Day 5 - Red Mountain

YES! We had our rad (or "red"/"rid" if you're from New Zulland) crew for a road trip in the Heresy Mobile (and El Saab; Mons' shred car) to Red Mountain. Red is about an hour from Nelson, on the road to the USA border and also across towards Vancouver - the 3A West I think. I will henceforth refer to Red Mountain as Rad Mountain, Shred Mountain or Shrad Mountain. Crew was, El Tim, Mr Pack, Fabulous Cheeky Geezer Phil Pharkin, The Chillaxed Mons, The Pumped-on-life Dallas R, Tara and Alexandra from Niew Zulland. Choice Bro eh! All photos by Tim unless stated.
Below: Phil and Tara

Sweet hire car; pre-stickering

Hire car, becoming more rad.

Mons checking out our sweet ride. Good photo by Alex.

Next three photos by Alex; the first (self portrait of her finger) is actually sweet-as, but Alex (very gorgeous girl from Niew Zulland) reckons it's not. Luckily, I'm right and she's wrong. Sweet-as photo. Choice. Next is of moi driving. The third is Phil, looking a little cheeeeeky. "Ooooh, I need a moofin. A cheeky moofin. Oooh, you cheeky Doris, taking my photo."



Mons and Dallas; photos by me.

Dallas through El Saab sunroof.

Packy loves his GMC minivan. Cheeky!

Mons and Dallas being cheeky.

Everyone loves Heresy. Dallas loves sticker slapping. Red Mt didn't want to give Packy free Red stickers. You can see him coming out of the office. He is looking for a molotov. Angry man is Josh.

Uh-oh. A hut. The hut's roof. What could this mean?

Acid drops. In order; Dallas, Packy (photos: timmarsh.net), Tim (photo:Packrat).



Just some scenery shots...




There was about 5cm of fresh snow at Red. We got on-snow about 10AM, so we missed first tracks but there was fresh pow stashes everywhere. The groomers were awesome fun. Light, dry carving. The next two photos attest to this. Just after I reeled these off, I got a face and lense full of snow. Down my back, down my pants - everywhere. Dallas was sorry, but Packy was busy trying not to axe me after he had a brain fade and decided to suicide slide at me.


This was an 8ft drop to flat. It was pretty gnarly. Packy indy-ing it up.

We think this is an old logging mill.

A first drop, without breaking anything, leads to this...

...a broken wrist. Yep. Really funny.

Tim on hut roof. Photo: Packy

Dallas launching, Tim laughing...because whilst towing Dallas in, I stood on his tail and completely burnt his run in = Dallas-face-plant...


Tim laughing at Dallas' face plant.

Packy smashing the wall

Packy C-box

Park Entrance - helmets stated compulsory, optional for us (they were at home)

Tim wallride...next time, higher

WACK steez. Skinny cyclist legs. Next time, no leaving gangster pants at home. Style - it's critical.

This is Heidi. Tim was blown away by her smile and sparkly eyes at first sighting by her smile, so we decided biggest smile from each resort goes on here.


Tim and Alex

Awesome photo of Alex by Pack.

El Saab...photo Pack/Alex

Tim tired, photo Pack

Copper smelter - more on this later
Been in hospital for 3 hours. Alex started doing wheelchair burnouts - I'll add a Photoshop sequence of a sweet burnout later...

Tim, photo Pack

Pack, photo Alex

We got bored. Alex is a bad, bad influence.


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I'll add more text around this later, including around the copper smelter and the drive home and the status of Tara. We're a day behind sorry. It's Day 6 now, and I'll try and get this updated tomorrow. Sorry Packy's mum for getting you worried. Shout out to Alexandria. Packy misses you. He won't shut up about how rad you are (it's making me blergh). Haha.

------ POST SCRIPT ------
Dallas took Tara down to get her arm checked out. She seemed in real pain but took it like a trooper. Not a word of complaint, no tears, no faces. Awesome.
The medical centre (no charge, take note Australia resorts) recommended a trip to Trail emergency for an x-ray, so Phil and Mons took off and we headed into Trail.

We dropped Tara and Dallas off and went and did a Macca's run to feed them.
We sat in emergency for 4 hours - Tara fractured her wrist. The drive home was gnarly. Terrible road markings and night time.

Anyway, we got home safely, nothing was open for dinner, so we ended up at Dallas and Phil's place (me bearing Bacardi, a bit cheeky according to Phil), and everyone got stuck into the boxes of product, and I somehow ended up with 'orrible poutine at 12AM for dinner and Packy meanwhile had most delicious tasting spaghetti.

