Words, Photos and Captions: Matthew Tufts 2021-09-09 12:35:10
Alpenglow hits the peaks above the Canadian Pacific Bridge with Highway 1’s historic suspension bridge tucked behind it in Revelstoke, BC. It’s 3:15 a.m. and I’m awakened by a primal, don’t-freeze-to-death instinct. I check my phone. Still four hours till the alarm. Damn. I’m tired, but I don’t want to sleep. I don’t think I can. I want to get moving. The northern winter nights are always long, but this week they’ve felt exceptionally long—a 30-degrees-below-zero kind of long. I shift in my sleeping bag, wincing at the icy burn of cold metal from my zipper, and try to ignore the soft crunch and crackle of frozen goose down. Grabbing a book from the makeshift shelf, I skim through two paragraphs of Gladwellian prose by the light of a dim headlamp before deciding my hands are too cold to flip the pages. I curl back toward a fetal position and resign myself to listening to the muffled serenade of idling semis just beyond my icy windows. It’s worth it. Always is. Words tend to fail me—a critical fault for a writer, I’m aware—when asked why I love this town so much. What makes Revelstoke worth living in the back of my pickup every season for the past four Canadian winters? My thoughts shift from the blankness outside to next week’s annual firefighters-versus-cops hockey game. The 20-minute conversation about microbus conversions outside the library parking lot in sub-Arctic cold. The sound of old Delicas, the smell of new wax, the nirvana of a fast, silky layer of hoar over bottomless powder, old growth cedars, the whoomph of a pillow compressing under ski, and the jolt into present when your tires fishtail on the sweeping turn just past the Asulkan Lot. It’s much like the snow falling beyond my frosted windows—the amalgamation of scores of small, unique, almost indescribable things, weightless in and of themselves, together creating a blanket of essential matter. A lot of little nothings; collectively, everything. This is the community I know and love. The sum total of the minutiae. It’s gritty. Charming. Perpetually stoked. It’s Revy. I can tell you what Revy isn’t: a resort town. Revelstoke has, by and large, avoided transcendence to the heart-wrenching status of its Western mega-resort peers. It’s a rural mountain town that happens to have a world-class resort. That’s not a trivial distinction. Strolling through downtown reveals a poignant nostalgia for the way ski towns once were, before alpine-themed boutique village shopping centers sprouted across North America. The ski hill—“hill” being a modest term for the most inbounds vertical on the continent—is a 10-minute drive from town. Close enough to be part of town; far enough to not be the town. Après still takes place off the hill at local watering holes, at semi-professional hockey games and at the public aquatic center hot tub. This modest perception of Revy fits a vastly local and long-term seasonal clientele—folks who buy their passes early and milk them for more than 100 days per year. The town’s unofficial “powder clause” draws bigger crowds to midweek storm days than bluebird weekends when tourists flock. You’ll find a few diligent souls still manning essential services, but show up to the coffee shop when there’s a foot of fresh, and expect some saltiness with your latte. I’m an experienced seasonal powder pilgrim, but by no means am I local. I’m not even Canadian (though I hold out hope). I’m part of a large contingent of seasonal transplants, most commonly found each evening at the public aquatic center sauna, Wednesday-night karaoke at the Regent, or anywhere that provides warmth, cheap food and cheaper beer. We hail from the States, Australia, Quebec, Australia, Chilé, Australia, and the Alps. But we’re not here for the weekend or even the week. We’re here for the season (though many of us would stay forever, visas and legality aside), a group of nomads unable to truly stay, but unwilling to leave. After all, this is hallowed ground. But to weave yourself into the town fabric, you’d have to put your time in, to show up. It’s not a relationship that can develop overnight. As limited access (over six hours from Vancouver International Airport or five from Calgary) protects Revelstoke from casual passersby, you’ll find that people don’t ski because they’re in Revy; they’re in Revy because they ski. The journey here requires intentionality. The region’s combination of world-class terrain and deep, light, right-side-up powder at the confluence of the Monashees and Selkirks attracted some of the first heli-ski operations in North America, and during the decades since, film crews, professionals, amateurs, the “fun-employed” and the legitimately unemployed have made the trek to the prow of BC’s Powder Highway to test their mettle in some of the finest pillows this side of the Pacific. While several high-profile pros have put down roots in the valley, most are living a financially modest, experientially rich existence. As a longtime nomadic inhabitant of an ’80s-era Ford, I have a deep appreciation for places that embrace the transient and frugal vehicle-dwelling community. It’s a recognition that, no matter where we’re from or what we’re worth, we’re all here for the same reason. Seeing a groggy-eyed neighbor putting on ski boots outside their tent, watching a light flicker in the car tucked in the back of the truck stop, or partying with nine buddies who raucously—and with questionable legality—share a two-bedroom apartment affirms a unified commitment. Nowhere embraces that pinnacle of ski bummery quite like Rogers Pass. The eastern of two passes on the main thoroughfare, Rogers is the kind of place that incites excitement and fear in the hearts of almost everyone who winds Highway 1 between Golden and Revelstoke. The snow is some of the finest