Washington Adventure Travel - Bumming on the Powder Hound (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine February 2003

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Bumming on the Powder Hound (Cont.)


	Snow-bound: The powder piles up near Revelstoke, B.C. (Sian Kennedy)

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, if you know anything about diesel engines, you know they can't warm up at idle; they've got to work. The coach will warm up here as we get out on the highway. If you'd like me to adjust the temperature later on, please let me know. Greyhound drivers are proud of their equipment. As they should be. Waiting to clear Canadian customs at the Blaine, Washington, I-5 border crossing, our driver, John, doled out the stats. This outfit is a 55-seat MCI G4500, the stretch limo of the Greyhound fleet. It's got a Detroit Diesel 12.7-liter, 400-horsepower engine that gets better fuel economy than your Hummer H1. Stainless-steel monocoque body, fiberglass and composite exterior skin, air-ride suspension with a manual leveling system.

This was the overnight to Vancouver, where I planned to sleep a couple hours and catch the 5:30 a.m. to seat-of-the-britches-who-knows-where. The beauty was that I had no idea. My pass allowed me all of Alberta and British Columbia. Big country.

The three amigos showed me thier hidden stashes, homegrown runs with names like country road. We'd lay fresh tracks, rest them for a run, then return to find our ruts filled.

The border guard couldn't understand I was skiing the Hound. "What brings you to Canada on the bus at this hour of night?"

"Skiing."

"Whistler?"

"Probably not."

"Where, then?"

"I'm not sure. I have a pass."

"Do you have a job?"

"Sort of."

"Welcome to Canada."

Vancouver at 2:30 a.m. is fuzzy as a homemade tattoo.

They locked me out of the bus station. Literally, the station closes. This was odd, because it's also the train station. For such a large, beautiful city, this was something I hadn't expected. "Don't come back before five," the guard said. I humped my skis, heading for the brighter lights of downtown, and, I hoped, a Tim Hortons coffee shop where I could cool my heels.

Pacific Central Station sits in the Lapland of Chinatown and Hastings Street, western Canada's largest crack- and heroin-trafficking district. The weather oscillated between rain and wet snow, and it was unsettling to hike, 70-pound pack and skis over my shoulder, down streets lined with strung-out zombies, strip clubs, and pawnshops. I decided to find a shadow in the park in front of the bus station and wait it out.

At 5 a.m., when the guards unlocked the doors, young people with snowboards and daypacks queued up for the 5:30 to Whistler. I boarded the Nanaimo, Vancouver Island-bound instead, and woke an hour later to find the bus, me inside it, in the belly of the whale, the ferry, with driving rain outside.

The bus was nearly empty. Up front there was an island resident who had taken the bus all the way from Los Angeles and a guy dressed like a lumberjack who was on his way to a blind rendezvous with a woman he'd met in the personals. The two talked about dog breeding for more than an hour. The driver let the lumberjack-on-the-make off at an unscheduled stop along the coast. There were no other tourists.

I liked the idea of skiing an island. And if it weren't for the thick clouds, I probably could have seen the ocean from the 5,215-foot summit of Mount Washington. That's what the locals said, anyway. The shuttle from Courtenay to Mount Washington, a big little resort, the un-Whistler, is an antique school bus. Most of the passengers were lodge employees, and the bus mood was festive. It snows here often—Pacific systems that sometimes last for days—350 inches a year. When it doesn't snow, like the day I arrived, the slopes are harder than hell, but by midmorning the ice had softened. I caught Linton's Loop and traversed over to the Sunrise Chair, where I skied Sunrise till sundown. In Greyhound aprs-ski fashion, the two Canadian lagers I'd stashed to cool in a vacant lot near the Courtenay station were waiting for me. Island life: ski, booze, Greyhound, snooze.

The driver from Courtenay to Nanaimo was named Earl. He wore a gray wool uniform and a chin beard, Gregory Peck in John Huston's Moby Dick. The lumberjack stood at the highway waving his arms—the dog breeder, finished with his romantic weekend. Apparently it had gone well; she blew him a kiss.

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