Snowmobiles and storms

It’s hard to believe I reached the age of 34 without ever riding a snowmobile, especially considering the way I feel about skiing and motorbikes. Thanks to a Christmas gift Groupon for a Blackcomb Snowmobile tour, that oversight has now been corrected.

It was a slushy start in the Callaghan Valley, and initially I was surprised by how much the sled slipped around in the wet snow. It took me a few minutes to overcome the years of motorbike conditioning and adjust to the fact that this was a totally different riding experience. Once I’d gotten used to the feel of the snowmobile and how much weight I needed to throw into the turns to get it moving smoothly, it was just as much fun as I’d hoped. J hung on behind me as we drove along snowy trails beneath scudding clouds; the conditions definitely made for a rough ride, but a very entertaining one. I didn’t want to give the sled back at the end.

After the tour we headed for Whistler, where we were staying overnight at the Coast Blackcomb Suites. The buzz in the village was for another epic powder day on Sunday, with 20cm of snow predicted overnight. We soaked in the hot tubs and then opted for a quiet night with an in-room movie, saving our energy for the slopes.

Unfortunately the overnight snow failed to materialize, and instead Sunday dawned on a howling blizzard. I did appreciate my first ever ski-in ski-out hotel experience; it was great to be able to walk out of the door, jump into my skis, and cruise down corduroy slush to the Wizard Chair. It rained gently on me as far as the base of Solar Coaster, and then the clouds closed in and the rain turned to snow and the winds started to build.

I started out with a couple of runs on Ross’s Gold before they closed it down for slalom training. Everyone seemed to be sticking to Springboard, and Ross’s was pretty well empty and untouched. With very limited visibility I was wary of letting my speed build too much, and the slopes below were dust on a crust of icy hardpack. I ended up heading for Seventh when the lift opened, which turned out to be a very good move. The ridge was a chaos of wind and blowing snow, but once you dropped down and cleared the first part of the runs (which had no visibility at all) the cloud opened up, the winds reduced, and the snow was in good shape.

By noon gusts on the ridge had reached 80km/h, and it took all my strength to pole forward into them. Skiers who stopped poling (and most of the snowboarders) would be pushed slowly but inexorably backwards. At the end of a deserted run, I wasn’t surprised to find that the lift had closed. I headed back to Solar Coaster but even there the visibility had deteriorated, the winds were gathering pace, and skiers and boarders sessioning the Camp of Champions airbag were being buffeted about as they flipped.

After a final couple of runs I skied back down to the hotel, collected J, and we headed to the Scandinave Spa with another set of Groupons. Four hours of steam rooms, saunas, hot pools, nordic plunges and solarium relaxation later, we drove back to Vancouver in another pounding rainstorm. Ah well; better luck with the weather next time.

Pow day

On Wednesday the fates aligned. I had the day off work, and the forecast was for 15-20cm of fresh snow. The rain turned to sleet just outside Squamish, and by the time I arrived at Creekside the trees were heavy with fresh snow and little snowcats were clearing drifts from the plaza. At the top of the gondola even the groomed runs were boot-deep in fresh, fluffy, perfect powder.

I haven’t skied a full run on real, honest-to-god, untouched powder since the middle weekend of the Olympics. I’ve skied probably less than a half-dozen runs on that kind of snow in my entire life. Even the Glacier run last week was a cruise from one powder pocket to the next through soft crud, not true powder skiing. At the time of my accident, I was finally figuring out how to weight skis properly to turn on soft snow; with all the time that’s passed and everything that happened in between, I’d forgotten everything I ever learned.

The snow was just deep enough to really float, with an icy scrape or two on the hardpack underneath on the turns. My first run was a nice easy green below Emerald, with barely a track to be seen. I floated huge, surfing turns across the slope, letting the speed build up so that I could cruise without touching the ground. And then I tried to turn exactly the way I normally would while going fast, and the unweighted ski shot out to the side and I had just enough time to think “Really? On my very first run?” before I was face down in the powder with my left ski MIA.

I was really shaky when I stood up, but no more so than after any fall at speed and there was no big internal panic. It was the first time I’ve had a binding release on the bad leg, but I think I’m learning to trust the new knee and believe it when there are no signs of injury or trauma. I dusted myself off, retrieved my ski, and carried on.

