A Nordic ski paradise… just eight minutes from our home

A few weekends ago we enjoyed one of the final ski sessions of the season with a few friends in the sunshine at Caledonia Nordic Ski Club.

I’m sitting in a patch of sun on the snow, where the trees meet the trail, taking my second ski break of the morning. Across from where I’m sat families are gathered around the the fire pit sipping hot chocolate and comparing the trails they have skied that morning. Occasionally the yells of a small girl asking her mother to watch her as she takes on a big hill, in the old gravel pit, can be heard.

Slowly the snow is making my bum cold, but I don’t move. My thumb is throbbing gently where skin was scraped off when I fell over just now, but I don’t care.

I’m feeling the immense happiness from a morning of exercise, a cup of tea in my hand and the sun warming my face.

This is bliss. Moments like these are what I came to Canada for.

Meanwhile elsewhere in the large complex of ski trails, Jacob is enjoying the moments he came to Canada for. Rather than people watching and tea sipping, he is still skiing. He is a reasonable cross-country skier now. I’m judging this on the fact that he can keep up with our friends, despite their experience and the fact that they are ‘skate’ skiing.

Cross Country skiing at Caledonia Nordic Ski Club

The Caledonia Nordic Ski Club has 55 kilometres of groomed cross-country ski trails, including some that can be used with your dog and others that are lit for night skiing.

To put it simply – I literally don’t have the knowledge to put it any other way – cross-country skiing is on flat terrain, with some accents and descents. When we’re faced with an incline Jacob tackles them with a startling smoothness, whereas, I’m often seen moving backwards down the hill in slow motion.

Cross-country skiing is split into two types ‘Classic’ and ‘Skate’. We’ve been learning the traditional, old as time, ‘classic’ ski technique. Using groomed ‘tracks’ in the snow you perform a ‘diagonal stride’ which looks like you’re skiing in mini train tracks.

Our friends are all speeding along using the ‘Skate’ skiing technique. This style, which mimics the motion of ice skating, is a more recent skiing development which has grown in popularity (very successfully if the numbers of people ‘stake’ skiing here are anything to go by) since the 1980s

Although ‘Skate’ skiing is often preferred by those who want to go faster, Jacob seemed to have no trouble keeping up with the group when we left the ski lodge that morning. I know, because I watched them all fade into the distance.

Learning to ‘classic’ Cross Country Ski

But I don’t mind being left alone to chug along slowly. I try to remember the tips we were given by Sue the ski instructor who took us for a lesson back in January. “Keep looking up” she had said in her almost faded British accent. Sue had arrived in Prince George from the U.K in 1973 with the intention of staying for one year. Cross-Country skiing was a big part of why she never returned across the Atlantic.

As I ski I remember Sue calling “Helen” to remind me to get my eyes off my skis and onto the trail. Each time I follow Sue’s advice and raise my eyes up, I’m rewarded with the sight of a twisting trail lined with snowy evergreens. The tracks for ‘classic’ skiing roll out in front of me, keeping me inline and encouraging me to keep going.

What else had Sue told us to do? That was it, “try to raise you back foot and glide along on your front foot”. When you do this correctly, you suddenly perform an effortless and immensely satisfying glide and you get a glimpse of how pleasurable this sport will be once mastered. The path twists around a corner and down a slight hill, I raise my polls, bend my knees and enjoy the speed of descending.

The first break of the morning

A little while later Jacob and I meet our friends (you can meet them properly in this adventure) by the fire pit for tea and hot chocolate. The fire pit overlooks the ‘gravel pit’ (or ‘Rotary Terrain Park’) which is an area with lots of small hills, very popular with kids. We watch their fearless descents as the logs burned slowly and the morning sun beats down through a blue sky, warming cold fingers.

Soon the group is deciding which trail to head to next. After one of them shares an amusing tale about his partner breaking one of her fingers on the ‘Fingers’ trail, off three of them go to enjoy this route. Silently glad my skiing skills are not yet good enough for this trail that endangers digits, Jacob, one of our other friends and I make our way to the start of the ‘Pine Flats’ trail.

Falling for skiing

‘Pine Flats’ has been freshly groomed that morning and, even better, quite a bit of the trail is bathed in sun light. I am soon alone again as the other two are gliding off smoothly, picking up speed. I cannot begrudge Jacob for being so much better than me at this, not when he is enjoying it so much. Besides, snow and ice and cold are his thing, I’m like a duck out of water. Or a lizard out of the heat.

But this lizard is willing to learn, so I try another tip Sue gave us: “stop using the poles and you will learn to balance much faster”. Skiing without the poles, I find I have to work much harder, but also, that the right motion comes easier. It works too: when I use the poles again, but continue pushing off with my back leg with the same amount of force I had to employ without the poles, I glide much more fluidly and faster.

I meet the guys back at the ‘Gravel Pit’ where they both shoot down a hill with no trouble, looking effortlessly cool. I wait until they are gone before choosing a much smaller hill.

I’m cruising down when suddenly I’m going too fast, I can’t steer and I’m going to go into the ditch. What was it Sue had said about a ‘snow plow’ to stop? Why won’t my legs go into that pizza thing? What’s the best way to fall? CRASH! Why does that hurt? It’s snow, surely snow is a soft landing? Oh my thumb hurts!

This is the point at which I decide I’ve earned a second break. I settled down in the snow and get the flask out, amuse myself listening to the families by the fire pit and terrify myself watching the little girl fly down the hill.