Far Out in Terrace BC

     The concept for this years film was to go a little bit further out, to travel somewhere new, and to simply get far out.  Canada is familiar to me, been going there for years, always exploring new areas of the country and getting my sled stuck a lot.  This year our crew decided to go to a different part of Canada, a place with fewer sled mechanics (let's be honest your never far from a sled mechanic in Canada) and ski resorts with zero high speed chairlifts.  We set our sights on a town that for being so remote still had two Tim Horton's, a town called Terrace British Columbia.

Hand Drag.....

Or air???

     Our trip started with a 1600 mile drive starting in Jackson Hole Wyoming. I had a head start since I had to drive to Oregon to pick up my snowmobile that was in the shop. It’s a funny thing when you have all summer to do sled matinence and then you still put it off until after the holidays... those things are nothing but trouble.

Parkin is excited we made it, pretty close to Alaska!

     The crew met up at the turn off at Lake Louise and thats when the trip started to feel real. Lots of planning and e-mails that Colter kindly responded to while we were sitting at a cafe in Chamonix. He handled a lot of logistics for me which I appreciate (but hey who wants to be responding to e-mails about another trip when your trying to enjoy the trip your currently on, right?).

The Beach in Norther British Columbia...

Our drive went smooth, zero flat tires and no collisions with logging trucks and when the Google maps was showing Alaska on the map we new we were pretty much there. We settled into our Airbnb “cabin" complete with a Kitchen and space for the entire crew. Parkin was the official Pancake maker, and Colter was the egg man for the trip, I made the tacos.

Durtschi and Parkin...

Parkin and Colter...

Colter and Durtschi!!!

All the essentials, a sled and some BCA gear.

     Our cabin for the trip was close to downtown and close to our friend Brad’s (aka BCskiJunkie) fishing cabin on the river called the Skeena River House. We would head over to brads to do Google Maps recon and enjoy his lounge at the B&B he runs full season for skiers, fisherman and anyone else coming to Terrace to get away from the crowds. Brad was extremely kind about sharing his knowledge of the area, he knew the kinds of terrain we were looking for and what access we were able to get into with our snowmobiles and skins.

Road to somewhere.

ParParkin with a big Double Backflip.

Colter with a big 360 over Shames Mountain.

After a day at the local ski resort Shames Mountain, we fired up the sleds and did a few days of exploration on the sleds. Brad gave us more than enough locations to check out so we had to narrow it down to the ones we thought would be most productive. This is tough, the challenge of going somewhere with very little knowledge meant that our we had to be patient. Our patience was definitely tested. There were a few days where we drove the sleds through a maze of lumber roads only to get lost stuck and not even take our skis off the ski rack.

Most of the time we would sled somewhere and then switch to touring gear.

Or just sled to the top of the mountain.

     Parkin’s was the youngest in the group at 18, but also the most talented on a snowmobile. He led the charge on these exploratory missions and was really good at going down single lane roads and not getting stuck.  Colter and I were the opposite, if we made a movie about us getting stuck it would be longer than Titantic.  Other than being really exhausting getting stuck is not that bad, we still make it to where we want to be and never really miss out on that much skiing in the long run.  Anyways we made it to some amazing zones and thankfully we all had touring gear to get through the thick old growth forest that alot of times was to much for sleds.

Photo: Colter Hinchliffe

Would I go back to Terrace?  Well there is still a plethora of Google Earth pins that we never got to take the sleds to and I only made it to one of the two Tim Horton's locations in town.  I guess I have to go back, the hardest part about going so far north was passing all the great destinations along the way.  I passed exits for Fernie, Revelstoke, Banff, Kicking Horse, and Whistler.  It was hard to keep on trucking but a little phrase kept replaying in my mind "if you don't go you'll never know."  A huge thanks to TGR for sending us on this far out adventure and to our local guide Brad Zeerip, we would have been so lost without you man!