This past long Easter weekend, Allan and I headed out to Mustang Powder for some freaking incredible catskiing. We had 3 days of amazing untouched powder and pretty much snowboarded until our legs fell off. Oh — and we took TONS of video footage… so stay tuned for that video coming soon. I also have a contest in this post for THREE full-day lift tickets to Grouse Mountain, so keep reading.

What is catskiing or catboarding you ask?

Well, you load all your gear into the bus…

… then you head up the mountain on a “snowcat”… which is a huge machine with a cab for twelve people that can take you up and down the mountain.

You arrive at the lodge, in the middle of nowhere with gorgeous mountain ranges all around. Yes, you are living and sleeping right at the top of the mountains. Allan and I were very fortunate. I won a contest to go to Mustang Powder (although Allan paid for his full trip)… so we didn’t really know what to expect. It was my first time EVER going catboarding.

The rooms are comfortable with their own private bathrooms… but to be fair, you almost never spend any time in them.

The lodge is soooooo amazing. Vaulted ceilings, all wood beams, and they didn’t use a single nail (apparently it’s some kind of peg system?). There’s enough room for 24 guests there, but since it was the end of the season they only ran one cat… so 12 guests.

The lodge really is in the middle of the mountains.

And there was a HECK of a lot of snow. It had been snowing all week and we got a few feet of fresh powder the day we arrived.

Their terrain is pretty incredible. Allan has gone catboarding before and he said it was the best operation he’s ever been to. The amount of terrain they have above the tree line is breathtaking.

Yep, you couldn’t wipe the grins off our faces. It was ridiculous.

We were riding in waist and knee deep snow the entire trip. We hooked up the GoPro HD for a few shots by sticking it on a pole to get a better wide angle. Worked pretty well!

The gladed runs were probably my favourite. They have a ton of old growth trees, but also some great runs with new baby trees that were fantastic.

The food. MAN. I did NOT expect this kind of food. It was gourmet meals every day for breakfast and dinner, not to mention a huge lunch spread to make your own.

Meals included chicken with beurre blanc sauce and capers, lamb osso bucco, a huge piece of bison tenderloin, fresh homemade pastry for lemon meringue, cheesecakes, carrot and coconut soup, broccoli cheddar soup, beautiful salads, and fresh blueberry pancakes for breakfast! My only complaint was that they didn’t seem to get the allergy concerns we listed on the admission sheet, so my recommendation is to make sure the kitchen receives your concerns on the very first day.

There’s a lot to do in the lodge too. There’s a full bar with premium liquors, a huuuuuuuuge outdoor hot tub, and a games room with pool and foosball and books.

One of the days I also got to go out on a snowmobile and do a private film shoot with one of their ski stars, Bruno. It was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to show you the video footage.

It was great to make new friends in the group, and I hope we all stay in touch.

This is one of my FAVOURITE photos from the whole trip. Check out our lines in the snow. Check out the incredible terrain. Holy crap, yes, that was a LOT of powder this past weekend.

The snowcats were brand new too, so they were super fast and we rarely ever had to wait for the cats to pick us up and bring us up and down the mountains. They have over 30,000 acres of terrain, so there was always a new untouched run to do.

The group we had was fantastic… 11 guests and a couple staff members to guide and help out. I can’t say how awesome the guides were (thanks for helping to carry my camera gear and dig me out on multiple occasions!) and the group was a really fun mix of people who were all friendly, and good skiers and snowboarders! From left to right back to front: Garrett, Roger, Dell, Kieran, Gail, Paula, Allan, Nigel, Ben, Greg, Bruno, Cam, and me. Kieran and Paula are owners and operators of Big Red Cats, so it was neat to see them there too and talk about their operation as well.

Our group had a pretty fast pace and on one of the days we managed to cover 22,000 vertical feet! Yes, that is for ONE day of skiing! It was surreal to look back up at our tracks.

At the end of each day, I felt exactly like this dog. I was exhausted. But I was also very, very happy. By the end of the third day I was actually getting my legs underneath me and I think I’ll be a lot more prepared for next time.

Nick and Ali Holmes-Smith are the owners and operators of Mustang Powder, and they are one of the nicest couples you will ever meet. I gotta say they have a pretty charmed life with their three girls, dogs, catskiing operation for the winter and summer farm with horses for the summer. Crazy, eh? They invited us back for next year and I CAN’T WAIT!

