Yes! I have finally drawn a winner for the 2010 Olympics Men’s Curling tickets contest for the Canada-USA game on February 22nd. We had 180 contest entries but only 171 were eligible. Watch the video to find out who won! Please note that the winner must contact me by e-mail (allie@vancityallie.com) by the midnight this Friday, February 19th or I will have to draw someone else.

This past week, my friend Amy took my camera up to Grouse Mountain where she got the chance to meet and see Michael Bublé and Matt Lauer on the Today Show. They are up there throughout the Olympics and they have quite the set up.

Here is Amy and her friend with Matt Lauer.

She took a number of pictures while there. Check them out.

Also, it was the torch relay in Vancouver all last week. I finally made it out on Friday to see the torch in person (after a failed attempt to see Trevor Linden carrying the torch… I missed him by one minute). I teared up several times. I was so proud to have the Olympics in Vancouver and seeing the torch passed from person to person throughout False Creek and Yaletown is an incredible experience.

Downtown Vancouver was CRAZY this past weekend with the streets completed filled with people partying, dancing, and singing O Canada.

Allan, Amy and I also got a chance to watch the Omega clock countdown to the start of the Olympics before rushing back home to watch the Opening Ceremonies (fortunately PVR-ed so we didn’t miss anything). It was a real thrill to have everyone countdown to the start. Watching the Opening Ceremonies with my closest family, Allan and my friend was so emotional. I thought it was beautifully done and really spoke to who we are as Canadians. I also thought it was a very diverse ceremony. Well done!

After a full day of watching the Games at our apartment with a group of friends, we somehow managed to wake up early to head to the House of Switzerland at Bridges on Granville Island.

I was asked to provide some coverage of a chocolate competition going on. When we got there, I picked up my media pass and we posed in front of the restaurant.

We also got to see them making the chocolate inukshuk and posed in front of it.

A note to visitors: Although we were there to check out the chocolate competition, please note that the House of Switzerland differs from other houses in that it is almost purely a restaurant (open for breakfast, lunch and dinner) but they don’t have an exhibition area or anywhere where you can walk around. The food and coffee is great there, but I recommend only going there if you are wanting a dining/eating experience. We ordered the Swiss Nespresso expresso and the Raclette macaroni and cheese.

We headed upstairs to check out the chocolate competition. They had a number of judges and we were there especially to cheer on Miss604 (Rebecca) who was a JUDGE! Wow!

We also saw Keira, John and Duane there. They got to sit at a special Friends and Family table with lots of different tastings! It was great to see Rebecca and Keira again, and to meet John and Duane for the first time. It was particularly neat to see Duane as he helped me through a difficult time when I had a surfing injury last year.

We got to taste the three different chocolates made by the competitors. They were all very good (Pecan chocolate bar, chocolate mousse, and heart-shaped chocolate biscuit), but we also loved the one that won the best… the Pecan chocolate bar. John has a great photo of the three chocolate pieces here.

Then we headed to the Atlantic House where we sat on the patio and sampled free seafood tastings for the afternoon. They were surprisingly good. We had a great view on the patio.

The Maritime beers and drinks were really delicious, although the most highly recommended beer of the day by my friends was the Blueberry ale. So definitely try it out if you get a chance to go there

And that was it! A really great weekend so far and I just CANNOT believe it is only Day 4. How are we going to get through the rest of the Olympics? It was fantastic to see Canada FINALLY win gold on home soil. Congrats to Bilodeau, Jenn Heil, and also all of Canada’s other medalists! Coming up… a special announcement also coverage from the Canadian men’s and women’s hockey games!

What did you do this past weekend?

This is the third and final photo post… you may want to check out Part One and Part Two of my blog post series on Kicking Horse, Golden BC, and the surrounding areas. The fabulous HD movie of the trip is of course still coming!

We really felt like we were part of a mountain community in Golden. The town is completely nestled in the hills, and they have spectacular views just about every day. Allan and I were pretty much seething with jealousy the entire time we were there. Talk about a sight to wake up to!

