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Published: March 9th 2008
Mark sux
No really he does (sorry Mark)Learning to Snowboard
After spending more time on my bum than feet on my first day of snowboarding I quickly banished any visions of gliding down steep mountain terrain in the near future. It's a quick learning curve I'm told constantly and after blaming the equipment for a couple of months I eventually invested in some new boots that actually fit properly. Now, I wouldn't say I'm gliding down the mountains as such, but I can generally get to the bottom without too many falls, or fingers crossed, broken bones. The snowboarders in town are easy to spot - they are the ones with the strapped up wrists and shoulders.
Cross Country skiing adventures
As if learning to snowboard wasn't hard enough, the powers of being (Mark) decided it was time for a new challenge - learning to cross country ski. Having not skiied for about 10 years, strapping on 2 very skinny sticks with no edges was no mean feat. We enlisted the help of Jason and set off around the 12 km Spray River Loop. Well much fun was had especially when Mark got stuck in the smallest ditch in the world, all caught on video by Jason.
Spray River loop bridge
The half way point. Mark thought it'd never come. Please note - quality of video low due to jiggling from giggling.
Lake O'Hara
Having decided that I am some what of an expert on cross country ski's I decided it was time for a bigger challenge. So I set off on a 2 day adventure with the Living Room, a mountain adventure program based in Banff. We spent the first day skiing about 12km along a track to a beautiful, frozen Lake O'Hara. Our hut was just around the corner, mind you a very steep, blind corner on a narrow track. A fall on this track resulted in a mutli skier pile up. Luckily Trace really likes the taste of snow. We stayed in a lovely warm hut almost completely buried in snow. The fire in our room was stoked so high that the girls on the top bunk had to sleep in their undies. The next day we skiied back to the van. After a bit of digging and pushing we managed to get the van out of the snow and make our way home.
Snow Caving at Mosquito Creek
How to build a snow cave:
1. Find a good location with lots of snow, preferably
Mark falling over................again
Mark you really do suck at cross country skiing without a river running only a foot under the snow.
2. Shovel snow into a pile.
3. Walk all over your pile of snow to compact it until it looks like you hardly piled any snow there in the first place.
4. Shovel more snow and walk all over it for ever until the pile is at least as high as yourself.
5. Tunnel through one of the sides of the pile of snow and carve out the inside until the walls of the cave are pale blue (about a foot thick)
6. Flatten out the floor so that it isn't slanting towards the door and carve out some shelves for candles.
7. Deck out your luxurious cave with a ground tarp, therma rests and sleeping bags.
8. Sleep tight in your toasty warm cave.
This time a 2 night adventure. The first night spent in a back country hostel with no running water or electricy but luxurious all the same. We spent the next day building our snow caves. Trace and I built a tiny one for ourselves, a group of 5 built a huge one nicknamed the "Taj Mahal" and another group of 3 built one that
unfortunately collapsed. We all learnt that you have to tunnel out the roof of the cave before you start attacking the side walls or the roof will cave in. After an initial panic attack I evenutally manged to crawl in through a small tunnel to the inside of our cave and even slept (well if you can call constant tossing and turning sleeping) inside the cave for the entire night. A great experience that I never have to repeat. Tick that one off the list.
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