MONDAY:
That Sunday night the
Sea-Shack hostel was packed with foreign exchange students from France plus the odd travelers. The only place available was in the
yurt (like a tee-pee) which has about 5 bunk beds (sleep 10-15). After a few beers inside and next to the fireplace outside and listening to the music playing, we eventually call it a night. Lucky got tired or maybe it was the locals that had arrived to impress the female tourists. A few minutes later, I decided to get to bed also. MMhh....nice, dry and warm bed.
We are now comfortable in our beds in our yurt next to the beach as a girl was putting logs on the stove, it’s actually too hot. That’s when someone cranks the volume outside to maximum. Some of drunken locals are trying to impressed. Someone had a loud and very annoying big long red horns that you see drunken idiot used at the Grey Cup games or Québec’s Winter Carnival. Needless to say, it was probably the worst night I’ve had in a hostel noise wise. I guess we shoud have checked their website,but we were going according to what we heard. For that Sunday, it might have been a great place to party, but not necessarly to sleep. The website might have clued us off, especially when they mentioned bar on the beach and pictures like
these.
Ok, it might have been a bad night. I remember know why I check into the hostel reviews when I travel.Funny, I was sure that Lucky would lose it, but it was a girl in our dorm that steeped out and told them to cut it out and turn off the *?&*?&* music at 4:30am. The sun was already up.
Two hours later, Lucky woke me up and we left the sea toward the mountains. Last day, cold temps and rain the previous day. As we observed the different white ribbons on the surrounding mountain as we moved in land, we wondered if we would be lucky to get the soft conditions we had on Friday or the frozen surface I expected at the beginning of this trip?
We made it to the campground to join the 2 remaining ZSkiers. After a breakfast near freezing temps, we headed up the familiar road. Lucky was hoping to explore different locations, however the uncertainty of the snow surfaces made us decide on the familiar and easier access terrain.
The snow on the road toward Saturday location had melted enough for us to use it. After finding the route to the apron of the mountain, the surface were what we feared. They were frozen solid. ESB and Lucky got their crampons on, I got the ice axe. Yannick from ZS had decided that he wasn’t going to try riding if the conditions would be firm and leave his board in the car. We didn’t head toward the longer no fall corridor, but the bottom of the other couloir. I had a hard time getting the ice axe into the slope. Booting up required a few kicks only to get one, maybe two inches in. Extremeskiboy mentioned that it was crazy to climb without crampons. They were seeing my slow climbing technique. It was a fun experience, definitely crazy enough that you needed cramps or an ice axe. The snow was ppprrreeeettttty firm.
We made two short runs (100-120m vert) each before heading back through the bushes, around the pond, branches toward the car.
