Words: Mary McIntyre 2018-12-10 15:22:41
“Yousee, it’s a chalet because it has more than two bathrooms,” Al Schaffer says. He gestures toward an outhouse perched 15 feet above the ground on a platform between fir trees. He strains to hold a serious look for half a second before laughter creases the smile lines radiating out from his light blue eyes. Minutes before, our helicopter dipped into an opening between low-hanging clouds, and a snow-covered A-frame popped into view, nestled in a spindly balsam forest. Al and his wife Marion waited outside as snowflakes tumbled from the dark gray sky, giddy with excitement at the 34th opening weekend of their Monashee Mountain ski chalet. Marion’s T-shirt shows a wild-haired hippie sitting on a toilet in the middle of the woods. Over this is inscribed, “Blanket Glacier Chalet—Where We’ve Got the Runs!” Before our morning flight, Al’s son, Marty, met us for a caffeine-fueled start to the day in Revelstoke. Though his parents are still a huge part of the business, his dad calls him “the boss.” Marty put the Blanket on the map for freeride-inspired backcountry skiers with his company Canadian Powder Guiding (CAPOW) and uses the chalet for camps such as Pillow Talk that vows to “throw you into lines that make you want to weep but you’ll come out stronger.” The tall, blonde, younger Schaffer greets us with a genuinely massive grin. His parents bought the chalet in 1986—the same year Marty was born. “I think it’s a kid’s dream come true to have this arena of snow-building opportunities,” he says between sips of coffee. “We get about 60 feet of snow annually so that’s what really stands out. I remember being super young and having to tunnel into the front door. In my eyes, the A-frame was just a big snow cave.” But more than the white stuff, Marty remembers the people. “It was a cool community to grow up in. Being disconnected brings the best out in people.” This bond formed by isolation is what we came here for, too. It’s the last week of November and Tobin Seagal and I are about to make our first turns of the year and spend time reconnecting with winter and the people that come along with it. As we dig deeper into this joyous annual reckoning with our favorite season, Marty recalls the general feeling of well-being that has permeated the Blanket since the beginning. “It didn’t matter what age people were. We would build luge tracks going through tunnels and over jumps. It was very youthful, like Never Never Land. Anyone who goes up there chooses never to grow up.” Now 30 years old and an ACMG certified ski guide, he’s definitely not growing up anytime soon. “I still just try to fill my winter with really fun things,” Marty laughs. We’ll hear more about CAPOW later, he promises, ushering us out the door toward staging. It’s still fall in the Colombia River Valley, and a damp brownness has settled over the farmyard where we meet the heli. Marty wishes he was coming with, but can’t miss guide training at another outfit where he also works. “My parents are cooler than me anyways. You’ll have a blast!” He grins and snaps the door shut behind me. Rotors whir deafeningly and we leave the wilting fields behind, rising straight up into winter. We settle in under heavy snowfall, but by afternoon the precipitation warms to pummeling rain. Runnels streak down the hillsides, turning the snowpack to saturated garbage. Ski dreams postponed, we grab shovels to help clear the steep metal roof, scoop buckets of drinking water from the creek, and get to know Al, Marion, and the three diggers preparing the chalet for the coming season. “We were one of the first to offer packages like this,” Al says. “Four days of telemark instruction and powder skills in what was then a new sport. After a workshop with an avalanche expert from Switzerland, we brought back what we learned and started weekend courses in avalanche training.” He brews a pot of the the “best coffee you’ll ever have.” I flip through a guestbook with duct-tape binding. One guest writes, “Welcome to Al’s bootcamp! Prepare to be worked to the bone.” It details an arduous week at the Blanket, though it’s clear the author thoroughly enjoyed himself. Al’s a fan of hard work. “It’s part of the backcountry livin’ lifestyle,” he chuckles. “Splitting wood, carrying water. One time, a group got stuck in a storm for three extra days. They ran out of food and had to dig down to the lake and catch rainbow trout. It was stuff that just wasn’t done in their normal life!” By late afternoon, Tobin and I are antsy to stretch our legs and determine wheather the conditions are as bad as they look. As we skin up, our jackets get the best washing they’ll ever have. On the descent, we kick off roller balls and