Revelstoke, BC - Backcountry Skiing Canadian Rockies Days 6,7,8

 

Its Official we have just gone in a big circle! After skiing around Kootenay pass for a few days we made the trek north, rode another Ministry of Transportation Ferrie and ended up in Revelstoke, BC. Revelstoke is a pretty funky community, it seems that most of their economy is built off of tourism, but none the less has a homey mountain town feel. We skied one day, kinda, spending most of the daylight hours "Brapping" the sled around up above a large hydro-electric damn. The Dam's Gate Keeper was quite a character telling us how security of the area has increased 10 fold for the olympic games. He is quite a funny man, owning a jacked up late 1980's pickup and talking straight Canadian Eh! Revelstoke is also home to an awesome community Aquatic Center. We spent both evenings here ripping the waterslide, climbing the over the water climbing wall, and chillin' in the hot tube and steam rooms...only $5 canadian! Check out the pic of the Canadian Snowboard Rack that we saw in the parking lot...plain awesomeness! Yesterday, after re-organizing the truck we hit up a local coffee shop we were told to check out. The shop was located in an old Victorian home which served breakfast on the main floor and had a chill second floor full of couches and coffee tables to post up at. Once we got a bite to eat and a coffee for me we took off over Rodgers Pass back to Golden. Arriving to late to get any skiing in we found a community hockey event to go spectate. It was an entertaining spectacle of 3 on 3 with team names such as "The Killer Rabbits" (monty python) not to mention the girls team that worn tutu's. And yes there was a beer garden and most of the athletes were indulging themselves too. It was here that we came across the "stump stove" which is a large log that has a chimney cut into it and then the whole thing is lit on fire from the inside out. These things are way rad! and crank out a ton of heat! Well, today we are off to shred some Kicking Horse Backcountry and ski some faces, I'll let you know how it goes!

Kootenay Pass & Ymir, BC - Skiing Canadian Rockies Days 2-5

For the last few days we have been living out of the truck and sleeping in the bed at night. A couple of the small town in the southern Kootenays (Salmo & Ymir) have free over night camping in town, of course no one uses these spots in the winter so we had to rally the truck over a plow drift and into the snowy park. This had to look pretty hilarious to the people that live across the street from the camping. Salmo, BC is only about 25km from the top of Kootenay Pass where there is a big parking lot and a couple huts. One being right next to the road for travelers to stop in and warm up and the other a 3km trek up a ridge and across. The skiing here is Classic Pillow mini golf lines as well as big open faces down to the highway. Yeah Pass Skiing! Drive to the top, Skin a little bit, ski down to the road. Yesterday we woke up in the town of Ymir, BC 25km north of Salmo to a damp, fridged 16 degrees F at 7am. This was our coldest night of camping yet. We were slow to get going, but once motivated we cruised up a forest service road right out of the middle of town that we scoped out two days prior. The road had been plowed and maintained for about 6km then turned into a cat skiing operation, Wildhorse Powder Mining, who groomed the remainder of the road.  We snowmobiled up to the recreational vehicle boundary at which point we skinned 1700ft up a 40-50 degree pillow laden slope. It was a trick to navigate around all the feature on the long slog up. On top, after mou'ing down some energy bars, we started our descent down the Natural Mario Land, boosting off pillows and dropping 5 to 15 foot single and double staged roll overs all 1700ft back down to the sled on the road. So far the style of skiing on this trip has been a fresh and welcomed change to what skiing is like in MT.

Golden, British Columbia - Skiing Canadian Rockies Day 1

How about dem mountains eh! I have arrived in British Columbia for a 20 day tour of Canadian skiing and adventure. Making the 11 hour drive from Bozeman to Golden I arrived and met up with my friends Ray Bernardo & Pat Tenney who had travelled up here a week earlier with the trusty old snowmobile and pick-up loaded and ready to camp in. During a couple post road warrior brews at the local pizza joint, "Mr. Manacotti's", they told me of the sled skiing they had stumbled across the day before. The next morning we had a relaxed start getting to the trail-head, but upon arrival I realized the ease of access to great ski terrain via a network of groomed trails that would take us aproximatly 15km back into the mountains and dump us out right on the boarder of the Canadian Glacier National Park. Check out the sites from up here! big face skiing, quick snowmobile laps, and an Awesome view!

November Skiing Crazy Mountains, MT

Early November brought the ski flu to Southwestern Montana with a couple of storms moving in and leaving behind 2-3 feet of snow in the mountains surrounding Bozeman. We loaded the sled into our little Brown Nissan Pickup and headed over to the Crazy Mountains for a day of exploring and early season Pow skiing. Our pow skiing plan was quickly foiled by not being able to find the correct road/trail-head to rally the snowmobile and us back into the Mountains. We didn't let this discourage our goal of skiing. We skinned over some private property and up a ridge to what appeared to be a sweet snow field from below turning out to be thin covered scree fields through a maze of trees back down to the bottom of the drainage. None the less an adventure and an enjoying day in the freedom of the rural Montana.