It's Ski Season - Please Kindly Send Us Some Snow.

It's ski season. With the late arrival of winter and the snow that accompanies it, I've been slow to get out skiing this year. Here in Banff, we're still waiting for the snow to fly. I was excited just to be getting out for the first ski tour of the year and was stoked to wake up and see a perfect bluebird sky out the front window. Yeah!

For our first ski day of the season, we decided to go for a long walk on the skis to Sunshine Meadows. For our first foray into the backcountry, we just wanted to see how much snow is actually out there and what kind of shape the snow is in. Despite appearances of glorious meadows of white snow, the snow has got no depth to it. We are desperately in need of more snow.

Into the Abyss

The early morning cloud left us to reveal a rather magnificent, perfect blue-sky day. It took a few hours to wake up those rusty ski touring muscles - but we ended up touring for about 5 hours with a short lunch break. I forgot that ski touring is hard work! I frequently find myself breathing a lot heavier and working harder than I would on any run. The other thing I noticed is that your body is constantly struggling to find it's centre of balance when you're making your way through deep, untracked snow. My back and core were getting worked. As well as my butt And my legs. Oh yeah and my shoulders. :)

Either way, it was a beautiful day to be working out all of the creaks and we broke a trail all of the way to Howard Douglas Lake. The snowpack is shallow, there's no base and what snow is out there is full of layers, wind-blown and treacherous. What we discovered was that there really isn't enough snow out there for good turns, but there's certainly enough to go on a long, safe tour and enjoy some awesome scenery. Keith and I had a great day in the sun.

The next day I followed it up with a long run, shockingly - a road run. In the winter months, there's always lots of time spent on my feet on the trails, but a whole bunch of it is spent walking up hills and through snow. I'm always running on soft, uneven terrain. I thought it might be prudent to throw in the occasional road run, just to remind my body what it feels like to run consistantly. Here's the verdict: it hurts. Despite my fitness level and amount of time that I spend running on the trails - trail running is not road running. Fortunately, the scenery was awesome and I had myself a great run from Johnson Canyon to Banff.

C-c-cold at Johnson Canyon

Upper Falls

Keith dropped me off at Johnson Canyon and I ran the 6km round-trip up to the Upper Falls as a warm-up. Well, it was supposed to be a "warm-up" but instead I was frozen by the time I was done. Go figure. A trail run up a dark canyon to a beautiful frozen waterfall - cold? Ha! The 25km run in the sunshine warmed me up plenty and with literally no traffic on the Bow Valley Parkway, it was a pleasure cruise. Awesome.

Views from the road - the Bow Valley Parkway, Highway 1A

J.R.A - Just runnin' along....

I had seen this massive bull elk, when Keith and I drove by earlier. Sure enough, he was still sitting in the exact same spot when I came running by a few hours later. I gave him lots of space.

As always, the magnificent and well photographed Mount Rundle welcomed me home. I love this view any time of year, but even more in the winter months. As well, Keith welcomed me home - he ran out on the Vermillion Lakes Road to join me for my last few kilometres. It was an awesome "solar-powered" weekend.

We Interrupt this Post....

.....to bring you the first day of ski touring season!! :)

...ready or not, it's HERE! There was a surprising amount of snow out there for our first ski tour of the season. The sun was out and we were pretty happy to be back in our sparkling snowy playground of Sunshine Meadows....let the season begin!

Magic at Sorcerer Lodge

I have a holiday hangover. You know, that all-over-post-holiday-come-down that hits you like a freight train? Phew. Me So Tired! It didn't stop me from heading out the door for my long run today, but let me tell you: it was ugly out there. I felt like a train wreck, but I was also a little giddy, happy and content with my all over fatigue.

Our holiday destination: Sorcerer Lodge (from the air)

Out the front window - Escargot aka. The Snail

To say my holiday was incredible is a bit of an understatement. I got to travel self-propelled, on my skis, for 6 fantastic days in the Selkirk Mountains! How cool is that? With access by helicopter only, the backcountry surrounding Sorcerer Lodge is epic: it's big, huge and wild.

Sorcerer Lodge is about 200km from Banff, in British Columbia. I had no great expectations, because the area hadn't received much snow this year. In fact, we were told by the owner that the snowpack was the most shallow that they had seen in 20 years! On most years, the lodge is usually buried by snow and it is a great place to go and get some powder turns. Within our group of 14, we were just keen to be getting out for some ski touring in some place new and different. But even with the lack of powder, we were blown away by the jaw dropping landscape of glaciers, rock, ice and snow.

