Here’s the Duck Toller back in 2002 when she was just a up.
She was consoling her Uncle Friar after his surgery, which was the result of a ski accident.
Fast forward, 11 years later.
Here’s an older, more mature Duck Toller.
She was consoling her Uncle Friar after his surgery, which was the result of a ski accident.
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The snow is gone, the spring peepers are chirping but I’m still not quite ready to let the ski season go.
Hard to believe, that less than a month ago, I was doing THIS:
I know I have a couple of ski paintings left in me this year, so that’s what painted tonight.
This is called “Vertigo” and it’s one of my favorite ski runs at Revelstoke.
It’s just steep enough, and just bumpy enough to be interesting. But the snow is soft and friendly, and it’s just FUN to go down.
On this trip, Friar’s Mom joined me for a day, and we went up and down Vertigo like yoyo’s.
There was one run where everything clicked into place. I was turning, carving up the snow. It felt like floating on a cloud
It felt good, I could do no wrong.
Typically, as a skier, you get maybe a handful of runs like this in a season, where everything is just PERFECT. Where you’ll remember it for the rest of your life.
And this was one of them.
And when it happens, you’re almost crying tears of joy as you go down.
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As a bonus, on the bottom, a ski instructor has seen us coming down.
He was teaching a student, and he complimented me and Friar’s Mom on our technique. He said we provided a “good demo” for his pupil.
Wow. To be complimented like this, from an instructor, on top of that.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
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I think I might keep this painting…hold onto it for a while.
The memories are just too good.
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Having just come back from vacation, I’m still in ski mode, and decided to paint one of my favorite photos from my trip:
Here’s what I ended up with tonight:
The first thing I did was the sky. A wet wash of cadmium yellow, violet (phtalo purple) and cerulean blue.
Then I did the mountains, starting with the dark shadows of snow. Again, with violet, cerulean blue, and maybe a touch of ultramarine and/or Paynes grey.
Then I started the rocks, starting with the larger ones as frames of reference, and painting the smaller ones around them. They’re almost all the same dark shade. I get my “black” from a mix of Van Dyke brown and Payne’s Grey. I deliberately mixed up the rocks so they have random dark brown/black shades.
Whenever I got bored with the rocks, I worked on the foreground, adding layers of purple/blue and gradually making it darker.
Then I would add the final dark snow shadows on the mountain, and then lift some of the foreground out to lighten the color and add some texture to it.
I did a lot of lifting and re-painting the foreground. If you want to do this, it’s important to have a rugged strong sheet of watercolor paper that can take kind of treatment.
I recommend the 300-lb Arches. It’s “bullet-proof”, you can use it and abuse it, and it doesn’t buckle or degrade. Not like the cheap watercolor paper I see a lot of beginners use.
Of course, it’s 12 bucks a sheet and when I tell this to people they say ”Oooh, that’s expensive!“.
(Oh, for crying out loud.) You can cut a sheet into four, and make four paintings like the one I did here.
That’s 3 bucks for an evenings’ worth of entertainment. I think most people can afford that.
Boggles my mind, why people will invest so much time into a hobby like watercolors, but they’ll scrimp and save a few bucks on sub-par art supplies that will only frustrate them. But I digress here.
As a final touch to my painting, I added a hint of cadmium yellow/yellow ochre to the white highlights to warm up the paining. Using artist licence, I added a skier (a small blob) to the foreground in the middle/right, to give a sense of depth.
The one thing I’m not crazy about is the bottom right hand corner. In the photo, this section is featureless. I tried to make it interesting by lifting some of the paint and adding some shadows. But I’m not sure if I like what I’ve done here.
If you notice, the painting is a lot more “warmer” (i.e. purple/yellow) than the original. Part of the reason for this, is that I did the painting based on a print-out from a laser printer on plain Xerox paper. The true winter white/bluish colors weren’t accurately reproduced, and this is all I had to go by.
Next time, I’ll print this out on photo paper instead.
Overall, I give myself a B-Plus on this one.
I’m not displeased, but I know I can do better.
Call this one a “study”.
I want to re-do it in the near future.
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Earlier this week, I did another quick trip out West on my air miles to ski at Revelstoke.
I was there for one day last year, and it blew my mind away. I knew I had to come back. So I did.
Last year, it was foggy and I didn’t get to see the Rocky Mountains very much.
This time, I had a blue-bird sky on the first day and finally got to see what the place looked like.
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Vertigo is one of my favorite runs. It’s a small bowl on the upper half of the mountain. It represents only a tiny fraction of the whole ski hill, but it’s still 2-3 times bigger than most ski resorts down East.
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The best part about skiing out West are the back-bowls. It’s just all open snow, and you can pick your own line down the hill, and gradually make your way down into the trees again.
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This, to me, is like dying and going to heaven.
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The other great thing about big mountains is that you can make it as hard as you want.
Down East, you’re limited to the most difficult double-black diamond run on the trail map.
Here, the most difficult run is limited to your own stupidity (i.e. how much you’re willing to put yourself at risk).
And if you wipe out, it’s not just a matter of falling and spraining your ankle.
There are cliffs, and risks of avalanches. If you take the wrong turn or do something stupid, you could DIE.
