Homework Avoidance Week

As my last weekend of skiing was drawing to a close, I was out in the vicinity of Bow Lake yo-yoing some small slopes.  I began to notice throughout that day that I was coughing a bit and seemed to not be breathing as well as I should.  I sort of passed it off and kept going, having a pretty darn awesome time.

Fast forward a few days and my nose had developed the appearance of a red, raw, Niagara Falls.  I was downright sick and though I tried to muscle through it, I ended up missing a few days of school.  Then I stayed sick and had to miss the Dogtooth Dash which was supposed to be my baptism by fire into the skimo racing scene.  The following Tuesday (I'd now been sick for 9 days) I finally noticed what was wrong: my eyes were developing a droopy, swollen patch below them.  This had happened 3 times before, and every time, I have been diagnosed with Orbital Cellulitis.  So off to the doc I went.  Luckily my doctor has seen this enough times that he gave me a prescription and I was at the pharmacy within 10 minutes of seeing him.  Some more missed classes while the antibiotics did their thing, and by the end of that week I was beginning to feel close to recovered.

I hung around E-town for the first weekend of "Reading Week" to catch up on some work for my design project and try to bash out a bit of homework.  I made sure to sleep a lot and by Monday I was feeling up to finally get out into the mountains and try some skiing.  A boring afternoon on the QE2 brought me to Canmore and Pete's sick pad there.  Although I did have to listen to some reggae, smash mouth and other samplings from his odd music selection, I was happy to finally be better and outside for once.

Some FEA that I fooled around with on Saturday

Tuesday we headed out to Purple Prince and made three runs before I was totally bagged.  My lungs, legs and everything else sucked from being such a lazy piece of sh*t while I was sick, and so those 3 runs really took it out of me.  Back at it again the next day, we headed to the Tryst Lake area and made two runs of the "Superslope".  Both days ended up being close to 1000m, and after Wednesday I was starting to feel on top of my game again.  Thursday's drive over to Nelson via Kootenay Pass wasn't really productive but did allow me to rest a bit.  Our tour up Cornice Ridge at the pass made for a real nice way to stretch the legs!

Touring up through some larches on the Tryst Lake ridge.

An avalanche ripped out high on The Fist

On Cornice Ridge at Kootenay Pass.  The avy hazard was pretty high so we skied some safe terrain along the ridge crest.

Our stay in Nelson was dominated by the heavy snowfall they were experiencing, and the Storage Wars marathons on TV... YUUUP.  Friday we skied the lifts at Whitewater, and I have to say that I am quite impressed with that hill.  It's everything a ski hill should be and nothing more.  Everybody there is just hanging out and enjoying life, there's none of the idiots that I normally see with their idiotic dress-ups, trying to look like Tom Wallisch even though they only ski 3 days a year.  Luckily, it looks like all those types are currently concentrated around some place called "Revvy".

It dumped all day.

Overnight Whitewater got seriously hit with a big dump, and I was regretting my decision as I lined up with the rest of the skimo racers for my first taste of this niche sport.  While we were all having our gear checked, the first chair riders came bombing down above us, barely visible inside clouds of powder.  Rather than enjoying that, I was going to suffer my way through a huge amount of vertical on my outrageously heavy touring setup.  Let's just say that while I enjoyed the race, I bet the powder was better :-)

My race set-up:

• Line Blend 178 Skis
• Marker Baron Bindings - Large
• Dynafit Titan Boots, Size 29
• 3-Piece collapsable poles
• A bike helmet
• Pete's old race pack

Needless to say it's not light... or quick to transition... or fun to strap to a backpack... or do any sort of "racing" on.

The race itself went pretty well by my standards.  All I wanted to do was finish, I didn't care where I came in the standings.  I was pretty worried about the 3-hour cutoff at the top of the second-to-last climb, so I figured that finishing the race was already optimistic enough.  When the start horn went off everybody got jogging up the hill (in pursuit of a good placing, or just away from the bagpipes?) and I settled near the back because I didn't want to hold anyone up when I inevitably struggled.  The first climb was super short, and because my transitions are crap, I fell into a crowd of heavy gear aficionados and one gaper on race gear.  The second climb was way longer and in this one I managed to made a few passes: I passed two guys on similar gear to mine and one woman on tech bindings.  At the top of White Queen, I caught the gaper on race gear, and through some miracle, passed him at a transition (dude was rocking Trab "World Cup"(?) skis, tech bindings and TLT 5 Performace boots).  Traversing along the ridge, I passed by Greg Hill, gave him a pro callout, and then dove down to the bottom of the second-to-last climb.  Here I drank a bunch of water, and broke out the bonking medicine (wine gums and some Eat More bars).  With 40 minutes to go before the 3 hour cut-off, I tried to hustle up.  Another break at the bootpack start and then I pushed through to the cut-off checkpoint.  Yelling at the SAR guy who was manning the checkpoint not to cut me, I dashed by and quickly dropped down Elevator Shaft before he could change his mind.  The last climb was brutal, but I eventually made it back to the top and then down to the bottom of the mountain.

How did I do?  Dead freaking last.  Well there were apparently about 10 other people behind me who didn't make the time cut-off, but it's still a dead last embarrassment.  Luckily nobody gave me a hard time about it.  I've now got my new touring setup all here at home and that'll be raced at the Lake Louise event coming up.  My goal there is to finish middle of the pack, I'd like to be somewhere close to the national team guys, but I know I won't be competing with any of them.

Sunday we devoted to getting home.  The drive back was a bit of an adventure due to Kootenay Pass being closed for avy control, so we had to take the ferry across Kootenay Lake and then slowly pick our way down the side of the lake to Creston.  Even then, the drive up through Invermere and Radium was a bit crazy with huge snowfalls making that slow going as well.  It felt good to finally pull in at home and be done with the travel.

Crossing Kootenay Lake, looking back West