This weekend was work’s Winterfest – really just the Christmas party delayed by a few weeks to avoid the craziness of December.  There aren’t too many places in the Bow Valley that can cater for the Lafarge crowd, so after eliminating the others in Banff & Canmore because they’re rubbish, this year we were at the Delta Lodge at Kananaskis.   Kananaskis Village is about thirty minutes drive from home & I hadn’t been up this way since the snow came & mountain-biking was stopped.  I enjoyed the drive up & back in the moonlight picking out various peaks & passes I had biked up to & over.  Dinner was as all good Christmas dinners should be – huge & delicious.  The highlights of 2010 were amusing & I was somewhat bemused by the plant manager identifying housekeeping as the biggest challenge for this year.  Things must be going pretty well if the largest concern is making sure the piles of clinker & cement & raw mix are kept under control.  Since I’m saving for the next adventure I passed on staying the night, so left all my colleagues at the bar in order to get home for a bit of sleep before another day’s skiing.

My cunning plan of actually getting some sleep didn’t work out so well – but I seemed to have survived the day OK.  Driving back out to Nakiska, I was pleased to be avoiding Sunshine as the traffic from Calgary (opposite direction) was very heavy heading to Sunshine & Lake Louise.  Nakiska is a nice little ski hill that is a legacy from the 1988 Olympics – they held the alpine skiing events there, the skifield was built for that purpose.  The Bow Valley has done pretty well out of those Olympics – the Nordic Center in Canmore is world class & Nakiska seems to be quite popular too as it’s great for beginners & the closest hill to Calgary.  There were insane amounts of kids learning to ski & tweens racing – it was best to avoid the lower slopes.

Accordingly, we (my sort-of boss, Viviane & her fiancee, Alex [yes, yet another one]) spent all morning doing runs off the top lift as the runs were good & the queues were non-existent.  Viviane is one of those people who learnt to ski when they were two years old & Alex was pretty handy too.  So it was good fun trying to keep up with them & learn a little.  All the runs were groomed nicely – it was pleasant to be able to try & concentrate on my technique a little more rather than just trying to stay upright as was the case last weekend (not that I’m complaining about powder).  It was another gorgeous & warm day – didn’t need a down jacket all day, this was helped by my remembering to bring my soft-shell this weekend.

Looking across the Kananaskis valley

Alex – I actually managed an action shot

There’s Skogan Pass behind me – where Alex (C) & I biked over a few months ago

The wind really picked up in the afternoon up the top & blew a lot of the snow off near the top of the lift leaving some pretty nasty ice, so we dropped down the hill a bit for the last couple of hours before I returned home & had a nice big nap, dinner & an hour of skating on the pond with friends & friends of friends (Adele you’ll be intrigued to hear I met a climbing GP from Wanaka here for a few days on vacation).  Must sleep before Sunshine tomorrow (avalanche risk is still pretty high this weekend – so no backcountry for me again).

Just when you thought I couldn’t make this any more boring, I’m going to talk about the weather a bit.  It’s been really weird this week.  For pretty much most of the working week, the mercury sat at or around -20ºC – which wasn’t too unusual or unpleasant.  I managed to get one enjoyable XC ski in at the Nordic Center, where I was surprised to find I wasn’t really all that cold.  Then come Friday, it was still just as cold but a whole lot of moisture actually made it this far (from the Pacific) & dumped a whole heap of snow in the valley.  We don’t get a lot of snow (in Canadian terms, not NZ terms) here in town & it doesn’t usually snow when it’s really cold – somehow we ended up with twenty centimetres on Friday.  I was glad – not least because I finally had cause to wear my winter boots when walking around town (shoes have been fine all winter).  They got a lot up at Sunshine too – I think it took quite a lot of work for Alex to free his car after work, looking at the photo I’m not surprised.

Of course, I was back at Sunshine on Saturday for the second powder-Saturday in a row.  This one was even better than the last.  I joined Megan, Alex & Finn for a morning camped at Goat’s Eye enjoying the powder.  Well, it was me & whoever wasn’t watching Finn at the time.  Here’s everyone waiting for the gondola & looking either happy or unaware & confused at the prospect of all that nice powder.

