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Into the deep

The challenges of building an off-the-grid, overnight snowcat operation from the ground up aren't for everyone, but Backcountry Snowcats near Pemberton has taken them all on happily

Descending through a burned out forest is one of the more ethereal sensations in a sea of ethereal sensations that is snow riding. On a sunny day in a regular alpine forest, the familiar ball-gown waistlines of healthy, snowbound conifers offer a labyrinth of crisscrossing alleyways that alternately close out and reveal themselves with every turn, eliciting an approach both careful and controlled. In a burn, however, where you can see all the way down a slope with little impediment offered by the blackened spires scraping the sky or a chiaroscuro of shadows set across the snow like sabres laid to rest, the arrangement usually invites wild, high-speed riding. Today, however, with changeable snow conditions, it's not quite as wild in the burn — a main attraction that hangs above the lodge of Backcountry Snowcats — as it could be. Instead we find ourselves in the halting progress of chasing cold pockets, trying to avoid the descending warmth of a January inversion. By the time we topped out in the alpine after our first ascent this morning — about a 40-minute cat ride from the warren of interconnected buildings comprising Hurley Mountain Lodge — It was already +5C in the sun.

With snow from the last storm long-since skied off by its hordes of shredders, and the latest in a series of deep inversions poised to bake anything left into oblivion, Whistler Blackcomb is played. However, on Hurley Pass, in the South Chilcotin Mountains outside of Pemberton, there is still plenty of powder — though it has been a tough mission for lead guide Conny Amelunxen to find just the right exposures in the burn. As we descend, the temperature drops steadily in this upside-down cake of a day (it's still -16C in Pemberton), and the snow quality vastly improves. Higher up, where the aspect angle strays a handful of degrees from north and the snow has experienced even a few minutes of radiation, it's grabby, so Conny works us around trying to find the right combination of aspect and elevation; there are moments of glory, occasional satisfaction and several near over-the-bars spectacles. Eventually, trying to ride anything but true north-facing terrain seems futile, and we hop in the cat for a pleasant 30-minute grind to the south end of Backcountry's tenure where a series of ridges and rollers of forest-sheltered shots pretty much all face north. The warm air temperature in sunny areas up high was a strange reality, but the shaded slopes here are like another planet: we all leave vaporous clouds of cold smoke hanging in the air from our first shin-deep turns. Inversion? What inversion?

It's testament to this simple fact: even the most challenging day of backcountry skiing beats resort runs when it comes to snow quality, something plenty of Whistler visitors who make use of day cat- and heli-skiing at Powder Mountain and Whistler Heliskiing already know. The kind of lodge-based opportunity now offered by Backcountry Snowcats — so close to the well-beaten haunts of the Vancouver ski crowd and yet a world away — means another option for core locals and vacationers alike. Which is exactly how Reg and Kathy Milne saw it from the start.

Somewhere back in the early '80s, Reg read an article in a magazine about cat-skiing near Revelstoke. It gave him an immediate desire to eventually do the same. Reg had met Kathy on Whistler when she was a lift operator on Olympic and he was in maintenance. Kathy went on to be a groomer and that helped keep the cat-ski dream alive; researching equipment and tenures became a regular spare-time activity for the pair. Indeed, the first snowcat they acquired from Whistler Mountain was purchased because Reg thought it would be fun to ski some backcountry with it; but the need for someone with a cat on a movie project filming in Whistler got him involved in the film industry. He ended up working on special effects for the mountaineering drama K2, did that kind of work for 12 years, then shifted over to both rigging and performing stunts. Despite all this, the commercial cat-ski idea, as Reg puts it, "always stuck in my brain."

By 1989 they were researching an area of the Hurley Pass in the South Chilcotin Mountains outside of Pemberton, and applied for the tenure in 1990. In a long story repeated by many in the industry hunting tenures in this era, it wasn't until the NDP got into power that B.C. actually allocated resources to deal with the backlog and conflicts of this process, establishing BC Assets and Lands (BCAL) in 1998 with a mandate to sell or lease public lands and make money doing so. When Gordon Campbell's Liberals won the election in 2001, they concurrently announced aggressive targets for revenue generation from the province's Crown lands through property sales and tenure leases, as well as a mandate to deal with everything that was already in the system and process new tenure applications in 140 days or less. Soon, backcountry tenures were being handed out in B.C. like loot bags at a kid's birthday party. At the time, dozens were pending in the Sea to Sky corridor (both Powder Mountain Snowcats and TLH Heliskiing Ltd. received tenure approvals in 2001), some competing for different uses on the same parcels, so there was still much for governments to sort through as well as a wise bit of pull-back on the hyper-speed approval. For Reg and Kathy, bureaucracy still reigned supreme: it ultimately took 14 years from application to get the nod on their dream. Not that they were just sitting around waiting.

"Anticipating that we'd get the tenure, we'd gone ahead and purchased a Pisten Bully for cat-skiing," recalls Reg. "Because it was taking so long, though, we eventually just put it to work on a contract basis, grooming trails for various operations and events up on Whistler Blackcomb (Kathy still works on some grooming contracts in Whistler). Then we thought 'If we don't just do it we never will.' So we went for it."

They skied their first run at the nascent Backcountry Snowcats operation in the winter of 2005/06.

The rest of our day proceeds in a happy blur. There are ridges and bowls of the kind known to pros and photographers as Mini Golf — powder lines with slots and pillows and rock drops that you can make a stylish move or two on. One of the unique selling points is the complexity of the terrain and its wide variety of features — a good asset in any ski operation. In good weather they are able to access alpine ridges at just over 2,300 metres. The burn area is a signature, and the images that come out of there in great conditions are unmatched.

