I've always wanted to part ways with my snowmobile, ghost riding it to the bottom while I chased it on my skis! Well on April 30th it happened. After a somewhat late start to the morning Steve and I made our way to Kananakis to what we new would be a warm and snowy welcome.
When we got to Cataract Creek we could see the fresh snow that had fallen over the last 24 to 36 hours and there was lots of it. We dropped our sleds into the vacant parking lot and got suited up. Due to the fact no one was there we were able to rip up to the alpine at 50-80 kph floating over 30 plus cm of fresh whit stuff. After playing around the alpine on the sled for an hour or so I found a nice tree-less area and strapped into my skis. Then sitting side sattle on my sled and facing the slope, I put the throttle to the bar. Bouncing around all over the place and getting my skis caught periodically in the track I barely made it to half of my projected turn around spot. My first dismount equally as bad resulted in an immediate fall. I took 3 or 4 tries and almost getting run over a couple times but I started getting the hang of it and before long I was doing non stop laps; high mark up, dismount ski down, catch up to the sled, get back on and repeat.
It was an awesome day, until the end when trying to take a short cut back I rolled my sled from almost the top of a ridge down to the apron. My gear was scattered all over the slope and I was in the middle of an avy area so I was on my own to clean up. Once everything was collected my sled mysteriously wouldn't start for over half an hour, it finally did and it was time to go with one more obstacle to go. As we go lower in elevation the days sun had melted most of the last 3 km of trail resulting in us turning our sleds into temporary dirt bikes. It worked great but we had to constantly shut the machines down to let them cool. It was 8 o'clock when we finally got out of there, 4 hours later then we were supposed to. I'd like to say thanks to my wonderful girl friend Audrey in this case as it wasn't until 9 that I was in cell phone range and we had plans at 630. Sorry cutie.
In this picture is me side satle skis on heading up the hill.
