Feb. 14-17 2017 at CMH K2 Rotor Lodge, Nakusp, B.C.
Mike's knee injury aside (I hope it is not too serious and I hope it doesn't require surgery) having insurance and cancelling the trip was the best thing that could of happened to Mike because in a word, the SKIING WAS HORRIBLE.
Driving to Nakusp, it rained all the way there. The first day of skiing it was raining and foggy and the choppers didn't fly. Same thing for day 2 except that CMH arranged a day trip to Revelstoke about 1.5 hours away. I didn't go as I was concerned about aggravating my hip flexor that I tweaked at Whistler the week before. They got wet snow on the Stoke Chair (the top 2k vertical) changing to rain part way down to the upper gondola base.
Day 3 was clear, colder, and windy and the choppers did fly but not to the highest landing sites due to severely wind affected snow. Where we did land the first few turns were slightly wind affected but quite ski-able, followed by some nice boot top turns and then the bottom third to half of the run to get to their highest chopper pick up zones, we encountered 2"-3" thick breakable, hard frozen rain soaked, noisy crust. Real knee twister very difficult to turn in ugly crud.
One person in the other group quit after a couple runs and some other skiers in another chopper quit at lunch time. A couple of runs after lunch, I quit and chose to finish the day riding in the chopper. The rest of my group lasted one more run. The other group sharing our chopper did another 2 or 3 runs after that. Most of the runs were short, about 1,000 to 1,500 vertical feet.
At one point we could look down a run and see what I thought were partially covered old tracks, but our guide explained that what I was looking at was the result of water flowing downhill on top of the snowpack.
Afterwards I realized that that was the worst conditions that I had ever skied. "Why is that?", I asked myself. The answer: when the conditions are that bad, I don't go skiing, I go home. With that in mind I chose not to ski the 4th and final day.
CMH offers a partial money back guarantee if minimum vertical is not met during the trip and it was not. They also offer an additional $500 credit toward a future ski trip if the refund is applied toward that same second trip. I won't be taking them up on the $500 second trip offer.
On the plus side, the food was very good, they had a dog friendly room for Tia and I and they didn't charge extra for Tia or for being in a room by myself. I also found a very nice pair of winter clogs at the Nakusp General Store. A plastic clog with a fake sheepskin slipper liner that are warm and comfy for in my camper and short walks with Tia if there is not too much snow on the ground
CMH does have some absolutely fabulous looking terrain. We did see one area where a very long horizontal crack had opened up in the higher snowpack, but no avy.
One other good thing was that when we did get skiing the visibility was better than last week at the Whistler Gathering, unfortunately the skiing was not.
And one more good thing: (I am trying hard to find good) my hip flexor didn't bother me at all even in the unski-able frozen crud. I was worried about my knees in that stuff but fortunately no crashes in the crud for me, just curses.
Mike's knee injury aside (I hope it is not too serious and I hope it doesn't require surgery) having insurance and cancelling the trip was the best thing that could of happened to Mike because in a word, the SKIING WAS HORRIBLE.
Driving to Nakusp, it rained all the way there. The first day of skiing it was raining and foggy and the choppers didn't fly. Same thing for day 2 except that CMH arranged a day trip to Revelstoke about 1.5 hours away. I didn't go as I was concerned about aggravating my hip flexor that I tweaked at Whistler the week before. They got wet snow on the Stoke Chair (the top 2k vertical) changing to rain part way down to the upper gondola base.
Day 3 was clear, colder, and windy and the choppers did fly but not to the highest landing sites due to severely wind affected snow. Where we did land the first few turns were slightly wind affected but quite ski-able, followed by some nice boot top turns and then the bottom third to half of the run to get to their highest chopper pick up zones, we encountered 2"-3" thick breakable, hard frozen rain soaked, noisy crust. Real knee twister very difficult to turn in ugly crud.
One person in the other group quit after a couple runs and some other skiers in another chopper quit at lunch time. A couple of runs after lunch, I quit and chose to finish the day riding in the chopper. The rest of my group lasted one more run. The other group sharing our chopper did another 2 or 3 runs after that. Most of the runs were short, about 1,000 to 1,500 vertical feet.
At one point we could look down a run and see what I thought were partially covered old tracks, but our guide explained that what I was looking at was the result of water flowing downhill on top of the snowpack.
Afterwards I realized that that was the worst conditions that I had ever skied. "Why is that?", I asked myself. The answer: when the conditions are that bad, I don't go skiing, I go home. With that in mind I chose not to ski the 4th and final day.
CMH offers a partial money back guarantee if minimum vertical is not met during the trip and it was not. They also offer an additional $500 credit toward a future ski trip if the refund is applied toward that same second trip. I won't be taking them up on the $500 second trip offer.
On the plus side, the food was very good, they had a dog friendly room for Tia and I and they didn't charge extra for Tia or for being in a room by myself. I also found a very nice pair of winter clogs at the Nakusp General Store. A plastic clog with a fake sheepskin slipper liner that are warm and comfy for in my camper and short walks with Tia if there is not too much snow on the ground
CMH does have some absolutely fabulous looking terrain. We did see one area where a very long horizontal crack had opened up in the higher snowpack, but no avy.
One other good thing was that when we did get skiing the visibility was better than last week at the Whistler Gathering, unfortunately the skiing was not.
And one more good thing: (I am trying hard to find good) my hip flexor didn't bother me at all even in the unski-able frozen crud. I was worried about my knees in that stuff but fortunately no crashes in the crud for me, just curses.
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