Cross Country Skiing Millcreek Canyon

*Some of these photos were taken by Bree or Ben*

So, Miara is kind of lazy and won’t write this post, so it looks like I get to. And by I, I mean Colton. Yes, the fabled, wonderful, fantastic Colton. You should all feel privileged to read my fantastic blog entry. Not really, mostly I just hope you are entertained enough to read to the end.

We have achieved our goal from last week: Cross Country skiing up Mill Creek Canyon! And when I say “up” Mill Creek Canyon, I mean UP. You can never quite realize how steep something is until you can start going backward at any moment. That was a bit of a side note, but you will be used to that by the end of this post. I promise. Anyways, let me start from the beginning. 

Last week, as we trudged up the canyon on our not-so-trusty snowshoes, we were practically beside ourselves with our envy of the cross country skiers. While we slowly walked up and down the canyon (interrupted only by our epic excursion up the face of Mt. Millcreekerest – if you didn’t get that, it is a mash-up of Mill Creek and Mt. Everest…) we saw them glide (seemingly) effortlessly by in both directions. They moved twice as fast as we did and it looked like they used half the energy! Now you are all thinking what we were…”Wow! If we were cross country skiing instead of walking…it would be four times more efficient!” We vowed right there on the trail that next week we would go cross country skiing. So we did!

We got our start fairly early. Since Trent (my older brother) and I were picking Miara up and packing -in addition to our own gear – the camp stove, hot chocolate, and some of the sandwiches, all before meeting at Bree and Ben’s (their version of this story, with additional pictures, can be found here) house, I was up by eight. I know I know, that isn’t all that early. But give me a break! I’m a college student between semesters. Anything before eleven is unpleasantly early. So we made it to the Martins’ house about five past nine, or fifteen minutes late. Bree had promised us breakfast, and she delivered. She had made some sort of fruity breakfast casserole, and it was very good. Especially once you added enough sugar that you could have helped the entire bottle of medicine go down. Yes, I just used part of a Mary Poppins song in my blog post. Impressed? You should be.

Anyways, so we left their house full of both food and anticipation. My driving on the way to REI was much less creative than the week previous. I didn’t even have to cross three lanes of freeway traffic just to hit the exit in time. Its too bad the skiing didn’t go as smoothly.(Past, present, and future English students – I just used foreshadowing – for real). We picked up our five sets of cross country skis (There were five of us: Trent, Bree, Ben, Miara, and I) and we headed to the canyon. It was apparent even as we began putting the skis on that this would be much more difficult than we had anticipated. I think most of us even managed to crash in the first hundred yards of the trail.

But things got better; we all sort of figured out how to make everything work and started making progress up the hill. We all still fell, every time I tired to turn and go back down the hill to check on Miara, I crashed twice. Once as I turned around, and the other because it was the only way I could figure out how to stop. And let me tell you, this trail was not a soft, snowy place to land. It was icy. Icy means hard, and we all had the bruises to prove it. Eventually we hit a much steeper spot on the trail and Miara suddenly became the fastest skier. I think she was so much lighter than the rest of us that she actually managed to have enough friction from the skis to not slide backwards. Trent was having the biggest issue. All gear included he weighed over 200 pounds, and the icy trail didn’t approve. It was either slide backward or take his skis off. So off the skis came and he walked ahead and sat in the shade. Shade? Yes. Shade. At this point we were all so hot from working our way up the steep trail that we were sweating in our coats. We had already stripped off our top layers, but that did not even begin to stop the sweating.

At this point we had reached the general area of a trail that led to the stop of Mt. Millcreekerest. Yes, there was a trail that took us almost all the way to the top. We had no idea this trail existed as we tried showshoeing up the opposite face of the mountain. So we decided to walk up the trail to our mountain-top perch, but not before testing our trail slide again. It was not nearly as smooth as the week before. Let’s just say that sliding down it this week may have resulted in some sort of prostate exam. Or at least a sore butt. So we hiked to the top, briefly lamented the death of our stump-top snowman, and had lunch.

 

Considering we were at the top of a mountain located midway up Mill Creek Canyon, we had a pretty decent lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, granola bars, hot cocoa, hot orange spice drink, and hot apple cider. The credit for everything hot goes to a camp stove which did a fantastic job of melting copious amounts of snow for our drinks. It was really quite pleasant and peaceful. But eventually we decided that we had to make the treacherous ski back down the icy canyon.

We had already realized that coming down was going to be a problem, but I don’t think any of us expected how hard it would really be. Trent decided that sitting on the back of his skis would be the safest and easiest way down (also definitely the stupidest) but he gave up after a few hundred yards. The rest of us immediately began trying to ski down. I am a pretty decent downhill skier, but this was crazy. Cross country skis have a hundred times less control and are long enough in the front that is isn’t hard to tangle them up. Ben, Bree, Trent and I had all skied before and were all having enough trouble. Miara, however, had never been on a pair of skis before. She was actually pretty good for being on skis for the first time. The trail was so icy that you could not use the classic “snow-plow” technique to slow down very much. No matter how hard you snow-plowed, you kept going faster and faster. There really was no way to stop except to crash. So every time I stopped to wait for Miara it involved me crashing down to the ice and skidding to a stop. Miara was not faring much better. She would get going fast, then she would get scared because there was NO controlling these skis, and she would crash too. Eventually she got the hang of it though, and we both started skiing down, mostly without incident. Despite the pain of it all, it was pretty fun. Looking stupid always has its perks. Proving that “In every job that must be done,  there is an element of fun.” Poppins again? This isn’t a blog post. It’s literary genius. But seriously, we looked like The Bad News Bears. Skiers more talented and experienced than us were constantly slowing down and staring at us before skiing on. Here is how I envisioned their thought processes, “Holy crap, those morons are going to kill themselves! They are kind of funny though, look how stupid they look. Maybe I should ask if they need any help. Not that I would need to ask. They clearly need help. They aren’t asking for help though, and if I leave them alone, everyone else can laugh at them, too! Okay, I will just leave them.” Then they would ski off. It’s okay though, their gawking was almost as entertaining to me as my sucking was to them. Fair is fair.

We made it back to the gate and found a ski trail that would take us back to the parking lot. It looked moderately hazardous to those of us who were inexperienced. And by moderately dangerous, I really mean potentially fatal. Trent, ever the reasonable one, decided to take his skis off and walk back to the car. The rest of us headed for the trail. It actually turned out to be one of the most fun parts of our ski trip. It was slightly downhill which meant no work, and and curves were easier than expected to navigate. There was, however, the rock filled river at the bottom of a huge ditch threatening to kill us. I think I was the only one who crashed on this trail. There was a rock, covered in snow, that my ski hit. I basically face planted on the trail. It was alright though, I suppose. We had at last made it back to the car, just across the street. Trent was there waiting for us, the walk was indeed faster than the ski. But we had more fun than he did. In any case, that was one seriously exciting, yet painful, Christmas Eve.