Words: Trevor Husted 2020-09-15 16:36:30
My ears and eyes were burning from a dancer’s rendition of Duran Duran’s “Hungry like the Wolf” when my friend Jill sold me on my next great idea inside a pub in Nelson, BC: skied dating. Although I was leaving the following day, I wanted to see what other tricks this small mountain town of about 11,000 people had up its sleeve, and this event seemed right up my alley—a ski version of speed dating built around a double chair. So the next morning I packed tightly into Jill’s friend’s Subaru Forester; skis up top, boots and bags piled in the back. It was a love wagon full of skied daters. “If you are tired of standing in the singles line at the resort, then maybe skied dating is for you!” That’s Tara Kowalchuk’s slogan for the annual event at Whitewater and Red Mountain Resort that she’s run for five years. The play on speed dating focuses on the chairlift, as dates last exactly one lift ride (given you can cobble a conversation together for that long). It can even extend to a downhill ski together if you play your cards right. When I asked the ladies on the drive up about the dating scene in Nelson, they chuckled and replied that it didn’t really exist. Kowalchuk is trying to change that, or at least add another element to it. The first year, she had to convince her friends to come out, but since then she’s gotten the resorts, local news outlets and social media helping to grow the skied dating community. The registration fee is $10 CAD, which includes being entered to win a dinner date donated by a local brewery and an après-ski mingle in the lodge bar. Throughout the registration process, Kowalchuk handed out numbered pink heart pins to help identify the skied-dating candidates. Everyone received a sheet to jot down each candidate’s name and number and there was space to write a simple “Y” or “N.” A Y meant you were interested, but two Ys were necessary for a match. After the event, Kowalchuk planned to link the matches together via email. The Silver King lift, the only double chair on the mountain, was the setting for our quest for on-snow connection. Slow, creaky, with a slight chance of love in the air. As we loaded the chairlift, I tried to channel bluebird skiing into something witty and charming. The only words that came out were quirky compliments and jokes that didn’t seem to translate from American English. Or maybe they just weren’t funny. While my dates were a little confused as to why a strange American passing through town was spinning lifts to spit game, I assured them I was just trying to have a little fun with Kootenay-style dating. My joke seemed to fall on toqued ears. “Well, that was a little awkward,” said Jill after she told us about how she ran into her ex-boyfriend on the hill—heart pin attached to her jacket. As the bull wheel spun on, I didn’t fare much better. After a series of unsuccessful conversations, I boarded the chair for one last ride with a woman named Rachel. “What do you think about throwing down on some figure 8s to the bottom?” I asked. She humored me and agreed. But my vision of perfectly synchronized turns faded as I struggled to keep up and she left me behind. Should have waxed my skis or something like that. Bye, Rachel. My luck had run out, but Kowalchuk thinks her experiment has a future at resorts across Canada. Who knows, perhaps skied dating will soon be coming to a mountain near you. Until then, I’ll see you in the singles line. Photo Caption: Built for romance. TJ Kolanko and Lisa Manning on the two-seat Love Boat at Alta, UT. Photo: Lee Cohen
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