Our Winter in British Columbia

After plenty of time to reflect on our winter, I'm feeling reminiscent and motivated to document it.

During the winter of 2018, while most of the western USA saw very little snow, most of the Canadian mountains got hammered. Before the snow really started falling, sometime in December, we fortuitiously committed to a 1-month rental in Nelson, BC and 1 month in Golden, BC.

The contrast between the two locales and towns was striking, which is exactly what we were aiming for. Snowy, cloudy, hippy-cool Nelson contrasted perfectly with cold, beautiful, sunny, small-town Golden. In both places, we pretty much did about the same thing every day. Climb up, snowboard down, climb up, snowboard down, eat, drink, eat, sleep, do it again.

Nearing the top of our climb, outside Nelson, with a rare glimpse of blue sky

Snowboarding down the mountains outside of Golden

While in Nelson, it was rare that we didn't see at least a few inches of snow *everyday*.

Climbing up, outside of Nelson. Never at a loss for new snow. 

In contrast, Golden didn't have as much snow, but the stunning mountain scenery and sunshine made up for it. We learned a valuable lesson in Golden, too:  -15 F is too cold for recreating outdoors. In fact, after we learned our lesson, lucky to have our toes and fingers intact, we were grounded for 5 days because it was too cold.

The backcountry outside of Golden allowed us to get out of the trees into the high alpine.

Snowboarding outside of Golden

Sunshine was usually easy to find near Golden, even when there were clouds

While climbing up one day, we noticed some tracks (other than ours) in our old uptrack. After a bit of research, I learned it was probably a large wolf. The tracks were impressively large. I was hoping it was a large cat (cougar?) or maybe even a bear but it was probably for the best that we weren't being tracked by a hungry cat or un-hibrating bear.

Since we did a similar thing last winter (staying in Nelson for 2.5 months), it seems we're in a bit of a pattern. Having a solid structure to live in during the winter has been pretty damn cool. Both of us love it - LOOOONG hot showers after a cold, active day outdoors, followed by oven-baked food, and warm solitude on the computer, with Netflix, or a book.

Homer overlooking Scott, while he researches the weather conditions and watches streaming music performances