in the Kootenays, if not the world; the avalanche probability is among the highest. The views from the road are second-to-none; the number of vehicular accidents also shares that distinction. Increased usage and lack of awareness of the Winter Permit System only exacerbates these issues (the permits are free but are required to ski at Rogers). The pass epitomizes risk and reward. Every morning at 7 a.m., the doors to the visitor center open, the avalanche bulletin is posted, the park announces which zones are closed for highway and railroad avalanche control, and a half-dozen crews file in to make plans for the day’s tour. On a powder day, you can expect a healthy smattering of locals getting an alpine start from town, navigating around trundling semis to arrive in the parking lot five minutes before the visitor center opens. Those folks are a dedicated bunch and, if you’re lucky, they’ll lay a mean skin-track, fueled by Timmy’s, La Baguette, or the fact that they took a shower the previous night and slept in a real bed. A small contingent of dirtbags forgoes the relative comfort of the aquatic center’s cheap showers and town’s milder climate in order to save a bit of gas and reap a lot more powder. You’ll find us in rusted pickups, new Sprinters, camper shells, Subaru Outbacks, tow-behind trailers, converted buses and even the occasional two-wheel-drive sedan, all tucked against the two-story snowbanks of the Discovery Centre lot. Sometimes you’ll find us spending an unnecessarily long time in the bathroom—it’s heated after all, and a nice place to regain feeling in your toes. There are substantiated concerns among both locals and visitors about getting “Revelstuck” at the pass. Parks Canada, in collaboration with Canadian military specialists, operates the largest mobile avalanche-control program in the world to manage the more than 130 avalanche paths threatening motorist and railroad traffic in Glacier National Park on any given day. Frequent closures can last anywhere from a number of hours to multiple days after heavy storms. Frankly, it’s not a risk a lot of people are willing to take when the heaviest storms roll in. On the other hand, if you have everything you need in your vehicle and the forecast calls for three feet of fresh powder in the high country, you can stock up on peanut butter, oatmeal and couscous and wait it out on the pass (provided you abide by Winter Permit System closures and restrictions). From the questionable comfort of my sleeping bag, I remember that yesterday was one of those days. Restocked on discount groceries and beer, myself and two German friends arrived midmorning in time for a short tour. They were in the midst of an Alaska-to-South America road trip, but seemed perfectly content staying in Revelstoke for days like this. Clouds rolled in steadily, engulfing the alpine as we made our way up Connaught Creek drainage, one of Rogers’ iconic access routes. Flurries intensified to steady snowfall as we ripped skins, and we dropped toward the trees to avoid being caught on the inside of the imminent mid-storm ping-pong ball. The first two turns were blind, with few features providing depth perception. No matter, the snow was dry and bottomless. We popped effortlessly over a rock band that in lesser conditions might’ve been a solid drop, landing gently among the trees. Embracing a newfound sense of time and space, we yipped and hollered our way through cedar, fir and spruce laced in lichen, the old growth opening up below each turn. The parking-lot scene was frantic as we scooted gleefully back to our rigs—beards caked in snow, icicles hanging from dripping noses. My friends and I could sense palpable anxiety as folks scrambled to brush off their cars, slap on chains, and get back to town before the brunt of the storm hit. For us, it seemed like a good time to crack a beer and bake camper banana bread. We weren’t going anywhere. Revy, like the snow that falls here, is an insulator. There’s an infinite silence to heavy snowfall. Not the silence that echoes around an empty void, but rather a tangible, viscous, omnipresent silence—muffling, then ultimately muting everything around until you’re left with a voluminous nothing. A poor man’s sensory deprivation tank. Emails, schedules, the tasks we so often cling to as necessary life forces—they dissipate into the soupy gray inversion that hangs over the village most of the winter. The alpine breeds clarity. The untrodden sheet of winter has a way of sharpening focus. My alarm finally goes off, breaking my midwinter meditation. I’ve been up for hours, but the piercing tones jolt me from my thoughts. I pull on the layers I’ve been warming next to me in my sleeping bag and carefully lift the back hatch of the truck to keep from dumping snow inside my humble abode. I lower the tailgate, fumble with a lighter, and pull out a slushy Nalgene from the foot of my bag. Snow is still falling heavily, silently, only interrupted by grunts and German swearing coming from my international friends’ camper. The visitor center lights flicker on. In a couple of minutes, I’ll have steaming oatmeal in hand as I walk into the Roger Pass Discovery Centre. I’ll greet the three rangers like long-lost friends, and the elder one will ask if we camped out last night. I’ll say “yes,” he’ll shake his head and laugh. “We all alone up here?” “Yup, pass is closed for the day, might not even open tomorrow.” “Perfect. You folks want some banana bread?” Writer’s Note: This piece was written following the 2018/2019 season, before the outbreak of COVID-19. In response to the pandemic, Parks Canada banned front country overnight camping in the Discovery Centre lot for the 2020/2021 winter season; there’s no word yet as to what the policy will be for the upcoming season.
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