above photo taken at Mount Robson, which is actually outside of Jasper national park, but thats neither here nor there...
So we stayed at the Pocahontas Lodges, which was about 25 minutes drive from the town of Jasper, very nice, all log cabins, and strangely, i think the employee's may have been used in the film The Deliverance. Several times i thought i could hear the sound of duelling banjo's in the background This caused a bit of worry when my creditcard wouldnt authorise, i thought they may have tried to keep me to add an extra strand to the dna...
we got chalet #46. The bikers reading this will understand its relevence.
so Michelle dropped me off at the slopes for a bit of boarding. I was a bit nervous, it was abit like 'first day at school' but i decided that i didnt need/couldnt afford lessons. so i watched a few people for a couple of minutes then decided i could do this. I strapped myself to the board, which proved quite tricky as it was determined to fuck off down the hill by itself... then i slid down the slope towards the chair lift. on my ass. and crashing thru the orange fencing into the 'school' area.
ok! so perhaps another go at that, i got off the board and back to the top of the school slope area. Michelle said she'd be back in a minute as she was going to move the car and get her camera. No problem, i figured i wasnt going ver far too fast.
within seconds, i managed to glide, upright, back down the nursery slope and to the chair lift! well, may as well get on this thing then. Lesson number 1. getting on the chair lift. i was on the chair lift with a local ski-er, who asked me how boarding compared with ski-ing... 'your asking the wrong person this is the first time i even seen snow!' she seemed quite surprised but assumed i'd had lessons earlier in the day... 'lessons? no, i just ended up on this chair lift'
Lesson #2. getting off the chair lift......
anyway, all went well. Not content with sliding all the way down the mountain on my ass just once, i ended up back in the chair lift for another crack (excuse the pun) at it. My butt was bruised, i had to bail out at speed after getting a good run going (thats comparative of course) and my arms, wrists, shoulders all ache from picking myself back up!
a bit of miscommunication meant that i'd hitched a ride back to Jasper town, to save Michelle a bit of a drive, meanwhile she'd headed up to the slopes at the end of the day to come get me - no phone signal up there so she had the worry of seeing the place closing and no reports of strange englishmen lost up the slopes, and i had the worry of becoming elk fodder. eventually i managed to get hold of her so we met up back in Jasper. Phew!
Mean looking elk... the silent killer
