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Clouds of power (page 2)
Satisfy your urge to slalom and schuss
at Canada’s snowiest snowsport resort
By Masa Takei with photography by Darryl Leniuk
WARMTH AND LIGHT beckon from the windows of the
twin-peaked Alpine Chalet as photographer Darryl Leniuk and
I climb a short slope to this showpiece of Swiss-style timberframe
architecture just east of Strathcona Provincial Park,
which will be our base camp for the next three days. Established
in 1911, the 2,500-square-kilometre Strathcona was the first
provincial park in British Columbia. During our stay here at
Strathcona Park Lodge’s chalet at the base of Mount Washington,
we’ll be led by an experienced guide from the lodge as we
sample some ski touring within the provincial park.
The Alpine Chalet proves to be the perfect home base. Our
guides have completed the lodge’s Canadian Outdoor Leadership
Training, one of Canada’s premier outdoor education programs.
So not only are we in the heart of Vancouver Island ski country, but we’re in the hands of friendly experts with intimate
knowledge of the local terrain.
The 12-year-old chalet is divided into two units, each capable
of sleeping a hockey team. Ours is the lower unit, the Elkhorn,
named after the second highest peak (2,195 metres) on
Vancouver Island. The higher unit, the Golden Hinde, is, as one
might guess, named after the island’s tallest peak (2,200 metres).
Both feature post-and-beam log construction, gas fireplaces
and fully equipped kitchens. Opening an interior door combines
the units, allowing everyone to enjoy the hot tub in the Golden
Hinde (the Elkhorn having only a dry sauna).
Darryl and I leave our boots and clothes to dry next to our
alpine-touring gear at the front entrance, then spark up the
fireplace and put on a movie from the house collection before playing rock-paper-scissors to see who gets the master bedroom
and who gets the loft.
There’s relatively little in the way of après-ski here, but that’s
a good thing. Amenities include a standard ski bar, Fat Teddy’s
in the Alpine Lodge, a general store, a sushi restaurant (this is
the West Coast after all) and fine dining at the Nordic Centre
Raven Lodge. Which leaves us to focus on our daytime objective
of exploring Mount Washington, an old-style resort with a
fiercely loyal local following. The privately held, family oriented
resort, owned by a handful of Campbell River businessmen, continues
development on the mountain each year, the latest being
expanded night- and tree-skiing trails. We also plan to spend a
day pushing our tips through some classic ski-touring country
on the other side of the road.
What the resort may lack in nightlife and consumerism, it
more than makes up for in raw natural landscapes. Sitting halfway
up Vancouver Island, Mount Washington is perched alone on
the northeastern edge of Forbidden Plateau, and it catches
what’s dumped by cold air masses originating in Alberni Inlet
and passing over the Comox and Cliffe glaciers. The mountaingets more snow than any other resort in Canada:
more than 12 metres in each of the past two seasons
and a record 18.5 metres in the winter of 1998-99.
NEXT MORNING, we meet with Ryan Stuart, a
former guide now married into the Strathcona
Park Lodge family. The Strathcona Park Lodge
and Outdoor Education Centre celebrated its
50th anniversary in 2008. For more than three
decades, it has been turning out guides for itself
and other outdoor centres with the Canadian
Outdoor Leadership Training program, a rigorous
three-month immersion in ocean, river and mountain environments.
Stuart is playing hooky from his regular job as
gear editor for an outdoors magazine to show us some of his
favourite backyard lines. We slide off the Eagle Express quad
chairlift near the top of the 1,588-metre mountain, with only a
complex of radio towers above us. The sky is a super-saturated
Technicolor blue behind the wind-shaped trees shrouded in
snow plaster. Lowering my ski goggles, the world takes on an
even more surreal tone as everything gets a candy-floss pink tint.
Toward the mainland is a bumpy mattress of clouds obscuring
the Strait of Georgia, the Gulf Islands, and most of the Coast Range. A tear in the cloud cover
reveals a column of vapour from the pulp
mill in Powell River. Behind us are the
peaks within eastern Strathcona Provincial
Park, including Mount Albert Edward, a
distinctive saddle with a pointed horn.
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