Last weekend: Mountains

We stopped in Kamloops for the weekend. Friday we went out and had a steak dinner to say goodbye to Anthony, the other co-op student. He’s leaving a week early to go home. Saturday I slept in a bit, and then took a taxi to the airport to pick up the rental car. I was driving back and passing by some mountains, and as I had nothing really planned for that afternoon, I decided to go and climb one. I only had what I was wearing, and luckily my camera, and as it was around 1:00 and it starts getting dark at 3:30ish, I decided against going back to the hotel to get warmer cloths and gloves. Boy would I regret that.

I picking the highest one (obviously), found somewhere to park and began climbing. It was easy going at first, but I quickly found that climbing uphill is actually a lot of work. I had to stop sometimes for breaks. It started to get steeper, and the patches of snow turned into a blanket of snow, which made everything very slippery. My 2 year old shoes with the tread pretty much completely gone certainly didn’t help at all. I was grabbing clumps of grass and bushes to help get up. I made it up to a flatter part, but it didn’t last long, and the real steep part began. And goodness, that was rough. The ground alternated between snow-covered grass (extremely slippery), snow covered loose gravel (also extremely slippery), and snow covered rock (you guessed it…also extremely slippery). The going was very very slow, and I had to plan my route very carefully aiming for trees and bushes. And the uphill never seemed to end. My hands were getting very cold, as I didn’t have gloves and was grabbing snow covered rocks, grass, and branches. Snow was also getting in my shoes, making my feet cold and wet. And to top it all off, it was becoming very obvious that I had forgotten to eat breakfast or lunch. There was one part where the grass clump I was grabbing ripped out and I slid down a meter or two before stopping, scraping my hand on the snow-covered rock, and I thought to myself “what the heck am I doing here. My shoes suck, I’m climbing up at like one meter a minute, it’s going to be dark very soon, my stomach’s grumbling like crazy, and I want to go skiing tomorrow. I should save some energy”. But giving up never really entered my mind as an option, I couldn’t admit defeat. I think it’s a guy thing.

So I continued up, one step at a time, one tree and bush at a time. And I finally made it to the top! It was cloudy and getting dark, so the view wasn’t all that good. I could tell that I was the highest thing in the vicinity at least, which was a pretty cool feeling.

As it was getting dark, I started heading back down, which I had been putting off as long as possible. I didn’t want to take as much time going down as I did going up, so I ended up sliding down on my but a lot, aiming for trees as most of the time I couldn’t stop on my own. Finally made it to the flat part, and down the last part to the car. I was brushing myself off, and I realized that the seat of my pants was completely ripped to shreds from sliding over rocks on my way down. Good thing I realized that before going out for supper.

I went back to the train, changed, dropped the laundry off, finally had supper, and then went to go see the hobbit, which was fantastic. That was my favorite story growing up, and it’s cool to see it on film now. Dwarves are cool. I tried to get back to the hotel, but the maps in the GPS we have are old and the roads weren’t the same. So I was pretty lost for a while, getting back at 11:00ish. As I was getting into bed, I thought to myself “jeremie, you’re dead tired. Your calves still hurt from that run you did on Thursday, you have a scraped shin, you just climbed a whole mountain on no food. And you just set your alarm for 6:35am to go and ski for a full day. You’re crazy” That made me chuckle J

Sunday I went skiing at Sun Peaks, about an hour drive out of Kamloops. They had 40cm of snow the night before, so there was tons of snow and powder, and everyone was saying how amazing it was that day. There was one run in particular where I was skiing in snow almost up to my waist, which was pretty incredible. It was really cloudy and foggy at the top, just like revelstoke. But part way down the hill there were some breaks in the clouds, and the sun even came out for a bit. The view was pretty sweet.

I was finally getting comfortable at skiing on the steep downhill parts and through powder. Before I would turn and stop, then turn and stop, but near the end of that day I was able to go continuously. I certainly wasn’t graceful, but I could go much faster than I was before. Too bad this was probably my last time skiing on a legit hill for a while.

Got back to the train at 6pm all worn out, and started all the weekend chores and shopping that I hadn’t done. I was hoping for a later start on Monday so I could get some rest, but the schedule said to get up at 4:15am. Guess I’ll get sleep Tuesday then. Wait… 3:45am wake up that day. Lovely. Ah well, it was worth it J

We are heading west back to Golden, then south to Fort Steel, west the Lethbridge and then up to Calgary, and should be done on Thursday. My flight leaves Friday evening, and after a layover in Las Vegas I arrive back home Saturday morning!