There are shouts and hoots and hollers randomly dispersed throughout the afternoon — minor epiphanies rising on the wind. In addition to our own overnighting group of skiers there's a snowboard crew from Pemberton just up for the day; like us, they know that given present weather trends, this is as good as it is anywhere in the vicinity. The other thing that makes for plenty of skiing is the layout of the terrain: on these short drops, the cat is pretty much at the bottom by the time you arrive, so there's no waiting — like cycling a chairlift.

The cat drivers have to keep their eyes open while driving, watching not just snow but animal tracks, building a mental bit-map of what's going on in this snowy netherworld. There's plenty of wildlife lurking about even in winter:moose in the bottomlands, wolves all around, and even the occasional cougar tracking mountain goats on the pass.

What has that got to do with skiing? Everything. Wilderness has its own rules. And this is nothing if not wilderness, as guests soon find out on the snowmobile ride into the lodge. It adds up to almost an hour in pretty good trail conditions, telling you just how far off the grid you are. Guests are met in the village of Pemberton, then driven to the staging area at the foot of Hurley Pass (Whistler pick-up can be arranged for large groups; and the staging area is only 2.5 hours from Vancouver airport) where everyone is assigned a snowmobile — many pulling trailers filled with luggage, a convoy often organized and marshaled by Kathy. Some are snowmobiling for the first time ever, part of the fun that gives guests a real sense of being out there. Reg doesn't see that changing in the near future.

"At the moment it works well for us because it gives us flexibility. The other option would be snowcat access but it would also be a long one. Heli access is limiting. Right now we can do a decent two-day package by using snowmobiles. It rings fairly true to the product we offer and, obviously, there's a cultural truth to snowmobiling in this area."

After a day in the mountains and a few down hours at après, interwebbing, hot-tubbing or napping, guests gather around the large dining room table where ski stories past and present circle like ribbons, wrapping everyone together in a bright parcel of experience. The modular Hurley Mountain Lodge, designed to accommodate up to 14 guests as well as staff, sits perched in the Hope Creek Valley at 1,430 metres and has been made cozy with bookshelves, a small lounge, wood-paneling, and door frames arched with timber from the burn, one of the more interesting pieces of ski terrain.

Dinner tonight is turkey breast with garlic-mashed potatoes, green beans with pancetta and steamed broccoli; for dessert, there's pecan pie. It's all lovingly rendered and served up by longtime Whistlerite Gail Morrison, who knows her way around any kitchen but now is her third season, this one in particular. Gail's laughter, which accompanies each dish, is contagious. "Cooking for clients and grateful staff is pretty rewarding," she notes.

Gail prepares the breakfasts, lunches and dinners, as well as doing laundry and chores like shoveling after a big snowfall. "I don't mind," she says, of the all-hands-on-deck approach. "If I didn't do it the guides would have to and they're exhausted after a day out with clients and having to write reports." This sort of team/family vibe permeates the entire operation.

Gail plans menus in advance. Obviously you can't just run to the store to pick up food items you don't have, but unlike more remote backcountry ops, there are enough comings-and-goings from Pemberton for modest resupply. The toboggans used to transport gear and luggage are also used to transport food; Gail & co. load and carry 160-200 kilos of food up the road every time they start work. And there are other challenges. "For example, you have to remember that it's usually always colder in the alpine," says Gail, about the care needed to pack every item where it will both transport and preserve best. "And you don't want to freeze the lettuce — that's really disappointing."

When it comes to challenges, of course, there are the ones you expect — and then there's the ones you don't. At 9 p.m., Reg takes a cat ride to pump a load of water from a creek about a kilometre down the road. "When we first put this lodge in we were expecting to use the water from a creek closer by — but it just wasn't good water. So now this trip is part of the routine."

At one point in early afternoon our attention is drawn to a surreal sight in the sky. Reg, suspended in a motorized paraglider powered by a large propeller fixed behind the pilot's seat, wheels overhead. With the inversion forecast to last another week he's scouting for more north-facing terrain that he hopes to break a cat-road into. The area is affected by the coast, but being on the border with the Chilcotin there are cooler temperatures and drier snow, yielding more options.

Employing a motorized paraglider for planning is unique, but the myriad daily and weekly chores Reg and Kathy are required to deal with sometimes demand creativity. This is true of all cat operations, where time is almost always occupied by work that falls into three categories: first, anything to do with the lodge facility like water, food, generators, kitchen, and plumbing; second, cat maintenance (at some ops I've visited, nightly tune-ups and replacing tread cleats took up an inordinate amount of time); third, the mountain ops, which are split into physical road maintenance — operators are sometimes required to go out in the middle of the night to maintain the cat roads for the next day — and then work related to the ski product such as avalanche forecasting, choosing runs, and just generally making a guest's day a good one.

"You start out wanting to go cat-skiing and spend more time with booking forms and fuel transfers," says Reg. "The ski business is not all skiing."

In fact, the single biggest challenge is getting the word out — few in Vancouver know that this kind of skiing and terrain is available so close, and there has been the 10-15 per cent drop in the heli/cat industry due to the U.S. housing and mortgage crisis and strong Canadian dollar to contend with. A number of guests here are on multi-day trips that include visiting Whistler Blackcomb for a few days; obviously having a draw like that in the vicinity helps business.

"The long term plan is to keep developing our terrain. We still have quite a few areas we haven't skied in much. We might consider a permanent log lodge structure, maybe in a different place, and that might help make it a bit of a year-round destination. Mountain biking looks like a pretty strong option for us."

One thing is for sure, Backcountry Snowcats has options, and it starts with being a dedicated community member as well. Reg and Kathy are involved in several volunteer efforts in town. "Pemberton is a mountain town without a mountain," says Reg. "So we are trying to be that mountain."



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