Checking out Revelstoke and some snowmobiling

This time Mike, Emil, Martin and myself are headed west towards the snowmobiling mecca of Revelstoke one of the best spots in the world if you like sledding. The largest area is Boulder mtn 5 min outside town where there on a big day might be about 800 snowmobilers on the 150 square kilometres ripping the soft snow and the accessroad is more like a highway than a trail. When we left we had no idea what to expect but we brought 2 pair of skis 2 snowboards a bag of Skittles one Snowmobile and Emil brought one pair of extra boxers, Martin a pair of extra socks. And  away we went.

Revelstoke is about 150km from Golden via the famous Rogers pass that is halfway through.  

Mike is stretching his legs in Rogers pass as you see on the roof of the infohut there isnt any shortage of snow in this region. Rogers pass is acctually a Rainforest with a yearly snowfall of more than 20meters per season. 

Martin, realise he has reached a skitourers heaven. Just strap on your skins in the parkinglot and start walking the 2-hour trip uphill and you've got skiable terrain in every direction.

When we reached RMR, Revelstoke Mountain Resort, one hour before the lifts close. Emil, Mike and I got daypasses for cheap ($0) and went up for a couple of fast runs. The Mountain gets about 12-18m snow per year quite a lot even by canadian standards.

Th resort opened 22dec 2007 so its not big yet and the mountain is domiated by heavy unskiable forest but they have quite some terrain to expand to and with all their snow its a unique experience if they get their act together.

Mike is enjoying the sunset.

We checked in to a Hotel in town and slept like some kind of very sleepy animal until Martins Parents called at 5am in the morning. After a breakfast and fueling up the sled we went to frisbee ridge for a 3.5hour guided tour.

Mike is happy with his brand new REV 600. But atleast i have a longer trackand a few more horses in my 700. 

Away we went and maybe the guide thaght we were better at this because when riding up to the ridge Mike went off the tral into some bushes and when I help him and the guide to dig it up Martin and Emil is instructed to turn around to get to an easier trail up. On this picture Emil is demonstrating why you never should use the reverse while riding soft snow.

Finally up at the ridge without any more mistakes. The landscape up here are not quite like anything i've seen before, 3m snow trees that has disappeared in snow and looking like some scary Moomintroll or other Tove Jansson-created monster

My sled held up almost all day, and it actually worked out pretty good. 

Rodtrip Golden-Calgary and back

This week I havn't been skiing anything. Which is too bad because from what the others keep telling it has been pretty good snow and some much needed addition to the snowbase in the resort.

But I couldnt enjoy the snow since I had promised to pick up Jonas in Calgary and Mike joined me so I wouldn't have to drive alone and maybe catch a glimpse of the famous scenery along Trans Canada highway. But the weather was not really good for viewing scenery.

It was heavy snowing going on along the road.

Mike drives us out of the mountains and on the flatlands around Calgary

Calgarys suburbs, pretty ugly place in my opinion

This far all is well and we pick up a bored Jonas at the hostel, everything is smooth until ve get about 60km from Calgary then all hell breaks loose or at least the car broke down. 

After 2,5 hours one 911 call and a couple of kilometers of walking to find out where we are... 

...the Towtruck finally showed up and we hoped the problems where Gas-related.

Im filling up and kind of hoping to get 60 liters in the tank, it would have been stupid to need a towing just because we were out of gas but if that would have been the case atleast we could be on our way the same night. But of course we could only fill up 47 liters and the car were still not starting. 

Since we werent able to leave Cochrane we had no choice but to stay at a hotel so we checked in at 23.00.  Bow river inn is the name of the place and according to the Guys at Super 8 Motel it is the cheapest hotel in Cochrane.

In the morning we actually managed to get the car running by changing the distributor cap and rotor. But a couple of km and a hill later it broke down again and this time we found someone professional with tools that could take a look at the car the following day so back to the hotel via a liquor store and spending another night (and dollars) in Cochrane but atleast we had beer.

Jonas thinks about how much money we will spend in the autorepairshop

 

The road back is really scenic and goodlooking mountainformations along the way. And finally we got to see them in good weather.

Happy New Year!

A new year has arrived and a lot of action is waiting around the corner.  To begin here is the promised pictures of our nice red F150 truck  complete with a snowmobileramp.

Speaking of snowmobiles here is a picture of my beauty that I got stuck with. Atleast it looks really cool parked beside the hottub in our backyard. Got to try it out somtime soon.

Ski-doo Summit 700 equipped with a 151" track. 130hp in a machine weighing below 250kg  will make it a pretty interesting ride.

At new-years eve we had barbeque at home and at a lot of really good meat. With the use of some aluminium tape we got the propanegrill up and running

Im burning meat.

Im eating the same meat. Really good. A new friend joined us for new years eve Erik, on the road from Fernie to revelstoke spent a night with us in "The Swedish house"

After finishing the dinner we went to some Canadians with a bonfire. Friends to Joakim one of the other swedes here in golden. Apparently there are no fireworks as we are used to back home in Sweden here in Canadaland. But thats mostly a good thing, trusting drunk people, like myself, with fireworks just isnt the smartest way to start a new year.

We all had a really good time, thanks JF and Chantal for "inviting" us

News... and then some.

Ok first of all I have been trying out my new skis. A pair of Line anthem, Everybody keeps telling me they are pretty soft but I find them rather stiff, maybe I should have gone with a shorter length but atleast I'm happy with their performance. They are really good on the hardpack right now but I guess the conditions in the piste are pretty much optimal. We have been building a minipark in the backyard and its starting to take shape and soon enough we can start to use it. We just need a little higher inrun.

