Part 1 of the Odyssey:
Australia to Vancouver to Penticton
To enliven newsgroups rec.skiing.alpine and aus.snow I'll commence the long and pathetic tale of a desperate Australian who goes to Canada to ski!
Flew into Vancouver on Wed March 5; by the mysteries of time travel I arrived before I'd left, despite having spent 3 hours stuffing around Narita airport.
The Vancouver Downtown youth hostel is well-located, clean and efficient, but completely devoid of 'soul', and completely infested with young Australians. Wasted 3 days lurking around Vancouver, which was cold and mizzly, with tantalizing snowy mountains decorating the edges.
Took Greyhound to Penticton, a nice little town in the Okanagan area, where they grow stuff and ski in the winter. The Youth Hostel there was better; a funny old house, with nooks and crannies everywhere, rather a lot of permanent residents, and far too many Aussie snowboarders who had taken over the lounge room and the TV room.
It emerged that despite advertising "ski packages" comprising hostel accomodation and skiing at Apex, the hostel had neglected to mention that there was no transport to the ski hill, except on weekends and school holidays when they used the school bus ($14 return).
They assured me that hitching was how "everyone" did it, and said it worked, and was fine. I'd planned to stay there for 7 days and ski most of them. I was dying to try out these new-fangled shaped skis. Two Buddha had left two pairs of next season's Olins at the Vancouver hostel for me to collect, and they looked pretty impressive. They were both ladies' models; 185cm DTVs, a softish intermediate ski, and some 180cm Radius Vs, the advanced, stiffish version.
Well, ended up skiing two days at Apex; the hitching-thing did not go well. It took us over an hour to get a lift in the morning, and on the second day me and a Japanese guy from the hostel were standing in the carpark up on the hill from 3.30pm til well after 5pm, with the sun setting, snow falling and the temperature well below -15 C. Katsume was turning a very strange shade of green and uttering incoherent cries, and I was wondering how long it takes to hike 35 km in ski boots when two North Vancouverites picked us up...
Apex itself wasn't bad at all! There was an incredible amount of snow, and more fell every day. This was real powder; soft, dusty, loose...when it fell on the arm of my parka, the actual shapes of the flakes were apparent, something I'd never seen in Australia.
The resort was extremely pretty, and uncrowded, and the staff were friendly. They had one main chair, a fast quad, with a slower shorter one servicing the far left and some pretty boring cruisers.
They also had a t-bar which seemed to be for the benefit of the race course next to it, and a platter for the bunny run.
It was a well-designed hill, with something for everyone, and some very tricky black runs off a bowl. Katsume spent the entire day skiing Juniper, a blue cruiser, until I enticed him onto Chute, an easy black run. He felt very worried about skiing a black run, but decided he was going to ski it all the next day, to "par-ak-u-tiss". The variety of runs and quality of the snow were really impressive.
And the Olins? Well, the DTVs were first, and very disconcerting when I first went to turn them. wow! Spent the rest of the day doing those big snowboarder turns, stroking my hands in the snow and ruining me gloves. They had some great big wide runs, perfect for that. The DTVs were quite wide, and floated most satisfactorily above the powder, turned beautifully and behaved themselves provided they were on edge. On the flat, they squirrled a bit.
The Radius Vs were a bit harder to work out. Very tight, snappy little skis, they were only happy when being turned, and demanded short turns. If you tried to run them out into a big, wide arc, they'd start to lose it about two-thirds through, when the energy had gone out of the turn. They were very "bitey" too, and as it turned out the ends were too sharp. They were good at sharp, tricky runs, and required fast skiing!
However, nice as Apex was I didn't fancy a repetition of the carpark debacle, so left Penticton on Thurs March 13; didn't get a refund of the two nights I'd paid for, either!
So, onto another Greyhound bus to head for Kelowna, a short ride down the road, to meet up with the shuttle from .....Big White!!!!
In the next episode, I encounter more Aussie snowboarders, ski with a geriatric addicted to speed, and THEN meet up with Two Buddha!