Kimberley

So after Big White, everybody else went back home, but I went to Kimberley instead!  I spent 5 nights in an airbnb, and then 3 nights in a motel.  The airbnb was sweet, it was right on the hill and it was cheap, the only drawback was I had to get a little creative when preparing my meals (cooking veggies in the coffee maker works pretty well).  The motel was also sweet, the North Star, it's the same place that Scott and I shared a very tiny bed last year.  Same old couple running the place (he's from Germany, she's from Moose Jaw), same bowl of individually-wrapped mints on the table, same little loaf of rhubarb cake when you check in, I swear that place is just as cute as a button.  Kimberley's a great little town and the North Star Motel is a swell place to stay, I can't recommend it highly enough.  Plus, unlike the airbnb, the motel rooms have little 2-burner stove-tops (no ovens) so you don't have to cook your peas in the coffee pot!

The conditions in Kimberley were great, it snowed a ton while I was there, and even though it's just a little guy compared to a place like Big White (or even Fernie) there's still some cool stuff.  I'm in no way an expert, but it seems to me that what sets Kimberley apart is the glade runs; there are tons of places where you can get in the trees and screw around, and it doesn't get a ton of traffic, being a smaller hill, so you can always find fresh snow to play in.  I also really enjoyed getting to that hill  after spending one day there last year, now I'm not trying to be a guy who brags but my snowboard skills have come a long way in the last 12 months so it was a completely different experience this time around, and it was pretty satisfying to be able to get into those trees and mess around doing dumb shit that would have been just plain impossible last time around.  It is My Opinion that Snowboarding is Really Fun, and you should all do it.  It's fun even if you suck, but it's WAY more fun if you kinda don't suck.

Aside from riding, I spent a lot of time olympics-watching, and that was lots of fun but it doesn't really make for a good story, so I'm not sure why I brought it up?  I did a lot of reading too, also fun but also boring to hear about.  I tried to go to the Bauernhaus for supper one night,  but they were all booked up so I went to a pub and ate french fries and chicken wings instead.  Sorry this part of the blog isn't good.

My original plan was to spend this whole month in the mountains,  but my plans to go to Banff didn't work out, so today I ripped back home.  Now I'm in Saskatoon for some R & R before heading back out to Big White at the beginning of March.  I can't wait to get back out there, I miss the mountains already.

Big White

It's Ski Trip Season once again, and this time the destination for the Mediocriskis was Big White.  13 people set out this year, and we all made it in more or less one piece, though there was some excitement along the way.  Some people chose to fly out, since the drive clocks in at about 14 hours, one car left a day early to spend a day riding in Revelstoke, and 3 vehicles left Saturday morning with the intention of meeting up in Reve with Team Leave Early that night, so we could roll into Big White early Sunday afternoon.  I was driving with Allison, and we did well considering the rain/sleet/snow and the traffic hold-ups and the nearly-running-out-of-gas*.  Steph's car fared about as well as we did, arriving in Revelstoke about an hour after us.  Drew and Danielle, however...

I'm a little sketchy on the details since I wasn't there, but Drew and Danielle rolled their van between Golden and Field.  Thankfully they were both fine, but the van was totaled.  The two of them spent the night on a couch in a hostel in Field, the van was hauled off to the Scrapyard in the Sky, and the next morning Alan and Scott went back to pick up D&D and all the gear they'd been hauling.  That meant some changes of plans, but we made things work and by Sunday evening we were all safe and sound and in our mansion on the mountain in Big White.

The days all kind of run together a bit, as the days on these trips tend to, but there was of snowboarding and hot-tubbing and eating and drinking and Olympics-watching and games and laughs and idiocy, and all of them to excess, as well as a distinct lack of sleep.  My friend Sol winters in Big White, and I got a chance to see him a couple of times, so that was nice.  I set off the carbon-monoxide detector in the house trying to make chicken stock, Scott embraced satanism, Andrea found some wooden blocks spelling out "LET IT SNOW" and re-arranged them to spell "MELON TITS", Scott and I formed a Pro Wrestling tag-team called the Spice Boys (I'm Big Cinnamon, he's Little Nutmeg), Alan stole Andrea's brothers' bag and stashed it in Steph's Saskatoon-bound car, pretty standard ski-trip stuff.  And the food!  Let me tell you, we ate like kings on this trip, as is tradition, and on the final Saturday night Sarah made a rice-based casserole, and she cooked said rice in left-over pork drippings and chicken gravy, and holy hell that was dang near the tastiest mess I ever shoved into my stupid face like a drunk hog, no two ways about it.

The conditions in Big White the first couple days were pretty much perfect, and the mountain is absolutely gorgeous.  I spent the first day chasing Alan down blacks and into trees, got sick of that, and spent the 2nd day riding greens and blues with Kelsey.  Day 3 was a day off, Day 4 I spent getting out to all the parts of the mountain I hadn't seen on Days 1 or 2, Day 5 was a day off, and Day 6 was pretty much a write-off.  Andrea, her brother, and I tried to board, but it was the Saturday of the long weekend and the mountain was packed, AND it was windy as all hell so only like 3 out of 12 lifts were open, which meant you had to stand in line for 25-30 minutes to get a chair.  I think we got 3 runs in before we said "fuck it" and went home for lunch, tried again in the afternoon and got 2 more runs in, then gave up.

One car-load of people split on Saturday to break up the drive home over 2 days, and on Sunday the peeps who flew got back on their planes while the rest of the crew piled into the car to drive back to Saskatoon...except Yours Truly, who hit the road alone, bound for Kimberley.

*if you ask Google how to get from Saskatoon to Calgary, Google will tell you to go south at Alsask to save like 6 kilometers.  DO NOT LISTEN.  You go over a wooden bridge and then drive up a gigantic gravel pile, then down the other side of the gravel pile, and then through a bunch of nothing for like 3 boring hours, AND THERE ARE ZERO GAS STATIONS ON THIS ROUTE.