Second we bought a car together and it seems to be working out fine. Its a -87 Ford F150 with room for 6 actually. So far there doesent seem like its going to be any problems with it. There is some leaking from the powersteering but nothing spectacular apart from that.

Not very remarkable news yet. But the main thing that will dominate my life here in Canada is that I from now on is a Snowmobile-owner. How did this happen then, to make a longstory short I tried out one smashed it into a rock and the repairs would be more expensive than the sleds worth. So 4 000 Cad later me and my friends Emil and Mike (thanks guys for helping me out) where bashing it to get it in riding condition. After 5 hours working outside in -11 and a couple of hundred dollars spent on parts it seems like its actually in pretty good running condition, hopefully it wont fall apart totally tomorrow. This really puts a serious dent in my budget. 

Well what to do next? I will first of all enjoy owning a way to powerful sled and then Im going to try to sell it and anyhow my airplaneticket home from this Godforsaken country will be rebooked to a earlier date and I will start looking for work ASAP. Wish me luck.... 

Pictures will be posted shortly

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year everyone!

My first Christmas away from home was a really good one, lots of snow 14cm fresh in the Resort. Really nice and good weather (well at least in the morning) too bad i had a bit of a sore throat and wasnt in the mood for skiing that much. At home we have built som kind of rail-setup to play on when the weekend arrives. This week not much work has been done on it the basic construction is one 12-foot 3-inch ABS-plastic tube and a load of snow sprayed with water to make an base where the pipe is frozen into, lets see if holds up for more than one run =) If it doesnt our next try will be to construct somthing from the free lumber we got from the local Home Hardware store. 

Emil and I working with the rail, really bad posterior on me, got snow in the neck...

Christmas in Canadia, meatballs and some homemade herring and three bottles of our owners own hombottled wine, Emil drank most of it but I dont mind it wasnt really in my taste =) 

The Backyard with the railyard as closest neighbour behind the trees

A picture of the hallway and Amelie in the tv-room taken from the kitchen

The stair to the second floor and the stair to the 3rd in the far end of the picture.

My room at the 3rd floor i share it with our new friend Martin that have been living with us for a couple of weeks. 

On another note the skiing the last days after Christmas have been dominated by rockhard pistes (really good though) and rockhard rocks annihilating all my skis (really boring) Everything easily accessible from the system is tracked out and in the alpine its 4/5 on the  avalanche dangerscale. This year the snowbase just isnt in a good condition from a avalanchesafety perspective. We have to wait and see before we can hike to the more exposed runs. so for now we are pretty much confined to the system and the less dangerous routes. 

Have a good one!

Nothing new only skiing...

Not much is going on right now, except Per and I got our new skis and boots along with my very red outfit. The skis are getting mounted as i write this. It should be very exciting to test the skis out unfortunately they wont be ready until monday. The new boots are rather ok, the fit is not as good as my Salomons yet but at least they arent hurting as bad as I thought they would. With time we will see how its helping my shinbang issues I had last year. Here is some new pictures of the house aswell. Below is the Kitchen with our Potscrubber II, the portable dishwasher in the middle. Great piece of equipment?

Our Outdoor Hottub, 40 degrees celsius all year around, or at least the cold months when its nice to get a hot bath outside. The owner is asking us to put out the lights in the rooms we're not using. But this little electricitysucker is apparently not a problem.

The resort is looking lovely through a fisheye...

Im pretty small compared to the canadian trees

Mike is bouncing through the glades...

...and i'm following him. Per, the photographer, has a good eye for a neat picture.

Some Rocky Mountain skiing

After a slow weekend we went out skiing this monday morning and there wasnt a massive crowd slaying up all the 23cm that fell during the weekend. Speaking of snowdepth, in 2 days i have scratched up my skis worse than I did during the whole last season... But Emil and Mikes boards are a lot worse looking than my skis so I shouldnt complain to much.

The riding was good but as I said the snowpack is still a little low. The new snow was the smoothest I've ever skied with nothing even coming close. This place sure will rock whith one meter base added.

The good stuff is only a short hike away

Too bad a short hike at 2200-2500m still is pretty exhausting

I'm pushing the luck with a 360... I didnt make it.

Emil is glad we managed to get a ride in a pickup back to town.

Mike, Per and Amelie riding in the back.

Finally in Golden

After a whole lot of travel and mixups Emil, myself and Mikael got past the immigration and where allowed to enter Canada. We met Per at the airport and went to our Hostel in Calgary. Then next day we got our SIN, Social Insurance Numbers, and met up with Amelie and her friend Dean. We all had a nice dinner and got to the Greyhoundstation the very last minute Read all about it in my mates blogs. At 22.30 we arrived in Golden and got to the really goodlooking and spacious accomodation.

Eating in Calgary

After a good nights sleep we are going skiing, the mountain is a 25min ride from where we live.

This is our House for the next few months. The owners live in the RV in front of the house. 

Per myself and Mikael enjoy beeing jetlagged.

The first run in KHMR!

The second Run we went on a little boothike to look how the famous sidecountry looks like.

We were lucky with the weather and the surroundings are marvellous a lot more Mountaineous than whistler

Getting ready at the instep for the first chute of the season

The Reward for our efforts. The terrain is a whole lot steeper than Whistler and more dangerous if you dont really know where to go so its recommended to ride the lines where you can see all the way down.

I'm looking as rad as I possibly can at the runout =)