Alex managed to get quite a nice little break from work, so Megan & I got quite a few good runs in.  My powder skiing is slowly improving – at least this week it was a little denser so one didn’t sink quite as easily (visibility was much better too).  With such good skiing conditions(& it was warm, around 0ºC – the temperature inversion had it much warmer than in town for the second day running), there were more people on the hill than I’d seen all season; consequently, the runs became rather scoured out & bumpy by the end of the morning.  Naturally, I had a few more little falls as Megan merrily lead me through trees & down some new runs (for me).  Can you tell she was excited to be out skiing on such a great day?

With a baby-sitter change, I got in a couple of runs in with Alex and then Megan before we skied out (I enjoyed it again, what’s going on?) around lunch time.  A great morning’s skiing & I was pretty tired out – all that turning in all that powder & the heat really took it out of me.

After a lunch & shower stop at home I was walking around to entertain Finn while Megan finished off her rather elaborate rendition of the Settlers board in cupcakes for Alex’s almost-birthday dinner.  Here’s the creek just out side our backdoor, the ducks seem to have come back now that it’s not -20ºC.

It seems now that Finn has a much better idea than he did six weeks ago of who Mum & Dad are – I no longer cut it as an agreeable person to be holding him for extended periods.  Still Megan finished her masterpiece & cooked a casserole before Joel & Kristy got in from skiing Lake Louise.  The cupcakes looked fantastic & tasted pretty damn good too.

With all the snow in the last few days & the warming of the temperatures, the avalanche risk was high all weekend at & above the tree line.  I wasn’t keen to head out back-country, so decided to go to the hill again with Kurt, whom I’d met before Christmas at an Alpine Club event – I mention that only to show that I do actually know a Canadian here & not just Aussies.  Beside, when you wake up & see this, how can you stay at home?

 

Sunshine conditions have definitely improved a lot in the last few weeks!  The crazy temperature variations were in full swing today – so much so that even though I stood outside for quite a while waiting to be picked up, I didn’t even notice I had forgotten to put my soft-shell on.  It wasn’t until we were in the parking lot that I realised that I didn’t have my jacket.  I survived the day with my down jacket on the outside, I was a little concerned that the high temperature would have all the snow that was landing on me melting  – this turned out not to be the case.

Kurt, it turned out, had been skiing for most of his life – he comprehensively left me behind on many occasions.  At least I was able to entertain him with two big crashes on some more of those really bumpy runs off Goat’s Eye.  By lunchtime I was keen to head up to the village to try out some different runs.  We managed to meet up with Joel & Kristy (in Trappers of course) for the afternoon.  By now the clouds had really come in & it was snowing quite heavily again.  We split up shortly after – I figured Joel could give Kurt a better run for his money & I was happy mucking around on some blue runs with Kristy & Ryan.  It was a good afternoon as we stayed away from the white-out on Standish & kept to some of the lower lifts.  By the time we got back to the gondola base, it was fair puking down – as it was so warm, the flakes were huge & pretty wet.   It snowed all the way back to Banff & then strangely turned to rain – I haven’t seen rain for months.  Near the park gates the temperature had dropped slightly to -1ºC, a few kilometres later nearing home it had plunged to -11ºC.  That was pretty crazy – all the rain water had instantly frozen to the side of the car.  I haven’t mentioned the freezing rain yet either.  Alas, it seems all is back to normal now – it’s touching -20ºC again, in time to go back to work.

Going to local news for a while: I’m now extra pleased that we didn’t go back-country this weekend.  Two skiers got buried in an avalanche up Burstall Pass way yesterday – Adele, you may remember we were up there a few-days-shy-of-a-year ago.  They didn’t survive & weren’t easy to find as they were up there with out avalanche transceivers.  I don’t know a lot about avalanches, but that doesn’t seem particularly smart on many counts.  Interestingly, emergency services were alerted by others in the area activating the SOS function on their SPOT – nice to know it works.

I managed to drag myself out of bed after another restless night’s sleep ready to head up to the slopes again.  This afternoon while I was vacuuming I realised that my mid-night attempt some weeks ago to jam the heating vent under my bed closed had slipped out – with the help of daylight & being fully awake, I’ve rectified this & hope to sleep a little better now.  After the last two days packed with skiing of various forms, a slightly lazier day was planned.

