Welcome to my blog! My name is Lotte Bond and I am an Admission Counsellor at Quest University Canada. Having lived in the Sea-to-Sky corridor my entire life, I look forward to sharing some stories and photos of the area, so that you can get a better idea of all this beautiful location has to offer!
If the rest of 2011 is anything like the first two days then buckle up 'cause we're in for a wildly awesome ride. Think big tastey meals, 2 meters of snow consolidated into boot deep hero butter, blue skies, and, well you get the point. We were lucky enough to join a group of catskiers for an memorable Whistler catskiing weekend at good'ol Backcountry Snowcats.
After a mellow moonlit sled ride up to the lodge, the night ended with bowls of unfinished chocolate fondue and untapped champagne... the first hint of how keen everyone was to shred the next day.
As expected, we awoke to bluebird skies from horizon to horizon, so we moseyed our way up the cat roads for lap after lap of sunny pow and good times. The leisure shredders milked the mellow pow for all it was worth while the pillow hunters killed their daily quota of powder pillows. Somethin' for everyone.
Just in case that wasn't enough, day 2 yielded more of the same. How often do we get 2 consecutive bluebird days in January? No complaints, that's for sure, and looks like we're onto #3 today. In a resort setting you'd be begging for pow by now, but with 15,000 acres of terrain and 13 skiers, we were doing just dandy.
The secret is out of the bag and Backcountry Snowcats is now on the radar for catskiiers from here to Norway and back, but the vibe remains super casual and there's still a bunch of good date openings for winter 2011. Get on it while you can...
Story written by Jamie Bond, Doglotion.com: We've skied three times this month... the driest July on record... and it rained or snowed on every trip. How does that work? This trip we hit fresh snow on the last day of July, for real, atop none other than Mt Baker, Washington, USA. Tired of the Squamish lake scene, Lotte and I were due for a couples retreat, and nothing says romance quite like a summer shred trip to Mt Baker. Horse flies, heavy packs, long hikes, freak snow storms, and an agressive 'learn as you go' intro to everything about ski mountaineering. I know ladies, jealous right? Oh, did I mention packing out your own poo? Need I say more, I think we have a winning combo here. All the magic ingredients for a good couples weekend.
We made the call for a 2 day trip, hoping for a casual pace, some wicked views from the alpine, and of course some sweet volcano sunset action. The first we got, the 2nd was obscured by inpenetrable forest fire haze, making the third - the sunsets - out of this world. With blue (and orange) skies as far as the eye could see, we went to bed confident that Day 2 would be a sunny walk in the park. Fail. Throughout a sleepless night of constantly finding new ways to hide the food from the mice, we couldn't help but notice a lot of headlamps working their way up the mountain. "Slow-ass mountaineers" we thought to ourselves. "Afterall, they need to walk all the way back down right? Suckers." Or did they know something we didn't?
We set out later that morning, continuing up goat path of the Coleman Glacier and up the Roman Headwall.
But just as we climbed the headwall, and all but 1 climber had worked their way back down, some ominous clouds rolled in for visit. Seemed like a good time to throw on more than a t-shirt, when baaam, it started snowing, pretty hard up top, to the point where it was accumulating and even covering our skin track and part of the bootpack. And probably raining on our gear below... Debating if we should be stoked about freshies or getting the hell out of Dodge, we loitered up top in the storm, hoping it would subside, or at the very least leave us some good new snow. But alas, windy and snowy summits aren't the best places to kick back and relax afterall, so we gave up the wait and headed down for the goods. Fresh snow on slush made for a funky 3 inches of snot glued to our skis for the first few minutes, but that eventually gave way to some fun but blind spring-storm style skiing the rest of the way down. We had lollygagged on top and in the fog so long that we didn't pass a single mountaineer!!! Ouch, who's the sucker now. But it sure was fun, with glory corn the whole way down the Coleman, minus some big suncup sections to keep you on your toes.
