canada

I decided to remove the Canada trip page, since it has no use anymore and I’m too lazy to update it. However, I wanted to save the links collected there, so those are now here:

Useful links (thanks to El?ɬ§mysmatkat for good hints)

• Ski Big 3 – 3 ski areas of Banff in one site
• Ski Banff – Sunshine Village ski area (in Banff)
• Whitewater
• Ski-Red
• Ski Fernie
• Kicking horse resort
• Ski Louise
• Cat powder- Cat skiing company
• Valhallapow – Cat&Heli-skiing in Nelson
• Canadan Bed&Breakfast
• Fernie Bed&Breakfast association
• Banff Bed&Breakfast
• Canada ski resort map
• Very nice map of North American Ski resorts

I should have posted this earlier, but work keeps you busy every now and then Anyhow, here is short summary of the costs of our tour in Canada. All the costs are per person, car and accomodation costs were split between two of us.

1) in every place they had good deals on combined accomodation and tickets
2) includes all the food and drinks in pubs, bars, etc.

Continuation of the report (Part I, Part II, Part III) from Canada

Tue, 31 Jan 2006: The snow was spoiled in Whitewater and the avalanche risk had increased dramatically in backcountry areas due to heavy snow on top of the thick layer of light snow. Hence, we decided to go to check Castle Mountain. So we packet the vehicle again and headed to the ferry over Kootenay lake. After the ferry, we had again scenic route to Fernie, where we called to Aspen Grove BB to reserve accommodation (we tried to call another place earlier, but they did not answer. Luckily, we called from Fernie, since we learned that there is no restaurants near the accommodation. Thus, we did some grocery shopping (first time during this trip) and eat dinner in Fernie. The Aspen Grove proved to be an excellent accommodation for us. Good rooms, nice lobby, full kitchen with all the bells and whistles, spacious drying room for ski gear, excellent breakfast, and outdoor hot tub with pleasant temperature. If you go to ski in Castle Mountain, stay in Aspen Grove

Wed, 01 Feb 2006: Back to the skis again. We drove up to the Castle Mountain in 20 minutes and were ready for serious powder skiing. The first thing we noted was that it was really windy even at the base and even more windy on the top (we heard from the locals that it is always windy here) – the hood of jacket was very useful during the lift rides. However, the snow was really good in the forest and what a forest there was: plenty of fully skiable forest with a lot of fresh lines. In some parts the trees were a bit too close to each others, but that provided good exercise on how to ski powder in faster tempo. The resort proved to have a lot of skiing terrain and the best snow we found without climbing during the trip. Also the backside looked promising, but there we no need to venture there when snow was good also from the lifts. In the end we skied 8 runs and 5800 meters of vertical.

Thu, 02 Feb 2006: Another day in Castle Mountain, but this time the weather was even more windy. There was no new snow and the forests were quite tracked. Thus, we decided after 3 runs (2630 meters of vertical) to call it a day (the last skiing day of the journey ). Just to note, the groomed slopes were also in excellent condition at Castle Mountain, which was not the case in other resorts we visited.

Fri, 03 Feb 2006: Final day, just driving back to Calgary along very boring roads in completely flat surrounding. We had plenty of time to look around in a mall and take few gin tonics at Air Canada business lounge The flight (AC844) to Frankfurt left 45 min late…

Sat, 04 Feb 2006: The flight was in time at Frankfurt and couple of hours wait before flight to Helsinki (AC9171). Finally back home and all the luggage also arrived with the same flight.

The bottom line:: 12 Days of skiing, 39 460 meters of vertical, 84 runs, 1 759 kilometers of driving, 137.5 liters of gasoline (7.8 l/100km), 2 882 EUR spent. Our main driving route drawn in Yahoo maps is available here (might be slow to load, be patient) – later examination showed that Yahoo maps don’t know how to route using ferries, hence, the map is not excatly correct

