Christmas break was spent in Calgary for the most part. It resulted in an awful lot less running than I hoped initially due to absolutely outrageous temperatures and then a lot of other activity. The hopes of getting out running frequently over the break weren’t met but when it’s because I wound up doing quite a bit of skiing the trade off isn’t quite as tough to take.
The skiing trips worth noting were a day’s ski from Sunshine parking lot up to the summit of Healy Pass. This was in anticipation of skiing into Egypt Lake shelter in February and I wanted to gain an idea of the layout of the valley and gauge the equipment needs on the trail before going in with a dozen or so people. Dad and I were on the trail soon before 9 am and made it to the top of the pass around noon. The wind was really howling up top so we didn’t spend much time there, just skied off the far side for a few hundred meters and then returned down the hill before taking lunch in the shelter of the trees.
The next week I skied up to Burstall Pass with both my Mom and my Dad on a new(ish) set of skis that I pillaged from the garage and had some new binding mounted on. This resulted in me having skins for the climb up to the top of the pass and I was really quite grateful for them. The ski in was nice, the climb was tough and the assault on the actual pass was I suppose unsuccessful. When we popped out above the treeline we were probably a half kilometer north of where we probably should have been. This resulted in us deciding that we’d done enough elevation and turned around to beeline it down the hill.
The very next day we skied in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park and skied up to Elk Pass before summitting Blueberry hill. The ski was fun and flying back down after all the work to get up seems to be more rewarding each time I do it. I think it’s a matter of me winding up heavier and heavier each time I’ve gone as I’ve grown up from being a little kid.
The following day I headed out with the whole family for two days skiing at Revelstoke Mountain Resort. The hill opened in 2007 and currently has the longest vertical drop of any ski hill in North America. We quite enjoyed the hill even though snow conditions on the bottom half were a bit sparse here and there. The weather was different at each different spot on the way up the mountain. The first day skiing in clouds up top and clear skies down below and the second skiing in blue skies and a bone chilling wind at -25oC at the summit with a snowstorm happening in the valley below. The hill is quite steep and I quite enjoyed it, it’s obviously built to have a few more expansions added in coming years as currently there are a few more traversing requirements than would be ideal but for the time being that’s alright. Apparently every room in the whole town is basically booked every day of the year so some parts of the development there need to hurry along to make this place catch on in a big way.
