About That Ferry: Almost Rainbow Mountain By Senior Citizens

It is almost seven years since we did any real skiing. True, we did a couple of multi-day ski trips in the Australian Alps - yes, Australians do call the low rounded rolling hills along the Great Dividing Range "alps" - but our only real skiing in the last half decade had been a few half day trips around the North Shore Mountains, and even those we managed to do upside down in Antipodean fashion boot-packing up Christmas Gully in frozen conditions rather than skiing down.

Sunset in Australia's Snowy Mountains

After Australia's rolling hills, everything felt desperately steep for the first few ski trips out, probably not helped by frozen tracks pocked with craters and trenches from the myriad of boot-packers who seem to have overtaken the North Shore Mountains since we left for Australia. Dog shit and 50 cm deep boot holes seem to have become the predominant hazards around the North Shore Mountains.

Easy skiing in the Snowy Mountains

Doug and I were trying to get the band back together to recreate the glory days when we were younger and stronger and each spring we'd head off on a big ski traverse, often around the Coast Mountains, but sometimes in the Rockies or the Selkirks. Robin and Betsy were otherwise engaged. Robin deep in the bowels of the Bivouac headquarters working away on prominences, road plans and all the other esoterica of running the Bivouac site, and Betsy, a seeming anachronism among our other friends, actually having paid employment! Tom, however, who had some kind of paid to do whatever gig going with the university, decided to get up at 4.00 am, drive for 1.5 hours, take the ferry from Vancouver Island, and meet us at Horseshoe Bay for a ski day, his only request being, and here I quote directly - if we could drop him off at Horseshoe Bay at "say 6.30 pm, 8 pm (or less optimally 10 pm)?"

Hashtag Vanlife

Our wheels of choice these days are a Honda Odyssey, yep, a minivan. I'm 56 years old and back to living the #vanlife in an 8 foot by 4 foot space. Who says things can't get any better? The clearance is low and the tires are kind of worn, so our options for skiing are limited to paved - or at least well graded - roads. Robin suggested touring from Whistler Olympic Park (WOP), a new (since 2010) facility up the Callaghan Valley.

Hanging Lake and Rainbow Mountain

We hadn't skied in the area for 15 years, not since we did the Pemberton Icecap traverse back in 2004 so it was pretty much all new to us again. Then again, with incipient Alzheimers just about every day is new to us now. The gate at WOP was closed for the season so we parked beside the Tow Away sign and popped the hood on the Odyssey which is the only way to stop the car alarm going off 15 times per hour due to some untraceable electrical malfunction.

Tom and Doug at the col

Apparently, there is a direct ski route from Alexander Falls parking lot to the far end of the mish-mash of overlapping trails in WOP but we did not find it. Instead, we walked along the road in our sneakers, changed into our ski boots at some generic looking building, and stashed our shoes in the salt bin, 'cos "doesn't everyone?"

View roughly west from ascent route

Some weaving around on groomed ski trails and we finally found the Rainbow Lake winter route. A couple of youth from the Czech Republic were also skiing up Rainbow Mountain and had come in on a mountain bike with better directions than we had. It's a 600 metre climb up to Hanging Lake, most of it pretty reasonable, but there is one steep section near the top. The trail was well beaten by skiers but the deep potholes of walkers and piles of dog shit endemic to the North Shore Mountains were conspicuously - and delightfully - absent.

Just above Hanging Lake and the summit looks a long way off

PC, DB

Over lunch at Hanging Lake we contemplated the remainder of the ascent, another 1000 metres of elevation gain, suddenly, it was starting to seem like this might be a long day indeed. Nevertheless, we continued on. We took a slight variation on the Czech route, but were soon following their broken track up the west face of Rainbow Mountain. Truthfully, it looked like a bloody long way, nothing is ever this far in Australia, but we plugged away, finally arriving on a broad plateau with the summit only another 250 metres above us. We had almost caught up to the Czechs, which was miraculous given they were easily 30 or even 40 years our junior, and, as much as it would have stroked our egos to go for the summit, it was increasingly looking like the least optimal ferry might be the only option for Tom, unless he too wanted to start #vanlife.

Tom at our high point,

PC. DB

So, we turned around. The ski out should have been simple, and would have been for other parties, but it took us a long time, some of which may have been because Tom preferred to leave his boots loose on his feet like an Aussie pair of thongs. As everyone knows, it's hard to drive a ski while wearing a pair of thongs, and Tom may have had a crash or two on the way down.

Skiing down

Inevitably, we took a wrong turn once we got out onto the groomed trails and ended up wandering around in circles on the maze of trails. There were sporadic signs on some of the trails, but we were all too myopic to be able to read any of them and too daft to make sense of them anyway. Eventually, we found the access road and resorted to walking along that, but even then I'm sure we walked in a complete circle before finding the salt bin where we had stashed our sneakers.

High up on Rainbow Mountain

PC. DB

We finally dropped Tom off at Horseshoe Bay just in time to catch the 10 pm ferry back to Vancouver Island. I'm not at all sure how keen he is to get the band together again.