Powder Play
Three skiers fixated on fluff find that their idea of alpine heaven is only a snowcat ride away.
BY DAVID SAX
My family is obsessed with skiing. In a lifetime of vacations, we’ve only gone to the beach half a dozen times, but each time we complained that we weren’t in the mountains. We’ve skied on every continent, plunging down groomed Colorado mountains, Austrian glaciers and steep couloirs in Argentina. Skiing is our universal truth, and among the men in the family it represents the competitive glue that holds us together and acts as the foil for our personalities. My father skis powerfully but carefully, my younger brother, Daniel, descends wild and fast, while I aim for fluidity and precision.
For obsessed powder hounds like us (my mother prefers the groomers), the promise of an exclusive expanse of alpine heaven, with not a lift line or crowd in sight, is the frozen equivalent of Shangri-La. So when my dad turned 60, he decided to celebrate by booking the three of us in at Powder Cowboy Catskiing, outside Cranbrook, B.C., where we’d be delivered by snowcat (a vehicle equipped with caterpillar tracks for travelling on snow) to fluff-blanketed slopes.
Located on a dude ranch, Powder Cowboy offers eight guest log cabins equipped with wood-burning stoves and in-floor heating in the bathrooms, and two larger lodges. The main lodge, housing the dining room and bar, is decorated in true backcountry fashion, with stuffed moose, elk and other game. Power Cowboy is a no-bull operation where a man’s desire for basic comforts is fulfilled: bacon-powder-beer-hot tub-dinner-sleep-repeat. There are no kitschy shops or resort villages to distract you. Instead, 6,000 acres of snow-dusted terrain await exploration. For skiing purists, it’s sheer magic.
After a sunrise breakfast of bacon and pancakes on our first day, we were shuttled to the waiting cats. All winter long, the Rockies had been pounded with snow, and the Powder Cowboy website showed skiers floating in tableaus of blinding white, the snow coming up to their knees, their chests, their faces. Powder skiing can be difficult, and dangers do lurk. But the growing popularity of cat-skiing, which was invented in the Canadian Rockies in 1975, has made it safer. It’s more accessible to skiers of different skill levels, especially with the advent of extra-wide “fat skis” that make it easier to plough through deep powder. Still, Dad had been nervous, his fears undoubtedly heightened by the senior’s discount he now received at movie theatres. But the storms subsided days before our arrival, and for the first time all winter, the range was bathed in brilliant sunshine.
Once we’d cleared a quick avalanche safety course, we ascended, cresting the first ridge that overlooked Powder Cowboy’s exclusive territory. There wasn’t a single power line, logging cut or road to blight the spectacular view – just 24 skiers and two snowcats. You could ski for two weeks here and never once cross another track. There were tight, steep chutes, swaths of fir forests and sun-drenched bowls dropping 600 metres into river basins. The sun’s warmth had drawn the moisture out of the snow, and the entire landscape was covered in potato-chip-size frost crystals, tinkling across the surface as we kicked off with our first smooth turns through the widely spaced pine trees. I followed in Daniel’s tracks, matching his arcs as we raced down to the cat. I felt like Michael Phillips, the 19th-century adventurer and fur trader who’d climbed this region’s savage peaks, although I had two guides and a cat at the bottom, loaded with snacks and sandwiches, ready to take us up again.
For the next three days, our guides took us around every ridge and peak of Powder Cowboy’s territory. We skied wide-open meadows bathed in sun and tight chutes that funnelled into forests. Toward the end of our last day, we stared down Big Cruiser, a large cathedral bowl that had been tempting us since our arrival. Dad went first, skiing short turns right down the middle, each fluid movement so effortless in the soft snow that he looked 20 years younger. Daniel dropped in after him, careening through the scattered trees. As the older brother, I’d always prided myself on being a better skier than Dan, but he’d been living in Calgary all winter, and it showed: He attacked the hill with ferocity. As I carved five massive turns down the steepest, most beautiful pitch I’d ever skied, I silently conceded defeat.
The Weather Man movie download
January 19th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
What a family! I prefer these photos to the ones in the magazine!
August 22nd, 2009 at 2:03 am
faliqej…
Echo Leafblower Pb 46ln …