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!

I’m truly sorry for the long hiatus on this site. I’ve just had a nightmare of a time getting the right parts for my computer, getting it configured exactly the way I want, installing all my old programs, formatting… etc etc you get the picture. I’m truly sorry for the delay and I hope it never happens again!

Anyway, the good news is — I am back up and running

Here’s a little bit of what’s been happening over the past week…

I love weekend breakfasts at Whitespot.. I just can’t get enough of Nat’s Hearty Brunch and a chocolate milkshake!

I got up to Cypress to shoot some B-Roll HD footage for the snowboarding movie and also to check out the snow situation and the new lodge. You can see the Cypress Mountain’s brand new lodge here (opening 2008/2009)… it looks AMAZING! What a big upgrade from the old one. It’s also in a much better location.. you can ski right into this one. Previously, you had to trek across the road and towards the parking lot to get to the lodge. Can’t wait to try it out.

It was pretty much deserted up there. There was this big exposed drainage pipe with yellow rope I couldn’t resist taking pictures of.

A desolate landscape… solitary chairlifts, sparse snow coverage, and exposed brush and rocks. Not a pretty sight for snowboarding but it sure was neat to be up there without anyone around.

The metal fences used for lift lineups.

This is what happens when you put Allan on an empty chairlift.

Ski resort sign posts just lying around.

Lo and behold, a solitary snowboarder! Pretty intense, considering the tiny snowbase and rocks. Kudos for him for hiking and boarding down though! I have to admit I was jealous since this was before I got to Whistler for first turns.

Crisp snowy footsteps leading into the sunrise…

The beautiful city of Vancouver has such a sparkle at night!

I picked up a new tripod since my old one was really bad for video panning. Not smooth at all. My new Manfrotto with 701RC2 head is incredible. Really smooth, stable, and durable.

We relaxed on the weekend… did some singing to Allan’s guitar playing and thought about funny snowboard songs we could make for the movie. On second thought, maybe we won’t put anyone through that suffering

Santorini, Greece

Cadiz, Spain

I’ve been following one of my friend’s Flickr photos recently. One of the best trips I’ve ever taken was to Europe in spring of 2002. I traveled to several different countries including Greece and Spain. One of my friends, Kyle, is currently touring around Europe and it is really bringing back memories for me! He’s got some incredible photos so I highly recommend you check out his photostream here.

My amazing friend from university Sandy out in Toronto surprised me with the sweetest gift! Lindt chocolates with an orange snowboard on the front. How fitting! Thanks Sandy you’re the best, it’s a really cool gift and I was completely surprised. You can check out her fabulous blog here.

Finally, the new computer.

I also debated with myself for a long time and talked to a few friends, and eventually decided to go with Windows Vista as my OS to take advantage of my new hardware (a Christmas present from Allan!).

For the other tech heads out there, here are my full system specs now:

- Gigabyte EP45-UD3P CrossFireX Motherboard (SATA2, DDR2, RAID etc)
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 Quad Core Processor 2.33 GHZ Yorkfield 4 MB
- 8 GB of DDR2 RAM
- A new Antec case and 650W PSU
- A new monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 2253BW)
- Existing: NVIDIA 7900 GS Video Card
- Existing: HDDs adding up to 2 TeraBytes of storage (mostly full though, probably will need a new HDD soon)

Is it top of the line? No. But it is definitely going to be better than what I had before, and it’ll handle HD video editing no problem, which was the main goal of the upgrade.

That’s it for now. The next few weeks are filled with Christmas parties, snowboarding, and lots of fun… I’ll be keeping up to date on the blog again now that the dust has settled with the computer craziness. Hurray! December is finally upon us.

On a side note. What in the world is up with the Canucks. Lately they seem to be falling just short. Four in a row… I think they can turn this slump around real quick, so don’t lose hope everyone!