Catching up with photos

Originally posted: Sunday, March 7, 2010

I’ve started a gallery for 2010 pictures. Starting with Revelstoke and Ellicotville.

 Andrew and I took a trip to Revelstoke in January.  My excuse was that Andrew couldn’t come to Whistler with us during March Break, as Queen’s students don’t get that week off.  So we needed an extra trip out west to compensate.

 There has been skiing in Revelstoke for over 100 years, but new lifts and facilities were installed and opened in 2007.  It is still a work in progress, with only 3 lifts (not counting the magic carpet in the training centre), but there is lots of mountain to ski and it is definitely challenging.  Very few of the runs are suitable for beginners or tentative intermediates.

 Andrew and I had a great couple of days, helped greatly by a mountain tour provided by Jason (a boarding instructor) on the first day. Although no fresh snow fell while we were there, we still managed to find areas that had not been skied. That’s the upside of going to a relatively unknown mountain.

 On the third day we moved over to heli-skiing and had an unforgettable day.  We were grouped with a bunch of Albertans who had been bumped from their cat skiing day due to lack of fresh snow in the cat terrain.  They were a great group.

The day started with about 90 minutes of avalanche training (beacon operation, search techniques, etc) that pretty much put the fear of God into each of us. This is a good thing.

 Then we headed out onto the mountain.  We had 5 runs for about 3000 vertical meters of skiing.   It was a combination of high alpine and tree skiing, all in untracked powder.   It was awesome!