Damn you La Nina and your deep powder snow!

I dream about skiing like teenage boys dream about girls. I've lost countless days of my life surfing bottomless powder in my mind. By October I'm stupid giddy with excitement to be skiing. By January my skiing spirit is usually crushed by thin snow and unstable avalanche conditions in the eastern Rockies. At this point I turn my energy to running and I try to look forward to summer activities.

Not this year. The snow just keeps falling and I'm forced to blow off another weekend of long runs to be in the mountains. Bummer! This past weekend it was Marmot Basin with pcf and cmg. Light flurries turned to full-on snow Friday night as we drove the 4.5 hours from Edmonton to Jasper. By Saturday morning 16cm of fresh snow had fallen at mid-mountain. It was going to be a great weekend.

Marmot rarely feels crowded, even when it's busy, and this weekend was no exception. Still, fresh snow is not the same when you put a few tracks through it and I was eager to ski some untracked powder. Normally I think hiking at a ski area is ridiculous. Why would I walk up a mountain when I paid $70 to be carried up? I'm glad I ignored myself. Hiking Marmot Peak with Awesome Bob.

Not only was the skiing amazing, the views were spectacular. Looking down the hiking ridge - Peak Run is the bowl on the left; Suzie's disappears to the right. The top of Knob Chair where the hike begins is in the bottom-right of the picture.The ridge across the valley is the backside of the Skyline Trail.

The Icefields Parkway from Marmot Peak.

Mt Robson, the highest point in the Canadian Rockies, is the distant pointy peak in the centre of the picture.

Tonquin Valley from Marmot Peak.

By the end of the weekend I'd hiked Peak twice and Cornice once. It's not running but it was a helluva workout.