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Alta states: Making the move

The first step is always the hardest
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I gotta tell you. This moving to Whistler thing has turned out to be the best decision I've made in the last nine months.

Really. I'm not kidding. Nor am I being ironic. And considering how much I tossed and turned and agonized and suffered over it, I can't believe how well it's playing out. It's totally positive. Feels just right. I'm like Goldilocks snuggling comfortably into little bear's bed. Snow White stumbling onto the dwarfs' ramshackle house and finding refuge there. I'm home. I'm where I belong. And the responses from my friends only confirm what I already know. The mountains are raising my spirits again.

Now if I can only figure out a way to sustain the move, I can get down to the more arduous task of rebuilding my shattered life from the ashes of April's tragedy...

Don't get me wrong. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. Bad things happens. It's just that I'm realizing just what a wild spiritual roller coaster I've been riding these last few weeks. And just how thick the fog of grief had settled around me recently. Now that I'm slowly getting comfortable with my new digs, that fog is slowly dissipating and I'm beginning to see clearer what the path ahead might look like. It's steep as hell, I can tell ya. But at least there's a discernible path now. Until very recently, all I could see was darkness...

Compromise is an interesting thing. For 30 years, I chose to live in a community that never became home. Vancouver was just too big for me. Too urban. Too busy. And for the kind of semi-domesticated animal that I was, far too rule-bound.

Trouble lurked around every corner. I'm probably one of the only guys in Vancouver to have been hit with multiple speeding tickets - on my road bike! One time in Stanley Park, the cops even called the paddywagon on me because I questioned their priorities in stopping a defenceless cyclist when motorists were flying by at mach speed. Okay, so I could have been more polite. But then, authority and I have never been all that tight.

The police had my number, for sure - at times it felt like the men-in-blue were just waiting for me to leave the house so they could toy with me. As for driving a car in the city, forget about it. I was like a bull let loose in a chicken coop.

But Wendy, dear Wendy, was so important to me that I willingly subjugated my own need to live in the mountains for a chance to share my life with this wonderful person. And for better or worse (mostly better), we made it happen. We brought up two strong and confident children. Worked through mid-life crises (mostly mine). Learned and grew and celebrated our differences with humour and laughter. It's not like we felt like we were better than anybody else. Far from it. It's just that we knew we had somehow stumbled onto our own little formula for marital bliss. And that was good enough for us.

As I write this in my new living room (well, not exactly new, but new for me), the clouds are just beginning to lift off Sproat Mountain across the valley. A sea of blue is pushing in from behind bringing a whole new glitter to the day. The tableau of snow-pasted peak against cerulean sky is almost too beautiful to bear. And I can't help but smile. As soon as this column is finished I know where I'm going. The summits are calling my name...

Funny too. Since moving up here in November, I keep getting flashbacks of the first winter I spent at Whistler way back in 1973-74. Same mountains. Pretty much the same weather. But such a different gestalt!

Back then Whistler was a very small town with a very big mountain in its backyard. And for those who could handle it, there was enough untouched snow to please even the most aggressive powder pigs. In fact, the real powder skiing was reserved for the experts.

I mean, it wasn't like you could just jump on a pair of fatties and hit the slopes. You had to pay your dues man. Think about it - skinny race skis that reached way over your head and refused to turn unless you applied serious pressure, uncomfortable plastic boots that reached barely above your ankles and did little to provide the stability you needed to control those long skis. In those days, you had to be an athlete just to ski offpiste.

And the clothing, my god the clothing.

Suffering the old Red Chair lift ride in Alpine Joe's stretchy ski pants with a skimpy Mossant Ski School jacket to cover my torso, it felt to me sometimes like the reward just wasn't worth the price. The lift was so slow, the ride so long - and the clothing so inappropriate to the weather - that it often felt like I was being tortured by the mountain gods just for the heck of it. Indeed, on one of my first days as a Whistler instructor, I underestimated the severity of the exposure and the ferocity of a West Coast storm and arrived at the top of the mountain seriously hypothermic.

I must have presented quite a sight. Picture it: there I was, on the cusp of leaving my teen years behind, a serious young ski instructor with a gaggle of struggling students and a medical condition that was getting worse by the moment. I was like a drunk on skis. Incoherent. Unable to assess the situation properly. Totally uncoordinated. One minute I was standing, the next I was lying in the snow and not really sure how I got there.

It was ugly.

I don't remember exactly how it all played out. I know somebody eventually took my class over and called the patrol. I know they took me down the mountain in a toboggan and stuck me in a sleeping bag stuffed with hot compresses. I think I cried for an hour. Then I slept. But the next day I was right back at it. Amazing how resilient you are when you're 19 and full of beans and dreaming of that big snow dump and the perfect powder turns you're going to make down a pristine Shale Slope...

What really sticks in my brain, however, is the size of the storms that used to visit us at Whistler on a regular basis.

Know what I mean? Those who've lived here for a few decades will happily bear witness to it. And yes, maybe I'm looking at the past through rose-coloured spectacles. But it sure seems to me like winter storms used to hit this place with far more regularity than they do now. And what a cover they'd leave behind.

As a kid growing up in Quebec City, I'd seen my fair share of winter storms. Indeed, those nasty northeasterly systems that regularly came juddering off the St. Lawrence could easily dump a foot of snow on our local slopes overnight. But it was so wind-whipped and storm-tossed that a "powder" run at my home resort of Mont Ste. Anne was more like a frozen version of the Baja 500. Ever hit a three-foot snowdrift that's been carved into a rock-hard wave of solidity going full-tilt boogie on a pair of 210cm race skis?  Believe me, you don't try it twice. But then, that's what powder skiing Quebec-style was all about for us.

That's why West Coast snow was such a revelation. It was like finding true love. I mean, I'd never experienced anything so soft, so deep, so welcoming. And from the moment I'd tasted of its sweetness, there was no going back...

Like the snow addict that I am, I can just about recall all the details of the first big dump I experienced at Whistler. Like most nights back then, I'd been invited to someone's home for a big potluck dinner. I remember walking from my squat (nobody had cars back then) and remarking on the density of the snowfall. The flakes were huge. And the air was full of them. It was like this massive wall of white that was slowly descending on the valley. But there wasn't a breath of wind. Strange, I thought, this can't be a big storm if it's not blowing. By the time I reached my host's front door, however, I had to reconsider.

You know those moments in the Coast Mountains when it's snowing so hard that it starts to pile on your shoulders and head faster than you can shake it off? Well that particular night featured that kind of a storm.

By the time the party was over and I was ready to head back home, Whistler had been transformed. Cars were but gormless shapes of white. Even the houses looked like they'd slouched further down into the neighbourhood snow banks. And the silence. It's what I remember best. So peaceful. So magical. As I ploughed my way through the new snow, nearly thigh-deep at times, I couldn't help but fantasize about the kind of skiing we were going to have on the mountain the next day. I can still recall just how tingly I felt. I was like a kid looking forward to Christmas morning. I couldn't wait to wake up...

Of course, the white stuff had turned to rain by the next morning. So it goes. But there were still big lessons to learn. For up above mid-station - on Dad's Run and Chunky's Choice and Blue Chair liftline - the snow was still deep and soft and enticingly inviting.

But enough reminiscences. Happy New Year everyone. As usual, our little family will be participating in the torchlight descent tonight. So if you see us out there, don't hesitate to stop and say hi. Goodness me, I'm just so excited to be a bona fide Whistlerite again....