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……

Today’s a photo post. Tomorrow — I shall post the video.

I have been eagerly wanting to ride my new Malolo around, so Saturday we went up to Whistler Blackcomb in an attempt to find some powder. We knew it was going to be hard — there was lots of new snow from the week, but all of it had been poached, and it was 2 days since the last snowfall.

We headed up to Whistler Blackcomb and had a really great, sunny day. We did a few groomer runs to start out… I really liked the feel of my Malolo on the groomers. I would say surprisingly it’s almost better on the groomers than my Feelgood. Must be the taper.

It wasn’t too busy where we were… we took the Glacier Express up… lots of little pockets here and there and really not many people to be seen. And warm enough to get a sunburn! Yeah!

We soon got bored of the groomers and I was itching to get my board on some powder, but there was none to be seen, so we spotted a spot we wanted to hike to and board down. This spot looked like it was still full of the good stuff.

So we started rode up the Jersey Cream chair and rode through some gladed runs (nice stashes to be found in there), and took 7th Heaven up. We hiked about 15 minutes before we saw this little hut. It was a great view throughout the entire hike.

30 minutes later and we still had our work cut out for us. We hiked all the way to the top of that peak and more.

Here I am, 60 minutes later and definitely getting tired. We stopped lots to take photos and videos but I was definitely huffing and puffing.

A look back from where we came. Yup.. all the way from that distant chairlift. We really didn’t do anything special compared to Tawcan and his friends but it was far for me!

Finally we got to the spot where we could drop in. The ride was short for the amount of hiking, only about 10-15 seconds… but it was glorious. My Malolo just glided over the snow… I barely had to lean back… so easy to make those powder turns. Ahhhhhh.

So I wanted to make sure my board was right for me, and I’m glad we went out of our way to try that little experiment. I’m completely in love with my Malolo for just about every mountain experience. My Burton Malolo review was successful. I was riding clouds all day… it’s perfect for me.

Video to come soon!