Like any good ski trip ends, we picked up our wet gear stash and... cough... bagged poo, and hiked back down Heliotrope Ridge to the car. Mission accomplished; a perfect text book execution of a romantic couples retreat eh? No wait, we'd better seal the deal by camping 2 more nights in the same wet tent and gear, not showering, and scaring ourselves on some unfamiliar crack climbing at Index, Washington. Love is in the air. Can you feel it?
See full story at: http://www.doglotion.com/freshies-romance-and-rain-mt-baker
Squamish welcomed a new mountain bike trail this past spring. "Half Nelson" is basically a 3km downhill pumptrack which can be ridden as fast or as hard as you like. Although it's rated difficult, intermediate and beginner riders will enjoy this trail just as much as an expert rider would.
You can find the trailhead just off the Ring Creek FSR, up the hill from Quest!
In March 2010 a group of friends managed to pull off a weekend of catskiing with Backcountry Snowcats once again up on the Hurley Pass, an hour snowmobile ride north of Pemberton. The snow conditions were a little firm to start, but a storm system came through the same time that we did bringing us some incredible snow. Here’s a little video from our trip:
A few of us girls have been riding on some new Rossignol skis this year – the Voodoo Pro BC 110. They are so incredibly easy to ski, I almost feel like I'm cheating. If you haven't tried them yet, you should! They ski well in all conditions and I recommend them 100%. But this recommendation comes with a warning - once you've tried them, there's no turning back! Here’s a little video of us testing them out on the west coast powder this past ski season:
Three weeks in India made for an action-packed February 2010.Although my blog focuses more on the Squamish area, I thought I might as well throw in a few words about India since it’s a pretty incredible place you don’t get to visit all that often.Quest joined a 10-day Education Tour, which involved visiting schools in Mumbai, Pune and New Delhi.We had a successful recruiting trip visiting a wide range of schools and meeting some wonderful students along the way.I was also fortunate enough to visit the beautiful Mahindra United World College just outside of Pune.
A very warm welcome at Starex International School, New Delhi
What a beautiful country!I wish I had more time to explore the different cities, but instead, decided to finish off the trip with a vacation up in Northern India – in Kashmir of all places.Vacationing in Kashmir does indeed sound like a bit of an oxymoron, but that is indeed how I decided to spend my time off.My husband and I joined a group of friends who were spending the entire winter in Kashmir at a tiny resort called Gulmarg, documenting the skiing in the area along with life in Kashmir (www.b4apres.com).Unfortunately, an enormous avalanche had just come down a few days prior to my arrival killing 17 army men at an army base nearby leaving me a little frantic upon arrival in Srinigar.Luckily they had just cleared the roads the morning I had flown in, making my trip from Srinigar to Gulmarg fairly seamless.The drive up the mountain pass did however involve a few tea stops, a car tune-up and a chain-up stop, but that’s really about as seamless as you can get in this area!
Gulmarg, India
Gulmarg is a small Himalayan ski resort that lies on the border of India and Pakistan.It was just recently developed in the late 90’s and only has one gondola, which is divided in two stages:Stage 1 was completed back in 1998 and takes you up to an elevation of 2600 meters, while Stage 2 was only completed in 2005, bringing you to an elevation of 4000m (13,000ft) – making it the highest gondola in the world as far as I understand. Stage 2 was unfortunately closed for the entire length of my stay, with the exception of one day.The line-ups were of course a little hectic with everybody wanting to get at the untouched powder, but I finally made it up to the top, bringing myself to the highest elevation I have ever experienced.I couldn’t tell if my breath was short due to the altitude or due to the breathtaking views at the top!The skiing was incredible and well-worth the wait.With the alpine not being open the rest of our trip, we instead earned our turns in the backcountry hiking up to nearby hills, and then skiing down to various villages, running into monkeys and army men along the way.In the villages, we would stop for tea and then work our way on finding a ride back to Gulmarg which always turned into an adventure in itself (and often took longer than the actual skiing did). Every night we looked forward to our never-ending dinners of daal, paneer, butter chicken, korma, garlic naan, gulab jamun, just to name a few of my favourites. Mmmm, take me back to India for the food alone!
