Snowboarding in Canada eh..?
It's over! I've now completed my six days of snowboarding in Canada and I'm certainly feeling it. We had another new experience today, and that was snowboarding in the rain!! Yup, you read that right, it rained here.... It's been something ridiculous like -12 or -17 degrees for most of the week, however apparently this morning it was a stupidly mild temperature of only -2 degrees! From what I've been told, snow usually forms around -3 degrees so this morning there was actually rain coming down (it was like a light mist).
After debating whether to actually head out, and feeling a little sorry for ourselves as a result of the drinks last night, we did get our collective butts into gear and managed to get down to the slopes. The rain had lightened off a little, but it was still falling as a mist. As rain can make conditions a little tricky, I decided to ditch my ski's and go back to snowboarding. This turned out to be a very wise decision as I found out later on in the morning.
So there we are, heading up the mountain with a light rain falling on us thinking "what the hell are we doing?!". Once at the top I got my first taste of what rain does to snow, and it's not very nice. It basically falls, melts the very top of the snow a little and then re-freezes. This creates a sort of crust on the top of the snow which isn't very strong, but which is amazingly slippery. It also makes it almost impossible to ski down the run without getting your vision obscured by water on your goggles (which then freezes and makes it even harder to see past). Wiping them with a ski gloves doesn't really help that much :( It all combines to make for some very interesting times....
The way to beat all this is to really use your legs a lot to push the edges of the snowboard deep into the snow. This will then break the crust allowing the board to sink into the softer snow underneath and then grip. It sounds easy, but in practice usually one of three things happen: 1) you manage to break the crust, get grip and the board swings around (that's good), or 2) you push too hard, the board digs right in and you can potentially overbalance (and fall), or 3) you don't push hard enough and the board slides out across the slick crust... and you fall pretty hard. It took a run or two and about 5 stacks to get the feel of the change in the snow, but after that I was ok, it just a LOT of work on my legs.
We boarded for a few hours in the morning (the rain got worse for a while) when suddenly, we could feel the temperature drop and all the icky light rain turned into snow! Hurrah! So then for the next half an hour we had snow falling and making a nice little covering on the ground.. good boarding! Eventually the snow stopped and everything cleared up. The runs were still a little icy on top but it was no where near as bad as the morning. So for the remainder of the day I jumped around all over the mountain trying to land small jumps, step-overs and just fanging it around the runs.
One section of the run we'd nicknamed the 'Forest of Death' as it was a trail off to the side of the main run which ran through a whole lot of trees. It's supposed to be a kid training area however the turns are tight and the trees everywhere make things really freaky. But between trees etc you get piles of snow which make excellent jumps, which is the main reason for going in there. In the previous days there'd been a nice covering of snow on the ground so we could (fairly) easily turn between trees etc and make it through in one piece. The area had really iced up today and it was so nasty. I had several near misses with quite large trees etc and had to save myself a couple of times by fully bailing out and jumping to the side. Still, with lots of hard leg work i could get through and jump off a few of the mounds... it was still great. I figured it was worth mentioning because it was the main contributor to the pathetic state that I'm in this evening (everything is sore!).
But things weren't finished yet with the weather, and around 3pm a massive thick fog rolled over the mountain. It was absolutely amazing to see this 'cloud' sitting right at the top of the mountain, but everything below being completely clear. You start the chairlift at the bottom, ascend into the clouds, snowboard down the run not seeing more than 10 meters in front of you (but hell, we knew the run so there wasn't that much to surprise us), and then suddenly, BAM, you've dropped below the fog line and it's all clear and crisp. On one of the final runs for the day I put on my headphones, whacked on 'Best of You' by the Foo Fighters (up loud) and just carved my way down (with a little speedy jump at the end). It was SO sweet as there was no one around and I had basically the whole run to myself. I love snowboarding!!!!
