Bumming on the Powder Hound (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine February 2003

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Bumming on the Powder Hound (Cont.)


	Breakfast on the Greyhound Motel: Mountain dew, french fries, truck-stop coffee, and thou (Sian Kennedy)

IT IS IMPORTANT NOT TO DRINK ALCOHOL on the bus. I learned this from my friend Fly-Fishing Bob, who was once left in the Utah desert because he thought he could sneak a 3 a.m. brewski. Psssssssstchchchch! He was gone. It is also important not to board the bus buzzed. I routinely saw passengers bounced before their trip began. The driver has the power of a sea captain, and you are at his mercy.

It's like being on a boat: Sleeping on the bus, waking, hitching a ride up to the hill, buying a lift ticket, being pulleyed up the mountain, skiing down, the payoff, the magical dancing of linked telemark turns, the floating sensation of skiing down. Repeat. Back on the bus and moving on. You become uncomfortably aware of stasis—standing roadside with your thumb out, waiting in Seattle for a three-hour layover, sleeping in an Alberta hostel. Your fluids are still in motion. Call it the Greyhound Powderhound Wanderlust. To wake up stationary becomes strange.

It's like being on a boat, sleeping on the bus, waking, buying a lift ticket, being pulleyed up the mountain, the payoff, the floating dance of linked telemark turns. Repeat. Back on the bus and rolling on.

Canadian Greyhound drivers are all frustrated Zamboni pilots and they don't slow for weather. Several times we actually passed snowplows. But I slept in the quiet of snow, my trust in the driver. In deep REM through Hope, Golden, and on to Lake Louise; I was sorely disappointed to have arrived. I went without coffee. I dozed off again on the shuttle from Banff to Sunshine Village, where an Australian ski tuner named Steve offered to watch my pack all day: "No worries, mate."

Unless you're Richie Rich, Sunshine Village isn't exactly a mom-and-pop hill—three mountains, a thousand acres each—but the snow is world-class. I felt a little guilty throwing down $37 for a lift ticket that could, on the bus, take me from Rock Springs, Wyoming, to Reno. But, hey, these are Canadian dollars, eh?

And today is Big Dump Day at the ballpark! I skied three feet of light and dry—first the Garbage Chutes off Standish, then over to Goat's Eye for Big Woody and Goatsucker Glade. Whoop, whoop, whoop. It dumped all day and an avalanche cut off the road back to town. All several thousand of us were stranded. There was a last-minute party at someone's house, me and every young person from Australia drinking Molson Canadian until they quickly ran out. Even that was fun. The Aussies were smoking high-quality B.C. bud and waxing their snowboards with hydrocarbon Swix and a clothes iron.

"Greyhound is a shitty way to see Australia," one said through the fog.

"It's a rock-and-roll limousine in Canada," I told him. "They showed Pretty Woman."

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