Jan. 18, 2012 - Issue #848: City of champions

On Jasper time

Leaping through wormholes at Marmot Basin

On the web
jasperinjanuary.com
skimarmot.com
jasper.travel

A slow-motion powder cloud crystallizes before me like a wormhole—universe altering and time suspending. Passing through, I enter a state of existence known as flow. In one part of my mind I know I'm at Marmot Basin in Jasper, punching through softpack in Milk Run and Elevator Chutes, taking the powder in Birthday Bowl—but my forethoughts are fixated purely on optimal movement through this living landscape, outside of time.

Then, with a sudden jolt, I snap back to the present. It's 3:44 pm. Precisely. I know because when you wake up from the flow of a day spent dashing from one experience to the next, it's like opening your eyes to a beeping alarm clock, LED lights glowing: 3:44, 3:44, 3:44.

So what's the big deal about 3:44? It's just one minute away from lift closing at the Knob Chair. Having just charged through Charlie's Bowl and ripped through the thin gossamer of the continuum once more, off a diving board in the middle of the run, all I can think is, "Again."

No words necessary, I motion to my riding partner. We simultaneously kick into high gear, aiming for the lift. Skidding into the hard-packed loading zone, I pull up to see a rickety wooden sandwich board showing a lift with a red circle and line drawn through. Closed. Glancing up, I see the lucky last riders a mere six chairs ahead.

Not prepared to give up yet, the two of us reach the same conclusion at once: the Ridge! This time we make it—barely. Moments later, standing atop the Ridge, I glimpse the shimmer of another wormhole.
 

Time plays a bigger role in the alpine experience than we sometimes realize. Seasonal cycles leech into the psyche, stirring limbic responses as fall turns to winter and snowflakes begin to sift through the hourglass. "When?" we ask.

For Marmot Basin the answer is usually Remembrance Day weekend, the resort's traditional, if tentative opening day. Next comes the waiting, praying for snow and, when it comes, the superstitious algorithms calculating how long it will last and how to maximize our slopetime.
In its simple, ordered way, the daily rhythm of the resort is almost sensuous. In Alberta, mountain resorts tend to open at 9 am. Marmot's no exception. For diehards, this means the 20-minute drive up to the resort often starts in pre-dawn light, mired in dark blues and purples. Ascending switchbacks, the road climbs into day with warm orange hues and diamonds glittering like promises in the snow.

From 8:30 am on, parking lots slowly begin to fill—decks of cards spread across the snowy earth for gods to shuffle. The first ski shuttle arrives at 8:50, later disgorging ever-increasing loads of skiers on the mountain at 10:20 and 12:35. Tick, tock, inhale, exhale, ebb and flow.

All the calendars and hourly schedules are useful to the skier who wants to plan a smooth trip. But as important as event dates, opening hours and travel departure times are for planning your day, knowing the migration patterns of the masses is also useful to avoid the traffic in search of a different flow.

Either way, time impacts us all at the hill in some way. For the most part it is inescapable, except in those rare instances. But that escape is exactly what the true Jasper experience offers.

Between those two bookends of first and last lift, everything else is up to chance.

On heavy snowfall days, opening may be delayed for upper mountain chairs—the Ridge and Knob in particular—due to avalanche control work. Avy bombs rap like gavels on judgment day, pounding out seconds that last for hours. Powder seekers wait it out in agony, knowing that the exquisite torture will give way to euphoria—in time.

Delayed openings generate excitement, tension and finally—as the chair begins spinning to ferry skiers up to fresh new snow—release. It can take years of exploring to figure out how to stretch a powder day beyond the first few hours, once all the open runs are tracked. But if you do it right, you can exploit a good 25-centimetre snowfall (like the one Marmot had in early January) for nearly three days.

Eventually, that knowledge becomes intuitive, and you learn how to manifest it on the mountain. Flow. No consulting trail maps, no lengthy discussions about where to next—you just go.

When you're in that flow, you're not paying attention to the efficiency of lifts. In some unconscious way it may register that the mountain skis bigger than it did before the Canadian Rockies Express and the new Paradise Quad went in.

Theoretically, with the addition of those two lifts, you could increase your actual skiing time by approximately 150 per cent by riding them exclusively. However, what matters is not the geek factor of travel time, but the lack of impediments as time loses meaning, replaced by the uncommon sensation of true freedom.
 

Too soon, of course, it all comes to an end as 4 pm brings last lifts at the Paradise, Ridge, Canadian Rockies Express and Eagle (with the exception of the School House at 4:30 pm, to ferry weary riders and skiers back to their cars). Likewise, the season; this year Marmot Basin has tentatively pegged May 6 as its closing date, seemingly far away and yet looming close as the wheels of time churn on.
Along the way are the milestones: the holiday season, Family Day weekend, Easter and, of course, Jasper in January. The annual return of this event, now in its 23rd year, is one of those traditions that has become intricately linked with winter in Jasper, offering the chance to reflect on history with lectures and exhibits, slow down a rapid day with tea or a bowl of chili, or perhaps rediscover childhood with a snowball fight at  the new Yukigassen battle.

Observing these rites is a way of both marking the passage of time and entering into the flow of the season, a way to harness the fleeting moments. The hours, days and years may pass, but somewhere out there is a wormhole with your name on it.

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