SKI-ING in the CANADIAN ROCKIES by G

24 CANADIAN SKI ANNUAL wegian school, which regards form and muscles just as sore as those of your thighs method secondary to successful getting and calves. there. Suffice to say that in Switzerland, You'll be discouraged, of course. Watch where one hears that the English are rapidly ing the effortless skill of an expert is always making themselves into the finest formal discouraging, as I once learned from a ski runners in the world and organizing the little boy who lived, with a dozen or 'so sport into endless clubs for competition and brothers and sisters, on a typical habitant classification of records, purity and grace of farm a couple of miles from our inn, in the execution are the thing. In the Norwegian Laurentians. Behind the sprawling, weather school, which the Canadians tend to follow, beaten farm buildings rose a perfect practice . ski running is rather a cross country sport, slope three or four hundred yards long, with with form less emphasized, and the attitude varying gradients to suit any taste. On it in general more easy-going. A good runner we were engaged in the usual novice occupa (incidentally, the correct term is ski running, tion of practising standing up, and getting so not ski-ing) can make prodigious time over good at it that some of us were trying to the snow, and in this his poles are half add flourishes to our signatures in the shape the game, increasing his speed downhill and of tentative and invariably abortive stops powerfully helping him along on the flat and turns. Yet, were we impressed with our by keeping up the run between strokes. On selves, until this child emerged from the uphill work the arms do as useful work as the farmhouse with barrel staves tied with string legs, if not more useful. In fact it would be to his ankles, toddled up the hill, and pro hard to name a muscle in the body that ceeded to whizz down again in radiant isn't used, vigorously, in ski-ing. You your curves and zigzags, ending at the bottom self will be surprised, after your first day, with a sharp (and successful) christiania. to find your shoulder, back, and abdominal Discouraging, like watching Bobby Jones. SKI-ING IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES By G. CAMERON STOCKAND NEVER in the comparatively brief history of crusted. It worked admirably, and even ski-ing in the Canadian Rockies have we of until well into the spring marvellous soft the Banff-Lake Louise region been privileged snow running was always available, to say to look back on a season so uniformly and nothing of the excellent practise afforded delightfully successful as that of the last in dodging in and amongst trees on ,a fast winter and spring. In happy contrast to the descent. ., snow-poor winter of 1930-31 when ski-ing Also, with improved facilities contributing, could be practised only at high altitudes, the slalom has become a regular Mount everything seemed to have conspired for the Norquay institution. On practically every peculiar benefit of the ski-runner from late week-end two or more courses were flagged November until May. Quite naturally, in out, the practise on these contributing im terest in the sport increased in a most measurably to the standard of downhill gratifying manner. running of the numerous devotees. There are some who, intoxicated by the MOUNT NORQUAY, BANFF charms of glacier and mountain ski running At the original Club hut on Norquay Pass in the higher Rockies, claim that Norquay at Banff snow conditions were ideal by offers little of interest to the enthusiast of December 1, and on the greatly improved and Alpine-type ski-ing, but with these we can extended ski-ing slopes of Mount Norquay scarcely force ourselves to agree. True, .local runners were given unlimited op there are none of the almost limitless portunities to practise and train intensively descents where thousands of downward feet for tours and ski climbs in the spring. Over may be encompassed in one flashing run; it two hundred and fifty feet of additional may lack the majesty and grandeur of the running above the fu'st practise slopes was higher hills and some of the indefinable made available by the clearing of all under charm of ski-ing in the remoteness of bush and deciduous timber from the steep mountainous wilderness. But for all that, it terrain, only the sparsely-scattered ever is not to be scorned by any means. In the greens being left. The evergreens were un fu'st place it provides ski-ing, and good ski disturbed, partly for aesthetic reasons and ing, for the many who would never ski at all partly to assist in holding powder snow if it were necessary to travel any distance when, later in the season, the open slopes into the mountains