Ripping in the Rockies - 12 March 2006

Hi everyone!

Yup I am still alive. The season has been a ripper so far, waaay better than last year. Yay! I’m currently in Fernie with about six weeks of the season left to go. I can’t believe how fast the past ten weeks has disappeared. I must have done a lot of skiing as I have managed to clock up 55 days of skiing. What have I been doing all this time? Well:

Nice in New Zealand

It was really nice to get back to New Zealand and catch up with family and friends. Unfortunately I had a bunch of chores to do which seriously ate into my time for catching up with people!

Two major chores were getting divorced and applying for a Canadian work visa. Both involved finding paperwork in my stored goods. This was no small task. It took four people, one forklift, three crates and three hours solid searching. Eventually all the required bits of paper were found and the crates could be nailed back together and put back into the stack.

Getting divorced was bizarre. I wandered into the family court office armed with the wedding certificate and the ex, filled out a form, signed on the dotted line a couple of times and that was it! 12 years gone in 60 seconds.

With the chores out of the way it was off to Nelson for a family Xmas. Unusually for December the weather was fantastic and I picked up a tan

White in Whistler

New Years Eve in Whistler This was the base for our snowman. It was so heavy that four people couldn’t move it.

With Xmas over it was time to head back to Canada. The first job was to go to Vancouver to pick up the car.

I don’t know what it is about vehicles, it seems that if I put them into containers or storage they get the sulks. So it was with a little trepidation I picked up the car. Sure enough the front right was flat! Even worse when I went to fix it the tyre wasn’t repairable. Damn. The other tyres weren’t in great shape so I decided to bite the bullet and buy a set of winter tyres. It turns out this was a very good decision. The difference on snow and ice is huge and with the amount of snow driving I have done they were worth the price.

However the surprises weren’t all bad. A friend had borrowed the car while I was away and not only was the tank full but there was a bottle of Jack hidden behind the front seat… Thanks Bec!

The Hostel I stayed in was in a beautiful setting on the shores of Alta Lake, well away from the bustle of the main Whistler area – with 160 acres of hotels it was always going to busy, and the Xmas - New Year period was peak season

The next decision was where to go for New Years. The reports said Whistler had good snow and it was a short drive so I headed on up. In contrast with last year where Whistler was barely operating, they had some of the best snow for a number of years. I hadn’t ever skied in such great powder and it was an awesome experience. It was so good that I even got a full day in on New Year’s Day!

The Road to Fernie

I was very tempted to stay in Whistler and enjoy the snow – the forecast said there was heaps of snow on the way, but I had a season’s pass waiting for me in Fernie so it didn’t make sense to pay to ski when I could ski for free.

Whistler is in a difficult spot to get out of, unless you want to go to Vancouver. So I only managed to get as far as Kamloops, which was the perfect excuse to visit Sun Peaks. I’d heard a lot about Sun Peaks last year, it seemed to be one destination that everyone visited. While it is a great resort it was disappointing after Whistler as it didn’t have piles of fresh snow. A serious addiction to powder was beginning…

While I was at Sun Peaks I did a little computer work for the hostel setting up their WiFi so they could charge for its use and cleaning their computers of viruses and spyware. The owner was so appreciative that I stayed for free and have been invited to go back any time! Another theme is born!

I was going to be going past Big White so I decided to drop in and say hi to my mates. Since I was there it would have been rude not to ski for at least a day. And what a day it was – super deep powder and a complete and utter white out. I’m sooo glad I knew my way around from last year! It was fantastic to finally see the snow that Big White is famous for. I was very tempted to stay a while – but the thought of skiing for free kept my on the road.

Fernie

View of the ski field from my bedroom…

23cm of snow fell during the day one Friday. Freshies all day!

What a welcome Fernie put on for me! It was simply dumping down with powder. We got 1.4 metres of snow in the first week I was there! That is a stunning amount of snow…

There was a downside though.

Cannon for launching snow bombs. I want to play…

Because this field is so steep and has a massive head wall above the bowls, avalanches are a real problem. When it’s snowing there are continuous avalanches, both natural and triggered. And some of them are massive. If you wake up to the boom of the snow bombs going off you know it snowed over night…The upshot of all this avalanche activity is that large portions of the field are frequently closed when it’s snowing. To make it worse the only way to clear the snow off the head wall is by bombs dropped by helicopter.