Phase 2, Gulmarg Gondola
Before flying out of Srinigar, we decided to explore the city a little and stayed on a houseboat for a night on Dal Lake.After checking into our floating hotel for the night, we enjoyed a late afternoon shikara boat tour which took us out onto the open lake looking straight up at the Himalayas, and continued through to the floating markets.Kashmir is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited and I feel blessed having had the chance to experience it. With the Kashmir conflict still present, it may still be some time until the flocks of tourists come to explore this area.But in due time it will happen – no doubt.
Shikara on Dal Lake, Srinigar
After an action-packed three weeks in India and looking forward to some quiet time back in Canada, we instead returned to the madness of the Olympics!We jumped right into the action and attended a number of hockey games in Vancouver as well as 4-man bobsled up at Whistler.Having lived in Vancouver my entire life, I have never experienced the city so alive.People had come from the entire world to check out the Games.Admittedly, I was not all that excited about the Games after they had made the bid a few years back, especially since I had to deal with the never-ending construction on the Sea-to-Sky Highway almost on a daily basis.But now looking back at it, it was definitely worth it.
February was anything but a month lacking boredom (and people)!
Ah, where has the time gone? 2010 has been one busy year to say the least. Between recruiting students from around the world and reading applications back at the office, I have nonetheless still found some time to play in my Squamish backyard and also overseas. I figured the best way to catch up on my blog is to try and capture some highlights for each past month of 2010.
I suppose I should start with January! January 2010 included my first ski trip to Revelstoke, a town in the interior of British Columbia, roughly an 8hr drive east of Squamish. What used to be a sleepy mining town and railway hub has now turned into a mega ski resort. The resort has just been built up over the last few years and now boasts the longest vertical ski descents within North America. We went out to sample the record-breaking terrain, and were not disappointed, although my legs were definitely burning!
The Rad Boob Club was also out at Revelstoke selling their fabulous 2010-2011 Girls Freeskiing Calendar with 100% of the proceeds going towards breast cancer research. Although most of the sales took place before the new year, the girls were still selling their calendars into the new year like hotcakes! If you search hard, you can even find me hiding in the calendar! I was pretty honoured to be a part of this inspiring project. Here’s more beta on how the project got started:
We are a group of female skiers that met in Golden, BC. While skiing together we realized that by combining our contacts and skills we could put together an amazing women’s ski calendar and raise a significant amount of money for Breast Cancer research. We are ski coaches, professional skiers, big mountain competitors, nurses, young professionals, students, and more. We are all passionate about mountains and live to ski. We are constantly inspired by the people around us and hope that as skiers we can still make a difference in this world by raising money for a great cause and inspire others to lead healthy and active lives. Check us out at www.radboob.com
Another reason we had gone out to Revelstoke this particular weekend was to check out the 2nd stop of the 2010 Subaru World Freeskiing Championships. This was the first time Revelstoke had been used as a venue for the championships and the final venue took place in a backcountry area which involved all skiers being flown to the top of the run by helicopter. The terrain looked incredible, and based on the skiers’ reviews, it sounded like a pretty enjoyable run, especially for a freeskiing competition where conditions can often be less than ideal.
January 2010 also saw the 5th Annual Deep Winter Photo Challenge held up at Whistler. The competition was tough, but without a doubt, Jordan Manley, reigning champion “King of Storms”, stole the show once again. Here are a few of his pics:
If the rest of 2011 is anything like the first two days then buckle up 'cause we're in for a wildly awesome ride. Think big tastey meals, 2 meters of snow consolidated into boot deep hero butter, blue skies, and, well you get the point. We were lucky enough to join a group of catskiers for an memorable Whistler catskiing weekend at good'ol Backcountry Snowcats.
