Canada - dog sledding and winter camping

And so we come into the third of five weeks of the Canadian portion of our trip. The week started off much the same, with all day skiing at 120% and being whipped along by our instructors….for some reason my ski poles have “Sorrow, Sacrifice and Suffering” written on them and most days that is what I feel :). But all good fun and we are making some really good progress with the full day tuition.

This week we ended with a dog sled ride and a winter camping trip. Clarissa, Chloe, Michelle and I all went on the dog sleigh – the day started with a 9am pick up by the musher, who had all 10 of his dogs in a trailer behind him. We drove for half an hour to another valley and joined one more musher and dog team to have two 10 dog teams. The first team pulled Michelle sitting by herself in the basket of the sled and the second pulled Clarissa and Chloe in the other. I drove a third sled that was connected by a 2m rope to Clarissa and Chloe’s sled. I didn’t actually drive the dogs but was pulled along in the second sled but still had to steer and brake to keep up behind the first sled, without being slung out sideways, much like driving a towed car. It was really hard as I had to balance on two think planks out the back of the sled, shifting my weight to turn and then lift my foot and balance on the other to press the brake…all in a crouched position. Quite tricky as the sled is very light so easily rides up on one ski – in fact, on the first corner I went flying off at the apex of the corner and flew what felt like many meters before landing in a sorry pile on an icy patch. I hung on pretty tightly after that.

At one point we missed a turning off the narrow track that we were following and ended in deep snow – the mushers tried to turn the teams around and asked us to get off. Michelle climbed off and stepped waist deep into snow and promptly hit a panic attack as she thought she was going to sink under the snow – considering she had only seen 2cm deep snow up until now. Anyway, after hauling Michelle out we tried the carry on with the sled ride but the two dog packs become entangled and the mushers started shouting at each other trying to figure out whose fault it was. Michelle’s musher went in to untangle the dogs and promptly got entangled and fell over before getting control of the two packs. I didn’t take a photo of him as I felt sorry for the guy. The rest of the trip went well – I was pretty cold driving at the back but Clarissa and Chloe were so warm in the sled basket (with blanket) that Chloe fell asleep.

After the dog sled trip we rushed back home to prepare for our winter camping. Clarissa and I dressed in our ski kit, grabbed a shovel, sleeping bag and some sandwiches and headed up the hill with another 15 people for an overnight camp in the mountains (which are covered in 2m of snow). We took the ski lift up to one of the higher peaks and then hiked about 20 minutes off piste through the forest…that alone felt like a two hour hike as we carried all our ski kit, clothes, food, sleeping bag, shovel, probe and ice saw…sinking knee deep into snow on each stop.

When we arrived at our ‘camp site’ we proceeded to make our snow cave, which we slept in that night. It basically took Clarissa and I five and a bit solid hours of digging – starting at 3pm and ending around 8:30 at night, with virtually no break. Again, in full ski kit – to say it was exhausting would be the least of it.
Our first task was to clear a circle 40cm deep and 3m wide to remove the top, soft snow. That took about 1.5 hours. We then dug a trench 1m wide and 2.5m long – and shoulder height in depth. When we reached waist deep the snow was basically ice and we harvested 10 ‘beams’ of snow by cutting them out with the snow saw…that took another 1.5 hours. We then took the beams and laid them, needing both of us to lift them, across the top of the trench to create an A frame. We then chipped away at the sidewalls of the trench to create curved walls to add more space in the shelter. We then piled larger (football sized) pieces of snow to fill the gaps and then shoveled 50cm of snow on top of the construction. After that, we dug a hole man deep about 1m square in front of the snow cave and then tunneled sideways to make an entrance. We dug 2x 10cm wide holes for ventilation and let the whole thing freeze for an hour, after which we tested the structural integrity by jumping on the roof.

We pretty much went to bed straight away because we were freezing cold and exhausted by the digging. The night itself was hell and definitely the longest night we have ever had – we were freezing cold in our sleeping bags in the snow cave, and the floor was very lumpy – basically a sheet of ice…with the unwarranted constant worry that the thing would cave in on us. Not something for anyone slightly claustrophobic.

Overnight, everything that wasn’t in our sleep bag froze…which was basically everything. Our dinner froze, other peoples ski boots froze (we wrapped ours in jackets), people that were silly enough to bring ipods woke up to blocks of solid ice….I tried to read before falling asleep but the pages of my book had frozen together…and I was very thirsty after so much digging but my water bottle had frozen solid and I had to eat snow for moisture – which is not fun because it is hard, of course, very cold – and a mouthful of snow doesn’t yield much water. So after a lot of gnawing and a couple of degrees of body temperature you get a few mouthfuls of water….everything was a mission – even going to the toilet.

In the morning, after putting on my ski trousers which had frozen solid, and agonizingly squeezing into solid ski boots, we skied through the forest (a scary event on its own) and down the mountain to the village for a welcome breakfast and best bath ever. Definitely one of the toughest things that I had to endure – Clarissa suffered with the cold much more than I and we collected a host of injuries between us from digging in the snow that only came to the surface once we have warmed up…sore wrist, wrenched back and knackered hip. No doubt Clarissa will not let me forget this night for a long time – especially since it was my idea and I basically bullied her into it…..and I guess sleeping outdoors in a snow cave at -10 degrees was going to be horrible no matter what we did so logic should have forewarned us. All in all a great adventure post the event.