If they can’t get one up there due to cloud, three of the five bowls don’t open…

Steep and Deep is the resort slogan and is it ever steep! With fresh snow you can launch yourself down the most vertical slope you dare and the skiing is so easy, the powder so easily controls the speed while you plummet down the slope. The feeling is something else. Looking back up some insane slope at your fresh tracks and saying, “I did those”, is a buzz! My powder addiction was growing.

Unfortunately the snow doesn’t always come when you want it. After a number of weeks of almost continuous powder days the snow stopped. Faces got long, people cried and cats hid under couches. I had to drag my skinny skis out from under the bed and evict some spiders. Hard pack snow is so wrong. It should not be allowed. It took two Swedish chicks and a Kiwi bloke to arrive in Fernie, go skiing for a day and come back raving about the great snow. We thought they were nuts, in fact we knew they were nuts. They pointed out that most fields in NZ and Europe would kill for the base and the great snow. I could dimly remember what “snow” in NZ was like and grudgingly had to admit they were right. I didn’t have to like it though. I wanted my powder back.

Ghostriders

A feature of small town Canada is the hockey rink – to be a real town you need a hockey rink and a team to go with it. Fernie is no exception and the Ghostriders are their team. What is different is the Ghostriders are at the top of the league and the fans are rabid. It makes for very exciting games. It’s safe to say I’ve become a Ghostrider fan… As I write the Ghostriders have made it through to the second round of the play offs. It’s going to be an exciting end to the season.

Golden

Living in Fernie is like living in a small town anywhere – you have to go somewhere else on a regular basis! Golden – believe it or not, this is the name of another small town. It seems like an odd name and the residents must agree as they want to change it. However their planned replacement is worse. They want to rename their town to “Hockey”. Bizarre. Especially as they aren’t hockey mad. I went to a Ghostriders away game in Golden and I, the lone Ghostriders fan, made more noise than all the Golden Extreme supporters put together. I did have plenty to cheer about – we beat them 8 – 2. Hehehe

Top of the Gondola at Kicking Horse. There is only one easy route down from here.

However Golden does have a large claim to fame. If their local hockey team doesn’t really set hearts afire, their local mountain does. Kicking Horse Resort kicks butt! It has more steep terrain than Fernie and also attracts lots of really great powder. In my two visits there I’ve had great snow. I NEVER want to come here when the snow is bad… It would be ugly!

It’s not all super difficult terrain, they do have green (easy) runs here – they are used to connect the Black runs… Not a place to learn to ski for the faint hearted!

The downside: The bottom of the mountain is as horrible as the top is awesome. There are endless runs that are carpeted with moguls, most of them monsters. And there is no way to avoid them…

Lake Louise Revisited

One thing hadn’t changed. It was still damn cold in Banff!

A couple of guys at the hostel are competing in a Big Mountain Challenge Ski series so it was another opportunity to go on another road trip. The Big Mountain competition is where they take a bunch of insane skiers to the top of ridiculous terrain full of rocks, cliffs and incredibly steep slopes. The person who takes the most idiotic line down the slope wins! Cliff drops, 360’s and back flips are all part of it. One of the rounds was at Lake Louise so it was an ideal chance to go back and see if I still loved the place and also to see a Big Mountain event up close and personal.

Lake Louise had a heap more snow this year compared to last year and a lot of it was fresh. Unfortunately Lake Louise is very well known and close to Calgary, so it gets hammered. The front side of the resort was as hard as last year but the fresher snow in the back bowls was great. Lake Louise is still one of my favourite places – however it has a lot of serious competition!

The Big Mountain Challenge was the best skiing I’ve seen outside of a DVD. You can see a video of the competition here.

Learn to Ski!

Last year I was disappointed at my lack of skiing improvement, so this year I decided I would do something about it and signed up for two courses. One was a ten week course with a three hour lesson every Thursday. It was brilliant value at $250. It was slightly different to the usual CSIA fare as the instructor taught the Harb method of skiing. Quite a different theory but works really well.

The other course I took was the CSIA Stage I Ski Instructors course. A number of people had told me that it was a great way of improving your skiing. It works too! I have never done so many snow plows in my life! Skiing slowly and “perfectly” is extremely difficult. I hadn’t realised how much easier skiing is with a little speed.

Finally…

It’s hard to believe, but spring skiing is rearing it’s ugly head and the end of the season is not far off. My plans for working in London are starting to take shape and I’m starting my research of where to ski in South America. Las Leñas looks like a possibility.

If anyone has any recommendations let me know!

Cheers

Mark