Once I’d practiced my turns on a few more runs, I headed over to Harmony. While most skiers headed into the open bowls I skied just off Harmony Ridge, building speed and confidence and rarely crossing another track. Getting off the chair after my third run, I heard the lifty mention that they were just about to open Symphony. I scooted straight over and was one of the first half-dozen skiers into the bowl.

Once I was there, the question of on- vs. off-piste became immaterial. There was no on-piste; groomers and moguls alike were hidden under the uninterrupted layer of knee-deep snow that blanketed the entire bowl. Jeff’s Ode to Joy couldn’t have lived up to its name more than on that first run, riding one endless wave of untouched powder from wide open faces to beautiful glades of snow-laden trees. Once the run started tracking out I moved right to find more fresh lines; it took half-a-dozen runs before I was regularly crossing other skiers’ tracks.

By the time I went in for lunch my quads were burning and I was trembling from exhaustion, but grinning like a maniac. Unfortunately when I headed back out I realized that I’d peaked too soon. Even fueled up with food, I had nothing left in my legs for the afternoon. I skied on for a while regardless, including a brief excursion to Blackcomb on Peak 2 Peak, but by 3pm I had to admit I was done. I skied carefully back down to Creekside and drove home remembering a day that I didn’t make the most of, but was still one of the most memorable I’ve had.

Wipeout weekend

I went up to Whistler on Saturday with two friends, K and R. It was a perfect day, with 10cm of overnight snow under a bluebird sky. And I reached one more of my personal milestones: I took the Shoguns back to Whistler. I fell in love with them all over again the second I made my first turn.

With big mountain skis on my feet and all that fresh snow, it was probably inevitable that I would eventually give in to temptation. A short run behind K and R on the Horstman Glacier was enough to convince me to make the bootpack to the Blackcomb Glacier, an open bowl of ungroomed snow so big you can’t even imagine it until you’ve stood on the wind lip preparing to drop in. For the first turn – maybe even two – I tried to be cautious, then I just let everything fly and rocketed through beautiful soft snow and powder pocket after powder pocket all the way to Glacier Road. By the time I got to the bottom I couldn’t even form a coherent sentence; all I could do was sort of yodel joyously at the sky.

I know I’m not supposed to be skiing off piste this season; I know I shouldn’t really have been there. But it was the best run I’ve had since I started skiing again, and made every single second of this feel worthwhile.

To get back from the glacier you have to take a 5km cat track that is one of the most boring pieces of slope on the mountain. It’s flat, narrow, dull, and interminably long. I was ambling slowly along with my mind wandering when I caught an edge on a bump that I missed as I moved from light into shadow, and fell backwards onto my skis at the exact same angle that I fell when I tore the ACL a year ago. My knee gave a good twinge, then I hit the bank and stopped and just felt sick.

My rational mind knew perfectly well that the twinge was the knee being forced through that last 5 degrees of flexion that are still stiff. It knew that nothing felt bad, and as I skied out afterwards there was none of that weird unattached feeling in the lower leg that had characterized the remainder of the run after the ACL tear. It watched me climb the stairs at Glacier Creek without discomfort, and reminded me that within half an hour of the original tear I could barely walk. Unfortunately I also realized that my irrational mind wasn’t going to be able to listen to my rational mind until I’d heard from a doctor that everything was okay. So I downloaded and went straight to the clinic.

They got me in immediately; by then it was obvious that the knee was fine, and I felt a little shamefaced while answering the doctor’s questions about where it hurt. (“It doesn’t. But it’s my new ACL!”) She xrayed me as per policy, then checked the knee and pronounced it more stable than most original ACLs. I was in and out in an hour, but just missed the last chair back up the mountain at 4pm.

Regardless of the outcome, I think going to the clinic was the right decision. It’s the first time I’ve fallen directly on the bad leg, and while a 5kph tumble on a cat track doesn’t compare to dropping 5 feet out of the air at speed there was that similarity in the way that I fell that really freaked me out. I was way more unnerved by this than the big crash the other week, because this directly involved the bad leg. There’s no way I could have relaxed until I got it checked out, no matter how it felt.

