Emma's photo on facebook:
www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=33081&page=1&id=55...
style: Garrison's Gorillas
Prelude
Mt Grouse - Sat 0045I was finishing off my Fakitol week by skiing the evening lift at Grouse Mt. and There were someone injured up there so I had to wait in line for extra hour to get down the Gandola ....
0045: my cellphone is ringing ....
Its Emma asking me if I would like to go "crazy carpeting" with them 3pm Sat, Blackcomb
R: "You meant 3pm ? wtf we are gonna do for the 2 hrs before resort clsoes ?!"
E: "We hangout in a pub waiting for it closes"
R: "WTF!"
.....
R: "OH!! .... I M IN"
Chapter I
We finally got rollin on the road. I didn't really have much clue what the "Crazy Carpet" is all about, however very surprised to see the rest of crew brought HELMET and Snowshoes.
I have a "Buff", skis and boots. - a bit off but certainly doesn't look as strange and suspicious at Whistler as the rest of crew !
the entire way we had awesome musics by Liam, like "Highway to Hell, etc" and we kept on hearing "death and hell and the unlucky words, and I started to scratch my scalp and assess my skull strength.
After we dec ided to have KFC bucket to "wash down" the booze at the top of Blackcomb we headed to Walmart for a piece of necessary equipment for the Cover Operation of the night, well, of the morning for the most part:
We seated ourselves at Brew Pub, stuffed up with Scotch Ale and fish chips parked at the bottom of Blackcomb 1000hrs. and ready to go.
Chapter II
Whistler Blackcomb Excelerator Chair - 1030hrsI m on Scarpa T2 club tele boots, no skis, the rest were on snowshoes. We headed along the Expresso blue run up.
The after hours Whistler mountain is quite busy, there were slow moving tungsten lights, those are grooming cats, they have very bright 8 head lights in the front and four at the rear, the illumination radius is about 10 meters however they areslow moving.
There were also fast moving snowmobiles driven by Ski Patrols and inspection personale to help the coordination of grooming the runs, and various other tasks like maintainence. but most of them were just heading down the mountain at high speed, their head light is focused, longer range.
Our goal is to get up as high as far as we could without getting busted, drink all the booze and sled down as fast as we could without getting busted or injured or lost.
We kept our profile low by following the side of wide groomed runs and following the shadow of the trees, no headlamp and keep the footstep the least spreaded. listen and observe for oncoming head lights - if you ever watched WW2 movie, you know what you are doing.
Cruiser at Stoker (two blue runs merged) - Sat 1130hrs
The half moon and clear night ski was very helpful for navigation. We have successfully avoided a couple groomer and individual snowmobiles.
Here comes to a wide open field, we could see there are many lights just about 300 meter higher behind the trees. They could come down to this junction anytime, and crossing this junction is very exposed - more than 100 treeless and well lit by moon light.
Liam and Emma crossed the field to the left first, they got into a safe bush. and signaled me and Jake to come.
We reassessed the situation - the head lights up to a steep slope seem to keep where they were but there is a ledge we couldn't see over. anyways there aren't any scattered head lights on the surrounding trees indicating any lead near by.
My stiff ski boots really a pain to walk in on those hard packed icy grooms, after Jake took off and took off right after to the left, I was aimming to small island of alders just in case poop happens. Jake and I got to the island no problem, we got more confidence to take it to the left most to regroup with Emma and Liam.
Jake took off again followed by me.
"Get down ! snowmobiles to the right !" Liam noticed.
Jake and I started to run back to the alder Island, he was fast and I was on my plastic ski boots like a cat on a frozen pond, followed by a penguin-dive to the tree well of the highest alder ..... awww.
The head lights started to peak over the ledge up on a black diamond run about 100 m, 12oclock direction. heading towards us. We were like oh shit shit we are so busted damn it kept our head down and stay still. I said hey the drivers will stare at the lit area in front of their mobile so their eyes aren't as adjusted (to the night vision) as ours, just dont move a toe when the light is on you.
