Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/201279
F or the past 24 hours, all I've been able to think about is Graduation Hill, so-called because if one can ski to its base without crashing, you're deemed to have "graduated" as a cross-country skier. Here's the thing. I've been a carvaholic for 50 years and fear few slopes when bolted to my boards. But these skinny cross-country doodads are giving me fits. The challenge, of course, is that they're not attached at the heel, only at the toe, making the process of stopping an entirely new experience – counterintuitive, even, for an old downhiller like me. I'm finding even the shortest slopes lead to slapstick crashes worthy of a YouTube highlight reel. And now, with each twist of the trail leading deeper into the ice-palace forest of B.C.'s Manning Park, where I'm tucked away with my little family for the weekend, Graduation Hill is just that much closer. I've only myself to blame. "Bring on the hard stuff," I'd crowed to our Nordic ski instructor, the appropriately (but coincidentally) named Sarah Manning. But that was yesterday, sprawled before a roaring log fire in Manning Park Lodge. Now that she's granted my wish, I'm trying to remember – as I push and poke amid pine and hemlock toward what I now think of as my impending doom – if an impish smile didn't flit across her face when I issued that particular challenge. Trepidation aside, I still can't help but be astonished by our surroundings: a fantastical world of snow-laden trees reminiscent of dreams and fairy tales where, occasionally, the trail breaks out into bright sunshine and startling vistas of Frosty Mountain and its sister peaks looming over Lightning Lake. "Who knew," I'd blurted out loud to the park lodge's GM Barry Wilks a few weeks ago. He'd just finished describing how this winter wonderland gets 10 metres of just-outof-the-bottle champagne powder annually and a yearly visitor count – barely 43,000 – that makes it one of the most underutilized winter playgrounds in the province (Whistler Blackcomb sees two million-plus). The latter was particularly puzzling considering the park is a mere 200 klicks from the cocktail clinking crowds of Metro Vancouver. "Yeah," Wilks had chuckled. "A lot of people think of Manning as nothing more than a highway pit stop." Guilty as charged. But that all changed when I followed up on said facts with a ski buddy of mine, who After skirting snow ghosts in Manning Park's backcountry (here), skiers relax at the Loon Lagoon Recreation Centre (below). broke down and confessed to downhill skiing at Manning last winter on "great snow" and pretty much having the place to himself. "Powder up to the knees and fresh lines to carve in unblemished snow all day long," he added with just a hint of malice, knowing how much it hurt to hear. Obviously, there are limits even to ski friendships. The thing is, at pretty much every ski hill I've ever been to, any fresh snowfall barely lasts a few hours before the local powder hounds tear it to shreds. Typically, by 11 a.m. I'm peering at a sea of gouged lines and feeling like the guy who's just come back from vacation to find his basement flooded. Noting the anguish on my face, my buddy, of course, pitched in with something else he neglected to share last ski season: "We even went back the next day and still got fresh lines." I booked a room the next day. Now, skiers are as notorious as fisher folk for exaggerating, but it didn't take long to confirm that everything my buddy had bragged about was true, and then some. Two weekends later, I was making the two-hoursand-change drive from Vancouver with my wife, Lisa, and our 10-year-old James in a snowstorm that had me giggling at the wheel, albeit one I occasionally gripped in irritation whenever some maniac in a pickup rushed past. By eight the next morning, we were standing at the top of the Orange Chair before a panoramic view that includes a slew of peaks in both Canada and the U.S., surveying our domain for the day with big grins slapped across our faces. It wasn't just the snow, either – 57 square hectares worth. It was the whole look and feel of (opposite and snow ghost) Alan Majchrowicz, Rob Sieniuc/Broadway Architects p44-47_Manning Park.indd 45 the place: a kind of retro groove that almost made me feel as if it were the '60s, that we'd stepped off the chairlift and back in time. It's no secret why. Manning is a provincial park, and stagnant revenues in recent years, along with a stubborn government, have kept development to a minimum. Which means the ski area is still served by a T-bar and a couple of antique two-seater chairlifts dating to the '60s, chairs that can still chug uphill but break down with aggravating frequency for anyone addicted to high-speed quads and the like found in the big resorts. As well, at 437 metres, the vertical drop is not a lot, but in this case quality trumps verticality. Most important, though, the locals who call Manning their own have a distinctly un-resort look to them. This is not the place to peruse the latest designer skiwear. This is blue-collar skiing; if you don't like it you can ski somewhere else. Please ski somewhere else. Only adding to the flashback ambiance is the parking-lot village at the bottom of the hill. Unlike some ski resorts we could name (you know who you are), Manning encourages its beloved ticket buyers to overnight – which means on any given weekend when the snow blows, its base lot is crammed GOING PL ACES >> w i n t e r 2 0 1 3 45 13-10-16 9:33 AM