So I headed back to Vancouver, and K and R stayed to ski on Sunday. Then on Sunday afternoon I got a call from K. She had taken a bad fall on Spanky’s Ladder, leaving her with a torn calf muscle and fractured pelvis. I feel terrible for her, especially because I know from my own experience just how tough it is to be on the sidelines. Heal up fast, K.

Season pass

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I bought a season pass. 2011/12, I’m so ready for you. I’m ready not to be weak, not to be limited, to charge the way I did before the accident. The way I still can inside my head. I’m ready to go into the backcountry. I’m ready for anything, just not quite yet.

I also bought my unlimited spring pass for this year. One more Edge card day, and then the making up for lost time really begins. I hope that I’m ready for that, at least.

Mixed messages

By the weekend, my latest injury was feeling considerably better. I took it out snowshoeing on Saturday, and the lure of the mountains overwhelmed me. I wrestled for most of the evening with the small voice of reason that told me I should give the injury more time to settle, and then threw my gear in a bag and set the alarm for 6am.

I’m not a morning person and I normally have a hard enough time getting myself to work for 8.30am, but I love the ski day ritual. A bleary start in the dark, sipping coffee in the car as I wait for lights to change downtown, blue dawn seeping over the Sea to Sky. I must have driven that highway a hundred times now, but I will never get tired of it.

I have to be honest: it wasn’t my finest day on skis. Conditions were hardpacked and icy, and I was tired from a week of short nights. I was favouring the right leg from concern over the LCL, and paranoia from the big spill last week led to me overtightening my knee brace on the left leg and irritating the hell out of the patellar tendon.

Nonetheless, it was good to be there. I spent most of the morning cruising Harmony and Symphony, then made my way back to Dave Murray before lunch. Once again, it was the perfect run. Straightlining the top stretch, then carving at high speed all the way down Bear Paw to the deserted Garbanzo lift. I’m really focused on my carving at the moment; being limited to groomers is making me very conscious of the flaws in my technique, and it’s an opportunity to correct them.

In the afternoon I headed over to Blackcomb and spent some time on Solar Coaster and Seventh Heaven before giving in to temptation and taking one run through Secret Bowl. The entrance was glorious – wind crust over a layer of soft powder – but Secret Chute was enormous bumps, which were a little too much for the bad leg to handle. It’s not missing much strength, but its response time lags fractionally behind the good leg and that’s enough to make gnarly bumps unmanageable.

To my delight, I also discovered that Heavenly Basin had been groomed. The gorgeously steep run that resulted was a high point of the day. While I can’t ski off piste, I want my groomers to be as steep and challenging as possible. I wrapped up by riding back over to Whistler and blasting Dave Murray and Bear Paw as fast as I could.

Under the warm afternoon sun, the lower third of the ski out had turned to wet cement. On the Shoguns I could have cruised over it, but on the Silencers I had to power through. My right leg started to ache like crazy, and I realized I might have overstretched the healing LCL. In the car every stretch of the foot to press a pedal made me wince. I arrived back in Vancouver with the sick feeling that I’d sacrificed the rest of my season to a day when I didn’t even ski particularly well. When I got up this morning, I could hardly walk.

A physiotherapy session this evening reassured me considerably: the LCL is actually healing well, but I’ve got an underlying tear of the biceps femoris tendon and some strained calf muscles. Hopefully I haven’t ruled myself out of unlimited spring for a second year in a row. I’m not ready to be done with this yet.

The first fall

On Friday I put myself back on the injury list, but only temporarily and right at the end of a day that couldn’t have been better in every other respect.

We arrived on the mountain just as a bright morning sun was breaking through the clouds above the Emerald Express, and warmed up with a couple of easy runs before heading over to Blackcomb. The views from Peak to Peak were stunning: hazy clouds filtering the sunlight, and a dusting of fresh snow all the way to Fitzsimmons Creek. Every time I ski, I’m reminded of little things that I’d missed so much: the smooth sweep of skis on freshly-groomed corduroy, the epic vistas from the gondola, the anticipation of hanging between two massive mountains and knowing that all that terrain is yours for the taking.

Over on Blackcomb we headed straight for Seventh Heaven. It was a perfect day for cruising groomers: no new snow overnight, but a full week of powder days packed solid underfoot. I’ve missed Seventh – hell, I’ve missed the whole of Blackcomb – like crazy, and the pitch of the gorgeous open runs was perfect for building confidence and speed. On Cloud 9 the wind burned my face and I remembered just how amazing it feels to let the skis straightline, building insane amounts of speed and power and driving it all into huge carving turns into the snow.

