January 11-15th 2006, Red Resort BC

Red Resort, BC

The road from Tahoe to Red slowly mutated from Nevada-brown to Canada-white. All it took to change the landscape was 18 hours of bordeom trapped on our asses in the AFW jeep. The competition taking place there is what put us on this road, but we were in search of more than that. When we finally did pull up to the mountain we somehow still felt human enough to throw on our gear and "give'er".

Ludicrous amounts of wet snow piled high in pillows and knolls and created drip-castles of every tree encountered. Our Tahoe background left us ready for the moist funk that we beheld. We found ourselves completely lost in a foggy snowstorm in a strange land we'd never seen. This fueled us to ski like little kids again! Laughing, falling and charging through any space in the trees big enough to fit us. The fog never lifted enough for us to acquire any bearing on where we were or what we were really skiing on. When the lifts closed at 3pm we were blown away! None of us had ever heard of such a early closing and we wanted more. This only reminded us that we were surely somewhere wierd.

In the morning we had the only clearing that we'd experience in BC. Early ups were granted at 7am for "venue inspection." Our mouths watered at the site of the freshly covered mountain in the pre-dawn light. There was no discrepancy between mountain, rock, nor tree. All was plastered with deep white. The early ups were gladly accepted and "inspecting" the venue from the chairlift seemed good enough to us.

As soon as we got off the chair we headed straight for Mt. Roberts. Roberts is an adjacent peak that is easily accessable yet out of bounds and full of insane terrain. We were the first ones to head up. The view from the top was something I'd never seen before. Fog filled the valleys and the sun was rising above them just as we gained the summit. The trees on the peak had been transformed to tired, lumbering gnomes that appeared frozen in their toil. The air sparkled and everything above the fog glowed with weak low angle northern light.

The snow was bottomless. Weaving through the drip-castles we discovered some of the best turns of the year. The repetitive face shots burned but couldn't stop the smiles. Half way down we entered the fog and reality took another twist. We spent the rest of our Red trip hiding in the fog.

Oh, yeah, the comp. Well the fog didn't forget about that either. Competitors and judges were each heavily challenged. The visibility was so poor that you literally couldn't see your next turn. The judges were forced to split into 3 groups and shorten the venue. Our Tahoe crew did not make it out of the competitive fog alive.

We bummed for a minute, but then realized that we were in BC and had nothing else to do but ski deep powder and have fun. The decision was made to hike Roberts again. The craziest spines I'd ever skied were discovered and I had the best run of the season so far!

The rest of our trip was spent in a similar fashion. Lost, charging, exhausted, tree humping, laughing, and covered in snow. The 18 hour drive back home was spent reveling in the absolute wierdness of our trip and it's mountains. As we traveled through 4 states and 2 countries on our way home we dreamt about how bizarre our next adventure would be.