Last day riding in sun peaks

Just came in after another day on the mountain, forgot the camera today so no pics.

Had a late start today as there was no new snow overnight. We had a quick breakfast in the cafe on the mountain and then went to join the lift lines which we pretty hectic today.

The main lift was at a complete stop, with people stranded on it for a few hours so everyone headed to the only working lift from the base. It started to snow heavily while we were in line and ended up taking about half an hour to get on.

We found out later that the reason the lift stopped was because a young girl broke her leg dismounting and they couldn't move her until the ambulance arrived.

With no new snow the runs were hard packed and again, visibility was an issue up high so we spent most of the day taking it easy on the groomers.

Tomorrow morning we check out and fly to Calgary where we pick up our car and drive to Banff.

Even though we loved Sun Peaks, we explored just about every run over the past 6 days and are ready to move on to somewhere new.

Had some days that we will never forget here – we were very lucky to get such good early season snow.

More updates from Banff tomorrow.

-J

Some sun in sun peaks

Last night we had pizza for dinner and headed out to "bottoms" bar for a few drinks. They have a bell at the bar there and whenever someone rings it they have to buy everyone sitting at the bar a shot. Neri and i were just having a quiet drink when this guy decided to ring it meaning that we had a shot of jager in front of us, free of charge.

It was a saturday night and the village was starting to fill up with more people meaning it was pretty rowdy at the bar.

The weather has also warmed up a little meaning more people are out and about in the village.

Woke up a little late this morning, looked out the window and there was some sunny skies, something we hadn't seen here yet.

It was nice to be able to see the whole mountain, although at times the clouds came right over again making it hard to see.
We made our way up to the "West bowl" tbar for the first time (all the other days visibility was too poor up there) only to have the tbar break down on us on the first run. We waited a while for them to fix it but eventually gave up and headed back to Crystal bowl, which surprisingly still had fresh snow in sections.

We did eventually get back up there but by then the visibility was terrible. We were better off on the lower half of the mountain or in the trees.

The rest of the day was spent cruising around the mountain... we did a run called "5 mile" a few times which as the name suggests is a 5 mile long groomed run. Heaps of fun cruising down this massive run at full speed.

We did a few of the black runs over the back side of Crystal bowl which was still deep powder in sections. I got caught up to my waist and had to hike out from the trees which was a good workout.

Came in around 3pm, had a mocha in the cafe and watched the sun set over the mountains.

In the hotel now and about to head out again for dinner... really missing home cooked meals but unfortunately we won't have a kitchen until we get to Mammoth in January.

-J

mushing video

Mushing

A big day today... we were up early and waiting in the line for the lift to open at 8.30. The snow that had come in yesterday afternoon didn't continue all night, but there was a good top-up of about 10-15 cm and everything still looked nice and fresh as we were on our way up.

We sqeezed in 2 quick runs, one of which Jase found an ungroomed run which had no tracks on it yet so he was very happy with that :)

Then it was time to go mushing on the dog sled. We took the shuttle up and walked a little way until we saw some of the dogs up ahead. All together there were 40 dogs, all chained up in their individual areas, with space enough for a small wooden kennel, and a circle of about 3 metres diameter where they could walk around. They were all very keen to meet us and were trying to get our attention by barking and yelping all at once.

Our favourites were called Mousse and Marble, and another girl called Screamer, who was very timid but had a really sweet nature.

Jase had to help our guides pick out the dogs for our sled (we needed 8 in total) and run them one-by-one down through the middle of all the other dogs, ready to be harnessed up. Every time a dog was chosen the rest of them would bark and howl in jealousy, then when the guide came back to choose the next one, they were all on their best behaviour, and started crying and pleading to be picked.

There was another sled on the tour with us, a lady and her daughter from Ippswitch, Qld. Lots of Aussies here.

So after our lesson on how to handle the sled and the dogs we were on our way... I was first to do the mushing. The commands were "Ready" to get going, "Whoa" to stop, and "Hike" to spur them up a hill. It was so much concentration that I didn't really even take in the scenery for the first bit, but I soon started to get the hang of it. Until, a tight corner and the sled with Jase cocooned in it nearly toppled over and I lost my grip on the handle! Luckily there was a bit of a steep hill so the dogs were a bit slow up there and I quickly ran back up and got control of them (and Jase in the runaway sled) .... N.

Neri thought it was hilarious, but the number one rule we were told was "don't let go of the sled" so i was stuck in this runaway sled yelling out whoaaa at the top of my lungs with no control over the dogs. It was lucky that we reached an uphill so that they slowed down or who knows where i would have ended up.

Sledding was really fun, the dogs seem to enjoy it too. neri mushed us all the way to the lake where we had a break and warmed up in the hut. I mushed us all the way back, which was mainly downhill and required a lot of hard breaking so that the dogs wouldn't go too fast. At one point i let off the brakes too much and we almost overtook the dogs on a downhill. Luckily i used my superior skill to maintain control and not let go of the sled.

We got back to the kennels and said our goodbyes to the dogs... they were all really friendly.
There was a bit of a walk back to the bus stop, through boot deep powder, where we caught the bus back to the resort.

A quick lunch and we were out snowboarding again for the rest of the afternoon.

Warmer today and the snow wasn't great by the time we made it back out (we have been very spoilt though the past few days) but we still had fun and found some tree runs with fresh tracks here and there. The sunset was amazing, orange sun just breaking through the fog and casting this magic light onto the mountains as we did our last run.



we've attached some pics and a little video of the sledding.

