Skiing, skiing and more skiing

What to do when winter hits, the snow starts flying and temperatures drop?! Why, skiing of course! :-)

Here's some photos of our recent trips into the hills for skiing........

This is our 'local' ski hill, Big White - with a village on the hill that accommodates 16,000 overnight! Not quite like the Craigieburn fields. A lovely blue sky day with fluffy powder - pity it was -16 out there, oh and then there was the wind chill.......





The following weekend we headed further afield for some skiing - into the West Kootenays, first stop: the lovely town of Rossland (great MTBing in winter; great skiing in winter). The town was an old mining settlement back in the day - they found a lot of gold in them hills - and today has many an old wooden building with facade. Looked kinda cosy with the Xmas lights strung out and a light dusting of snow.



So we spent Saturday skiing at Red Mountain - the local ski hill/resort. It was the first day of season and everyone around was excited to be getting out. We discovered the 'Paradise Basin' area pretty early on and found it had the nicest snow, so we were set. Lots of exploring to do and trees to be skiied between :-)

Next up was cat skiing - 12 of us from Kelowna got together to hire a cat for a day. So Saturday night we drove to the tiny town of Ymir (pronounced as in '"Why'm I" Here?' apparently!) Another old mining town, this one has shrunk considerably more than Rossland. The 12 of us holed up in the Ymir Hotel for the night - a rather eclectic place. Turns out there are only two hotels in Ymir, but this one has the only liquor license, so that keeps it busier. Although with our group of 12 in there, there was a grand total of 12 patrons, hmmm.
The proprietor is a Dutch man who lived on Vancouver Island for a number of years before selling his nursery land to developers and buying the Ymir Hotel from the local bikers sight-unseen 4 years ago. He removed the burn-out marks off the lounge floor, renovated everything and added his own touch through a mix of original masters art works, wooden carvings and a collection of musical instruments that a sign says 'you are most welcome to try'.......



We wer up early the next morning to get to the Cat, load up and head into the hills. The guide Trevor paraglides also and therefore knew a number of people in our group from gliding, hence the opportunity coming up. We had a mix of boarders, skiiers and those on teles between us - all good fun :-)

Here we are all excited and bouncing as the Cat heads further and further into the hills......



The guys at the 'Wildhorse Cat-Skiing and Powder Mining Co.' prepare for the season developing the tracks to access the skiing areas. The area is on nature conservancy land just south of the Whitewater Ski Area out of Nelson. Beautiful snow and terrain.........


At the top of the first run - Trevor would take off and set a line for us to keep to one side of. We would then each set off, finding our own fresh snow. Trevor reckoned that even if it didn't snow for two weeks at all, they had enough lines for 12 days skiing before ever coming back to tracked lines!!


And she's off - Frances starts off through the powder.....


Steve emerges from the trees on his board - all is good!


End of run - time to reload gear and people into the Cat, head back up the hill and find more snow to play in......





We skiied into twilight - the Cat had been playing up and going a bit slower than normal, so Trevor was determined to get us as many runs as possible. So the trip down in the Cat was pitch black. Two of the guys went and picked up a second snowmobile with toboggan to get us back down the snow road quicker, leaving the Cat behind for the night. Here we are loading six people per toboggan, towed behind a snowmobile - awesome!!!!!


Unfortunately we had to head for Kelowna that night, with work the next day :-( Early on in the drive the snow was really falling and the plows weren't out on the highway yet, but thankfully it did eventually clear and we rolled into Kelowna under starry skies.