Happy Birthday Ladies-SOAP BOX

When we adopted our dog and people would ask 'how old is she?', we would have to do the math from the seven-month old dog we adopted in early September and come up with a number. After a while, we realized seven months from September would bring us to early Feb, the same time my wife has her birthday so we gave our dog the same day as my wife's birthday.  

We have one rule at our clinic we own together: we always take our birthdays off no matter what day it falls on. This year having Fridays, Sundays and Mondays off already, her birthday came on a Saturday so we got a four-day holiday. We have also developed a reciprocal gift-giving system where she will shuttle me up for some mountain biking for my birthday in June, and I offer 100% trail-breaking to any area she wants to go for her birthday. This year, we received a nice 15-25 cm (depending on the aspect) of snow the week before and nice cold temps to make the trailbreaking less of a slog. 

The first day, hit the lower skier's left line off of the Whalesback under the cross-loaded cornice where the winds deposited the 25 cms of fresh snow we were expecting on the lee aspects. Fresh tracks to the bottom down the main gullies in sunshine. The sublimating water vapour turning to ice crystals in the air because of the cold temps leading to the phenomenon she calls 'sky diamonds' as they shimmer in the sunshine. At the end, my wife commented 'those are better than real diamonds any day'. 'Cheaper too', I replied. I broke back up 2/3 up the gully to the base of the Whale and we finished the first day with three more mini-laps with sky diamonds for most of it.   

For her actual birthday, we started touring in -20 degrees and a fairly moderate wind. We anticipated the SE face of Ecstasy would have received a similar amount of snow to our run from yesterday from the wind direction during the storm. So off we went with a north-facing run into the Ecstasy backside bowl. When I broke the trail back to the ridge line, there were strong winds blowing more snow onto our desired run so we took our time and returned to the backside bowl off the face of Ecstasy for another lap and let our run accumulate some more centimeters. As the winds howled a little more that day and a large cloud looming over the area, it was time to hit the front face. Went down a bit to set up for the photo when my dog just started jumping down the face on her own. I yelled at my wife, 'I guess she knows it is her birthday too, trying to get some fresh tracks!'. My wife dropped in after her for a nice tandem picture of the two birthday girls ripping into the run:

At the bottom, I asked my wife if she wanted to head for the truck now and go do some retail therapy in town or hit another lap. Despite the cold temps, disappearing sunshine and fairly decent wind, she could not pass up another lap in good snow so she requested another run. 'No problem', I said. Finished the day breaking another trail up to meet up with our previous Whalesback gully uptrack and finished with a true Whalesback gully (between Whale and the uptrack to Evening ridge') with a hidden meadow that received no warm sunshine last week and was up to the knees. How lucky. Finished the day making dinner, baking a cake and frying up some duck for my dog as her birthday treat.  

Third day, no trail breaking. Skied Mt. Crowe at the Strawberry Pass near Nancy Greene Lake with a friend from Rossland. Four laps on E, N and W aspects in good snow. First time to that area so it was nice on the eyes. Lots of new areas to scope out from the top.  

Last day, had to hit some true north-facing runs for the best snow quality of the area. Came off the Whalesback false peak with a NE run into Hummingbird and three mini-tours back up to finish the four-day holiday. Snow was amazing in the bowl and for reasons unknown to me, nobody had taken the steep ridge line between the Evening ridge side and the Selous side. Happy birthday to the dog as the pitch was perfect for her to ski right next to us the whole way down (she even got to a one of my favourite chutes before me!). At the end before our last skin up to exit out of Hummingbird Pass, she could not resist a little snooze on a snow mound after a long four day ski holiday:

All in all a beautiful birthday holiday. Finished with just under 5000m vertical for the four days, including 1000m of trail breaking. Considering the last weekend where we were scratching around to find pockets of untouched and soft snow, we were very fortunate.  

After the weekend was over, treated my wife to a facial from a spa. The lady commented on her cheeks red and weather-stripped from the cold and wind from walking the ridgetops all weekend. Could not be more proud of her. That night, the dog got a nice half-femur calf bone (the size of my upper arm) as she fell asleep with her head resting on it. Happy birthday ladies. Let's do this again next year.  Hope my birthday falls on a Saturday this year...