-Jase

Boxing Day laziness

Last night we had an early Christmas dinner at our lodge, they had a special menu with a main meal of turkey with cranberry sauce and roast vegies. It reminded me of Christmas at home, but definitely a very different experience when it's all white and snowing outside! As we were sitting in the restaurant I kept seeing the horse-pulled sleigh going up and down the main street, and finally was able to snap a photo after we had finished dinner and went outside. It was a very quiet night in the village, all the pubs and shops closed early so there wasn't much left for us to do than to head home and have an early night.

We woke up today very sore from the past two days... every muscle was complaining as we got moving and ready to head up the mountain again. The temps were colder than it has been so far and I was having trouble keeping warm despite my multiple layers as the icy wind was making its way through somehow. The conditions were pretty ordinary, hardpack groomers with a trace layer of fresh snow... all this combined with uncooperative legs didn't make for a very fun time.

We decided to head over to one of the other peaks, Mt Morrissey, which turned out to be quite protected and more fresh stashes to be found on either sides of the runs. It was better over there but still some flat spots to tackle on a few of the trails.

Heading back up the main lift after lunch we thought we'd try out one of the upper mountain lifts, as surely there was still powder around up there. On our way up we were beginning to question our decision as it was complete white-out... one of those times when you don't know which way is down the mountain and you just have to point your board a few different ways until gravity does its work.

Despite the lack of visibility, the snow was untracked... that icy wind I was talking about before had blown all the powder into one of the bowls... the turns we had there made it all worthwhile!!

It was still a long ride back to the village and by that stage we were both happy to call it a day.

Tomorrow we are going dog sledding which we are both really looking forward to, although, it's been snowing all arvo and the forecast says it'll continue all night, so it looks like we'll miss an epic powder morning. Oh well, there's more snow due Sat/Sat night so hopefully Sunday will be just as good!

Stay tuned for some photos after our dog sledding adventure!!

Hope everyone had an awesome Christmas and is looking forward to New Years Eve!

love Neri.xx

Thanks Santa...

For those of you who don't ski or snowboard i'm going to apologise as for the next few weeks this is about all we will be writing about... for those of you who do, feel free to read on... we've had some awesome conditions already!

Last night we had dinner at "Powder Hounds" restaurant... very busy as it was xmas eve so we spent an hour waiting for our food. We were both sore and tired from our first day snowboarding so had an early night.

I woke up at 4am ready to hit the mountain... couldn't really sleep when i checked the report and we had 15cm of fresh snow overnight! The best xmas present i could hope for!

Neri and i got our act together and made it to the lifts early this time. The mountain was dead empty, and as we approached the top we couldn't believe our eyes... untracked snow everywhere and nobody around.

I'm learning quickly that when they report 15cm it is more like 30cm up top. Our first run was straight under the lift at full speed on a layer of boot to knee deep powder, face shots the whole way down... epic!

I got a bit too excited and ventured into the trees and fell over... neri zoomed ahead. The call from the chairlift by some random guy was "Catch up with your girlfriend!" how embarrassing.

From there we went to the top of Crystal chair and tackled some of the steeper runs which were also covered with fresh snow. Once again, only saw one or two people on the run.

As the day went on we found more and more fresh lines, a few times we followed the fresh snow into some flat spots were we literally had to "swim" out. Luckily the snow is so dry that you can pretty much kick your way through, even when we were waist deep.

Not much more to be said other than this was one of the best days i've ever had snowboarding.
By 2pm we were soooo tired and rode back to our hotel.

We got plenty of pics, but in most of them you can't even see us through the cloud of white snow...

That's it for now, more snowboarding tomorrow and then a day off to go dog sledding on Saturday!

Hope that everyone back home had a great holiday / christmas / birthday... we miss everyone but it is very nice to be up in the mountains at this time of year.

-Jase

Sun Peaks - Snowboarding xmas eve!

This morning we woke up, had a look out the window and it was snowing quite heavily! Not windy at all and temps had warmed right up to -16 degrees.

We unpacked all our snow gear, got the boards and headed out.

Neri had a quick look at the trail map but we really didn't know what to expect as we arrived at night and could not really see the mountain.

We got on the first lift we could find and made our way to the top... it was so exciting to see that below there was still a lot of untracked powder and not many people around. They had reported 3cm overnight, but this was very modest... on top of the big dump they had two days ago there was some very deep sections in amongst the trees and to the sides of the groomers.

We had a few runs, and quickly realised how unfit we were... we did one run which seemed like it went on for ever. Amazing groomer with an amazingly light and dry layer of powder snow on top. By the bottom we couldn't feel our faces or our legs but we had the biggest smiles!

We've seen the "best snow on the planet" in Utah, and also riden in Niseko but this stuff was just as light and dry (although nowhere near as deep yet). We were watching the perfect snowflakes build up on our jackets as we rode up the lifts, they were so light they were just stacking up like cotton wool.

Headed in for lunch early at around 11:30 and had a couple of "B52s" which is some kind of coffee with baileys and stuff in it... whatever it was it tasted really good and got us pumped to get back out there.

The afternoon was even better than the morning as we did some seriously leg burning runs... one in particular on Mt Morrissey i collapsed at the bottom after so many deep turns and could hardly breath as my bandana on my face froze solid from all the snow hitting it.

There were a few moments of getting stuck in flat spots but other than that we are both really impressed with the mountain.
It is not huge in terms of size, and it is not the steepest / most challenging but it is definitely fun and best of all there are no crowds at all!

Highlight for neri was seeing some deer eating in the snow right under the chairlift... for those of you who know neri and how she reacts to seeing animals in the wild... she was giggling for a good few minutes.

A few pics attached (neri is in dark jacket and i'm in white jacket)... still snowing outside so hopefully we get some more fresh pow to ride tomorrow.

Special note to Tim from heresy snowbarding - This snowboard is amazing in these conditions... loving it. Thanks again.

Hope you are all having happy holidays! We are ;)

-Jase