After that the whole day was one high speed run after another. I couldn’t get enough of it, and couldn’t quite believe that not only my reconstructed knee but my whole out-of-ski-shape, unfamiliar body was able to rip so hard. Seventh, Springboard, Ross’s Gold, Ridge Runner, Dave Murray, Tokum – we found the longest groomers we could, and skied them as fast as we were able. I couldn’t stop smiling and on half the runs I was yelling with the sheer joy of it as we cruised into the lift line; I never imagined I’d be skiing like that on just my second day back at Whistler.

The accident, when it happened, was a mixture of my own fault and freakish bad luck. We were on Dave Murray, catching a last few laps on Garbanzo before the lifts shut for the day. I was heading straight down when a skier shot out of a side trail and stopped dead directly in front of me. I swerved violently left to avoid him – no easy feat at the speed I was travelling – and realised as soon as the manoeuvre was complete that it had left me headed straight for my friend P, who was waiting at the side of the run. I flung myself back to the right but couldn’t quite clear him. My skis caught the very ends of his tails, catapulting me into a clean 180 spin. My right ski blew off on the ridge as I landed, giving my good knee a hard twist, then I crashed down onto my face and slid feet first about fifty yards down the hill.

I knew immediately that I’d pulled something on the outside of the right knee, but I could also feel that it wasn’t a sharp pain and it wasn’t deep inside the knee where I’d felt my left ACL rip away a year ago. The first thing that went through my head was the LCL (lateral collateral ligament.) Then I got caught up thinking about the bad knee, checking that out and making sure the impact hadn’t caused any damage. It felt fine and even the right knee didn’t seem too bad, so I put my loose ski back on and went for a couple more glorious runs – not much slower than before – before the lifts closed down on us and we headed back to Creekside.

That night things stiffened up badly, and while it didn’t hurt to walk or even to hop certain pivoting movements caused excruciating pain in the outside of the right knee. By this point I was pretty certain that I had a grade one or two tear of the LCL, and after it failed to improve on Saturday I took it to the doctor on Sunday. He confirmed my diagnosis, and advised a week of complete rest and then a week easing back into activities. No skiing for at least two weeks.

I’m really bummed out that I just lost another two weeks of my already very limited ski season. At the same time, I’m grateful that this time I tore a collateral ligament that, unlike a cruciate, has the ability to heal by itself. And in some ways I’m relieved that the first fall is finally over and done. It was going to happen sooner or later, and now I no longer have that fear of how the knee will react hanging over me. I’m very happy that the bad knee survived the impact without damage (it tested rock solid), although I’m very aware that had it been the left ski that blew off and twisted the consequences could have been far more serious. Like the snowshoeing fall, this was a wake up call.

I went for physiotherapy yesterday and the LCL injury is already starting to feel a little better. Now I’m doing my best to follow doctor’s orders, and counting down the days until I can head up to Whistler again.

Praxis Backcountry: first impressions

It’s been a long time coming, but yesterday I finally got to ride the amazing Praxis Backcountry.

Before I talk about the skis, I should note that this isn’t in any way a proper review. Because I wasn’t sure if my knee was up to handling a ski that size, I took it over to Seymour for the day and spent most of the time on groomers (albeit with a ton of rather wet new snow on top.) I plan on posting a full review of the BCs after I’ve had a chance to take them out touring and ride the gamut of conditions, which may not be until next season.

I skied the Shoguns in the morning – another knee test that went well – then switched to the BCs in the afternoon. The first thing that struck me when I clicked into them was how impressively light they were for their size. Lighter by far than the Shoguns; possibly even lighter than the Silencers, though it’s hard to make a direct comparison when I don’t have the numbers to hand and there’s such a size difference. I knew that Praxis had focused on keeping the weight down for touring, but even so I was blown away that such a big, powerful feeling ski could weigh so little – especially with the relatively burly Marker Baron bindings.

