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| the lodge under a starry sky... leaving the icy conditions of middle europe, the past week brought me deep into the monashees in interior BC, canada. a good friend of mine, scott martin from catskiing canada hooked us up with the nice people at 'monashee powder snowcats', a big cat operation in the very heart of interior BC, well known for its insane terrain and deep powder. 'us' means riders riders peter könig, fredrik evensen and simon gruber as well as filmer maxi seefried, pleasure editor christian öfner and myself. |
we were doing an article for pleasure mag for next season and filming for the new isenseven movie and this place is for sure perfect when it comes to shooting pow pow: the lodge is locaded on a big, logged field in the middle of a 17,000 acre snowcat-accessible terrain.
travel was quite smooth and everything went easy as one-two-three... we all met at calgary airport to hop onto two rental cars. we made a short stop at scotts house near olympic park in calgary to get some last minute advice for the seven hour ride to vernon, BC. it had snowed alot in the past week and we were a little concerned about kicking horse canyon (near golden) and rodgers pass (between golden and revelstoke). turned out that our concerns were justified, as both passes had been closed for four days prior to our arrival.
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| on the way, entering the rockies... |
sicamous was our destination for the first day, as we had arranged the pickup for the ride to the lodge at 2 p.m. the next day and it was supposed to be sharp, no more possibility to get up to the lodge within the next 3 or 4 days. the motel rooms in sicamous were probable the coldest we ever stayed in. luckily, there were enough blankets available...
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| öfi in the coldest motel room ever... you can't see the icicles haning from the roof on this picture... |
arriving at the pickup point near cherryville on time, the last hurdle of the journey was taken and we were welcomed by some of the guides as well as george, the bus driver and threw our gear onto an old, yellow school bus for the first half of the transfer. the bus ride takes about one and a half hours on snow road, only interrupted by the appearance of a moose, who couldnt't / didn't wanna get off the road, so george had to chase him for a while, gently pushing him to the side. we met the two snowcats in time, loaded all our gear onto the cats and had another one hour cat ride up to the lodge, where we were welcomed by the owners carolyn and tom morgan. after the mandatory safety briefing by chief guide mark stanley, it was time for our first dinner on site!
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| pickup near the small town of cherryville... reloading the gear onto the snowcats near sugar lake... |
tommy veillette, the chef of MPS used to work for chateau lake louise, before he decided to come to where the powder is. many returning guests already told us about his skills and that they had his food was the best they ever had on their trips.
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| bison steak, anyone?... deeee-licious!!!! |
turned out to be no lie, dinner was delicious. guess, i've never eaten so good on any of my trips. tommy is a god!!!
stay tuned for part II!
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