Red & Whitewater

Hey everybody!

We jsut got back from a 4-day roadtrip to southern BC, small cute little alpine towns Nelson and Rossland...they are right down by the USA border maybe 10 mins! It was a buddies birthday so we packed the van and drove about 6-7 hours south to stay with another mate on his farm in a town called Fruitvale (he he) - he is turning it into a vineyard, it is pretty beautiful down there.

We went skiing at Whitewater the first day, which is a pretty classic little ski hill, it has two double chairs, which kinda go up a little way, leaving all the good terrain above you (sort of like the Remarks) But all anyone does down here is hike. There were like, 20 cars in the carpark! We skied about 3 runs in bounds then hit the "back-country" which is a big long ridge off one of the chairs and you can pretty much drop anywhere and ski down to the access road. We skied pretty deep tree pow all day! (Which is awesome cos Lake Louise dosn't really have that much tree sking it's all alpine.

This is Whitewater lookin straight up from base, it's all hiking. Pretty sweet ay!

The next day we cruised to Red mountain (which both Reubs and I have wanted to ride at since we were teenagers) AND this mountain is SICK!! It is pretty massive, there is this big peak in the middle that you can ski off pretty much 360deg. One side is the steepest tree skiing I have ever done! And, there is really easily accessed backcountry, including this huge face that looks over the mountain super steep, that's where they have the Canadian open big mountain comp! 30 min walk! Once again super-ghetto chairs, which was great! The top chair (the 'Motherlode'-ha ha) is so long! The terrain under it is super-sick though! AND it was warm there! Like around zero all day! The sun was out for the first time in ages!!

Kristin and Buck on the Motherlode. Look at the pow!

We drank beer all day and then had to help patrol with sweep. It was pretty funny, we were all ranting shit, I'm sure they thought we were the most friendly people ever! We got tickets to both places by bringing beer to patrol. It's pretty cool over here!!

The back country off Red. MMMmmm, sun!!!

Then we partied pretty hard in a funny town called Field, which is so pretty but has a big-ass wood mill thing RIGHT in the centre of town spewing out smoke and chemicals!

The classic double chairs at Whitewater. Reubs was snowboardin so he could keep up with the big kids! He got given a Ride Timeless which is pretty sweet (but then his Eldo got nicked by some punk...)

Good times in the warm temps at Red Mountain. That ice-cliff is one of many in-bounds! Too bad they sold out to some rich americans and it's gettin comercialised, they are already puttin in a new lift and buliding heaps of condos...

PARTY

Hey everyone!

We had our first house party the other day, the kiwi house hosted the first of many fooseball tournaments, the entry fee was $10 per team, winner takes all! Of course hardly any of us could actually play fooseball, but that was completley irrelevant. Oh yeah- you had to dress up in teams!

If you can see the classy people in the background that's me and reubs! We don't quite know what we are... Very drunk perhaps?






Apparantly the noise was heard down the street and we could have got kicked out (whatever, it was in our basement!) Well, Reubs and I got out on our first round...but the winner wnded up taking away $120. Not bad ay!!





















This is me and my awesome buddie Kristin looking ready to party!

These are Reuben's two bosses. All our bosses came and got wasted with us. They are awesome! Everyone here loves to party and ski hard...

And, on that note today was an epic pow day, Reubs and I got to ski all day (he is rippin pretty good on the skis) And it was amazing yeaaaahhhh! We skied the most amazing light fluffy pow fresh tracks all day and now I'm really tired my legs are going to fall offf!

XX KAT AND REUBENNNNN>>>>>

C*O*L*D

Well...today we felt lovely and warm, apparantly the temps were 10degrees warmer than the rest of the week...finally the sky was blue-bird and the snow so so epic! Ok...the temp was -20 today, can't believe that feels warm, but all week we have been braving around the -30ish temps...you can't even really hang out outside, if you have any exposed skin it FREEZES! Yeah, crazy ay! We usually wear 2 thermal pants, 3 ice-breaker tops, fleece, maybe down jacket and gore-tex to work, PLUS you have to have a layer covering your nose and cheeks or your flesh BURNS (ewww) apparantly it's quite gnarly and gross....

We went back-country (slack-country really, we didn't have to walk that far) and reubs experienced the beauty of skis - he is fully converted now - touring on a snowboard is a complete waste of time & energy!

The terrain here is SICK! You can access all these lines within like 5 mins walk from the skifield. Today we skied a bowl called Pipestone...the views from here are epic too...

The little village you can see is Lake Louise, that's where we live. The massive mountain on the left is over 3000m - Mt temple. You can ski off it, apparantly it is hard core! The town is about 1500m. This is what the views are like 360 degrees no kidding! THE rockies are AMAZING!!

The track out from where we went touring was super-gnarly! It was like a luge track on skis, winding through the forest and jumping off rocks and over creeks...

This is reubs and dave lundin at the top about to drop into a sick, perfectly creamy, amazing bowl of powdery goodness!

Anyway, next week is supposed to be warm, i think like -7, so that will be a nice change, maybe we can play outside for more than 10mins! It's wierd when its that cold, your skis stick to the snow and you can hardly move - cos its SO COLD!!!

Peace

HI

Had a pretty sweet day the other day, it has been dumping with snow over here for the past - well - since we've been here really... I got to go out with the Avalanche Control team twice last week! (it's a pretty big event if you get to go with them). one of the days was really amazing weather...

There was fresh powder EVERYWHERE, oh yeah and i gotta throw 3 bombs too! The guys are real cool and make sure that you do everything properly - though it always scares the hell outtae standing there with a big, lit bomb in my hand! This is the guy i was working with hucking his bomb into a chute...

oh yeah by the way our uniforms are bright the FUCK orange ay!! ha ha

ok enough from us, oh yeah...

Reubs bought skis and is now skiing all the time haha he's actually doing a pretty good job too, he has to carry all this heavy as hell stuff all the time, but he's loving it!

Lake Louise update

OK, so i guess i'm not that good at this! Here's attempt 2:

So i'll just update to all what Reubs and I have been up to. We arrived in Canada about 3 weeks ago i guess, to -30 temps, still in our jandals from Taiwan (which was awesome) and it's been snowing since we got here! We fianlly sorted out our oven the other day so now we can bake muffins and pies. And cheese scones! We decided to drive from Vancouver to Lake Loiuse (which by the way, is quite far!) Ooh yeah we also have a fooseball table in our lounge! Yeah, it was in the house - Awesome! We somehow got super lucky and are in our own house, away from the massive housing lodge (which mostly contains 18-year olds who have never seen snow before - over half are aussies -aah)...We had training for a few days - here's a pic of the base building which is a massive log cabin. The best part of training is gondola evac

You get to ride down the cable and climb onto the roof of the cabin, then climb down, kick open the doors and lower the people inside one by one! They had to do one for real last year!

So, after training (by this stage reubs was working his ass off walking to the summit everyday from half way and digging all day) i got to go touring in the backcountry for a couple of days...

It's awesome, you literally park your car and head straight up into the hills! Usually you kinda walk up through the forest then up into the alpine area. Skiing out is fun, you follow your tracks out winding back down through the forest to the car...

OK, well we haven't got a phone yet (useless) but write comments or email.

xx Kat and Reubs

CANADA

Been arrived in Canada, prob been here for a week - got this idea fro tania, just testing the blog cos me and reubs have ben trying to sortit out for about one million hours!! ha ha stand by for more photos and good times