Time to start planning the next adventures…

Continuation of the report (Part I, Part II) from Canada

Fri, 27 Jan 2006: Whole day of perfect powder with Valhalla Powercats, which I boasted already earlier. We woke up at 6 am. exited of anticipation for great skiing. After quick breakfast we drove ca. 25 minutes to the meeting point. Getting the group organized took quite a long time, when everyone had to sign waivers, most of the folks selected rental skis, and the growd had to be divided into two groups. When all this was done, we jumped to the bus and drove to the cats. Finally, on 9:30 everyone was in the cat and we were on our way upwards. On the way up, we stopped for 1 hour to go through basic avalance awareness training and practice usage of the tranceivers. Finally, around 10:45 we were up there and ready to make our marks to the fresh snow. From there on the day was pure enjoyment: run after run excellent lines in forests or across nice little open bowls. And the snow – it was just perfect: deep, light, and there was enough of it. Unfortunately, after 6 runs and 2600 meters of vertical it was time to go back Overall the cat skiing was very positive experience, even though there could have been more skiing. Decent value for the money (299 CAD per person), especially recommended if you have short holiday and don’t want to use for looking for the snow.

Sat, 28 Jan 2006: Back to the Whitewater. We again skied few runs the spot we found earlier, which was quite nice, but nothing compared to snow on Friday. Thus, we decided to explore the backcountry options after lunch. So, we attached the skins to the skis and started climbing following the trail up from the top station of the silver king chair lift. Based on the hints we got from JP, we believed that there would be some good runs for us. On our way up we met two local fellows, who offered to show us good line down to the road. We did not hesitate to accept the offer! It took us 1.5 hours (earlier I was a bit more optimistic about the time used for climbing, but this time I checked the Suunto logs) before we were on the peak of mountain (nobody seems to know what is the name of the peek, but the coordinates are 49° 27.450′N; 117° 09.057′W). However, we used a lot of time for looking around. From there we skied down an excellent line with even more snow than we saw in Valhalla on friday, just perfect turns in perfect snow for over 500 meters of vertical (check the video). The run ends on the road maybe 1 km away from the resort, but it took only 5 min to get lift back to the parking lot. Later we learned the run is called White Queen. The total for the day was 2100 meters of vertical in 7 runs.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006: The well tested receipe from saturday was in use again; first couple of runs in the resort and then back to the White Queen. This time we met with JP and few local fellows (group photo). The run was again awesome and JP found untouched line for us. The best skiing I have ever tried out! This time total 2330 meters of vertical and 6 runs.

Mon, 30 Jan 2006: The expectations were high: the snow report said that it had been snowing 20 cm over night in the resort and all the locals had closed their shops for morning in anticipation of good runs (in Nelson everyone gets morning free, if there is over 20 cm of fresh snow). At 9 am. there were more cars in the parking lot and longer lift lines than at anytime during the weekend. Thus, the dissapointment was huge during the first run – the snow was heavy and wet After 1 hour (and 3 runs, 910 meters of vertical) we were in the lodge with all the others and no one looked happy. We met JP and the growd again in the logde and decided to go to aquatic center, which proved to be excellent place to relax with steam room, hot tub, water slide, and naturally swimming pool. It was quite surprising that first person, we met in the stream room was a finn, who had run Outer Glove restaurant (which server very good food) in Nelson for over 10 years. She told us that there are 3 finns living in Nelson permanently.

Continued in Part IV

When we were in Canada, they claimed that we can get the GST back from all the goods exported with us and from short term accommodation. Now I filled the form and sent the recipes to the authorities in Canada. Let’s see how long it takes to get something back – and if the refund exceeds the cost of cashing Canadian check in Finland.

Continuation of the report from Canada

Tue, 24 Jan 2006: Breakfast in day lodge (was not included into the accommodation) and exploration of skiing opportunities in Kicking Horse started. The resort has 5 lifts, but in practice we used only 2 of those; the rest are for beginners. However, the skiable area would be considerable with many quite steep chutes and large alpine bowls easily reachable from the lifts. But no fresh snow here either The highlight of the day was the only sunny beer break of the whole trip. We skied 5 runs and 4000 meters of vertical. Later in the evening we met two nice canadian fellows in the (still boiling) hot tub, who adviced us that Castle Mountain might be better place to visit than Fernie in this warm climate. Later we found out that this was good advice… Dinner in the Scotch pub (now open for 4th evening) was very good. Kicking Horse has great expansion plans with new lifts and accommodation. If the new lifts will be build, the resort would provide terrific terrain for serious skiing given that the snow conditions are right.

