Happy Holidays

My holidays started yesterday, so what better way to kick off a break than with a big ski day?  Originally I had thought of skiing maybe 15-20km, but as I only found one other person to head out, he suggested aiming for the Stoney Creek Warden Cabin, which would make it a 30km day.  Why not, I thought?  The trail seemed easy enough - go uphill until you're exhausted and cruise downhill on the return trip.  That way you only have to really ski 15km, right?  Wrong.  Parks Canada describes the Cascade Fire Road as being 14.5km one way with 180m elevation gain.  That, however, is very deceptive, as there were a lot of ups and downs.  In total, we had skied 613m of elevation gain and covered 30.7km.  To say that I was pleasantly depleted may be an understatement. 

This trip tested our endurance, but it was also very, very rewarding.  It was almost epic (in terms of beginner xc skiing anyways).  We skied all the way to the Stoney Creek bridge where we took photos in a beautiful, expansive valley and saw the sun perfectly aligned with the summit of Cascade Mountain, which we had summited together four months ago.  Then we skied to the cabin, looked around the horse enclosure, and ended up having lunch at the picnic table on the veranda.  It was sunny, and it was warm.  It was also 1pm so we had to be mindful of the distance to be covered on the return trip.  After refueling we decided to save cookies for a half-way stop at the campground by the Cascade River bridge.

The return trip was more work than expected. While the first half went fast with nice cruising downhills, it also meant more learning.  Earlier in the day I took a fall at the 14km mark (while standing around and talking no less) and did something to my shoulder that made poling painful (because my hands were stuck in the loops of my poles and my shoulder got twisted).  Later my buddy took a spill on a downhill, only to get back up covered in snow, and with glasses and ski pole broken. While he thinks the fall was spectacular, it may also have resulted in slight whiplash.  On the big hill at the end he went down again, I tried to slow down so I don't crash into him, but because I still find it hard to get my feet to get out of the tracks at nice speeds, I ended up crashing as well.  I think the falling's just part of the xc grame until there's more practice.   But, we survived, and we both agreed that we pushed our limits and were starting to feel some muscles.  Most definitely, as I could barely walk when I got out of my car afterwards.  Overall we achieved our missing of making it to the cabin and getting a sense of how much distance one can reasonably cover in one day.  The next time we may stick to 29km, but that Tyrwhitt loop around the far end of PLPP is calling our names, as is the Great Divide.

On a more Christmasy note, skiing back along the Cascade Fire Road we noticed a Christmas ornament in a tree that was arched over the trail.  We took a summit shot there and thought it was a nice gesture of a random person to cheer up others' day.  Right around there too a toung family was heading in to the campground with two small children, aged maybe 4 and 5.  They knew how to ski, pulled sleds of sleeping gear, food, and Christmasy goods.  When we passed another ornament on the way back we came to the conclusion that it must have been that family that was hanging the ornaments.  What a way for those children to remember Christmas.

Merry Christmas!