Seven Miles Downhill

My buddy Murray, called me up one day, to see if I wanted to go cross country skiing. He had found a trail that would take most of a day to ski but had a great thing going for it – after a short climb of a few hundred meters, it was a long, shallow downhill run. Seven miles downhill, he swore.

I really should have known better.

The trip to the trailhead was epic. The temperature was about – 25 C when Murray picked me up in his 1960’s era VW van. You know the type. Flat nosed, a gas heater for the cab that only worked in the summer, plywood for seats and your knees formed an integral part of the forward bumper/crash system. We had a quick stop to pick up another pal, who we’ll call Gerry. We’ll call him that because that’s his name and we don’t have to protect him from anything that I know of.

It was zero six hundred dark when we picked up Gerry. Being a morning person, he promptly grabbed the back seat and curled up into a down sleeping bag and went back to sleep. Murray eased out into the street and we headed for the mountains. As the morning began to light up, we noticed a car or two in the ditches. Then we saw a couple more. We stopped counting after ten as we were catching on that the road was a tad slippery in sections. Plus, the heater still hadn’t warmed up and Murray and I were wearing everything we had AND had a sleeping bag over our legs. We took turns using the ice scraper to clear the windshield – from the inside.

We managed to make it to the trailhead intact, having only one 360 degree event on the highway. As we got our skis out, I noticed that there was a gondola station at one end of the parking lot. Sweet! That must be the uphill section he was talking about! I started over but Murray called me back and pointed to the other end of the lot. We trudged over and I saw a sign indicating the cross country trail. I knew it was to good to be true.

The sign said it was a three and a half hour ski to the Pass. Gerry and I looked at each other, then both looked at Murray. “Trust me” he said, “Our trail heads off of this one. One kilometre uphill, then seven miles downhill”.

I should have been suspicious when he started mixing his measurements.

We waxed up our skis and got onto the trail. No kidding, we went up about a kilometre and there was the downhill section. We couldn’t see down all the way, which Gerry and I thought was a good thing. Murray went down first, then Gerry, then myself. Looking forward to a nice easy ski, I made the corner and promptly found myself climbing again. We kept on climbing for another 30 minutes, with Murray always saying, “The turn off is right around the next bend, I promise!”.

At the 45 minute mark, Gerry and I were making a concerted effort to catch Murray, so we could toss him off the trail, grab the van keys and head back to town for a hot tub. Murray must have sensed some discontent, because he always managed to stay just out of reach of our ski poles. I think the worst part was Murray shouting out “It’s just around the next corner” all the time. He might have sold it if he didn’t keep on giggling…

It took us until lunch (which was at the top of the pass anyway) and by that time, Gerry and I were too darn tired to do more than steal Murray’s food. I’m just glad he was carrying the beer. The upside of the trip is we took almost one hour off the estimated travel time and we stayed warm the whole way up! A new record!