We spent our last day there exploring around and found several of these frozen over waterfalls…

We also explored under the river and the bridge until our fingers pretty much froze off…

… and noticed that there were just mountain goats and other wildlife wandering around in broad daylight…

… or they would just hang out in people’s yards at night. We saw this deer family hop over people’s fences, hang out on their lawns for a while, and do a little tour of the neighbourhood. It was awesome.

Our last night we stayed at Copper Horse Lodge, which right in Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, just a 2 minute walk from the gondola. Pretty sweet location! They also have a fine dining restaurant called “Corks” which we ate at a couple times. They have a Twitter account as well.

The Lodge has only 10 rooms, so it really is a boutique hotel. I managed to chat with the owner for a few minutes while I was there and he mentioned that they don’t want to expand at all because they care a lot about giving personal attention to guests. Again, I felt an extreme sense of wanting to open my own B&B or hotel in a mountain resort. Argh. Why am I working in video games again?

Nothing like relaxing in a hot tub after a day of snowboarding.

Again, I was really impressed with our choice of accommodations here in Golden! We really lucked out… everywhere we stayed was awesome, and the people were so friendly. It kind of reminded me of Whistler 10 years ago.

Anyway, our room was HUGE! King bed, couch area, flat screen TV, and lots of places to throw our gear everywhere. The place literally looked like a train wreck after we were done spreading out all our snowboard gear to dry. The big bathroom was a bonus too… mmmmmm jetted tub.

We hiked around the area to shoot some little snowboarding videos. I can’t wait to edit it all together.

After snowboarding we headed to the Local Hero Pub. It’s obvious to me that Golden is awesome. Where else do you have JENGA in the middle of a BAR? Haha!

We met up with our newfound friends, Mike (our guide from Canadian Powder Adventures) and Steve (from Tourism Golden… he helped us find places to rent our backcountry gear). Many tequila and whiskey shots were had…

Then it was off to Corks Restaurant (part of Copper Horse Lodge) for our last dinner in town. They had some really nice drinks and appies… we ordered several cocktails, had a mango shrimp appetizer, shared a carrot ginger coconut soup, and some different types of flatbread. Oh, and I snuck a little photo of the chocolate torte we had for dessert in here.

Yes, we eat a lot. Well, Allan does. We also had to have pizza since pizza is a must after snowboarding. I noticed a LOT of locals were coming into the restaurant and getting pizza and beer as well.

The mains were really the best part though. Allan ordered the lamb which had an orange glaze and a spicy mint sauce… such a nice combination.

I had the tilapia with the seafood and tomato saffron risotto. I LOVE risotto and this one was especially good… saffron is my weakness. The chef, Kalon is from Australia and you can definitely tell where some of his influences are from!

Why are my posts always about food? *sigh* I guess we just like to eat. Well, in the morning we woke up and had amazing eggs benedict served at Corks Restaurant by the couple who manages the place. Such nice people! Relocated from Vancouver… hmmmm… argh!

So alas, we had to say goodbye to beautiful powdery Golden, BC… till next time! We will most definitely be back.

Part One of our journey to Kicking Horse Mountain and Golden, BC is posted up and now we’re onto Part Two of Three!

After a day of boarding at Kicking Horse, we headed down the mountain for a delicious dinner experience at Cedar House Restaurant.

The restaurant is tucked away in a residential area in Golden, BC just outside of downtown… and it’s one of those places that you would only really find if you heard about it from the locals. It really is a secret spot! I also noticed that they have chalets for rent beside the restaurant, so although I didn’t get to check them out, it seems like a neat place to stay as well.

We also got to meet our guide Mike, from Canadian Powder Adventures who was going to take us hiking/ski touring into the Kicking Horse back country the next day. That guy could really sing and play! On an interesting side note, I’ve noticed that a lot of people in Golden seem to be multi-talented. Everyone does a couple different jobs and helps each other out with different businesses. It really is a cool and diverse community. Allan is still trying to convince me to move there.

They bill themselves as “Fresh Grown Rocky Mountain Cuisine”, and they aren’t kidding! They actually grow most of the vegetables consumed in the restaurant in an organic garden they have planted outside. Everything is organic, and is locally sourced. This crab bisque was really good.

The free-range chicken looked pretty amazing…

I tried the halibut myself and it was awesome… tasted very fresh and rich.

