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.