This past weekend, I went on a 3-day snowshoeing and winter camping trip with a PE class from Dawson College. My friend Anthony teaches the course and recruited three of us from the MOC to be his assistants. It was tons of fun, not only to be outside ourselves, but also to watch the reactions of a bunch of city-kids that seemed to never have spent more than an hour outdoors. We're talking (for the most part, of course there were exceptions) full-on rich kids from Westmount that don't even know how to boil water for themselves and have never done so much as a minute of manual labour. Which is why it took them until 3 in the morning to finish building their snow shelters, when it should have been a 3-4 hour activity. Honestly, these kids would come up to us, with no mittens, hands in their coat sleeves, and jackets unzipped and complain that they were cold. Well, kid-o, you've got 3 options: go put on something warmer, start a fire, or jump around. And they would look at you like you were the meanest person they'd ever met and then sit down just as they were and sulk.
It wasn't all bad, though. As instructors, we had a great time and there were some kids that seemed really psyched to be there (I call them kids, but really they're only a year or two younger than me). And oh, the food! While the kids were choking down macaroni and sausage (they had to plan their own menus), we were gorging ourselves on bacon, pancakes, a cheese fondue, and fine swiss chocolate. It was heavenly!
Moi and the sea of blue foamies. These kids REALLY made me feel good about my fitness level on the hike in!
Yep, that's a bale of hay. There were three of them tagging along on the trip.
Nik whipping up a hearty breakfast of blueberry pancakes and bacon.
Getting home from winter camping on Sunday, we heard that Jay Peak in Vermont had gotten 2 feet of fresh snow over the weekend so Nik and I decided to head down there on Monday and see if there was any fresh snow left to be had. There wasn't a ton, but we still had a great day skiing the trees, with the exception of one run, that just might take the cake for the worst ski run ever, when we went down the wrong side of a ridge while we were out of bounds and had to bushwhack through alder bushes all the way down, only to find that we were a 1/2 hour hike from the lift. At least there were lots of other tracks in the same spot, so we weren't the first to make that stupid mistake!
And, as if I wasn't tired enough after 3 days of snowshoe camping and a day of skiing, I was on the slopes again today, this time slopes without a lift. Mike, Pat and I went to an abandoned ski hill in the eastern townships where we yo-yoed all day. I spend just about every last drop of energy I had trying to keep up with those two on the ascents. The skiing was too low angle to get in any really good turns but it was still great to be out in the sun and on the snow.
So now I'm utterly and completely spent and ready to spend the next 24 hours in bed with a good book, but I just got an email from Nik telling me that tomorrow's going to be the last nice day before a week of warm weather and rain moves in, so it looks like my day of rest will have be put on hold...one more time.
Oh, que j'aime l'hiver!
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