A Visit To Lost Winter

The road from Alberta climbs out of sweet grass flats. Here, on Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, the gas is prepaid in liters. My travel sketches stack up in GPS coordinates sent down from satellites that wink between stars.

In Banff, the mountains are so big they could swallow Colorado. Their southerly sisters, my home, are devastatingly diminished by these Northern prodigies. Canada is winter’s prodigal daughter.

The pass narrows into twilight. Ahh! There’s the lost snowpack. We did it. Found the deluge, winter’s deep roots buried on the other side of the Omega Block. Alive snow shifts on the strange, humongous faces. Wind cries with the wolves, stiffening the pack. Sky-splitting peaks with their unfamiliar aspects pierce the heart and make me weep tears of snow.

---

Lake Louise has bowls that hold all of you. Bigger than your biggest Super-G turns.

I fade into snow
ptarmigan fading from sight—
no one there to know.

100% of terrain open. There’s the boomerang road, that ring of mountain that zips up along out-of-bound ribs before swooshing down toward the ridgeline’s hips. I follow local kids darting like sparrows into unmarked trees. They fly me to a rock garden where little boulders offer endless lips and launches. Top of the World chair whisks to a realm of rock and snow. Steeps that bind the throat like dins of 9 are accessed by Paradise, a triple hung so high on so small a string in so vast a bowl. By the third lap, I get used to it.

---

At 3:25, I ride up Paradise with a guy from lift ops. The chair stops over the belly of the bowl. A thin rope below wriggles in the wind that wings its way into my belly. This mountain is not part of the mega corporation but he’s dressed in black, like our guys do. I tell him where I come from and how our season fared.

The chairlift ninja replies:

“We all have bad years
winter forgets, now and then—
it was just your turn.”