The idea for a ski trip together came up during a walk Jenny and I took one late fall day. The original idea was to go to Mazama to cross country ski and send the men-folk up into the backcountry. The four of us (Jenny, Chris, Randy, and I) met for wine and pizza in one of the fine downtown Mt. Vernon establishments and brought forward our idea. The idea was nixed almost immediately because the backcountry isn't very accessible in Mazama without a snowmobile. Jenny and I hadn't thought of that. We put forward a lot of ideas where we thought we could all have fun and eventually settled on Revelstoke, even though Whistler, Big White, Big Mountain, Silver Star, Sun Peaks, and other resorts were mentioned. We also settled on a week in early February then watched the weather.
By January we needed to make a final decision. Apparently our best decisions are made over pizza. With more pizza, beer, and a computer we finally made our decision based on the dates that lodging was available. We reserved a condo with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen in downtown Revelstoke for the last weekend in January and first week in February.
Then the weather forecast immediately did exactly what we did not want it to do: we had along warm spell, followed by a dry pattern. Since we did not know what the conditions would be like we didn't follow through with hiring a guide for the backcountry. It turned out just fine but I wouldn't recommend that approach.
Departure day arrived. Randy and I packed the night before and prepared for an earlier-than usual departure. Even still, we arrived at Chris and Jenny's about 10 minutes late. It took a good 15 minutes to load all their stuff on top of our stuff then we were off to the border crossing in Sumas. Easy, except our apples from the grocery store were confiscated.
Our next stop was the Kamloops Costco to buy 2-day discounted ski passes for Revelstoke Mountain Resort. The pass is a lot like an Advantage Pass for Stevens Pass here locally. So if you go, it is well worth it to stop at the Costco. However, make sure you have a Mastercard or enough cash or an American Express because debit cards with the Visa symbol don't work in that Costco. Also, make sure that you call your bank to let them know you will be in Canada otherwise the bank will place a hold on your card. Big Brother is out there! After a little confusion, a delay in the check out line and a mad dash back to the truck to get my American Express card, Randy and I had our passes. Chris fortunately had brought enough cash to cover his and Jenny's passes.
Another 3 hours or so up the TransCanada Highway, we arrived, although a little too early because the cleaning lady was still working on our unit. She invited us to camp out in the adjacent unit. Randy and Chris did that while Jenny and I walked around town. We stopped at the RMR visitors center for some information then continued walking on icy sidewalks. When we got back Chris and Randy had transferred all our stuff into our unit and loaded up the fridge from our stockpile of beer, our extra large stockpile of beer. We also found an illicit apple that had made it through the border. No worries, though, the apple never made it back out of Canada.
For dinner we went to the Village Idiot for pints and food. It's a fun place with a couple local brews on tap and some interesting variations on food and pizza. I had a vegan salad of chickpeas, which I'd recommend. Not sure that the others would recommend their meals.
The next day we went up to the mountain to ski. It's about an 8-minute drive from town so there's no need to get an alpine start. Of course we heard that the day to ski was yesterday because a weather system had dumped a bunch of powder on Friday night. It was quite cold and sunny. I learned that when I buckled my boots all the way down my feet froze. We also learned that our wimpy Washington face protecting gear was inadequate so eventually we all got these sort of hinged balaclavas with breathing holes. Maybe Chris didn't but the rest of us did.
The conditions were fast but still quite good and a little powder could be found here and there. Revelstoke has 4 chairs. The first is a gondola from the bottom, which connects to another gondola at "mid mountain", which actually may only be the bottom third of the total elevation. At the top of the second gondola a short ski is required to get to the Stoker Chair. There's another chair called "The Ripper" that is off to skiers right. Naturally we got separated immediately. Jenny and I ended up going left while Randy and Chris went right. Somehow Jenny and I got to the Ripper Chair and had to figure out how to get back. Eventually, maybe around lunch time, we all ran into each other again and skied together for the rest of the afternoon.
The mountain has about 5600' of vertcal if one is inclined to ski from top to bottom. Our strategy was to generally ski the top third or the top two thirds. Eventually we all found our favorite runs. Mine was an ungroomed blue run just right of the Stoker Chair called Snow Rodeo. Jenny seemed to favor an ungroomed bowl across the groomed run to the left of the Stoker Chair. Randy and Chris went into the North Bowl but also seemed to enjoy the run way right of the Stoker Chair. It was easy to find something to like. I'd never seen a groomed black diamond run before but Revelstoke has one called "Pitch Black". It is very steep and very fast.
Monday proved to be quite cold so we opted to not ski the resort. Instead we spent a lot of time wondering about Rogers Pass and finally took a drive up there since we were't getting much helpful information in town. The advice to Randy and I before we even left for the trip was to hire a guide but we procrastinated because no one was sure whether it would be worth it given the sunny and dry condtions. However, once we got up to Rogers Pass we found the amount of terrain overwhelming and further advice from the park service to hire a guide. After we got back to Revelstoke we went down the list the Canadian Avalanche Association office gave us and looked up names and numbers in the phone book. Randy and Chris made phone calls while Jenny and I stretched our legs on the groomed crosscountry track on the golf course. The track was very crunchy and we couldn't really get a good rhythm going because the sides of the track kept catching our boots and bindings. Still, it was a good leg stretcher.
