I know, I know. I’ve been slack on the updates. I have a good reason. I was on a ski trip for 12 days.

I’ll update the crap outta the log for the next few days. For you hardcore bikers, sorry. Only ski shots for the next while. But has it ever been good.

So, on to our story…..

We didn’t know what to hit for New Year’s. No plans at all.

“How about Powder King?”

OK then. Never been there. It sure is far. It’s possible to get there in 10 hours or so, but with the conditions on the road it was more like 15. Lots of snow and wind and cold, and plenty of upsidedown 4X4’s in the ditch. I think we counted 7 dead trucks between 100 Mile House and Williams Lake.

We finally got to the ski hill at around 10 PM. Now, for those of you who have never been there, let me give you some advice. Don’t go expecting a business or some kind of competently run tourism operation. This is the North. The lowest common denominator rules. Everything at Powder King is redneck proofed. Once you understand this basic rule, then everything else makes sense.

The first clue that we might be in for some trouble was at the gas station down the highway. It had one of the raunchiest bathrooms in the western hemisphere. Kind of made you gag a bit when you walked in but seeing as I didn’t need to sit down and it was about -30 outside I toughed it out. We asked the guy behind the counter about the accomodations at the hill and in his own words “it’s a bit run down.”

Did it just get colder?

Ahh yes. The Powder King hotel. Also known as “Chateau Atco” because its a bunch of Atco work trailers welded together. The first thing we see as we walk in is a guy bleeding profusely from his hand. You could actually see all the tendons in his fingers. He’d punched a mirror out. “It’s that guy again and he keeps looking at me!” Bam. Too drunk to manage. Barb taped him back together gut he kept ripping the bandages off. Refused to go to the hospital too. He eventually lost a bunch of meat off his knuckles because it started to rot. Pretty gross.

But not as gross as the trailers themselves. Kind of hard to describe even with pictures. I should warn you, if you have a weak constitution you shouldn’t look at these.

Anyway, the hotel doubles as the staff housing, and as the hill was closed due to extreme cold (windchill of about 65 below zero, no shit), everyone was wrecked on booze and mushrooms. The “manager” was so mangled he couldn’t deal with renting us a room so he just gave us one.

It’s all it was worth anyway.

Plenty of closet space.

“Safety Wire”

Not too mention that all the fire exits were bolted shut, there were no extinguishers or smoke detectors (then again the hallways were full of smoke at all times so they would be useless anyway), the utility rooms were full to the ceilings with garbage, and the bathrooms……

You really had to smell it to understand. I would have been on my hands and knees retching except all the broken glass and god knows what else kind of ruled that out.

So that was the night of the 30th. First thing next morning we find this little present outside our door.

Mmmmmmm. Yummy.

At least breakfast was good. The owner of the hill also cooks, and he’s pretty good at it. We met some characters at breakfast. One guy (John from Campbell River) drove up in his diesel LandCruiser and was staying in a tent. The winds were so strong that his tent was completely shredded and his truck had frozen solid. Luckily the hill had a heated shop so he was able to thaw his engine out. Another guy had his new boot room for his trailer blow away. The pieces were spread all over the pariking area.

So in spite of the punishing cold we hit the hill. The lifts wouldn’t start so we hiked up. So very cold out. About -23 at the bottom but the wind was still gusting up to 160 km/h at times.

This is Barb on the climb with the Murray Mtns behind her.

When we got to the top we snuck in to a hut to get out of the wind. I actually felt fine but the mercury showed it to be -27. Which is cold enough to freeze your eyes shut if you’re not careful.

The skiing was actually really good, but the digits were freezing. The camera stopped working it was so cold. There was about 20 cms of fast and light storm snow on top of about 30-35 cms of older, slow snow. Because the wind had been at it, it was kind of variable. This led to several episodes of sub-zero face plants. I guess it also meant that one run was all she wrote for the day. Good thing there’s a couple thousand vertical there.

Here’s Barb enjoying the sensation of having here feet thaw out.

New Years was a pretty good party. The owner whomped up a killer steak dinner, and then got us all wasted. Here he is lining up a bunch of shooters on the bar.

We made a bunch of new friends. This is Chip Wood. He’s a logger. Try to guess where his left hand is right now.

All in all, it was a good party. I think a lot of the locals got most of it out of their system the night before because it was actually kind of tame by comparison. We even got a good nights sleep.

Still too cold when we woke up though, so we decided to split. Gorgeous day out too. See how cool my truck looks in the Northern Rockies?

We headed down to Sun Peaks the scenic way via the Yellowhead highway. Sweet views of the Rocky Mountains the whole way.

…and to top it off? I’ve seen two moose in my life. I said to Barb that it would make my day to see one on that drive. We saw three.