I’ve gotten in several hikes, skis, and snowshoes so far in 2019; all of them, I’ve decided, have been too mundane for my blog. (They’re not; I’m not in the habit of writing yet.) Sunday’s 10 km ski at Kamview Nordic Centre in -27 was no exception, except for the pictures!
Justus, Rosie, and I planned to ski Jackrabbit to the Sundial, then either take the Lookout, Aspen, or both in a circuitous route through the trail system. In a perfect world, I wanted to ski 15-20 km to get in a good training ski for the Sleeping Giant Loppet; in the real world, it was -27 and we knew we needed to be flexible.
I started out leading. 1 km into Jackrabbit the trail takes a sharp turn left and starts ascending. I waited at the intersection. Justus skied up with a colourless welt the size of a loonie on the tip of his nose. Frostbite already! He covered up and we went back to the chalet to get warm.
A few minutes later, we were on the trail again. I decided to take us on a shortcut (ha!) via Maze back to the Jackrabbit intersection. Rosie was leading and I was in rear. Maze is a beautiful narrow trail for classic only that winds through the woods adjacent to the chalet. When we missed our turn-off, I was too far behind to call to the others. No one really minded because Maze looks like this.
Maze is a circle and we caught the shortcut to Jackrabbit the next time round. The shortcut comes out next to the Jackrabbit intersection, except the intersection is around a corner and just out of sight. I led us left…turns out this was the wrong way. A few minutes later we arrived back at the chalet instead of on Jackrabbit. Oops.
After some mishaps aka exploration, we got back on the main trails. We skied from the chalet via Sunup to the Stadium, where the wind howled in our faces for 200 meters. Once out of the wind, we stopped to soak up some seriously hot sun and turned right onto Tamarack. Deer greeted us–they were chewing on red pine on the loop of the same name. Unfortunately the deer only showed us their behinds, so no photos. For extra fun, we finished our ski by climbing Sunup to the intersection at the top of Jackrabbit and having a long winding ski down. The extra fun also added 1 km, bringing our total ski to 10 km.
Back at the chalet, I took off my backpack and discovered that my back was drenched in sweat. We rounded out the afternoon with well-deserved hot chocolate and Kamview’s famous cookies.
Boreal Backpacker 