The road chose me

I hadn’t seen Duke in about two and a half years, since I last visited him in New Hampshire. We first met about four or five years ago when we sat on the same chairlift at the resort I was working at, Kirkwood in California. After a week of riding, drinking and general trouble making it was pretty much a given we would catch up down the road. Somewhere and sometime.

Fast forward to last Monday, Duke calls me up, says he’s on a road trip and will be in Banff tonight. Tonight. In Banff. An hour away. I raced out there as soon as I could, grinning the whole way.

Sitting on a bench waiting for him I was a little worried I wouldn’t recognize him, or we wouldn’t be friends anymore or… bah – what crap. The second I saw him I knew it was on again. It was pretty damn obvious he’d been on a roadie for a month and man was I jealous – he’d just driven his $800 truck from Jackson Hole, Wyoming over to Portland, then up through Washington to Whistler. From there he drove East through central BC, Revelstoke and now Banff. Living out of his truck the whole time with his dog Simba added a lot of character to the trip.

We both had so much to say and were smiling from ear to ear the entire night of bar hopping around Banff. Not wanting to pay for a place to crash we found ourselves a quiet spot up behind Banff where I crashed in a tent and Duke and Simba in his truck.
Man that was a fun night.

Over the next five days we didn’t stop. A round of disc at the Canmore course was awesome, followed by hiking up Heart Mountain. It was just a little windy (read insanely) and snowing pretty hard at the top but we loved it all the same. We bypassed the fence at Park 96, Calgary’s private disc golf course for a sweet round with a local character who just a month earlier had quite accidentally dropped a cliff at Lake Louise to the tune of a severely broken arm and leg. He was super proud to tell us he was now a celebrity around those parts, as he had skied down by himself to ski patrol. It was great to see him out so soon.

Every night of the week found us at a different bar, chatting it up with a different group of random people. Papa Roach are my favourite band and they were in town on Thursday night, which Duke knew we had to get to. A few beers down we arrived just in time to watch everyone stream out – not that it mattered, there were plenty of bars on 17th that had cold beer for us. Every day at work was a gong show, which led to a couple of choice quotes. A friend at work was commenting; “Dan’s been looking a little frazzled these last couple of days” and by Duke seeing me on Thursday afternoon: “You’re going home for a nap before we go out again”.  Haha.

It was an awesome week of laughing and smiling – which only made us want to catch up sooner rather than later.

Duke’s summary was pretty fitting: “Danno, there’s no way we could live together. Within a week one of us would have alcohol poising and the other would be in jail”. Sounds like fun to me.

-Dan

Duke Dan and Simba

“We had a 47cm day last week – I rated it a 2 out of 10.”  –Mike on pow

I hadn’t spoken to Mike since we finished up our snowboard roadie over a month ago – he sure has been keeping busy since then.
He completed his Avalanche Skills Training level 1 course and now heads into the back country at least twice a week. The guy gets to ride powder the quality of which the rest of us can only dream about.
He cut a cornice off the top of a chute.

A cornice. Off a chute. Yeah. I know.

He went cat skiing the other day with a bunch of his friends from ski school. Even the guide was impressed with the snow and terrain “We don’t get up into this stuff very often” he mentioned. Mike was more than proud to tell me about the 30 foot cliff he and Joel had dropped. In. Sane.

Needless to say I’ve booked a week off work so I can get out there as fast as possible.
Take note of the high-cost, high-fashion gear he is riding. I think it helps him ride better.

-Dan

Carving up the pow

Dropping a 30 footer

Boost that rock

For Halloween this year we had a costume competition in the office. I’d been wanting to re-do my “Arnie from Predator” since I did it back in the day. I think I improved it a little. We also carved out some pumpkins – I was amazed how well they turned out.

I’d been to Ram Creek a couple of times before and had scoped out some really great camping spots. I packed up the new Jeep for her first adventure and headed out on my own.

The road up was much worse than it was in winter. Potholes were a-plenty and about 20 cm deep. I started to dobut the likelihood of a sedan making it up there. I spent the first afternoon & evening at Ram, soaking my heart out. A few people came and went but I was the only person staying up there.

In the morning, it was time to hunt down Mutton Creek Hotspring. This spring is mentioned in the Geothermal Resources of BC report and so is also mentioned in Glenn Woodswoth’s book “Hotsprings Of Western Canada”. I found nothing on the ‘net so went out with not much to go on.

So, looking at the Geothermal Resources of BC report, the co-ordinates given are 50 00.000N 155 40.000 W. Now, immediately, there is a problem here. 155 W is not even in BC.. maybe a typo? maybe something else.
Estimating from where the dot is placed on the map, I get 50 00.000N 115 41.000 W (notice 115, not 155)
These co-ordinates are about 1.6km north of the Ram Creek road, and about 1.2 km SE of Larsen Lake.
Interesting, this is not even close to the “Mutton Creek” that is passed Lussier Hot Spring.

So I headed out looking for these co-ordinates. Not far up the Ram Creek road, there is a pull-out on the left, that goes down to a locked gate, with “Private” marked on it. I didn’t go further, but the old old road seems to wind it’s way down into the lush green valley, directly towards Larsen Lake. Farm land is down there. There is a name on the gate, so it’s a possibility to call the owner to ask about any knowledge of a spring, or even if they’d mind us wandering around on their property. I’m starting to doubt the spring is there, but who knows.

Onto day two, and I started hiking up the Mutton Creek that is about 1km east of Lussier. There is an excellent logging road following the creek, although it’s gated. I have also seen cars parked in front of this gate in the past. I didn’t get far up at all (maybe 1km) when I ran into a medium black bear. He ran off, but I thought about it for a while and turned back. I decided not to push my luck.
On reporting this to the ranger near-by we got into a chat about the spring, and she was really keen to hear what I knew. She’d definitely heard of a rumor of a spring on Mutton Creek, and knew plenty of people that had looked for it. Supposedly the “old timers” of the area knew of the rumor. Her brother-in-law (or something) had also spent a good amount of time looking for it.
Nobody has ever found it, as far as she knew.
At that time, we both suggested that maybe it’s on Mutton creek, south of the road. It hadn’t even occurred to me to look there, so maybe others have overlooked it too. Mutton creek continues for about 800m south of the road before flowing into Lussier River. Hmmm.

After all this effort I had a nice long soak in Lussier River Hot Spring – always a favourite even though it can sometimes be too busy.

I met a really cool German backpacker, Marcel, who I gave a ride all the way back to Canmore. We talked endlessly about travelling, meeting people and generally having fun. An awesome sunny day driving around with no roof.