After two long days of shredding Whitewater Ski Resort here in BC, the crew, with the welcome addition of Casey Vandenbroek and A.J. Hobbs, headed up to Mike’s Pub to let off some steam. Located at street level in the historic Hume Hotel, Mike’s tends to bring in a wide sampling of local Nelson color.
Last night was no different, with Casey, Justin and I getting our dance on with some ladies from the Cheesecake Burlesque show tour that just wrapped up in Nelson. The ladies were still in their costumes, with all their womanly parts on display, and Casey took no time in getting a dance party started with them.
The highlight of the whole evening was meeting Ms. Judith Stein, who recently was inducted into the Burlesque Hall of Fame. At 62 years of age, she taught us some moves that were barely legal on the dance floor. I wish we had more time to hang with Ms. Stein, as I’m sure she has some stories to tell.
After some good songs and some fun dance moves, our little crew said our goodbyes to the ladies and bid them good luck on their trip back home to Victoria, BC. Next time, I hope we get to see their show!


The athletes and organizers of the Freeskiing World Tour had a powder day today, choosing to use the optional weather day to wait out the surging storm. Revelstoke Mountain Resort is offering up the use of their helicopter to shuttle athletes to the landing zone (LZ) at the top of the almost 2000 vertical feet of spines, chutes, and cliffs. With everything on hold for the day, the mountain was abuzz with the whoops and yells of roving groups of freeriders dressed in baggy, bright clothes.
If you had a chance to ride the 8-seater gondola from the mid-mountain lodge today, you would probably have seen some frozen waterfall lines being sent by shredders in full-face helmets. Or snowboarders slashing some turns down a steep, powdery face. Not much sun out, so most folks were taking advantage of their low-light goggle lenses to battle the drab greybird day full of indistinguishable clouds. With all the gladed, steep tree skiing on the main aspect of Revelstoke’s frontside, poor-visibility is not an issue.
To wrap up our day, some friends and I ate some good burgers at Nomad’s and finished it all up with a hot tub session. The yoga from the other night can still be felt in my muscles, but the hot tub definitely helps. Tomorrow, the comp wraps up; I’m hoping to get some interviews with fellow POC athlete Arne Backstrom , while he sits in third place going into an epic finals.