Wed, 25 Jan 2006: The sky was cloudy and there was nothing new to be seen in Kicking Horse. Thus, we packed the car and headed towards Nelson. Breakfast at gas station in Golden showed us two things you don’t see in Finland: credit card phones in every table and C-cassettes sold. The route took us via beautiful mountains, Revelstoke, and a scenic ferry over Arrow Lake. The long drive really showed how big and parsely populated the Rockies are compared to the Alps. But the roads were extremely good and also our Chevy started to find it real character after running-in. In Nelson we just went to the tourist information office to find accommodation. They had nice book of all the options and after calling to couple of them, it was easy to select Inn the Garden BB, which turned out to be very nice place to stay – Recommended to everyone! After unpacking the car we went to Max and Irma’s for (very late) lunch. The food was excellent and staff friendly; our waiter recommended that we should go later to Mike’s place and – good for us – we followed his advice. In mikes our waitress immediately introduced us to JP; a Finn who had been staying in Nelson already since September. JP gave us some good hints on the backcountry options in Whitewater. Mike’s became our living room in Nelson, where we hanged out every evening at least for a beer or two…

Thu, 26 Jan 2006: After enjoying the excellent breakfast, it was time to head to Whitewater, the famous ski resort near Nelson. It had snowed roughly 10 cm over night and it kept snowing for whole day a bit. However, the resort area was full of old tracks which would need much more snow to be fully covered. Luckily, we explored also areas a bit outside of the resort boundaries and found a nice untouched spot for us with best snow of the trip so far. So we skied quite a few runs there and were quite happy for the day – anyway the first powder day of the trip. In total we skied 13 runs and 4000 meters of vertical.

To be continued (part III)…

The reporting during the journey was quite infrequent due to my lazyness and severe connectivity challenges in Canada (I cannot remember when I have last time lived days without GSM coverage). Further, all the posts during the trip were written on my N70 keypad, which a bit limited the length of the comments. Thus, here is first part of a day to day summary of the trip as I recall it.

I may have not mentioned it earlier, but we were a team of two in Canada: yours Truly and Jussi.

Check also the photos from the tour in Flickr.

Thu, 19 Jan 2006: The journey started by boarding to AC9170 at 09:25 from Helsinki to Frankfurt and continuing with AC845 to Calgary arriving at 15:55. The fights were on time and all the luggage arrived to Calgary. The lady on National desk was nice and gave us a car which can take all our luggage and skis inside. So we got Chevrolet 300 with 3.5 L V6 engine which had been driven 300 kilometers before us – That’s a true skiing car . Anyway, our stuff was easily packed into the car and we were on our way to Banff. Driving was smooth even thought the engine of the car felt a bit lazy (later it got better, so it must have been some kind of running-in program). When in Banff, taking lodging in Big Horn BB was smooth and easy.

Fri, 20 Jan 2006: We were up early, party due to excitement of the first skiing day but even more so due to jet lag, and after DIY breakfast ready to head for the ski bus up to Sunshine Village. We managed to found the ski buss stop on the first try and also our timing was perfect. The bus was already leaving, when we arrived to the bus stop. First, we managed to confuse ourselves a bit regarding the architecture of the resort, but during the first lift up, we got back to the map. There was no fresh snow on the slopes, so we used the morning to explore the resort. When heading already for lunch, we met the superior of ski patrol on the lift and he told us that the Delirium Dive (#91 in the trail map) had been opened (when we mentioned that we are going to Lake Louise on Sat, he also recommended the back side of the mountain there). So we had to postpone our lunch and head to all the way to the top again. Delirium had some good snow left, but I had my telemarks on and the run was a bit too steep for my telemark skills, would have been nice with alpine bindings. After Delirium we had good lunch in Mad Trapper’s Saloon in the Village area. We did not find any new exiting places after the lunch, so we headed back to the bus a bit earlier just to find out that the busses start when they are full, not when the timetable says so In total we skied 4090 meters vertical in 10 runs.

