Ski Canada, eh?

Canadian Glacier National Park (Between Golden, BC and Revelstoke, BC)

 Last weekend, four of us headed to British Columbia for a little weekend ski trip.  The plan was to leave Seattle, drive 1,200 miles and ski three different resorts in four days.  We hit snow around Everett and didn't leave snow for the next 1,000 miles.  The drive up Route 1 was beautiful.  We crossed three mountain passes on our way to Golden, BC.  After the ten hour drive, we checked into the hotel and then drove into downtown since it was -1 degree F. 

We had dinner at the Whitetooth Bistro.  For starters we split duck confit poutine.  Amazing.  For those of you unfamiliar with poutine, you have french fries topped with cheese curds and a brown beef gravy.  It is gluttonous and decadent.  For the main course, I had a NY Strip Steak with roasted vegetables.  Both the steak and the poutine paired nicely with the 2005 Desert Hills Syrah from near Oliver, BC.  The wine had blackberry, smoke and pepper on the nose and the pallate was full of blackberry, vanilla and beef jerky.  It was great fuel to begin a ski trip.

Steak and Wine

 The next morning, we woke up early to get to Kicking Horse resort in time for opening.  Kicking Horse has 4 lifts.  A beginner lift, two 1,000 ft lifts, and a 4,000 ft gondola.  It was a huge mountain.  After exploring the hill a little bit, we settled on a tour that consisted of two 1,000 ft, north facing chutes and a few thousand ft of run out.  And we did lap, after lap, after lap.

Me on the hike up to the White Wall

 The laps we did consisted of a little bit of traversing, a little bit of hiking and then finding where the cornice was the smallest to drop into the bowl.  The day got better as viability increased although temperatures never warmed up with 3 degrees registering in as the high temp at the base.

Keef finding his line

White Wall

Kicking Horse was awesome.  The resort could only be accessed by a one lane wooden bridge over the Columbia.  There were so few people you felt like you were skiing alone.  And, oh yeah, there was a grizzly bear refuge under the gondola.  Canadians do everything better.

 We celebrated our day of 32,000 verticle feet (higher than Everest) with a beer in the parking lot.  The beer turned to slush when opened.  Then we made our way to the next resort- Revelstoke hoping it was only half as good.  While we knew the way back to Revelstoke since we had driven through town on our way in, it was difficult not to continue east deeper into Canada.

The drive back through Glacier

 We decided we'd relax for the evening and found ourselves in a night club.  At least we got some Ray-bans out of the deal.

The unhs-unhs club.

 Sunday morning came and we made our way across town to Revelstoke Mt.  Overnight there had been some fresh snow and visibility diminished.  The temperature was still cold with a high temp of 6 degrees F.  This was a perfect day for powder skiing in the trees.  We spent the day playing in narrow chutes through the trees spraying powder right and left.  To cap the day off, we took the longest ski run in North America-- 5,200 verticle feet and 9 miles.  It only took us 16 minutes.  If you do the math, that means we averaged 33.75 miles an hour.  By this point, I started to feel some fatigue in my legs.

Around 3pm we jumped in the car and headed south to Rossland, WA. We were anticipating a small highway through the Columbia Valley.  What we got was four hours of heavily falling snow on isolated roads, an ice ferry crossing on the Columbia River (Upper Arrrowhead Lake), and a black bear crossing the road. 

When we arrived in Rossland, we checked into the last room available in the Flying Steam Shovel hotel.  On the ground floor was the town liquor store/reception desk, on the main floor was a restaurant/bar, and on the top floor were the guest rooms.  This was our kind of place.  We ate dinner, played a game of pool and retired for the evening.  We had one day of skiing and a long drive remaining.

It is hard for me to believe this, but somehow Monday topped the previous two days.  Overnight about 8 inches of snow fell creating ideal conditions.  Aside from wind and clouds, everything was perfect.  The daytime high was 31 degrees.  Practically a tropical heat wave.  The mountain, again, was nearly empty.  We skied the same run 6 times with fresh tracks each time.  The day was cut short with high winds closing the old two person chair taking us to the top.

Our early end wound up being quite fortuitous, as another weather system made its way through eastern Washington dumping tons of snow and a 10ft avalanche covering Snoqualmie Pass.  Somehow our 7 hour drive turned into nearly 11.  At least we had the powder... and bears... and ice.