Snow patch.  One of the useful aspects of summer snow is that it creates a rather convenient bridge over alpine scrub allowing access to regions that might otherwise be painfully difficult to get to.

Looking down the Murray Range in the Pine Pass.  I don’t think any of these suckers even pushes 2500m and the side I was only probably is only about 2000. The Pine Pass itself is the lowest pass in British Columbia, with the summit barely reaching 900m.

Didn’t make it through the winter.  

Mackenzie is behind the range in the horizon.  This would be looking West.  Unfortunately there was quite a bit of trash up in the alpine.  I carried a fully backpack full of cans/bottles courtesy of your lazy neighborhood snowmobilers/skiers/boarders.   Folks don’t realize that the area is also used in the summer…and yes…just because it is covered by snow doesn’t mean it’s gone. 

Murray range within the Pine-Le Moray Provincial Park.  The park was created in 2001 as part of BC’s push to allocate 12% of provincial land-base as park.  To meet this goal, the Province appeared to just circle a bunch of land on the map without actually thinking very hard about what they were doing.  It’s kind of a map room park as I don’t think the boundaries have ever been laid out by a field team and the only indication that one is nearing park land are several run-down signs near a few of the trail-heads.  Apparently a management plan for the area doesn’t exist. 

This dog loves sticks…loves them.  She found this rather log-like stick on one of the snowfields and carried it all the way down to the bottom of the mountain.  Every so often she would drop it and wander down slope a dozen or so metres…only to notice that she had left it behind.  This sudden realization would send her racing back up the slope to pick it up.  She climbed the mountain twice for this stick. 

Technorati Tags: azu, british columbia, mountains, pets, photography, pine pass, powder king, travel

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Tremblant is an IntraWest instant resort-in-a-can, with the standard pedestrian village,  hot spring spa, tubing, skating and over-priced food stuffs.  

Snow conditions were very good, although some of the terrain became very slick in the late afternoon.  I’m told that Tremblant is usually like that.  Hard ice (not surprisingly) is quite difficult to cut across and I definitely felt my Western weakness and instability when navigating through some blue ice patches.  

Tremblant has the largest number of good skiers I’ve ever seen on a mountain.  All hills have their share of good skiers, and in the case of Western hills, they usually cluster around the alpine bowl and other steep areas.  In the case of Tremblant, they are all over the mountain, 80% know how to carve an arc and hold a bump…and there are lots of them.  I credit the strong racing program at Tremblant, the multi-generational nature of skiing culture in the area, and the hard snow conditions.  I also could argue that the limited terrain options on the mountain has everyone slicing corduroy at a young age.  Boarders, however, are a minority

Despite terrain limitations, it’s a good hill and left me with a fairly decent  impression of Eastern skiing, but I think that two days is enough on the trail system.  Run design is really good where a combination of long verticals and wide cuts creates excellent cruising trails.  The hill could use about an extra foot of snow to cover up the numerous rocks, roots and stumps that are very common throughout moguled and gladed areas.  My skis sure were not happy about those.   

I had a fairly close encounter with a tree somewhere in the glades.  Actually, close encounter is kind of an understatement.  I bear-hugged this tree, bounced off it like a rubber ball hitting a wall and slid a good 15 metres down the hill before realizing what happened.  In my whole life of skiing, I’ve  been sucked into tree-wells, smacked branches, face-planted, yard-saled, landed in open creeks and fallen down rock faces…but I’ve never hit a tree.

I’m quite confident in the trees and know how to move through them, yet snow-snakes attack the best of us and that was what sent into a juvenile maple tree.  I wasn’t moving fast at at all.   My up-hill ski hit a hidden root, knocking it off and causing me to pivot sharply on  my downhill ski.  With one ski off and no balance, the pivot acted somewhat like a sling shot and blasted me counter-clockwise directly into the tree below, which promptly threw me back  down the hill like a rag doll.  I consider myself very lucky.  My upper body took most of the hit, avoiding my face but the shock vibrated up through my helmet and into my head where I probably suffered a mild concussion. 

I now fully appreciate the danger of trees.  I didn’t hit the tree that hard, the force being nothing more than the momentum from the pivot, but it totally knocked the wind right out of me.  If someone hits a tree at even at moderate speed…it’s death.   

I took a 40 minute break after that, but was back at the moguls a run or two later.  Battered ego more than anything, especially after I just said to my friend “just follow me” :-p

Technorati Tags: canada, laurentians, mont tremblant, mountains, quebec, skiing, travel

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