Sat, 21 Jan 2006: The morning routine started to form; breakfast, boots on and to the ski buss. This time I changed to alpine bindings and noted that there was quite a bad crack in the crossplate‘s front clamp; luckily it held together for entire trip. That pretty much ruled out telemark skiing for rest of the journey (there are stronger upward forces to the crossplate while doing telemark – I believe). This time we took a bus to Lake Louise. We had nice sunny day to explore the resort and we even found an untracked spot for few nice turns. In general, the alpine bowls of the backside provided good mountain skiing, but no fresh snow. We managed to track down 4700 meters vertical in 10 runs. Lunch in Temple Lodge was not that good – a bit industrial taste and setting. Another disappointment was that there was no GSM coverage in the resort (which we later learned to be a norm, not an exception in Canadian ski resorts) – how come they have not build coverage to a place that organizes World Cup competition every year?

Sun, 22 Jan 2006: Another day in Sunshine Village. No fresh snow, but there was Elan ski test, unfortunately we did not have change to try out any real powder skis. We skied 4200 meters and 9 runs. Key learnings from the Banff for future trips were: hot iron heats only with 1/4 of the power when using 110V instead of 220V, which makes waxing skis very slow; indoor (including restaurants) are pretty cold compared to Finnish standards – better to keep warm clothes on while eating.

Mon, 23 Jan 2006: Time to move on, after backing everything back to our vehicle we drove first to Lake Louise. The sign was right – it was a windy day with flat light – no good skiing available. Hence, we settled for 4 runs (2100 meters of vertical) in the morning and went to Lake Louise village for lunch. The village was much smaller than we expected, just few hotels, couple of restaurants and that’s it. Somehow, I was expecting it to be a bigger place. After lunch, we turned the wheels towards Kicking Horse, where we had booked “wake up & ski” package for two nights in Mountaineer Lodge for 189 CAD per person. After unloading the car, we took a walking tour in the resort and found nice scotch Pub in Highland Lodge. It was the 3rd day the pub was open – Good luck for the business! We also checked out the hot tub of the logde, which was really hot and full of chlorine; the swimming trunks got whitening treatment… It was a bit surprise that there was no GSM coverage down in the resort; so we were in complete communication isolation from the rest of the world.

To be continued… Part II

Sorry, I was wrong in my earlier post – the powder just got better! Yesterday (Sat 28.1.06) there was 20 cm fresh powder in the ground. First we skied few decent runs in untracked snow in the resort (Whitewater), which was pretty OK after long dry season. However, in the afternoon (thanks to the hints of JP, local Finn here in Nelson), we strapped our skins on and climbed about 40 mins up from the lifts. On the way we met 2 local guys who showed us an incredible run back to the road. Later we learned that the run is called White Queen. That was the deepest, lightest, just best powder I have ever seen (and I have seen some powder runs also earlier)! There was snow flowing over the head in every single turn for 500 meters of vertical drop in just perfect forest! Photo on the left does not make justice the real feeling, but gives some hints anyway. See some video footage in vimeo.

Today (Sun 29.1.06) we again first skied few runs in the resort and then we did the White Queen again. This time with JP and bunch of other locals. It was awesome again! JP found completely untracked lines for us all the way from top to bottom. Just great surfing on bottomless powder and nobody there! Skiing cannot get better that this (hopefully I’m wrong again ) There should be some photos coming soon…

The forecast for tonight says that it should be really heavy snow fall coming over night. So tomorrow will be one great day again

Sorry for sporadic reporting – GSM coverage seems to be very scattered in Canada

Anyhow, we got the first powder day in Whitewater. There was ~10 cm fresh snow and we found a nice spot in the forest that did not have too many old tracks. Thus, after long waiting our luck seems to be changing… Whitewater seems to be very good resort. Two lifts, not too many skiers, good runs in the forest, and plenty of terrain. What else do you need?

Tomorrow we will go for cat skiing with Vallahalla Powdercats. Hopefully our need for deep powder will be finally met!

So now we are lodging in Nelson at Garden B&B, which provides excellent service, can be recommended to anyone visiting here! Nelson look to be nice town to hang around. People are friendly, good food and a nice pub are available. Max and Irma’s is definitely recommended for dinner or lunch. Mike’s place pub is the place to meet locals, have few beers, and they also serve good food.

Before coming here, we visited Kicking Horse for two nights. No fresh snow, so we did not stay there longer. Maybe more about that later.