondido Vineyard) are the beginnings of the adventure. I greatly appreciate your help, or any guidance as I look back to that period and storms that dropped snow on The Mountain.
Best,
Eric
Palomar Mountain News 
I wonder if the observatory would have this data or NOAA.
On Sun, May 17, 2020 at 4:42 PM Palomar Mountain News wrote:
> Bonnie Phelps posted: ” Eric’s snowboarding career began on Palomar > Mountain!?! How fun is that! Do you have the snow levels recorded, or > know someone who does? Thought you might find his note and request > interesting and hoping a fellow subscriber can help him out. ” >
By: Rosemary Johnston on May 18, 2020
at 2:32 am