I tried the ski out on a few different runs, including a couple of blue cruisers, an ungroomed black, and even a little rather soggy powder. The first thing that struck me was that the ski has quite a bit more tail than I’m used to. I couldn’t decide whether this was down to the extra length, the relative stiffness of the back portion of the ski, or a combination of the two – I’ll probably get a better sense of this as I ski it more, and attack more varied conditions.

The second thing that struck me was the smoothness of the ride. The snow was pretty horrible – choppy, wet crud – but that big rockered tip just flew over everything in its path. The few stashes of fresh snow that I found weren’t deep enough for a proper assessment, but I definitely had a sense that these boats are pretty much unsinkable. Seymour isn’t big enough to really open up and let the ski run, so although I got a great feeling for how it handles poor conditions I don’t have any impression of its performance at speed.

The standout for me was that this ski doesn’t feel like anything I’ve ridden before. I was expecting to find some parallels with the Shoguns or the Doughboys, but the size coupled with the light weight and the tip rocker created an entirely different experience. I don’t think these would be quite as much fun on the groomers as the Shoguns, but I can already see them becoming my powder day ski of choice for Whistler as well as my go-to for touring.

I was stoked that my knee was able to handle such a big ski – the biggest I’ve ever ridden – even though it definitely put my new ACL through the toughest test it’s had yet. I’m sorely tempted to take it out and try it in the kind of conditions it was built for, but underneath I do know that it’s too soon for the knee. Nonetheless, I can’t wait to explore some of the potential that I know I wasn’t able to tap yesterday. This ski is powerful; I could feel it wanting bigger runs, steeper slopes, and deeper snow.

Overall, I would say that yesterday’s very limited test gave me a lot of confidence that this ski will be everything I thought it would – and then some. The only very slight negative is that I don’t think the beautiful topsheet will last too long, as it already has three noticeable chips (two next to the sidewall, one on the tail) from yesterday’s outing. But really, although I love the way the ski looks, what I care about is not the appearance but the way it feels to ride. And for that, the Backcountry is already a clear winner.

What is the love that brings you to the mountains?

I’ve been trying to frame my own answer to this great TGR thread. It’s so hard to put what I feel into words.

To put it simply, the mountains are where I feel free. They are the spaces where anything is possible.

But there’s more to it than that. In the mountains all bullshit falls away, and the ragged edges and contusions left by the pummeling stress of making your way in the urban world begin to heal.  They have no space or time for falsehoods, lies, or pretenses. Unlike cities, they don’t need people to give them meaning; they simply are, whether we are there or not. They are about simplicity and truth, stripping away everything that’s needless to leave an absolute clarity of thought and purpose.

Mountains are the natural world at its most raw and its most captivating. Jagged peaks, endless fields of snow and ice, broken rocks at the edge of the sky. Glimpses of a time when the earth was wilder.

And when we ski, we’re dancing with the mountain. Skiing is about taking that wildness and that freedom and all of that raw energy and power and riding it like one endless wave down from the sky. It’s about leaving the world behind and finding a space where the only things that matter are the speed and the snow and our mastery of our own bodies. It’s an intoxicating mix of adrenalin and beauty that leaves us hopelessly obsessed and hungry for more.

Mountains put the world, and the ripple of my own very tiny path in it, into perspective. In them I live for the current moment, am absorbed entirely in the beauty around me, and feel complete.

The light at the end of the tunnel

On Friday I skied straight into the light at the end of the tunnel.

I really wasn’t sure that I was ready to go back to Whistler. My knee spent two days aching like a rotten tooth after eight hours on my feet at work on Tuesday. My early ventures to the north shore were gratifying – after all, I was skiing – but conditions had been too poor to get any real sense of what the knee was capable of. The longest I’d lasted had been four hours, and that was on relatively short runs. Add in a forecast of heavy snow and a poor night’s sleep, and I set out on what should have been my biggest day so far feeling nothing but nerves and trepidation.

The Sea to Sky was a picture postcard winter wonderland. Snowladen trees, heavy cloud gashed by streaks of blue, and compact snow from the Callaghan Valley all the way into Whistler. We must have passed a dozen cars abandoned in the snow-filled ditches beside the road. The drive soothed my nerves a little. I’d missed those winter morning rituals so much: the crack of dawn alarm, a bleary start in the dark, the twists and turns of the road that just briefly interrupts the mountainsides that roll from the sky right down into Howe Sound.