Of course, the real highlight of the dinner for me was the freakin’ incredible toffee bread pudding! Now, to be honest I’ve never had bread pudding before, so I didn’t know what to expect… but it was soooooooooo good. I may have to try and find this somewhere in Vancouver now. Any recommendations?

Also, the cocktails were good. I ordered a cosmo. And is not at all the reason why we had a late start the next morning.

The next morning (well, I should say early afternoon… we slept in a little), we met our guide Mike at the top of the gondola on Kicking Horse mountain. We snowboarded a bit down one run, made it up a chair, snowboarded along the ridge and found ourselves riding down some fresh powder leftovers (I couldn’t believe it wasn’t all skied out) in the “Fuse bowl” just off the side of the resort.

The back country near the resort at Kicking Horse is AMAZING. It’s all so accessible and it all funnels down back onto the bottom of the resort so you can either take the gondola back up or easily get to where you parked your car. So many people ski tour around here it is crazy… and I can see why.

We rented our back country gear like our backpacks, shovels, probes, and beacons from Avalanche Safety Solutions in Golden, and we got our snowshoes and poles from 180 Mountain Sports in town. We even got to try out a Snowpulse Airbag backpack… which we will of course save for our awesome HD snowboard video coming up

Here I am with Mike, our fantastic guide from Canadian Powder Adventures. I honestly didn’t even know that you could hire someone to take you into the back country for a day trip… and when we met Mike in the restaurant it just seemed like a great idea. I am SO glad we did. He was so patient with us (even though I am totally out of shape and was super slow), and taught us a lot about avalanche safety as we went along on the tour. Allan and I are really new to the back country stuff… we did out AST-1 avalanche training course last year, but this is the first time we’ve really been out in the backcountry when it hasn’t been a course.

The snow was just perfect. Really stable, super soft but yet firm enough to hike on, and of course… we had a blue sky day… can’t ask for much more than that!

The views were just beautiful off the top of the ridge. I was amazed how much accessible backcountry there was… we didn’t come across anyone during our hike and we rarely saw other people’s lines.

Yeah, it took me a little longer than it should have to hike, plus we got a late start… so we did get to see the start of a beautiful sunset

Here is our trail from the gondola to where we rode down. Mike says it would take him 40 minutes to do it… it took us 2 and a half hours. Haha! I couldn’t believe how far we went though.. Mike really chose a great trail.

Here I am at the bottom of Kicking Horse, super tired and exhausted! Haha! It was a perfect day though, and I really can’t wait to show you guys all the video footage we got! Saving the best for last for sure……

Our trip this past weekend to Kicking Horse Mountain Resort and Golden, BC was so much fun! It was our first time to the area, and there was so much to see and do… so bear with me as I separate our trip into a series of blog posts over the next week or so. These are photo posts… I will of course have a big HD snowboard video at the end of all of this

We flew out Thursday night at YVR on WestJet thanks to some buddy passes our friend Emily had given us at the beginning of this year. I’m glad we finally got to use them. We packed everything into our board bags and crossed our fingers that we would pass on the weight scale!

Thanks Emily!

We landed in Calgary an hour later and managed to somehow score a Volvo all-wheel drive despite booking the cheapest possible car with Budget. It worked out well, because having the AWD was really nice (but not necessary) for driving through the mountain passes from Calgary to Golden.

It only took us 2.5 hours to drive from Calgary to Golden… just a little more than it would have taken us to drive from Vancouver to Whistler. I’m really amazed by how accessible Kicking Horse and Golden are. It really is a whole new snowboarding destination that feels like you’re traveling far away… but it’s just a short hop from Vancouver. We arrived at Canyon Ridge Lodge, the B&B/lodge we found which was luckily just off the highway and really easy to get to!

We really lucked out with our accommodations. Kat and Paul (and little Roxy, their daughter) are the nicest people you could meet. I really envy their lifestyle… and maybe one day I’ll set up a bed and breakfast of my own somewhere in a small snowboard or surf destination town.

Their home is AMAZING… Paul actually built it himself. It has vaulted ceilings, exposed timber, and yup… even a hot tub outside. This is the lounge they have… so you can meet other guests or if you book out the whole place you can hang out with your friends here.

This is our room! The bed was super comfortable.

