My mind wonders…

A late start today and an early finish which was probably a good thing, my knee has started to hurt so I have taken to wearing a support but also because the heat during the day has been melting the slow slightly, meaning that it refreezes over night leading to fairly miserable conditions first thing and heavy moist stuff in the afternoon.

I’ve seen a lovely bowl over a ridge that we ride past every so often, it looks as though it would be a serious hike but definitely worth it, I might well see if any of the others fancy going up early in the morning for first lifts and doing that.

Rob and Nathan both ordered their Avalanche Kit today and I picked up a Shovel and Probe having already bought a Mammut Pulse in the UK, we’ve got our first day with Big Red Cats on the 16th so we’ll need to get some practice in using them before then.

How does this all tie in to the title? It doesn’t, the reason for the title is that Rob today shaved his beard off whilst Nathan and I are still persevering with ours. I must confess though, every time my beard itches, which it does quite often, I consider shaving it off too.

We were all up early this morning hoping for a powder day. We were dissapointed to find that the inversion was back, it was -3 at the base and +5 at the top. It was also apparent that it had rained over night meaning that the powder from yesterday had turned in to a hard packed ice. The day’s riding was unpleasant and I called it quits at lunch time, I hitched back to the hostel getting a lift from a nice couple who opinion of the conditions were pretty similar to mine. All in all a shame, it’s 17.15 here at the moment and it’s raining in town which I am taking as not being a good indication for tomorrow, still we’ll go up and see how it goes.

No, I didn’t have to use my AK, well, I did use my jacket which is an AK but I suspect that Ice Cube was singing about something else.

Today was a good day for us as it snowed all day long. The weather front that we were expecting to drop today though is now meant to come in on Wednesday.

We did the hike that we did yesterday again I got to witness Julian spitting his dummy in quite a major way, muttering under his breath “I didn’t pay 300 bloody dollars just to walk up the bloody hill”. On the way down I argued with more trees than I actually managed to avoid but still got some sweet turns in so emerged smiling.

Rob didn’t quite make it as he out performed everyone on the Shiraz drinking front, there’ll be plenty of soft stuff for us all to enjoy tomorrow anyway, perhaps he’s done himself a favour taking a rest day before hand.

We spent our first Saturday on the hill today, there were some queues but still nothing like you would find in Europe.

We had a great day, we did our first hike in to the back country and it was beautiful, there was a lot of sweat and a lot of huffing and puffing (particularly from Read). We got to the top and we stopped for about 10 minutes to take in the surroundings before setting off on our ride, we couldn’t hear anything but ourselves, the air was so still and it seemed like the 3 of us were the only people for miles.

The photos that we took are below, unfortunately my digital camera has bitten the dust so my pictures will be a little more spaced out… i.e. they’ll have to wait until I get them developed and then scanned in (yes ther are people that still use film…), still, it brings me closer to buying a digital SLR, something that I have been trying to avoid for some time.

It was exactly this sort of experience that I came for, so different to what I normally experience in London. To get to where we were we had ridden down from the top of Motherlode until the top of Rino’s Run (formerly Long Squaw) and then dropped down in to the gully below where we took the boards off and strapped them to the back packs.

Julian turned up today and with him came 4.5 litres of Shiraz. Things will never change will they.

His arrival has also bought a bit of mellancoly on too. It’s strange. I have 2 great friends here and yet another one turns up and I miss home and in particular Pole.

Tomorrow will be the first day on the hill for Fernandes, I waxed and edged his board for him today and you know what, I’m getting in to it, I always used to shy away from servicing my bike and then when I bought the Santa Cruz I started paying more attention, particularly after the lot at mediasterling kindly bought me a bike stand as a leaving present and now I take enjoyment from doing something like that.

We ventured up to the hill a little late today after having a couple of beers in the newly opened bar across from the Hostel. It was snowing on the lower elevations and blue bird up top, described to us as an inversion by one of the locals. Whatever, there’s meant to be some snow coming on Sunday, what’s more, it’s expected to stay around for a week. To say that I am excited is an understatement.

One thing that has not ceased to amaze me since having arrived in Canada is how much the Canadians like to rock, I mean, everywhere I go I hear some form of rock music, they seem to like music that you would find on the power ballards albums that get released in time for Christmas for kids to buy their unsuspecting Dads. The current theme tune to our holiday, and it has become our theme tune only because it is always on at the lodges that we stop at is More Than A Feeling.

