Skiing between trees, particularly in glades, where the trees have been thinned out a bit to allow easier turns, is a lot of fun. Wikipedia says “Glade riders need to be agile to negotiate trees”, but one family member found a completely different strategy:
Why ski around trees when you might just ski through them and collect branches as evidence?
It goes to show, though, that free riding cannot start too early – certainly an approach the Canadians are taking with their young offspring.
Meticulously groomed 3-day beards, goatees, full chinstraps or rock-and-roll Frank Zappa beards – you name it, we’ve got it! This is not the place where a respectable pow addict would show himself without a good helping of facial hair. Unless, of course, your dreadlocks go way beyond the edge of your helmet…
Some stop shaving when they retire, some stop shaving when the arrive in Canada…
Enough? No way! Need a break? Nope. Want more? Absolutely! This have been fantastic three weeks with fresh powder, beautiful groomers, some white outs, more sun than expected, tree skiing (with some hugging), undisturbed by bears but beautifully guided by a bunch of crazy local skiers, who’ve been living the life that we live now for the last 20 years. I start to understand how it feels to be among the slower skiers in a group: uh – you’re there, let’s go! Let…me…catch…my…breath. OK, while you catch your breath we’ll have a little recreational smoke harvested in our backyard and watch you panting. Adding insult to injury? Absolutely not – this is so much fun- Revelstoke rocks.
And the rest of the family: let me pick out one member – Max. Instead of heading for school on a Friday morning he had ski training. Happy Max? Happy Max:
Today I was allowed to play with the Big Boys.
A bit of treeskiing to warm up, down North Bowl for a fast run in the semi-powder, walk up a bit for some better powder, down, up, down. And to round it all up before lunch a “baby-walk” (a climb 100m straight up) to Sub Peak! Only my pride and the infamous Dahlman stubbornness prevented me from turning around… These local guys are so incredibly fit….I’m so done…I’m off to bed…Goodnight….
What do the little Breadbaskets do, when they’re finished skiing? They go tubing:
You know the feeling: you’ve been off for a few days and upon your return your desk is full of stuff to work on. So I was shocked when I opened my office door this morning and saw these piles:
Today was the first normal “workday” of the Breadbasket family: kids had to go to school and parents had to go skiing. Tough life for some. Little Molly was full of eager anticipation, Max summed his feelings up as “I’m looking forward to school, just not the lessons.”
So, our little ones met a lot of other kids returning from the Xmas break at Columbia Park Elementary – the school they have been assigned to by the school board in British Columbia. Molly was particularly lucky: two kids from the ski club are in her class, which is grade 1/2 (both years are in one class). When she returned in the afternoon she was excited about having received her first invitation to a birthday party – well done, Molly! Max is in grade 5 and started working on the integer factorisation, which surprised at least me a little bit. Ain’t holidays for everyone, it seems.
Worthwhile mentioning is the school’s principal, Ms. Ariel McDowell: she took the time on New Year’s Eve afternoon to introduce Max and Molly to the school and meet us. I somehow don’t see that happening at a German public school (British chums: that’s the opposite of a British public school). Ariel gave us a tour of the school with classrooms, gym, library and computer room – I have to say that the brand new iMacs connected to ceiling mounted projectors via Apple TV were quite a change compared to the PC’s at Munich’s Gertrud Bäumer elementary school with Windows 2000. And, folks, just compare the pictures on the two home pages: Mount Begbie of Revelstoke vs. Gertrud Bäumer architecture? Tough choice.
Local women Shendra and Alex took me out into North Bowl and Boulder Mountain, a free rider’s dream, to try to find the powder that one of them had been showed by a Ski Patrol a couple of days earlier.
Beautiful day with the mountain peaks (Mt McPherson and Mt Begbie, I believe) just about sticking out, we took the “skiers most right” run, Greely Bowl along the outer boundary but we somehow managed to get lost. Not quite sure where we were and very much aware of dangerous cliffs, we took a joint decision to walk back up to the trail rather than ski down through the trees. Good decision, as it turned out, when we came down and glanced up we realised we had been standing just above some killer cliffs! I really admired Shendra’s and Alex’s responsible attitude; just 6 years ago two skiers died sliding down a chute and going over a cliff in the out of bounds area on Boulder Mountain.
Beer connoisseurs of Cologne – forget what I’ve ever said about Kölsch! I am a convert. High Country Kölsch – that’s the business: it’s being served in pints (Cologners: that’s a big glass of
beer) at our local Big Eddy Pub or, as illustrated in the picture, in handy cans of 0,355 liter. Bigger than the original and good stuff!
I should add that the whole “Kölsch” business started in Vancouver already, where we tried our first Canadian Kölsch at a little microbrewery just off the gaslight district. Also very nice.
Who's been here? 