By Becky Lomax
Gals like it too, and it's not just for extreme adrenaline junkies.
Screams of glee filtered through firs until one at a time, we popped
out of the whitened trees to meet the cat. Chatter piled deeper than
the snow. With Mother Nature flinging a foot of light-as-air powder at
our feet, "wows" turned into "stunning" and "beyond my wildest dreams."
With each run soaring beyond the previous, laughter leaped off every
turn.
For most of us, a three-day all-girls
cat trip in the Lizard Range of eastern British Columbia provided the
right tools to feel the fun. Cloaked in the supportive environment of
Powder Cowboy's Girlski, 12 women-early twenties to
fifty-somethings-discovered that cat skiing wasn't as extreme as we'd
presumed.
On the first day in the cat, palpable
tension crawled aboard. The few women with cat skiing experience doled
out as much encouragement as they could. Stopping en route to learn
avalanche protocol only inched the tension higher. Then one by one, we
dropped down the first slope, soon finding our familiar ski rhythms.
Led by Powder Cowboy's girl team, we
gathered confidence, bit by bit. With the expertise of a seasoned
professional, veteran ACMG guide Kir Knechtel hand-plucked an endless
supply of powder romps. She launched each run with an honest menu of
what we could expect-a few turns in "schnarby windpack" followed by
soft snow in the trees. With reports from the snow safety team
assessing slope stability, she upped the quality of each run while
building up our abilities. "Our guides were strong, confident, and
competent individuals," says Patty Christie, attributing their guidance
to notching her skiing skills higher.
Acting as tailgunner, Olivia Sofer
picked up strays flopped in the fluff. Smiling as she played caboose,
she waited patiently for those of us stopping for photos or mishaps.
When Kir lassoed us at bottom, we were different-giggling, tasting
confidence, and itching for the next run. Cat skiing seemed no more
difficult than resort black diamonds.
In three days, we never skied our
tracks twice, but blew through ridges, bowls, chutes, and glades. With
fat boards included in the fee, we floated through powder with not a
mogul in sight. How could moguls bump up when the 6000 acres sees only
24 skiers per day! Jill Vogan noted, "There's so much untracked that
you can ski at the end of the group and still get freshies."
At the bottom of each
couple-thousand-foot pitch, our no-caffeine-needed driver Libby Olsen
zoomed up in the snowcat. With finesse, she spun the big red Princess
around steep switchbacks and across knife-edged ridges to deliver us to
the best runs. After she sent us off with cheers and a wave, she raced
to meet us at the bottom with a giant smile and "Dude, how was it?!"
As temps hovered in frigid zones,
riding back up in a warm snowcat far surpassed a chairlift. After each
run, we climbed aboard to snack on wraps, home-baked cookies, orange
wedges, veggies, hot punch, and a large bag of chocolates.
Corralling ourselves back in the
Princess, we patted each other on the back for good skiing. We even
mocked our original fears. "Despite our varied ages, we made an
extremely compatible group with strong camaraderie," says Christie.
"Everyone was enthusiastic, encouraging, and fun without the boisterous
bravado we heard in the boys' group." Even the guides noticed a
difference.
At Powder Cowboy's Girlski, we bucked
two notions-that cat skiing is for extreme adrenaline junkies and that
it's a sport mostly for men. We discovered that cat skiing is
definitely for girls. On the final day after one run, Diane Carlson
quips, "That was so good, I'm giddy." We weren't the same skiers who
climbed into the Princess the first dy; we were confident, ready to
devour all the cat skiing we could.