Eventually we got a call back from a guide service who had time to take us on a tour on Thursday. We were to meet Wednesday evening to go over avalanche beacon searching and signing the forms. Our guide was Bob Shafto from Revelstoke Ski Touring and HeliCanada. He was actually the owner of the company so it was surprising that he was going to be our guide for a tour.
After skiing inbounds in the sunshine on Tuesday and Wednesday, Jenny and I opted to take a lesson in the afternoon of Wednesday. We wanted to hone our skills skiing in the trees since that is likely what we'd be doing for our backcountry tour. Neither Jenny or I are confident skiers in the trees and the lesson definitely helped. The reason we thought we'd ski the trees for our tour is because a storm was forecasted for Thursday. It's a lot nicer to ski in the shelter of trees than in the open in the storm. The avalanche conditions were stable because of the recent avalanche cycle followed by several days of cold and sun. Still, we weren't sure if there were buried layers that were a concern so it was comforting to have a guide.
Plus our guide turned out to be a lot of fun. Bob is a lively fellow with many years of experience in Revelstoke and quite of bit of international experience as well. He says that ski touring is his favorite thing although he did encourage us many times to try heliskiing. I'm not ready for that yet though it would be fun to get dropped off by a helicopter to a backcountry hut. Some day…
All our avalanche safety training served us well during our beacon search test the evening before our tour. We found all four beacons in a fairly systematic way. Also, we got to meet "Big Ed" the retired one-eyed avalanche search dog. He didn't go on the tour with us but I'll bet he wanted to.
We met Bob at 7:10 the next morning, finished signing waivers, then loaded up to drive up to Rogers Pass to get our necessary passes. Our tour started at Bostoc Creek up a summer trail. We made a long traverse above a drainage then started switchbacking up the slope to find an open path that hopefully had untracked powder. Along the way Bob shared his wisdom about breaking trail, staying cool and dry, eating, drinking fluids, and so on. The trail breaking wasn't easy because the snowpack was low in the forest so there were plenty of obstacles to go over and around. At a clearing we could see a lot of ski tracks across the drainage so Bob took us to another powder stash near the top of the ridge. We ripped our skins (hides, as Bob says) and started skiing down at over 6000'. The car was parked at just below 4000'.
Jenny and I paired up while Randy and Chris made the other pair. Bob practically yodelled all the way down the chute. We skied as far left as we could so that we could avoid most of the slippery track we had come up. Most of the skiing was in the open but some was in the trees. Jenny and I didn't ski real pretty but we got down in our own style. The uptrack was a bit of a luge but 7 cm of new snow helped slow us down and made the ski out fun. At the end of the day Bob came up to our condo and had a beer with us. It was great fun and I'd definitely try to hire him again on a future visit.
Revelstoke had received quite a bit of new snow so on Friday we skied inbounds again. The lines were much longer. It was like the whole town had come out, which may be true. Someone on the gondola said that everyone would be gone by 1:00 since they probably had to go back to work. What a nice life! Our favorite runs were different with a whole lot of fresh snow and it was like skiing new runs all over again. After lunch I asked Randy to go with me on a tree run. Jenny had hurt her knee on an earlier tree run attempt so she and Chris skied other runs. The tree run was fun with lots of fresh lines and widely spaced trees. I was happy with one long run through the trees then another run down the open runs. Randy had enough energy to take another run from the top while I dawdled my way down. By the time I got down Randy finished his extra run and met me as I was taking off my skis at the bottom. We were a half hour late meeting Jenny and Chris. Thankfully they had a warm bar in which to hang out.
We all agreed that we had had enough skiing for the week and were ready to go home. I was really tired and cranky although I made my best attempt to keep it to myself. Not entirely sure I was successful but I buried myself in a good book. We'd had 5 days of fairly strenuous skiing plus Jenny and I had the one day of crunchy cross country skiing. Our condo was right across the street from a lively night club with booming woofers. Plus our condo inexplicably did not have any blinds in the windows so light streamed into our bedrooms. Generally our condo was really nice except we had to buy our own toilet paper and hand soap. There was only one lamp in each bedroom and only overhead lighting in the living room. That was startling but in the end lodging had only cost each of us about $75 per night. So it's hard to complain but I could've used much better sleep. Ear plugs reduced the noise significantly but the light was hard for me to sleep in. I doubt I was the only one affected but I am truly unpleasant when sleep deprived.
Our last night in town was my worst night of sleep yet. Still I got a few hours of good sleep and was able to sleep in as long as I wanted. That helped and felt distinctly cheerier the following day. We were coffeed, breakfasted, packed and loaded before 9:00 a.m. We left the snowy streets of Revelstoke and onto the TransCanada Highway. Randy took the first shift of driving through low visibility and frozen wipers. Hot coffee from Chris' thermos unfroze the wiper sprayers so visibility through the windshield improved, inspite of fog and road spray. I took over driving south of Kamloops. The going was a lot easier but mud and spray on the side mirrors and windows did not help visibility. Fortunately traffic is fairly polite in Canada, which is surprising because I don't find Canadians typically polite drivers here in Washington.
The border crossing in Sumas went smoothly although a couple oranges that had come from the US were not allowed back in the US. Oh well, maybe the crossing guards will have a snack on us. Within an hour we were back at Chris and Jenny's. Unload, hugs, and on our way home. But first dinner and a beer since we knew that there was no food at home. We detoured to Diamond Knot on Camano Island and had a burger. Home and unloaded (but not unpacked) by 5:30. It was some kind of fun and I'd love to do it again! Here are the few pictures I took.