After a cup of tea and a nap to help recover from the drama of the morning, we loaded up Snow White again and drove off to the ferry for a long weekend on Vancouver Island with Fee and Bob, friends of Neil. Tom and Neil were keen to do some more ice climbing, but thankfully there were others along on this trip so I could gate crash on their walk in one of the provincial parks. The weather was gorgeous – still no snow of course – but the forest was spectacular.
We got back to the cabins around 4pm, hung around, waited, waited some more and eventually had dinner while still waiting for Tom, Neil and Magalie to get back from their climb. They finally got back around 10:30pm after unsurprisingly having to make their way back to the car in the dark – this happens a lot, I´ve learnt to always bring a head torch, no matter when we intend to return… The next day was gorgeous again, and even though the Mount Cain ski lifts were closed due to lack of snow, we thought we´d see what there was to see so off we trotted up to the slopes and skinned to the top. At least we got great views, because we were having to ski on ice which is not particularly pleasant, it sounds a lot like nails on a chalk board going down – and of course hurts a lot when you fall over. One run was definitely enough!
However, as we got to the bottom the first flakes of snow started to fall. Hooray! The promised snow storm had finally arrived, just in time for one more day – so we returned the next day for a completely different experience (falling over, for instance, was much more pleasant). The chalk board sound is replaced by silence as you float down the hill – it was absolutely wonderful. Very sad that we had to leave the next day.
Tuesday was still technically a day of holiday, and those of us who were left thought we could squeeze one more morning of turns out of the trip. The destination of choice was Mount Victoria, which was accessed by a series of logging roads – had I mentioned it had been snowing at last?
Both parties had 4×4’s, so figured that the cars could stand a sizeable dump and off we went. It was all going really well until we got a little stuck and thought that gunning the engine was the way out of the problem…
So, that was the end of that weekend. Or not quite. Hmmm, there are a few slopes coming up on the return journed, and Snow White has a tow rope – queue one of the more questionable stunts pulled that weekend! (the video will get added as soon as we manage to figure out how, thankfully both Neil and Bob made it down.)
The Good Life Rides Again 