Rossland Winter Carnival

Downtown Rossland was unrecognizable this afternoon, with young skiers and boarders spinning and sliding down the slope-style course on Queen street, DJs cranking out tunes, a beer garden, a mountain biking stunt show, and crowds of people enjoying the sunny spectacle. Kudos to the organizers, Winter Carnival is going off.

Three Skiers for Three Peaks

I absent mindedly left my camera in the car for this past trip, and while I usually find photography adds to my experience, it was a pleasant change to be entirely focused on the here and now. I took this pic of our descent route (the green line) on Mt Seaman, in very similar [...]

Jungle Style

There’s something I love about a jungle style manouver, when the terrain, trees, and snow conditions limit the skinning options to the point that swinging from tree to tree is the best option. There are those who laugh, and those who curse when the going gets tough, and I like to ski with the former. [...]

Powder Philosophy

From a recent article on Wildsnow (link on my blogroll for the full-article) about the life and recent death of skiing pioneer Dolores LaChapelle, I was touched by her personal philosophy regarding powder skiing.
Powder snow skiing is not fun. It’s life, fully lived, life lived in a blaze of reality. What we experience in powder [...]

James Bay

This section of the main line off the second peak of Mt Gray is known by local backcountry skiers as James Bay. It’s a lovely open moderate angled run down to Long Squaw (aka Rino’s) that this morning was smooth and blown-in with easy boot-deep turns. That’s Nicole turning it up in the pic, with [...]

Rossland Range Tree-skiing

With high winds and mild tempertaures creating variations of wind-pack on higher elevation and open slopes, and minimal visibility,  lower elevation trees seemed an obvious choice for today. With the plentiful snow conditions we’re enjoying, the drainages of the Rossland Range are blessed with an endless selection of short, steep, tree lined chutes and reasonably [...]

Mt Roberts

The 1500ft North face of Mt Roberts is my regular favoured place to ski-tour, with a consistently steep pitch, a great variety of challenging lines and features, and so close and convenient. Brigitte, Cindy and I were making hour long laps today, the snow – a little bit of powder, a little bit of wind-pack, [...]

New Year’s Eve Action

I just received this pic in my e-mail (thanks Troy and Anna). Hurtling down a banked course (courtesy of Mat and Ed) on a GT Snowracer, a fire, BBQ, and beers close by, and a few amped-up kids to remind us how uncomplicated having fun can be on a chilly Rossland evening ……. was as [...]

Hidden Pleasures

Unseasonably strong winds and arctic temps have made skiing conditions a little more challenging of late. But deep in the backcountry, on the slopes above an infrequently visited mountain lake,amongst the old growth Hemlock and Spruce, in the vicinity of a well disguised cabin where the red wine flows, the wood fire crackles, and [...]

Red Free-skiing Comp

The free-skiing circus is back in town. The latest crop of young chargers spent the day pounding Lynx Line into submission, providing a bit of entertainment for the few of us riding the Motherlode chair. I saw a couple of tumbles and a wild kamikaze style straight-run, but otherwise it seems they’re saving their big [...]