The snowmobile came down, scanned us with its high beam head lights and turned off to the right of us. We stayed breathless, still as a log.
We continued on and regrouped with the rest.
The easiest way to navigate up is to follow where the snowmobile just came down, and now the head lights up towards 12oclock direction is getting less. so here we went.
To keep low profile, bust-ratio low low low. we climbed up a steep slope just to stick to the right side of the run, in the moon shadow. I was kicking steps. Liam and Emma flipped over the top of the ledge to the trees and yelled "snowmobiles to the left". Jake cranked up his snowshoe power and flipped over, I myself. took a few steps to the right and just about to come over the ledge.
The headlight was shining over at the slope where I was working on and I was completely lit !!
NOOOOOOO !!
I lost a step started to slide down, F***!
All the sudden the lights were gone, everything was dark again and the snowmobile went to nowhere.
Phew!!
Liam offered his snowshoes to me to help on the stiff ski boots. I took them.
Chapter III
Excelerator Chair Lift, 1500m. - Sun 0130hrs
Zoom ....
After a snowmobile went by in front of the Chair Lift operator room. we jumped out of the bush and checked out the area, the map the stopped lift chairs and trying to sit on one of them to enjoy our booze and KFC.
Jake said to check if those doors open.
I went up and mummered to myself 'uh only idiots would leave the door unlo.."
"......."
Its unlocked Jake ! I wonder what's behind the door next to it - hoping there wasn't a ski patrol sleeping inside ! turned out a storage for tools. it was scary to find out.
The Control Room.
"It is warm here, we got heat !"We found the heat control and it says "leave the heat on at night plz" - for party , yes it must be for us!
There are hundreds of LEDs and buttons on the control panel, master keys, stop pause resume lift, Master shut off, emergency stop (you can tell from the size and the color of the button), and there were log book, phones and other random things on the table, The Lost and Found box.
There was room in the back, after the drunk fest, we named it the "Retards Room" which Emma went in a handful times and found her self a big icicle to suck on, she claimed she was very thirsty. ahem.
Keep on exploration, Liam stopped a ladder to the engine room on top of the chair lift wheel. I was behind him and he tried to walk up the ladder to gain access.
All the suddden the lights on the engine room turned on, without thinking much, we fleeted a couple hundred meters. haha no we didn't.
Here came the rest of us. we triggered the lights a couple more times and didn't know why until we found out the infrared sensors on the ladder, Liam scrambled the side of the rail of the ladder to skip the sensor and he looked back at us expressionlessly and stared into the air.
I noticed he heard something, so I turned back to signal others to be quiet."Snowmobiles are coming at us ! it must be the triggered lights !"
OH man, we fleed, with all our gear, everything, ran towards the bush headlessly and stayed prone still for 5 min until we found out we were just hungry, thristy and all hypersensitive.Coming back with much more confidence, we cranked up the heat all the way and started to unpack our KFC and various kind of boozes: a liter wine, 350ml Innis and Gunn, 750 ml dark ale, and 400ml scotch. Liam cranked up some tunes on his cellphone. 
the control room filled with greasy chicken and booze smell aka - awesome party atmosphere. 0230hrs Sun.
the control room filled with greasy chicken and booze smell aka - awesome party atmosphere. 0230hrs Sun.
Our party started with everyone standing up and commenting on the ski patrols log book, and their note "Remember to lock the door". There were so much drawings in the log book, mostly word puzzle and griffity and stuff you draw when you are completely bored the F*** out of your brain. like two unicorn f**king eachother while having a conversation.
The formation of the party now is sitting on the ground and soon, it went horizontally, we were as soft as paddle of mud, all over each other. My head was cracking from the alergy or drinking, I passed out around 0400hrs.
I started to hear a burred voice,"guys lets get out of here, we have to get down before the avi control comes up .... Ran lets go"
Realizing it was almost 430. I forced to clear up my head and blew up my Rocket pad, ready to do the runs.
Chapter IV
Escape from Blackcomb
Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaa~ !