It was the end of the season so the entire group of guests plus all the staff said their goodbyes. It was sad when it was over. It was the best snowboarding trip we’ve ever gone on, and without a doubt we’ll be back next year. Stay tuned for videos!

GROUSE MOUNTAIN LIFT TICKET CONTEST

I am also giving away THREE full-day lift tickets courtesy of Grouse Mountain here in Vancouver, BC. You’ll have to use them before the end of the season, but considering the amount of snow we are getting, you could very well have a powder weekend!

What: Three, full-day lift tickets for Grouse Mountain that must be used before April 30, 2010.
How: Just leave a comment on this blog post and you’ll be entered!
When: I will draw the winner on Saturday, April 10th at 10:00 PM. (So you can use them on Sunday if you want)

Good luck, thanks for reading

Hello everyone… I’m so happy that it is Friday today, that I thought I would make a Happy Friday post.

My weekend plans include cooking, reading (finishing up the Wheel of Time series), playing some video games on the Xbox 360, and maybe even snowboarding depending on the conditions. Let’s hope for some new snow! I’m also hoping to do a photo walk, and may try and pop down to the Olympic cauldron before it goes out since I haven’t gotten a picture there yet.

What are your weekend plans?

In other news, everything Olympic is going to come to a close in Vancouver this weekend as the Paralympics Games come to a close as well. In honour of this, I thought I’d post my favourite Olympic “image” yet.

This joyful and fantastic piece of art was created by my good friend Alissa Staples. She is a children’s book illustrator here in Vancouver and you can check out her website and Twitter! It makes me happy about everything Olympics and Paralympics… and I’m so thankful that these wonderful events were hosted in our hometown. Thanks Alissa for letting me use your image!

Lastly, I wanted to let you know about a couple upcoming things I’ll be doing over the next few months…

The next couple weeks: Expect to see a video from our experiences in Golden and Kicking Horse with lots of snowboarding footage. And I’ll also be putting together a snowboarding video of our time at Apex with the outdoor hockey tournament.

End of March: Look out for some spring photo posts and maybe even some spring fashion…

April 2-5: Allan and I will be going CATBOARDING! So excited. We’ll be going to Mustang Powder which is in the Monashees near Revelstoke. Catboarding is basically snowboarding but with a group that uses a snowcat to get up the mountain. This is usually done in remote areas and you end up riding powder all day! I’ve never been catboarding before and this is as good or next to as good as heli-skiing/boarding. Wish me luck! I’ll definitely be doing my squats every day until then…

May 21-24: Allan and I celebrate our 3rd year (dating) together! Our anniversary plans include going to Tofino, getting in some early season surfing and maybe a special dinner out.

Summer 2010: We’ve got all our campsites booked from May through to October and we’ll be going surfing in Tofino just about every other weekend in the summer. Look out for lots of surfing photos and videos!

What are your plans for the spring and summer?

Today is a bit of a weird blog post. I’m posting the winner of one of my contests, while also entering a contest myself!

First up, this is my contest entry for the Cat Skiing at Mustang Powder Contest. I’ve never been catskiing or catboarding before, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to try it out!

The contest asks for a blog post, but I also thought I’d include a video just for fun. It’s a little silly, it was filmed and edited late at night in the midst of chaos. Still, I think I’d be a great candidate to win the contest and I’ve put together some reasons why ( in text, just in case):

- I am extremely passionate about snowboarding and I’m constantly on the hunt for deep, fresh powder lines
- I’d love to take high quality photographs and videos of the catboarding experience; I’ve got a ton of equipment such as a DSLR with fisheye and telephoto, an HD video camcorder/DSLR, and a helmet mounted or board mounted GoPro HD camera which can help capture the experience
- I’m always on the lookout for new adventures!
- I have my AST-1 avalanche certificate so I know some of the basic safety principles for the trip
- I love road trips!
- I’d love to post about the experience on my blog and Twitter

Cross your fingers for me, friends!

ALSO, I thought this would be as good a place as any to post the winner of the contest I held for the Volcom Snowboard jacket!

Congratulations to the winner. Again, please excuse the silliness, as this was even later in the night. Winner, please e-mail me at allie@vancityallie.com. If I do not hear from the winner within 2 weeks I will do a re-draw.

Thanks to everyone for entering!

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.