squish through sloppy turns back toward the chalet. As it grows dark, the temperatures drop to freezing and I carve my first real turns of the season in fresh snow. Over Marion’s hearty dinner, more stories come out. “There was one time when Marty was 4 that we were up here, Al and myself were busy digging stuff out, and kinda forgot about Marty. He had fallen headfirst into a tree well and was there for about an hour before we realized he was missing,” Marion giggles. Al chimes in, “And we had a Polk so Marion could take him skiing with her. Marty would be bundled up and she would park him in the woods while she took laps.” When I ask if making skiing their life was always part of the plan, they both shrug and smile. “We enjoyed working with people and enjoyed the outdoors. We just happened to be here when backcountry skiing became a new thing.” After a full day of searching for soft snow, we return to the chalet, beat, as darkness falls. When we show Al where we’d skied, he’s not surprised. Marty has been poking into these steeper zones since he started guiding. “A lot of the terrain you guys are skiing now, we called that unskiable terrain,” he says. “We looked at it and kept right on walking.” I stick a foraged icicle into a glass of whiskey and warm up in front of the fire, sharing stories and contemplating going out to throw a log on the sauna. Another day of skiing in the rain makes Tobin and I hungry for powder, so when it snows all night before our scheduled flight out, we get up hours before breakfast to sneak in some morning turns. It’s well worth the early alarm, and we hoot and holler our way down pillowy terrain in the glow of dawn. As we heli out, Marty is coming in with the first CAPOW camp of the season. Now a full-time guide, Marty got his first taste of it at the telemark camps. “I remember cleaning earwax out of the first-generation beacons during avy clinics. My parents made sure to give me the really shitty jobs so I understood that part before taking over the business. I knew it wasn’t a glorified job. They set me up for success,” he says. Another central motivator in pursuing guide school was an avalanche accident that occurred when Marty was a senior. During a school field trip to ski Rogers Pass, seven kids were caught and died in a slide. A lot of the people on the trip were Marty’s friends. “I invited a bunch of the students up to the Blanket. It was their first time on skis since the incident,” he says. “One girl in particular was buried three meters deep for half an hour. That was probably the most influential moment for me to get into guiding, taking that group up into the mountains. It was such a powerful week.” After high school, Marty completed his guide training and founded CAPOW, continuing his parents’ legacy of combining avalanche education and ski skills with his own flair. “I wanted clients that wouldn’t normally hire a guide,” he says. “With CAPOW, you’re not hiring someone who’s crusty and doesn’t talk to you all day. You’re getting a homie. Somebody who’s going to shred.” CAPOW was founded on the premise of mentorship. The open format encourages clients to talk snowpack and decision-making with their guide, rather than the traditional “I lead, you follow.” scenario. With a solid contingent of pro skiers calling Revelstoke home, Marty taps his friend group for guides and coaches, creating a roster of well-known skiers for campers to learn from. “With the camps, we set a tone for the vibe,” he says. “I’ve seen it so many times: You spend all this money on a ski trip only to get paired up with a total newbie. It ruins your week. We try to create a community of like-minded people for every trip.” With 140 days of guiding this year, Marty isn’t slowing down. Between his CAPOW camps and with his sister running the Blanket kitchen, the whole Schaffer clan is involved with the chalet. “Independently, my sister and I both found a niche,” Marty says. “Our parents never pushed us into it at all. I’m sure they thought by this point they’d sell and move on.” By now, the groups frequenting the Blanket are on opposite ends of the spectrum. The original telemark skiers from the 1980’s or the “Old Guard” as Marty calls them, have three weeks booked for the coming season. Other weeks are filled with pro skiers teaching a younger demographic to huck themselves off pillows and ski big lines with confidence. This dynamic duality ensures the Blanket will be used for years to come; it’s been reincarnated by a new generation of skiers while retaining its decades-old roots. Photo Caption: Daily departure preparation at Blanket Glacier Chalet in BC’s Monashee Mountains. Photo: Mattias Fredriksson
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