One after the other, zooming like rockets, we Crazy Carpeting down the blue runs - tooooo fast too dark and too drunk to tell what run we were on and where we went.
The carpet came between legs, holding my dear life on to it and boots for breaking / turnning. the snow rushing towards my face was like tiny needles, and all I could see in ithe headlamp was white stuff in front of me, can't see no trees or where others were headed. helmet ? yeah probably a good idea.
I must had went down a black diamond, way to fast to control, My sled were deflated cuz the ice burn had trashed the plastic, I felt out of control and something caught one of my boot, I was on side ways and screaming down the hills. I started to feel my gloves and side to be very warm, in deed hot, against the surface. and I started to catch air and I was now backwards, so i no longer can use anything for break - i was a ball of snow on an avalanche !
"TREES !"
The black shadow of trees start to appear on both side of me, i realize I gotta somewhat stop this ... even before I could finish my thoughts. I crashed onto something and was thrown out the carpet. I was rolling, totally not knowing where I was and what I was fallen onto ....
Aww Awww. I ended up somewhere in a ditch, pain pain pain pain all over the place, I opened my eyes and looked around, I was in the middle of tall trees. and didn't see any blood on the ground, neither did any body parts of mine, ok i m good.
I regouped back by following others headlamps.
We were on the zoom again ! My carpet is totally a piece of plastic now and I now realize the feature claim on the box of this carpet "Instant Inflation and DEFLATION". We arrived a fork in a semi open area, there was a snow maker throwing snows in the air..... Just barely realizing all of us have arrived together, there were super bright lights coming in front of us.
It is a Cat !
Where to go ? its open area, if we run forward, there are about 100m absolute nothing. and back is steep hill and a snow maker against a rock wall !! Out of desperation, we all dived in to the bottom of the snow maker. The lights of the cat casted on us, the path is right in front of the snowmaker. We were literally 5 meters away from the cat and can clearly be seen.
DONT MOVE and NOBODY LOOKS UP.
We almost piling on top of eachother beside the snowmaker, I could clearly hear Jake:
"Shit shit shit shit shit, so busted so busted!"
"Fuck the shut up" Emma replied.(poor emma after the 500m el lost, still drunk)
My gut told me that cat was going to stop and the driver was going to come out and bust us ..... it was the most stressful 2 min, darn the cat moves slowly.
Phewwwwwww !
"wholy F***", we yelled to eachother, "I thought we were soooo ...."
Back to the moon light lit ! the cat surprisingly did not stop for us ! We were good, we were good dudes ! There were just a tiny bit more to go before parking lot .....
0430hrs Sunday.
Chapter V
Hung Ova~0500 Sunday, Parking Lot.
Still dark, but can see the jade off to east. Two slept inside the car, Liam and I slept outside.Booze seemed to make the temperature a lot lower that it was.
"Wakie Wakie !" - 1000 hrs Sunday.
Only one of my eyes struggled to open a crack, it was my allergies that glued my eyelids. everything seemed super bright and I could barely see anything. Second try, I saw two men standing by my head with some sort of "Patrol" jacket and the other was in blue uniform.
"DAMN IT, I told you we should have drove away by dawn, you think people cannot make associations with a trashed Control Room and a bunch hungovers and slept in by their car ??" (Not exactly hungover, still drunk)
FINALLY BUSTED !!
"Cheap hotels eh guys ?"
"Yeah certainly quality service, with in person wake up calls, hehe" I replied awkwardly.
"Arrived late or came up early, what were you guys up to last night, some crazy party ?"
"where you guys from"
"Not as our license plate indicated, we are from Vancouver"
Now I can start to focus on the yellow and blue jacket men.
They were Parkade Patrols ! LOL and as soon as I stood up, I saw our car parked out of orientation of other hundreds of cars.
"We will pack up and get some breakfast very soon sir".
We cranked up the stereo "Crazy little thing called Crazy" by Queen and drove away tailing clouds of dust ........
More Photos
No comments:
Post a Comment