for their sport. There is on each side have become windswept and no hardship for the devotee of the ski in the CANADIAN SKI ANNUAL 25 short hour's climb from Banff to the hut, and even that will be done away with by the comple tion of the long awai t ed motor highway to the summit of 110unt Stoney Squaw whicb is now actually under construction. Tfris highway will pass within a few q ..... hundred yards of the Club hut, and will, we are convinced, provide the final im petus in making N or quay Pass one of the leading ski resorts of the West. The ski ing, while admittedly not. of a parity with PHOTO CLIFFORD WHITE that ,.of the great NEARING SUMMIT OF DECEPTION PASS glaciers and mountain slopes a few miles to the westward is still Ptarmigan Pass, traverses the pass about infinitely superior to that of many centres in half its length and leaves it for a second the East, and, as has been mentioned, it pro climb, over Deception Pass. From the col of vides, even for the high country enthusiast an Deception Pass the trip is climaxed by a admirable training ground at a time when thousand vertical feet of fast downhill running in high altitudes is handicapped by running into the Skoki Valley where his skis the then usual heavy falls of deep, soft, finally swing to a stop at the welcome door mid-winter snow. of the main lodge in a sheltered spot at the edge of timberline. PTARMIGAN PASS AND SKOKI VALLEY 11anaged for the Club this last season by Starting in the late summer of 1931, ex 11r. and 11rs. Peter Whyte, both well tensive improvements and preparations for known in North American ski-ing circles, the the coming season were under way in the Skoki Ski Lodge was headquarters; not only now famous Skoki Valley immediately north for high-speed downhill running, but also for of Lake Louise. The original lodge built in some particularly ambitious tours and ski 1930 to open up this marvellous ski-ing climbs executed by visiting runners from terrain had proved too small for the demands eastern Canada. the United States and Great upon its accommodational facilities and was Britain. The Ptarmigan Glacier, pioneered consequently enlarged. Two additional as a ski climb the winter before by Clifford sleeping cabins were constructed adjoining White's party, was ascended no less than the main lodge and still another cosy little four times to the ten thousand foot mark, log ski lodge was erected at the foot of twice by lady ski-runners, and the actual Ptarmigan Pass, overlooking the magnificent rock sumnrit (10,070 feet) was attained panorama of the great peaks of the Lake twice, once by Henry S. Kingman, of Louise group-Temple, the Ten Peaks, Lefroy, 11inneapolis, and once by A. N. T. Rankin, Victoria, amongst them, true monarchs of of London, England. Both parties were the Rockies, all over ten and some over guided by the Club's Arlberg ski teacher, eleven thousand feet. This little supplemen Vic Kutschera. tary lodge, now universally known as the From the ski-mountaineer's standpoint "Halfway Hut" is situated in excellent ski-ing Ptarmigan is an ideal peak. The glacier's country, is fully equipped and offers a pleasant crevasses, dangerous in summer, are well haven of rest for the ski-runner who has filled and bridged safely in the spring, and travelled about three hours in climbing two skis may be retained all the way from the thousand feet to timberline from the Skoki lodge at about seven thousand feet to Canadian Pacific main line at Lake Louise. a "joch" at ten thousand, fr6m which point Leaving the Halfway Hut, the ski-runner, to the summit is a short but exci ting en route for the Skoki, ascends rapidly scramble on foot over rock of only moderate through wide open country to the summit of difficulty. 26 CANADIAN SKI ANNUAL portion in eighty seven (we counted them) semi - com pleted jerked christ ianias he finally pointed his skis straight downhill for one glorious "schuss" at airplane speed to a point half-way down Deception Pass where a high-speed downhill turn and another straight run brought him to rest in the valley floor a superb exhibition of continuous downhill running without a falter or a fall. Day in and day out, however, Deception PHOTO CLIFFORD WHITE Pass is the favourite CREVASSES ON ICEFALL OF PTARMIGAN GLACIER playground of visit- ors to the Skoki. The run down is, of course, one of the Reaching upward for a thousand feet imme classics of the Skoki region-three thousand diately above the main lodge, it was casually vertical feet of wide open glacier ski-ing, given its unofficial name by one of the first some of it on morainal slopes of forty degrees parties to cross it on skis, for on the climb by actual measurement.

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