Each day, we were led out into this landscape by 3 ACMG guides who took us on some amazing ski tours and kept us safe from the dangers of winter travel. I'm an experienced resort skiier, but a novice at ski touring. I've taken avalanche courses and am learning more about travelling in winter time with every trip that I do. I've never been on a glacier in winter, because I don't know the first thing about travelling on glaciers and crevasse rescue. All I can say is: Yay for professional Mountain Guides! With their help, our group got to travel across glaciers, climb to high mountain passes, peaks and ridges and enjoy a simply incredible week.

The group. Ready to Go!!

Each day, we were out the door and ready to go by 9:00 and then spent the entire day touring. On average, we were on our skis for the better part of 7 hours daily! Most days would start with a short descent and then would put on our skins and start climbing. And climbing. And climbing. Usually, we would cross a glacier along the way and sometimes the up track was really slick because of the lack of snow. It was challenging and it was awesome! The reward of course, was the ski back down. Considering the marginal snow, we also got in lots of good turns and even found some powder. Sometimes, you just have to look a little harder to find the snow!

It just worked out that each day was better than the previous day. By the end of the week we were a group of happy, exhausted, elated skiiers. We were all thrilled to try something new like travelling on a glacier, skinning on challenging slopes, making turns on a glacier and challenging ourselves physically. O.K, I was thrilled! I was impressed hugely by my friends, who endured some fairly long and challenging days and who were totally up for everything and anything. My husband was a star, with his weight loss of over 20 pounds since last winter, he was moving strongly, confidently and expending way less energy than this time last year. As always, he made the prettiest turns, kept everyone entertained and had waaay too much fun!

Keith and his Ladies

We skiied. We saw pretty places. We ate like kings and queens. We visited with our friends. We made some new ones. We slept like babies. It really was a magical week in a very special place.

We did a LOT of this:

With a side of this.......


And a whole lot of THIS!

My smile muscles are still sore.

I'm off to bed with dreams of a magical place of glaciers and snow, giddy, happy and content with my all over fatigue!

Weekend Round-Up

Friday's glorious run in the sun was hard to beat, but on Saturday I ski toured up to Crowfoot Glacier area off the Icefields Parkway. We were a huge group and as a result we more moving pretty slow.....so it was the perfect recovery day! Yet another great day in the backcountry with Keith and our friends.

"Let's go THAT way!!"

Looking towards Bow Lake and Num-Ti-Jah Lodge

Crowfoot Glacier

Makin' a Plan....

Backcountry Ski Stud!!

Keith had just returned from 4 days of backcountry skiing, but was still keen to get out for another day. He has had 39 days in the backcountry this year!! He is a beautiful skiier. And he is all mine!

Sunday, as a grand-finalee....the sun came out again and it was HOT. I took a run up the Spray River Valley to Goat Creek. This run is right out the back door. I was running on a cross country skiing trail that was in terrible shape. With all of the melting and freezing and thawing the track-set has turned to mush. It was far better running. I actually saw a guy on a mountain bike who started early and rode the frozen hardpack all the way from Canmore! That's about 20+ km on snow. Now that's hardcore! I also saw a bunch of wolf scat and some huge footey prints right in the middle of the trail.

When I arrived back in Banff, I decided to do a "bonus loop" to get an extra hill in and run up the trail to the Rimrock hotel. I rounded a corner in the forest and saw someone hammering down the trail towards me.....clad only in a bra-top, 3/4 tights and ARM warmers! I laughed very hard and was surprised to see my hyper-kinetic friend Nicki from Calgary. Nicki has more energy than anyone on the planet and she told me she was menopausal and permanently hot these days (thus the fabulous mid-winter outfit) and she was trying to squeeze a long run in in preparation for the Diez-Vista 50k. She is one hot mama! Just a year ago she suffered a broken leg, so she is back in full force. When we got back towards my house she did a full dive into the snow bank and rolled around in the bra top and took a long pause face first in the snow. Too funny. After the 4 hr. run she went up to Mount Norquay to meet up with her hubby and kids for a little resort ski.....Go Super Mom!