A couple of times

Over Christmas I was enthusiastically reporting the joys of the dawn patrol. I talked up the glories of the early morning starts, the sun rising over the mountains, and the fresh tracks before arriving at work at 10am.
"So you do this a lot?" my bemused listener asked me. Damn. He had me there. I'd only been out on one dawn patrol in my life, and yet there I was talking as if it were a regular occurrence. Well, as of today, I can now put forth the answer "I get out a couple of times a season". Provided I go for an early morning ski at least 2 times next season I suppose.
I had come home last night in a grumpy mood. My first day back at work after vacation was a rather grim one. All afternoon I had to listen to this high pitched wine coming from the corner of the cubicles where my 10 coworkers and I sit. The buzz was penetrating, like a vacuum cleaner, or a broken computer fan, or heavy construction equipment operating outside. As it turned out, ahem, it was the A440 tone on my metronome emanating from my backpack, which had accidentally switched on. How embawwasing.
But I returned home to great roommates, who had the deep fryer bubbling with chicken drumsticks and fries. Hell yes! Then followed some beer, whiskies, and a game of Settler's of Catan, and a plan to wake up at 5:30 the next day for a dawn patrol.
Amazingly I got out of bed this morning and was out the door with little pfaffing. Unfortunately I didn't realise that the road up to Cypress doesn't open until 7am. Luckily we still had time to get to Seymour and see the sunrise. As to whether I'll go out for my scheduled 4.5 mile run this evening, well, that remains to be seen.

Ski ski ski

Welcome back, loyal readers who suffered through the 2 month long absence of blog postings. It is your continued faith that compels me to keep writing.
Last week saw me headed to Utah, for a ski vacation with the family. Let's have an overhead look at Salt Lake city.


Some of you may be puzzled by the fact that we appear to be looking at a desert. Why yes indeed, and yet it miraculously offers outstanding skiing. The Great Salt Lake has no outflows; all of the moisture rises up and is deposited as light fluffy powder along the Wasatch front. The multiple colours of the lake is not an artifact of NASA's composition photography. The lake is separated by the Union Pacific Railway line. As none of the rivers flow in to the northern half of the lake, it is significantly more salty and takes on a maroonish colour.

A quick drive up to 2500 metres takes you out of the desert and in to lush alpine where the lake precipitation falls in abundance. Sadly, not a drop fell for the week we were there, but the endless sunshine provided outstanding spring skiing.

The parents in front of Little Cloud bowl. On the ridge you can see the tram that takes you from 2500m to 3300m in 8 minutes. A slightly faster rate of ascent than my typical backcountry 5m per minute.

As this was a vacation with the parents, the accommodations were a little more lush than I'm used to.

The view from the lodge!

Moon over the Wasatch range.

My best fall of the week occurred when the tip of my left ski dove under the heavy spring snow. I tumbled down the slope, but had no problem finding my ski. This was a much happier fall than the previous tumble in the week where I smashed my sunglasses.

Tip dive.

The new sunglasses.

Returning to Vancouver, I couldn't help but notice that 103cm of snow had fallen in my absence. Despite somewhat sore legs, Christine and I ventured out on Sunday for a quick day of skiing in Garibaldi park.



Great turns were had by all.