Day 4 - downtime

I'm - we're - really, really tired. We slept in today, but made our way over to Phil's as the plan was to head to Red. It still hasn't snowed (in fact, in 2 weeks), so, to ride on the same groomers for a day, we made the decision to sort the car, sort Josh's corrupt memory card and so forth.

Mons bailed, Phil and Alex went riding, and so Mons, Packy and I went for brekky. Packy wanted food and I wanted coffee along with Mons - this causes difficulty. No one serves a full breakfast with free range eggs AND good coffee. So we have to get brekky then get coffee, or vice versa. My breakfast suffered but we found Sidewinder where someone, FINALLY, gave me a coffee with a good rosetta, that wasn't too hot (this means YOU Grind House, despite your good coffee, your milk is too hot). Red Grill breakfast was pov - Full Circle gets the nod for best brelly by far, so far, but again, sub-standard coffee. I am longing, LONGING, for Limoncello in Station St Sandringham where they manage to combine (imagine this!) free range eggs, awesome mushies and rad coffee. Blend 73 is not far behind but their eggs are not free range.

Pack and I sorted his camera then went to get the car. After walking for an hour then finally finding it, we were greeted by the news that they don't have a record of our booking. She didn't seem too apologetic about it either. So. Here it is. If you book through Budget BC, make sure you double confirm the booking. I am NOT happy. Rent a Wreck luckily has a 2005 minivan cheaper than Budget so it works out well.

I think this turn of events freaked Packy out, but Michael B's and my collective adage of "there are no problems, only solutions" calmed me. Along with Jager.

My custom 153 2008 Heresy is LATE and experiences its third exception, luckily Ryan sorts it and it looks like it will hopefully be here by tomorrow.

My money is being depleted FAST (somehow) so I need to ease up.

Today I am shocked at the unbelievable juxtaposition between the top half of town and bottom half - the top half is where we have been hanging out - organic food, obvious coexistence with nature. The bottom half is loud trucks, dirt, commerce, noise, a mall. The town has a split personality and it actually depresses me. The stark reality of man's uncompromising intrusion on this place is made completely obvious. Wal-mart, Quiznos, KFC - they're all here. The sparkling energy apparent in the upper half of town, apparent in people's eyes, their nature, is replaced by bland American hegemoney and overt consumerism. Blank subservience to the shopping culture. Warm malls designed to capture and keep you there. Spending for no other reason than to keep the wheels in motion. Fuel inefficient Dodges, Fords, GMCs etc line the kerbs. Nowhere is there a turbo diesel Renault, VW or Peugot. It seems we have a little way to go in pushing back the tide of American "Eff-you ism" that is wholly obvious in a place such as Los Angeles.

The line is crossed at one particular set of lights. I am glad to return to the top half of town.

Red tomorrow, more photos.
Also, we find out we're cat-skiing Retallack on the 18th to help celebrate Nick's (a local) birthday - we got an invite right away. Mons, after riding with us for a day, says we'll be fine in the extreme terrain. Mum, prepared to be shocked.

Day 3 - post script

Here are a couple of photos we rescued from Josh's point-and-shoot. Well, the very helpful dudes at the local camera shop (one who lived 5 mins from me in Brighton for 4 years) did.

Word.

This is obviously the WORST Photoshop image improvement EVER. Mainly as I can't be bothered. Josh took this. He needs practice. This is me in the back of Mons' rad CAN$400 Saab that has a rad sound system - mp3 player and CAN$7.50 speaker system from the dollar store that shreds over any high-falootin' Bose system I've seen. The back seat was down so I pretended I had a seat belt. Then I fell asleep. Luckily Mons is a good driver. The food at Whitewater is awesome. I paid CAN$8.25 for the best vege lasagne I have ever had, EVER. And the crispy and oh-so-cheesy top reminded me of nan's lasagne. The bean salad was awesome too. They had tofu stuff, curries, and all CHEAP. Whatever the Australian foodhalls think they're doing, they're doing it wrong. Retail pillage is not cool. Now, all I need is a cool 100k to open up a wholesone lunch/brekky + rad coffee place in Falls and Hotham for everyone.


Tim laying it out. This was a super fun day - about 3-5 cm fresh snow on top of the groomers and in the trees, and steep runs, meant super quick slashing on steeps. Good times.


Didn't take long. Heresy goes well with Nelson. Everyone is loving it. It's like a Canadian Falls Creek. Everyone at Phil and Dallas' house has stickers on their laptops, helmets, drink bottles...Dallas hasn't taken his 2008 green hoody off (sorry mum, will get you anothery).