Here’s one of the steeper runs I took, and I was reasonably proud of myself for doing it.
But that was nothing compared to these guys…
Check it out: the two black dots on top of the peak are skiers, and the other black dot to their bottom left is another skier going down.
ne thing to this type of extreme skiing on video…it’s another to see it in real time, where ther’s a real risk of someone dying.
There were about 30 of us watching these lunatics. You’re kind of speechless, because you can’t believe at how stupid/brave they are. This is how skiers kill themselves.
You’d feel bad if they got hurt, but on the other hand, they’re skiing out of bounds and nobody’s putting a gun to their head making them do this.
If you look closely here, you can see the tracks where the first skier went down.
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You don’t know whether you want to congratulate him and buy him a beer, or smack him upside the head, and call him “shit-for-brains”.
I know if my Dad (Mr. Official Ski Instructor) were still alive, he’d do the latter.
Either way, that’s some damned impressive skiing.
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On the 2nd day, Friar’s Mom was on the road at 6:00 AM and drove 2 hours to meet me. We had a great ski day together.
On one run, Friar’s Mom wanted to “explore”. We ended up bushwhacking through a snow-board trail between the trees, dodging branches and trying not to get poked in the face.
I’ve bragged about this before, but I’m going to say it again: I don’t know too many 71-year-old Grandmas who can ski like this.
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While I was there, they also had rescue dogs,who were being trained to find avalanche victims.
The would get on the chairlift with their handlers and ski down the hill right beside them.
The dogs just LOVED this, as they’d run down the hill at full ballistic speed.
I mean.. look: how happy do you think this critter is?
On a scale of ten, I’d say ELEVEN.
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Now, of course, the weather was not always great. And it changed by the minute.
Day three started off like this:
The top (and best part) of the mountain was closed because of high wind, and things didnt’ look great. But within 30 minutes, it cleared up and everything opened up again.
I hiked the traverse on top to get to the back bowls, and suffice to say it was pretty windy.
I could barely see the skiers ahead of me, and their tracks were almost filled with fresh snow again by the time I caught up to where they were.
I felt somewhat safe, though, because there was a steady stream of skiers doing the same thing. I wouldn’t dare do this alone, under these conditions.
I like this photo of a random snow-boarder who was coming up behind me. I find the angle of the hill interesting.
Things calmed down considerably once I got to the other side. And I skied in half-tracked fluffy powder until the lifts closed.
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That was it. Three days of intense skiing. But I certainly got my money’s worth.
Junior Bear did too, as he made some friends in downtown Revelstoke.
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January 27th.
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January 28th.a
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January 29th.
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January 30th.
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February 2nd.
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February 3rd
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February 4th
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February 5th
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February 6th
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February 7th
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February 8th
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February 10th
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February 11th
Skiing in Western Canada is beautiful, not only because of the mountains, but because of the trees.
Especially at the higher altitudes, when the trees are often in the clouds. Under the right conditions, the snow and hoar frost accumulates on the branches and covers everything in white.
The trees take on weird shapes, and form “snow ghosts”.
I especially like snow ghosts on clear days, where the brilliant white contracts the azure sky, to the point that it almost hurts to look at.
I never get tired of watching the trees on these days. The color and lighting changes by the hour, and you never see the same scene twice.
I’ll take dozens of photos in a single day. And some of those photos will become watercolor paintings in the near future.
Oh yes, they will.
On a 
This is Friar’s Mom, skiing down a double-black diamond run last winter.
Friar’s Mom is 70.
Friar’s Mom was in a wheelchair with a broken pelvis 18 months earlier.
Friar’s Mom is insane…but in a good kind of way.
And I want to be just like her when I grow up.
As far as I’m concerned, any day you ski out West is a great day.
But some days are better than others. You don’t always get ideal conditions, or ideal weather.
But on some days, everything seems to come together.
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Where the sky is so unbelievably blue, it almost hurts the eyes to look at.
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Where trees are transformed into surreal ghosts…
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Where the snow is perfect, and the ski runs are steep…
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Where lift lines are non-existent, and you pretty much have the whole hill to yourself…
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Where ice-crystals play tricks on you, creating brilliant sun-dogs that hang suspended in mid-air, just beyond your reach…
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Where you feel on top of the world. Ready to launch yourself into infinity.
Yep. These are Magical Ski Days.
Enjoy them when you can. Because they don’t happen too often.
I’ve been skiing for 40 years, and I’ve experienced maybe 2 or 3 in my life.
This was one of them, which I was lucky enough to share with Friar’s Mom.
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You can get pretty interesting weather skiing out West.
Literally, on the same morning, you can be skiing below the clouds…
…in the clouds…
..or above the clouds.
Another thing I discovered while skiing on a remote gnarly bump-run…
..is that someone had carved and burned a demon-mask right into a tree.
Now..THAT…is AWESOME. (And I’m sure the Vikings would approve).
Going up the chairlift is also fun…
..because just where you get on, they have this ad for “Oxygen”.
I have no idea what “Oxygen” is, but I’m sure it’s…er…wonderful.
(I mean…look how HAPPY it makes that woman! )