Having waxed the board last night I did indeed notice a difference today, it went faster, I ended up on my arse more often.

This led to my most fantastic stack on a snowboard to date. Riding through some fairly tracked out powder to the side of one of the pistes I pulled a fairly sweet toeside turn which yielded a lot of spray, however, as I came round on to the heelside the nose dug in and I ended up somesaulting and landing on my back somehow, my momentum carried me on a little and I watched my feet with the board attached, travelling over my head, almost in slow motion, until I ended up on my knees looking as though I was ready to set off again. It was so good that a couple of locals stopped to congratulate me. I rode off with my tail between my legs.

Monkey boy turns up tomorrow, we rang him today, I really don’t think that Rossland is ready for him. It should prove to be an interesting couple of weeks.

Today, we went to Trail. Trail is a town that I can only describe to you as Deliverance meets Bexhill on Sea. Weird. It’s famed for the largest zinc mine in BC, probably the world.

The purpose of the visit to Trail was for me to get a haircut, Rob suggested that I get a Top Gun, I declined and we left. We did however stop to take in the local waneeta mall. More weirdness.

To update you on the riding that we’ve been doing, there’s been no new snow recently but there’s some promised for Sunday onwards. Rob and I have been trying to ride switch without much success. One of the locals rode past Rob on his arse yesterday and said “I’ve got 2 words for you buddy… HOCKEY PANTS”. I nearly fell over with laughter. Nice bloke though, he stopped and spoke to us for a while and gave us a heads up on where to head for on the hill.

We waxed the boards tonight ready for another day on the hill tomorrow, there’ll be no excuse for my slowness tomorrow other than my lack of talent. I look forward to it though.

I took the film camera with me today so no new photos but I will update with some more soon.

In Canada, here to be precise.

I’m sat here in the Mountain Shadow Hostel at the end of my second day on the hill. My legs are aching and my face feels a little wind wipped but I’m smiling and with the prospect of another 67 days on the snow to go, who wouldn’t be?

The flight from London was as to be expected, I was lucky enough to have nobody sat next to me so I was able to spread myself out a little, I did have a window seat and managed to capture the following photo as a result.

Things took a little turn for the worst though when we got to Vancouver International and went through the Immigration services. With both Nathan and I going through and noting on our entrance forms that we were staying for 71 days the officials took a little more interest in us than they perhaps might have otherwise.

We were asked to go with somebody to a room off to the side and present our luggage for a search. They asked each of us where we worked and why they were allowing us to have 71 days off. Nathan proudly said that he wasn’t working, which unsurprisingly worried them a little more. The fact that I had all the time off as leave didn’t seem to compute though. Anyway, presently another official turned up and told us that he needed to ask a question and that we should be honest with him. The conversation that followed went something a little like this:

Him: “Do you smoke pot? I don’t care if you do, I just want to know if you have any on you.”

Us: “No, I don’t smoke.”

Him “OK, it’s ok if you do, I don’t care, I just need to know, do you smoke pot?”

Us “No, I don’t”

Him “OK, really I don’t care if you do, I just need to know so I will give you one more chance to answer the question, do you smoke pot?”

Us “No…”

Not what you need after a 9 hour flight.

We spent a night in Vancouver at the Radisson (the last bit of luxury that we would see for a while). We took a taxi in to town bound for the China Town area to go and get some food. At 8 o’clock though on a Saturday night everything was closed, perhaps because it also seemed to be the area where all of the local deliquents hung out. We left. Quickly.

The next morning we were back to the airport for our transfer to Castlegar, or so we thought. As you can see in the photo below the cloud base was extremely low, as we approached our destination with the under carriage down we were told that they may be a chance that we wouldn’t be able to get in to the airport. For what seemed like an eternity we descended through the clouds. All of a sudden though the pitch of the engine increased and we were back up in to the clouds to be redirected to Kelowna. From there we hired a car and just about managed to get our kit in it.

Anyway, the mundane story telling out of the way, the 2 days that we have spent on the hill have been fantastic, we had a few cms of snow yesterday and today was bluebird, we could do with a lot more but while we’re getting our legs back it doesn’t matter too much. There’s plenty of the hill still to be seen and that’s without having done any hiking.

Don’t forget to check out the photos that I have taken so far, you can find them in the set that I have set up on Flickr here.