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"I love it” “Unreal” “Epic” “The Best” “Awesome” are only the very few words everyone has repeated to describe their trip from the newly owned mountain Kicking Horse. So when the opportunity came up to have a 2 day trip to the mountain I was the very first to jump on the band wagon.
We left at 4.30pm on Sunday from COP, Jay(our RA) somehow managed to talk COP into letting him borrow the catering van to have a 2 day trip to Kicking Horse. I don’t know how it did it but it was spectacular. The Van was like a white long hatchback with a COP logo on the side door and printed on the sliding door, “Simply Spectacular Catering”. So we looked like a bunch of caterers delivering food across the border rather than on a ski trip. There was also another load of people joining us but they were coming up after work.
It had been puking snow for the last 2 days non-stop which made the road conditions and visibility even worse on our 3 hour drive but really turned out to be 4 hours. Here we were driving down the icy snowy roads with snow ploughs going back and forth clearing the snow of the lanes. It felt more like doing fishes the whole way up with the Van occasionally spinning out. But we made it in one piece. We stayed at a town called Golden in a place called The Sportsman Lodge. Apparently Jay has been coming here for years and he gets a really good deal on the rooms. We ended up paying him $50 bucks for 2 nights. So once we checked in we dropped our bags and stripped down to our shorts and headed over to the hot tub with a few beers and it was the only place that I have seen that promoted drinking in the hot tub. Having a beer in the hot tub is like mowing the lawn in summer and cooling yourself down with a drink afterwards. Once the hot tub overflowed with water because there were too many bodies in there it was time to leave and hit the town.
We ended up meeting the other crew in town and had a few more drinks, Golden didn’t have much to offer on a Sunday night. A local rock band playing live, we entertained ourselves with a few games of pool and raging on about tomorrow and how we were going to ski and snowboard ourselves to death. We still managed to have a late night and got back to the lodge at 2am and we had to be up by 8am. Like that was going to happen.
As the clock ticked to 8am, there was a constant thumping on our door, it was Jay. He had taken the initiative to wake all our asses up. We all got up and got changed and surprisingly enough got out the door by 8.30am but we were all crying for breakfast and so we stopped at the Kicking Horse Lodge to have a feed. It was 10am by the time we hit the mountain. The conditions were overcast and lightly snowing. This place hasn’t had snow for the last 3 weeks and it had been bucketing down the last few days so looks like we caught it just in time.
Taking a glance at the mountain, it was steep, everything was steep. Another look at the trail map and 90% of the trails were Black runs and the rest were half blue and green. It was unreal, we took the 20 minute Gondola ride up to the top of the mountain and boarded off to the right where we were all suppose to meet up at the “Stairway to Heaven” Chairlift. I just kept on boarding and boarding and didn’t see any chairlifts so I flopped out the trail map and didn’t have a clue where I was going. It was so open, everything was white and it was pretty hard to see. But once I found a trail, I realized that I had missed the Chairlift so the only way was to go down and catch the Gondola up again. So I lost the crew on the first run and started to go explore myself. I then found myself on the 10 km trail. The well known longest ski run in Canada - 10km from top to bottom. Although it was a green run, it was still tiring it seemed like it was never going to end. I had to stop a few times just to catch my breath but finally I made it down. I was up on the Gondola again and this time I tried to follow the chairlift and found myself dodging through trees in powder, it was awesome. Somehow I ended up under the chairlifts so I followed it straight down. I then took the Stairway to Heaven chairlift up, this was the peak of the mountain at 8033ft above sea level. Pity it wasn’t a clear day to take scenery shots. The runs were steep but full of powder and when I fell it was like rolling around in a mountain of pillows. It was unbelievable, the snow was fluffy dry, when I tried to scrunch it together to make a snowball, it all collapsed again. It was so light that you could just blow it all off your hands just like dust. When I regrouped with a few others we went on to ride a few black runs full of powder and took videos of us jumping off cliffs and tumbling all over the place. It was fun, I have to say that Kicking Horse has got to be my favorite mountain so far. Even though there are only 2 chairlifts and a Gondola. It is the only mountain that you spend more time riding then on the chairs and on every possible terrain you could think of. It was just magnificent but if you were only starting out, you probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much. Tomorrow another hard day ripping up the mountain and then heading back to Calgary.
previous travel blog entry
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