Next week will be a normal skiing week, and touch wood we are both holding it together quite well – at the start of the course the instructors warned us to be careful because 20% of us would end up with injuries and so far this has proven accurate, with a broken arm, blown knees and a few other minor injuries going around. Clarissa and I are careful– it is easy to fall and injure yourself when being pushed at 120% of our skiing ability by the instructors all the time but we pull back when we feel too uncomfortable….holding thumbs.

Chloe has reached the end of her travel ability – we may cut short our trip and return to Hong Kong early because at every stop she takes longer and longer to acclimate – we don’t know if the tantrums and difficult behavior is an early onset of the ‘terrible two’s or because she hates the cold Canadian weather. Probably a bit of both.

Hope all is well with everyone back home.


PS: if you can, watch the movie Hot Tub Time Machine – it was shot in Fernie, the village and ski hill we are staying at.

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Canada

So we arrived in Canada safely…a week ago. Sorry for no post but skiing for the full day and trying to recover in the evenings doesn’t leave much post writing time.

Fernie is a great little town – quite off the beaten track (hour flight from Vancouver, then a 3 – 5 hour drive on top of that) but that is why we picked it. It is deep in the Canadian ‘back country’ and the town only exists because of a mine a few miles away…and the resort. I wouldn’t describe the town as pretty – some of the European villages are much nicer, with quaint wooden houses etc. This town is built for serious snow and cold….normally 2.5m deep at street level and -20 degrees. However, as per our normal skiing holiday practice, we have bought the warm weather with us and there is no snow (town level) and people are happily biking around in T-shirts and even sun tanning in the balmy zero degree weather (these Canadians are tough!), which they call this spring. Luckily on the mid to upper parts of the mountain there is enough snow (2m) to have fun. The good thing about Fernie is the weather is volatile – so we could well see another, and continuous, dumping of snow…which would cover the village; letting Michelle and Chloe experience the snow as they cant go up the mountain.

Our days are pretty much the same – we get up at 8am, have breakfast and catch the bus from Fernie town to the ski hill, which is 10 minutes away. There is a storage cabin with our ski’s etc and Clarissa and I split up for our respective lessons. Clarissa is doing the ski instructor course and I had planned to do the snowboarding instructor course but changed to learn how to ski. The reason is that when we were in London, I went to a ski boot specialist to get them to custom fit my snowboard boots to avoid the terribly painful feet I get because of the boot pressing against my high arches and instep. The boot fitters advise was to ditch snowboarding in favour of skiing because there is only so much customization you can do to a snowboard boot as it is made of leather…it just reforms while boarding to hit the pressure points that the boot customizer tried to avoid. However, with ski boots, the hard plastic means that any customization stays during the ski motion because of the hard material. Long story, but the short summary is that I am learning to ski instead.

I did try skiing many years ago and hated it – but this time around it is great. I am used to the snow and, because I fell so hard / often when boarding I have little fear of falling on ski’s…meaning my learning curve is fast. I am having lessons each day and will soon join the ski instructor group – not with the goal of actually getting the certification at the end of the five weeks but rather for ski improvement.

Clarissa is enjoying her skiing and they really seem to be challenging her – she even fell twice, which is more than she has ever fallen in the 8 years we have been together. They are doing downhill slalom racing, jumping, skiing backwards and other crazy things.

Today we did an Avalanche Course; which consisted of us skiing around with one of the rescue Ski Patrol members and he taught us how the mountain, weather, snow type and other factors lead to avalanches. We practiced how to stop problem terrain, how to self rescue, how to find a buried person using prods and transmitters / scanners and showed us the general operations and inside of the ski patrol mountain huts. They really have a fun job – every morning they go avalanche hunting in order to trigger (with bombs, canons, or via skiing) avalanches to make the runs safe. Fernie has one of the highest number of avalanches due to the terrain so the ski patrol is very busy. The most interested part of the course for me was when we dug away a 2m wide and 1m deep section of the snow to see how an avalanche happens. Each layer of snow through the season is highly visible in the cross section of snow – much like the timber rings in a tree…and if there is a good layer on a bad layer the upper layer just slides away with little pressure. So in our snow hole test, the was a bad layer about 2cm thick and about 40cm deep. The avalanche instructor dug around to isolate a pillar about 1m high and 30cm wide – he then out the spade on top of the column and with very little pressure (six hard taps – same force as you would use to slap someone’s hand away from the last chip), and the block broke away at the weak layer level – coming away as an entire block, held together by the good snow well enough to be passed around…and boy is snow heavy! So the lesson was that this 30m slab would slip down the slope with little pressure (a skier) and so no skiing there. Of course, that is for skiing in the mountain and off the ski runs that are maintained by the ski patrol…which we will never do – but it was interesting none-the-less.

…and as I write this, it has started snowing again…