Searching for Winter

There’s plenty of press on Vancouver’s absent winter and upcoming winter Olympics.  November brought cold temps and record setting snowfall, so we got Scott fully equipped with skate skiing and AT gear with a few trips to Sigges, MEC gear swap and Craig’s List.   Then December turned warm, January stayed warm, now the Olympics are almost here and it is still warm.  Cypress Mountain, the North Shore venue for freestyle skiing and snowboarding, is using helicopters to bring snow to the site.  The company I work for had a project at Cypress last year building a water supply reservoir for snow making capacity….looks like it will get used soon.

I knew that if we were going to get out for any ski touring that didn’t involve a 200+ km drive past the fraser Valley (see Scott’s goal of self propelled kms > driven kms), that a trip up the Sea to Sky corridor had to happen before the Olypmic travel restrictions started.  Saturday we went to Elfin Lakes just outside Squamish.  It’s the closest bc tour to Vancouver and there is little to no avalanche terrain on the trail from the parking lot to the cabin.  It’s very popular and very crowded but soooo convenient. Wooohooooo finally out in the SNOW!!!!

Scott showed that making the transition from long-time snowboarder to skiier is easy for the uphill (once we actually hit the snow line at around 1000m).

smiles. No doubt he can climb. 

The trip out and back to the cabin is a tour and we didn’t peel off the trail for turns until the return trip.  The few cms of new snow were wet and heavy keeping speed in check.  The downhill is harder than the uphill when you’re learning to make alpine turns.

Luv the snow. Luv the skiing.  Luv the hubby.