PISTE 1.09 SEASON PREMIER

SUNSHINE IN SUNSHINE VALLEY, WHO WOULD’AVE THOUGHT IT

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Got the first ride of the season in at Sunshine Valley in Banff National Park, Alberta, after three months of strength training in the gym. I was nervous, and despite my confidence I tweaked my ‘snowboard knee’ on the first run.

Weeks of deliberation, watching the weather forecasts, waiting for snow, sunshine if there was no snow, and analyzing the price fluctuations of hotel and transportation go up and down ever so slightly, finally resulted in a positive outcome.

I had to wait to improve my strength. And then the weather looked good.

I eventually found myself in the food court of the Calgary International Airport waiting for the 90 minute shuttle to Banff National Park where I have every intention of completing the Ski Big 3 challenge.

Sunshine Valley, Lake Louise and Norquay are all within reach, with a hotel shuttle making the short trip from Banff Avenue to the ski hills. Just getting to the mountain for riding is the first challenge.

The second challenge is to truly explore each mountain for riding. Sunshine, for example, actually has three mountains, while Lake Louise has two.

Norquay with one, might be left for an easy day, although I am sure, all three resorts have two sides to them – a green/blue side and a black side.

I brought along my own snowboard, core shot and all, and my own boots and helmet, partly because of the price of rentals over possibly 5 snowboarding days exceeded the charge for checking the board and boots as sports baggage at the airport.

The other reason for bringing your own board is because a good board will have a personality that fits or shapes, for the better, your personal riding style. It’s not as simple as a good luck bat in baseball that got you all those homeruns in July or a tennis racket that survives the beatings of an irate tennis champion after losing a precious point in the early rounds of the Slams.

My board bends and moves the way I like it to, or in the inverse, my board has taught me how to ride a bit differently. The biggest fear was losing the board at the airport as lost checked baggage, or having the board damaged beyond repair after being placed incorrectly in the cargo hold of the plane – the damage only being discovered while doing a pre-trip inspection before heading out to the mountain in the morning. And I had skipped the $4.99 checked baggage insurance premium.

I have pieced together a green itinerary as much as possible, using shared transportation all the way from my home in the West End of Vancouver to the hotel lobby on Banff Avenue in Banff National Park, Alberta.

If you have unlimited money, you can be more carefree. But one parallel narrative is to reduce costs and get there and back on a shoestring budget, if for no other reason, just to see how cheap I can be much to the chagrin of the tourist industry. For example, I bought one dozen energy bars for snacks in order to avoid running into the mountain resort cafeteria and putting down more money for a hot meal.

If I was not careful with money, I might not be able to keep travelling.

I put the flight and hotel and shuttle on a credit card. And then I brought along about $370 in cash in case a storm takes out Interact. I intend to use the same card for all purchases going forward as a way of keeping track of everything.

Typically, I hold onto the cash in reserve until the end of the trip, in case the cash is needed in an emergency.  Often, I bring the cash back home. This squirreling away of the cash reserve happens with trips to Europe and the United States as well.

After the major expenses, I anticipate per day costs, with the more I save on the mountain the more I can spend in a restaurant in the evening, and vice versa, after working up an appetite all day riding.

I wish I could buy and spend whatever I needed and then brag about how much the trip cost me. But I can’t.

The last time I went on a ski vacation, I shared the expenses, in that I spent all my out of packet cash, and then she spent all her out of pocket cash.

I have a two hour wait in the airport for the Banff shuttle, not to be confused with a three hour wait, if you forget to move your watch ahead one hour from Pacific Time to Mountain Time.

The flight from Vancouver only took one hour and 3 minutes. The taxi ride to the airport about 20 minutes in the earl morning well before rush hour. I skipped breakfast at home, because of the early 5:30 am wake up call. And I had breakfast at Vancouver International Airport or YVR, arriving two hours early for the checked baggage to get to the plane in time and for me personally to clear security.

I wasn’t exactly on the way to the Le Cheapo Championship.

Here I am experiencing about 2 hours of downtime at YYC – that is Calgary International Airport.

I had been use to spending time here on the way back to Vancouver, catching dinner in the domestic departure lounge. But on arrival, the story seems to have gone a bit odd.

I mean, I just had breakfast about 90 minutes ago. If I overeat, I won’t be able to ride so well tomorrow.

I am still a bit antsy about leaving my board and boots at the shuttle counter. But I’ll have to wait until the hotel to relax about that. I even brought my own screwdriver to tighten the bindings at the end of the day, as they do tend to work lose during a hard day of carving.

The other problem was estimating how much clothes to bring. I tend to warm up really quick after a few practice runs. But Banff National Park is a dry cold, regularly in the minus double digits during the winter.

I remember one day on Whistler the cold was below  -20 in the wind, and Whistler can have a kind of constant howling wind that accelerates over the mountain ridges of Garibaldi Provincial Park.

I got so cold I couldn’t warm up anymore, and had to begrudgingly make my way off the trails and into the mountain lodge. Once warm, with a belly full of warm food, I decided not to bother anymore, and rode out the day at about 1 pm.

And then I headed home. And this ending from a guy who likes to go to the last run of the day when the lifts close. The day was just that cold.