So as I said, that's it for the first part of the Canadian Odyssey. Snowboarding here is a completely different experience from Australia and Austria. It's far colder but the snow we've had has been of a really good quality. From here on I've no idea what we are doing, but hopefully I won't get stuck in any more airports! :)
I hope to also get some pictures up soon, but for now you'll just have to make do...
Happy New Year (again).
Anka
After debating whether to actually head out, and feeling a little sorry for ourselves as a result of the drinks last night, we did get our collective butts into gear and managed to get down to the slopes. The rain had lightened off a little, but it was still falling as a mist. As rain can make conditions a little tricky, I decided to ditch my ski's and go back to snowboarding. This turned out to be a very wise decision as I found out later on in the morning.
So there we are, heading up the mountain with a light rain falling on us thinking "what the hell are we doing?!". Once at the top I got my first taste of what rain does to snow, and it's not very nice. It basically falls, melts the very top of the snow a little and then re-freezes. This creates a sort of crust on the top of the snow which isn't very strong, but which is amazingly slippery. It also makes it almost impossible to ski down the run without getting your vision obscured by water on your goggles (which then freezes and makes it even harder to see past). Wiping them with a ski gloves doesn't really help that much :( It all combines to make for some very interesting times....
The way to beat all this is to really use your legs a lot to push the edges of the snowboard deep into the snow. This will then break the crust allowing the board to sink into the softer snow underneath and then grip. It sounds easy, but in practice usually one of three things happen: 1) you manage to break the crust, get grip and the board swings around (that's good), or 2) you push too hard, the board digs right in and you can potentially overbalance (and fall), or 3) you don't push hard enough and the board slides out across the slick crust... and you fall pretty hard. It took a run or two and about 5 stacks to get the feel of the change in the snow, but after that I was ok, it just a LOT of work on my legs.
We boarded for a few hours in the morning (the rain got worse for a while) when suddenly, we could feel the temperature drop and all the icky light rain turned into snow! Hurrah! So then for the next half an hour we had snow falling and making a nice little covering on the ground.. good boarding! Eventually the snow stopped and everything cleared up. The runs were still a little icy on top but it was no where near as bad as the morning. So for the remainder of the day I jumped around all over the mountain trying to land small jumps, step-overs and just fanging it around the runs.
One section of the run we'd nicknamed the 'Forest of Death' as it was a trail off to the side of the main run which ran through a whole lot of trees. It's supposed to be a kid training area however the turns are tight and the trees everywhere make things really freaky. But between trees etc you get piles of snow which make excellent jumps, which is the main reason for going in there. In the previous days there'd been a nice covering of snow on the ground so we could (fairly) easily turn between trees etc and make it through in one piece. The area had really iced up today and it was so nasty. I had several near misses with quite large trees etc and had to save myself a couple of times by fully bailing out and jumping to the side. Still, with lots of hard leg work i could get through and jump off a few of the mounds... it was still great. I figured it was worth mentioning because it was the main contributor to the pathetic state that I'm in this evening (everything is sore!).
But things weren't finished yet with the weather, and around 3pm a massive thick fog rolled over the mountain. It was absolutely amazing to see this 'cloud' sitting right at the top of the mountain, but everything below being completely clear. You start the chairlift at the bottom, ascend into the clouds, snowboard down the run not seeing more than 10 meters in front of you (but hell, we knew the run so there wasn't that much to surprise us), and then suddenly, BAM, you've dropped below the fog line and it's all clear and crisp. On one of the final runs for the day I put on my headphones, whacked on 'Best of You' by the Foo Fighters (up loud) and just carved my way down (with a little speedy jump at the end). It was SO sweet as there was no one around and I had basically the whole run to myself. I love snowboarding!!!!
So as I said, that's it for the first part of the Canadian Odyssey. Snowboarding here is a completely different experience from Australia and Austria. It's far colder but the snow we've had has been of a really good quality. From here on I've no idea what we are doing, but hopefully I won't get stuck in any more airports! :)
I hope to also get some pictures up soon, but for now you'll just have to make do...
Happy New Year (again).
Anka
posted by Anthony Hawke at 10:43 pm
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