FIRST DAY SNOWBOARDING, FINALLY

THE PEAK, GROUSE MOUNTAIN, North Vancouver, Canada

FOGGED IN CITY BELOW PROVED MOUNTAIN SUNSHINE ABOVE

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The first day of snowboarding for the season was not exactly ski in and ski out, at least not how ski in, ski out is imagined anyway.

Snowboarding without a car to drive yourself to the destination resort had some disadvantages, like options in terms of which mountain to visit. And for that early morning start, there is that limited patience with commuting and ride sharing, having to be at the exact location at the exact time. I like to get an early start but not necessarily according to someone else’s schedule.

I tossed and turned all night thinking about my first day of the snowboarding season. I had waited patiently at first for the snow to fall in November, and then for the Christmas holiday crowds to dissipate, and then for the weather to become a bit favorable in January, and then for the sun to shine this week, which is the preferred weather for riding. Snowboarding becomes somewhat hazardous when reaching certain speeds through limited visibility zones.

I had been there before as a child of course, with many still fond memories as if the ski moments had occurred just a few years ago.

Grouse Mountain seemed so big and mysterious then, even later as a teenager making Wednesday trips as part of the school ski club, with the gondola and the view from the city, especially at night with the lights. I can still remember trips as a child. We were quite active, and I began collecting pins from the mountain gift shops. I still have one from Grouse Mountain, in some box somewhere.

The problem with snowboarding on the North Shore Mountains has always been the weather, like this past week after a lot of snow over the holidays, rain just seems so determined to wash away everything winter has made so far.

The choice to go or not seemed all so complicated during the days leading up to yesterday with the forecast calling for sunny skies, but then the city was foggy in the morning when I woke up, as it had been the day before as well.

I had usually notched in a few days by mid-January, but not this year for whatever reasons. So, a lot of pressure developed to get that first day in, and then, with the goal of just to keep going at least one day per week until the end of the season, like in the previous four seasons with the car.

You know, I do not have a car anymore. I had to give up my car for financial reasons (because of the cost of repairs) and for reasons of reducing the carbon footprint.

So, I had two options really. I had learned to snowboard on Cypress Mountain four years ago when I had a car. I would have had to meet up with a private shuttle on one of the main city gathering points, like Canada Place on Vancouver Harbor, at a certain time and place, you know, or you get left behind.

The second choice was Grouse Mountain. A public transit bus goes through Downtown Vancouver along West Georgia Street, and stops at the Grouse Mountain Gondola, but just twice a day: once in the early morning for the trip to the mountain, and once in the late afternoon, for the trip home, I guess. A second public transit bus goes about halfway from the Downtown. Snowboarders then have to get off the bus once in the North Shore and wait for a second bus that goes the rest of the way to the Gondola.

I remember this option from when I used to have to make connections from North Delta. For the life of me, I cannot remember how many connections my friends and I had to make, but I remember the last connection was at Hastings and Cassiar, and then on to Grouse Mountain.

Anyway, I got up at 6 am yesterday morning, and snoozed for about 15 minutes before making an espresso. My best days snowboarding are when I get a good night sleep and have a fortified breakfast in the morning. Having lost the first part of the battle to night tremors, I was determined to still have a good day on the mountain.

I had three pieces of bacon, two eggs and a banana, and another espresso to get me out the door in time.

I have been expecting to go for so long now that I did not really have to lay out my gear the night before, as I had been inspecting pieces of equipment, one piece at a time since early December.

I had waxed my snowboard just before the end of the last season, so I just had to quickly check my edges for burs, which I did that first week of December.

My goggles and helmet were in the same place I had left them about mid-December, when I just checked to make sure I still had them, and that the goggles were still in good condition. Of course, the goggles are still a bit lose, as I am reminded each day, just before the first run of the day when I put them over my glasses, and then the goggles slide down my nose a bit too much. 

But anyway, so the city is foggy, but the mountain forecast was still for sunny skies. So, I decided to go. I was out the door at 7:15 am and had to run a bit to catch the bus as it was just pulling into the bus stop. No big deal as this particular bus comes by every 10 minutes, but since the bus is there, you tend to want to run to catch it before it pulls out of the stop.

I then had to connect with the Grouse Mountain No. 247, the ‘one time express’, on West Georgia and Denman by about 7:41 am. I arrived at the stop at about 7:39, and as I got there the other Grouse Mountain bus, No. 246, pulls up. This bus is the one that only goes half-way to the Gondola from the Downtown. I decided to pass on this one and wait for the Grouse Mountain ‘one time express’. I got a bit anxious though, as I seemed to have to wait and wait for this bus that was, as it turned out, only running about 5 minutes late, but at the time, I thought I had missed it and let the 246 go by as well, thereby squandering my early start to the day waiting at a bus stop.

But all good though, as I actually arrived about 20 minutes early for the Gondola.

The Gondola area was still foggy, but the mountain employees were a bit chatty about how the day was so sunny and beautiful up top, as they made us wait for a second gondola, this gondola sitting there in the station being for the last few employees straggling in to work.

I remember how The Peak run was so monstrous as a kid, and even as a teenager, and then to turn left then down into Blueberry was rather substantial. A lot of time on the mountain as a kid was spent on the Cut, and then once in a while, I would take the side trails, such as Centennial, to Blueberry.

On day one, the trails were rather icy after all that wait since December, the rain having come down for about week, and then with overnight freezing. But the trails were not so icy as other mountains with overnight temperatures dropping below minus 20 Celsius, and then the trails get a good ice sheet built up.

The trails on Grouse still had some give in them, like frozen corn snow does, and the day was sunny and mild, so the snow softened up pretty quick, giving the trails a bit of a topcoat, early on.

I got some good runs in after warming up on the Cut, with very few skiers and snowboarders on the trails between 9 am and 10 am.

I repeated the runs a few times until I got a bit of form back for the season, and then I continued a few more times just enjoying snowboarding again after a long layoff since the early closures due to covid late March last year.

I have been jogging since about May, perhaps June. Instead of cycling so much, as I had moved into the Downtown and no longer needed to make the long cycle commute each day. So, I started jogging around the Stanley Park Seawall, probably peaking a bit during the heat wave last summer, and not really getting the best times because of the heat.

I also starting weight training again, since about September. I tried starting in July, but I did too much, too quickly, and blew up my shoulder. So, I let that heal before heading back into the gym again late September. The first six weeks in the gym were just agonizingly slow, starting out with low weights and not noticing any improvements for several weeks.

But then the muscles remembered when I worked out a lot a few years ago, and everything started to improve really quickly. I even began doing squats to make up for the lack of cycling, and to try to just get my legs stronger for snowboarding, even stronger than they would have been from cycling so much in previous off seasons.

Unfortunately, my knees did not like the combination of squats and running. And I had to stop running for about six weeks, as I could barely walk to the bus stop anymore, after one early morning run.

And then the gym closed again due to covid, and everything just came to a halt over Christmas, when I would normally be getting at least five days of snowboarding in and establishing a routine for the season, and setting the goal of getting about one snowboarding day per week in for the rest thereafter the holidays.

So, today was a pretty tough day one.

After repeating the Peak to Blueberry run quite a few times, when the snow began to soften up in the sun, I found a few longer runs, by connecting trails.

Most of the Black Diamond runs were closed due to lack of snow (dissolved away in the rain), which reduced the novelty of the day a bit. But I still managed to get in a pretty happy four hours before my legs and lower back gave way to fatigue, as these body parts tend to do on the first day snowboarding, no matter how much off season training gets accomplished.