Over the Family Day weekend, I headed up to Ottawa to get in some much needed snowboarding. Since my ridiculous illness lasted an entire week over Christmas, I wasn’t able to get in any downhill excitement. It had been a few years since I’d been able to get out snowboarding so I was really starting to crave it.
Plus, you know, Ottawa looked like this:
Yes, those are about 6 foot tall fences separating backyards where the backyard itself is filled about two to three feet high of snow.
Since I was a little kid, my dad had taught us (my brother and I) to ski. Over the years I slowly became bored of skiing. I was proficient, although I never progressed past just “going fast” down a hill while occasionally venturing amongst the trees for a few jumps. In my twenties, I was introduced to snowboarding by an ex of mine. With a single 30 minute lesson at Camp Fortune in Ottawa, I went snowboarding in the Swiss/French Alps with my friends. It was insane to take such a leap but it was exhilarating and I love that I did that with such little experience under my belt.
I’m not an amazing snowboarder. I don’t tend to go faster than 40 km/h (as I found out with my Garmin!), my idea of going off a jump is to barely take a little hop over a tiny snow mound and I barely know what the heck to do when my speed picks up too quickly other than just turn into a side slip.
But I love it. I really love it.
After years and years of skiing, snowboarding is a breath of fresh air. It just feels exciting! It’s nice to be doing something different and new. Since I’m still not completely comfortable with snowboarding, it gives me an added sense of exhilaration.
I also know next to nothing about snowboarding gear, but I love mine. As with my clothing, I tend to steer towards white and the board, boots and bindings are no exception. The bottom of the board is actually not completely painted over, so you can see the wood right through the bottom which I think looks really cool.
So anyway, back to the snowboarding. My dad and I got out twice, once to Vorlage and once to Edelweiss (both just over in Quebec). It’s funny how memories are. When I was younger, these hills felt so big. But going up them now? I can’t believe how small they feel!
Edelweiss, while slightly bigger than Vorlage, has never been my favourite hill, but it’s relatively nearby so we made one trip out there. In high school, this was the mountain the ski club used, so it’s one I was seriously over-exposed to. It has longer slope lengths than Vorlage though, so the runs tend to be a bit longer which is quite nice.
However, I really liked Vorlage and that’s the one I remember liking from when I was in my teens. No to mention, the place was totally and completely dead! We had that hill practically to ourselves and it was wonderful.
I wore my Garmin 220 for the second time we hit the slopes, just to see what kind of speed I get up to and how many calories snowboarding actually burns. And while the calorie burn isn’t particularly high, it was definitely fun to see how fast I get up to in the breakdown (topped out around 39.2 km/h).
Aside from the snowboarding, I also got out for a bout of cross-country skiing. Now, I haven’t been cross country skiing since I was probably about 15 years old so I had to pick up a full set of new gear. I was also slightly worried about how good I’d even be since I barely remember the motion of pulling your heels up on a pair of skis. One note about the gear… since WHEN have they made cross-country skiing boots feels like you’ve put your feet in a pile of pillows? These boots were so comfortable that they were an absolute pleasure to wear!
I was only intending to get out there for about an hour, but somehow an hour turned into roughly three hours. We ended up on the trail for the Loppet which was happening that weekend, but thankfully didn’t ski the whole darn thing (50k). We did, however, cover about 15k which is pretty crazy to me.
So what are my thoughts on cross country skiing now? Well, I’m faster than I thought I was going to be (bonus) but I ski slower than I run! According to my Garmin data (can you tell I love this thing?) we covered 15.3k in two hours and forty minutes, which is an average page of 5.8 km/h, but I run about 10 km/h. I honestly expected that skiing, given that you have slipey-slidey things attached to your feet, would mean you moved at a much faster pace.
It’s definitely a pretty solitary sport – there’s no one really to talk to as you do it since the tracks are decidedly single file. I don’t like it as much as running, but that may be because I feel like I’m getting nowhere fast on a pair of these skis! It’s certainly one hell of a workout though since the Garmin clocked me in around almost 1000 calories burned for the time we spent out there.
So while I liked the experience of cross-country skiing again, it’s definitely not as exhilarating as snowboarding. It’s a shame that Toronto doesn’t have more access to proper ski slopes like Ottawa does so I really only get my fix in when I visit my parents during the winter (or go on a snowy vacation!). I was really happy to get out there again and looking forward to when I get another chance, although it likely won’t be until next year!