Storm Warning Results in VERY Local Skiing

The predictions were all there “Winter Storm to Hit Lower Mainland”. Living on the side of a mountain in Canada it should almost be expected that you’ll get covered in snow every winter, even when you live at the waterline in a temperate rainforest. But this was different. The official weather warning used the word Blizzard four times in its description of the weather in the next 24 hours. We already had snow on the ground so getting more on top of that was very unusual. It kept falling all night. Even in the morning as I cleared the walkway it continued to accumulate. I was late so didn’t bother clearing the driveway, just drove right up its 30% slope and onto the equally steep 25th Street we lived on. That is when things changed. The extreme cold meant the snow packed underfoot and under car wheels so traction was unreliable. Having got about a third of the way to the office in twice the time it should have taken me I turned back deciding to work from home that day. Before I even got back to the house two of my meetings were cancelled. I re-booked the third I had in my calendar and got a call from our CFO informing me that the entire office would be shutting down. Good decision.

A few hours of calls and some maintenance on my overloaded inbox (deleting and forwarding of requests and obligations) I found myself at liberty to go out and play in the snow. Two years before when the last substantial dump of snow like this landed on us my whole family got our skis out and did 4 or 5 runs down the hill our house sits on – directly out of the driveway. It made for great video.

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Sadly, this storm our skis were all elsewhere so I rummaged through the garage and found a couple of toboggans and an old snowboard. That was it. I had skied down the hill right outside my house – literally out the end of our driveway – now I was going to snowboard down the same slope.

A ton of snow and just enough slope on our street meant we could actually ski down the same street I drive to work on every day.

The adventure didn’t stop there. After discovering the 8″ or more of untouched powder along both sides of the road, basically down the grass strips, I skied it all out and went looking for more. With the snowboard in the back, I hopped into our truck – a sturdy late-model GMC Yukon with 4-wheel drive and snow tires – and backed it up the driveway. Planning to go further uphill in search more fresh powder I quickly found myself slipping sideways down the same street I had just skied down. Uh oh. I maneuvered the massive Urban Tank over to the far side of the road to keep it out of the way and went back to get a shovel. Even after digging it out I still could not get back up to the top of my driveway so had to go down the street to the flats, drive along a few blocks then back up the hill from another street with a less severe slope. Found one two blocks over at 27th. Turns out it was a bus route so had been plowed and was easily navigated. Got up above our house then worked my way over and parked the truck on a flat spot so I could ride down to the house. What a treat. I had just snowboarded out of the driveway in front of our house and now I was riding back down to it from above and arrived just in time to find my kids doing laps down 25th Street on the toboggans.

Now THAT’s local skiing…