At Creekside I geared up, expecting nothing much. As we climbed into the gondola I made myself vague promises about taking it easy and just seeing how long I could last. I looked down at skiers cruising the powder runs, and vowed that I’d be happy enough just seeing how well I could carve on the groomers.

And then I hit the mountain, and finally found the day that I’ve been waiting seven and a half months for.

I skied, and I skied hard. I skied hard from the moment we arrived (about 9.30am) until the last chair we could convince the lifties to let us on (about 4pm.) I skied on gorgeous soft groomers where I carved perfect turns all the way down; I skied on Peak to Creek at the end of the day when it was cut up into gnarly bumps; I skied in beautiful soft chopped up powder and I skied my legs off on the Dave Murray Downhill. The caution lasted barely a run; having those amazing expanses of mountain in front of me, covered in fresh snow, was just too much to resist. By lunchtime I was tearing down Dave Murray and Tokum in about three minutes flat, ripping the mounds of soft snow to shreds and carving beautiful snaking s-turns at full speed all the way to the lift.

Every single time my left leg forced the outside ski into the snow, carving or smearing another huge arcing turn, my confidence grew. All my fears about lost technique were completely unfounded; it’s still there, everything I learned last season. I did stay out of the big bowls and deep powder (not easy when there’s a huge storm overnight), but I skied hard and fast and so much better than I expected. By the last run Dave Murray was a mess of bumps and I was flying a foot in the air on the outside of every turn. Probably not exactly what the doctor ordered, but psychologically it was an enormous boost.

Friday was every single thing that I’ve been missing. It was the reassurance I needed that nothing is gone, nothing is lost, and fear isn’t going to hold me back. There’s no psychological hangover from the accident and injury. And if I can ski like this when my left leg is still weak and I’m still hampered by concern for the graft, then I will at some point in the future be as good as – and better than – I was before. It may not be this season, but it will happen.

On the last run of the day I was still skiing fast and carving hard all the way from the top of Big Red to the foot of the Creekside Gondola. At the end of the run, the only thing I wanted was for the day not to be over. This is why I made the choices I did and struggled through the whole long nightmare of surgery and rehab: these moments when the only things that matter are the snow and the speed and the skis between. These moments of perfect harmony with the mountain.

It’s been a long road and I’m not done with it yet, but on Friday I truly felt like I’d come home.

Day four

The North Shore isn’t being all that supportive of my return to snow.

30cm of new snow fell on Cypress on Friday, and a friend who was up there midweek said the conditions were great. I packed up my gear and set off Saturday morning, looking forward to more fresh snow in the forecast.

There was certainly snow, but it wasn’t exactly what I had hoped for. I arrived in the teeth of a howling blizzard, with a vicious wind and wet snow blowing horizontally across the parking lot. I wrapped my facemask a little more tightly under my goggles, zipped my jacket up a little more securely, and climbed onto a violently swaying chairlift.

The first few runs on Mount Strachan were reasonable, although the snow was already pretty heavy and starting to pile up badly. I moved over to Black Mountain before lunch, where the snow was quite a bit better but the visibility was zero. I was very conscious of the risk of catching an edge, especially on the lower third of the mountain. I tried not to let the conditions distract me too much from the need to think about my technique, and managed a few brief sections of decent carving. Overall, though, flex and mobility in the bad leg is still lacking.

By about 11.30am the temperature had risen enough that the lower runs were getting really wet, and on the one run I took to Raven Ridge I found driving rain instead of snow. The knee tired badly in the heavy conditions, and I was struggling to force it through the piles of chunky, slushy snow that littered the runs. I stopped for a quick snack, but came back out to even worse conditions: even heading into the lower runs with as much speed as I could gather, the snow was so sticky it brought me to a dead stop. At that point I gave up and came home.

That’s four days out, two on boilerplate ice and two on wet, heavy cement. It made me long for the chance to test the knee out on smooth groomers where I can focus on technique and not on going ass over tip due to horrible conditions. The knee got a couple of sharp twists yesterday, although it felt okay at the end of the day. Overall, though, I’m feeling pretty disappointed with the North Shore mountains. I don’t think my leg is ready for a full day out yet, but I’m more than ready to go back to Whistler.