Our own little bathroom… really liked the stone shower walls.

Next time I think we would probably stay in their self-contained suite. It would be nice to have a kitchen and share the suite with a group of friends next time we are in Golden.

In the morning we got our timezones mixed up (Golden is actually on Mountain Time like Calgary, not on Pacific Time like we thought), so we ended up getting a bit of a late start for opening day. YES, it was Kicking Horse Mountain Resort’s Opening Day and there was about 150cm base to play with, and 40 cm of fresh to find!

Seriously, what a cool resort. I honestly didn’t know what to expect going in (except that I had heard a lot about “The Horse”) and that it was a mountain with unique terrain. We pretty much rode blue and black diamonds in pow pretty much all day, and when it got a little tracked out we found the trees and the bowls. The mountain was split pretty much 50/50 skiers and boarders.

The best part though? NO CAT TRACKS! Oh man, for those of you who snowboard… you know how annoying it is to get looped on to those super flat runs made for skiers that you can never seem to get enough speed for? Well, it’s not that Kicking Horse doesn’t have cat tracks… but the mountain is set up so you pretty much never have to run into them. Here I am looking pretty exhausted. Haven’t really gotten my snowboard legs back yet

We had lunch at the Eagle’s Eye restaurant on the top of the gondola.

The layout inside was really nice for a on-mountain lunch stop!

The food was awesome too… after two months of being EXTREMELY strict with myself on an allergy elimination diet I’ve been on, this weekend I decided I was on “vacation” and going to eat whatever! I may be a little biased, but that white wine fettuccine alfredo really hit the spot.

Allan ordered the red curry Thai chicken, which was also delicious.

He also enjoyed his beer.

We spent the rest of the day riding until the gondola closed and our legs had no more in them. First day at Kicking Horse? Pretty darn impressive. You can follow me on Twitter, and also Tourism Golden, Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, and Canyon Ridge Lodge.

A great start, to a great trip! More photos coming… and of course the HD video at the end Thanks for reading!

Last night we drove around to 3 different stores trying to see if we could buy the “That’s It, That’s All” new snowboarding movie with Travis Rice sponsored by Quicksilver and Red Bull. They were all either closed or didn’t have it.

Today, I called every Best Buy, Future Shop, Blockbuster, and all the snowboarding stores on 4th and Burrard. No one had it.

Only a couple sketchy online internet stores had it, and not even many of the big players (e.g. Amazon) had it.

Where was I going to get this freaking movie?

Well, it suddenly hit me at the end of work today that there were Quicksilver stores in Vancouver. AND, it’s a Quicksilver movie. So I quickly called up the store in Oakridge… yes, they had it in stock but they were closing in 8 minutes. Darn. So I asked to see if she could leave it at the Safeway customer service desk since Safeway was open later and I could pre-pay on the phone. It was about to happen but then the district manager gave the ixnay on that.

But, she told me they had a store downtown and I could try them. Bingo! Quicksilver on Granville JUST got the DVD in today so I had them reserve one and I rushed down there to pick it up at 7:30, before they closed at 8.

Awesome, I couldn’t be happier to get my hands on it.

So I made some Japanese udon noodle soup from scratch (mmm chicken broth), with vegetables from Granville Island — leeks, shiitake mushrooms, baby bok choy, some dashi powder, onion, freshly chopped green onions, and enoki mushrooms… I thought it turned out really delicious! (P.S. T&T Supermarket downtown is a great place to buy asian food stuffs like fresh authentic Japanese Udon noodles) So Jay came over and the boys drank beer and I had my udon noodle soup and it was a really good night.

The movie was great — I highly recommend it (PSssst Quicksilver downtown still has some copies). Travis Rice was really ripping it up… tons of great tricks with lots of inverts, corkscrews, grabs, backflips etc… and lots of natural terrain… no park! Nice! Lots of beautiful scenic shots, some gorgeous timelapses, great locations (New Zealand, Alaska, Jackson Hole) and a nice Nelson, BC piece… it was fabulous to see a Canadian snowboarding segment that wasn’t shot in Whistler for once. And catboarding at that… to complement the catboarding trip we have planned in February.. w00t! YES!

Let the snow fall! BRING IT ON.