We were at the parking lot well before nine & it seemed reasonable busy, but getting off the gondola the village was pretty sparse.  Luckily for us, all those we had seen below seemed more interested in the day lodge or the parking lot.   Alex (that’s new-Alex, I’m sure it would save a lot of confusion if I just called everybody Bruce) & I were both more than happy to take it easy on the groomed runs we could find.  Again with no new snow around, it was a beautiful day – & I had a willing photographer.  So here’s a view you’ve seen before, but with me (I assure you) standing by.  We had some difficulty picking out our skin tracks from the previous day, but I was finally able to provide evidence that we had actually gone across the meadows.

I think it was shortly after this photo was taken that we hit a run that had been chopped up a lot since Saturday.  I did a very passable impression of someone trying to hurl themselves off their skis at speed on hard pack, but somehow managed not to.  Time to change runs.  Best run of the day (for me) was the last one off Goat’s Eye & then the ski-out (which for the first time ever was almost enjoyable, as it was only 11.30 & empty).

The afternoon was even more chilled out, with Alex continually trying to warm up, an introduction to Barpa Bill’s (great burger), a little shopping at Monod’s before the final attempt at recovering circulation – a good long soak in the Upper Hot Springs.  Another great thing about only skiing half the day is that the Hot Springs are not very busy – & you can actually see the view as it’s before five o’clock & consequently it’s not dark.  A short little drive around town was what passed for a tour of Banff & it was off home with still plenty of time left to do those boring weekend chores that have been mostly neglected since the skiing took priority.  Apparently I have to go back to work tomorrow – that may be a bit of shock; and it’ll be January the Fourth – happy anniversary Mum & Dad.

Up too early after all that skiing & hardly sleeping, I picked up Alex & we were back out at Sunshine by nine o’clock.  This time we took the gondola up, one lift & then went out of bounds on to the Sunshine Meadows for my first decent ski-tour this winter.  It was slightly warmer than the previous day, & the still-rising sun slowly warmed us as we skinned across the meadows.  This was a similar route to that which Alex, Megan & I hiked at the start of July to kick off our three-day hike to Mt Assiniboine & Mt Shark.

It all looks a little different to what it did in the summer (but just as beautiful):

Anyway – back to the snow.  We were aiming for Citadel Pass & slowly worked our way towards it picking whatever route looked good – it was difficult to see any previous skin tracks to follow.  This made some of the climbing a little difficult as all of a sudden whoever was trail breaking would fall an unexpected foot or so in to a void.  Well, it was difficult for me at times being unused to such occurrences.

Alex skinning across another flat patch

We had a few downhill runs here & there.  I think these were just to show me that I can’t really ski all that well off-piste.  I took a few more dives – at least landing in soft snow doesn’t hurt.  We veered off from our path to the Citadel (that’s that big hunk of rock in the centre of these pictures) & headed up another ridge that looked nice.

The route we chose didn’t look so inviting half way up, so we turned again & skied back to Howard Douglas Lake (which we had skinned across no so long before) before skinning up to our lunch spot.  The skin on my left ski managed to frustrate me no end as it managed to come off five times, even after I’d tightened the fastening mechanism.  At half past one, I was fair starving so pleased to sit in the sun & mostly out of the wind that had picked up here.  It didn’t seem too cold, but at -10ºC it turns out your sandwiches freeze to the bottom of your lunchbox.  After I made a few more rookie errors on the small run down we had, we turned & headed back to the meadows & the ski resort.  Most of this was skinning, but there was a little cruising downhill.

Here are a few pictures, courtesy of Alex (I can’t keep writing ‘shamelessly stolen’, even if it’s true).

That’s me taking it easy & not falling over for a change

Oh look, I’m putting my skins on again

Eventually, we were back across the meadows & heading in to the resort boundaries (that’s that blue sign there).

After six of so hours of this excursion, I was exhausted & my feet were starting to hurt.  When I found the small blisters on the top of my feet (above the arches) I learnt the importance of loosening my boots while skinning.  For a pretty busy day as Sunshine (the beauty of where we were was that we didn’t see another soul for five hours), we managed to time it right & missed chaos on the ski-out.  So tired, I couldn’t really be bothered making turns so snow-ploughed most of the way back to the car.  Another great day here in the Bow Valley & 2011 doesn’t seem to have slowed down yet.  Thanks Alex for taking me back-country & not having to put my shoulder back in.