As I write I am settling in to my third week in Canada and it’s 21C outside without a breath of wind. Shortly after stepping outside the door I can feel my nostril hairs freezing, but apart from that the cold is manageable. The Mountain Hardware down jacket I got is a lifesaver. It’s so warm that I can walk around with only a t-shirt on underneath. The flip side is that I can’t wear it zipped up for long once the temperature rises above -5C!

The downside to such low temperatures is that snowboarding is pretty tough. The groomed runs are rock hard as we haven’t had any snow for a couple of days, and the powder is so cold that my board almost sticks to it, which plays havoc with any attempt to control turns on steep terrain. I had to resort to toe warmer pads in my boot yesterday as my toes were turning to ice after only two runs. Furthermore, my bindings had to be manually locked into place as the plastic was so much less pliable in the cold that the mechnism refused to lock itself.

The last two weeks have been great fun. The cold snap only started yesterday, and before that we had mountains of snow – one meter in the space of five days. The course is good, though the pace is relentless. We have lessons all day Monday to Thursday, followed by ‘activities’ on Friday and Saturday, leaving only Sunday as a day off. Last week’s activity was an avalaunche awareness course, this week’s is back-country touring. The lessons are definitely paying off and my snowboarding is improving rapidly. Might be time for a new board!

I’ve managed to plague myself with injuries in the short time I’ve been here. I had a huge crash on the first run of the first day of lessons, catching an edge at about 40km/h, being spun around and having my head slammed into the hard snow. If I hadn’t been wearing a helmet I’d have been straight off to hospital. I managed to twist my knee in the process, so that meant I’d three days off to let it recover. There was no way I was risking blowing my knee in the first few days!

No sooner was I back up the slope that I tore a stomach muscle. We’d had 40cm of fresh snow overnight and I’d got my board stuck in powder. I did what I’d normally do when stuck in snow and jumped up to lift my board above it and get moving again – however, a 160cm board covered in 40cm of powder takes some lifting, so when I jumped, the board stayed where it was, as did I since I was strapped to it, and my lower abs gave a painful twinge. Nothing serious that a bit of ice couldn’t alleviate, but I re-tore it last night while toboganning down the beginner slopes after a few beers ;) At least it gave me a valid excuse to sit here writing e-mails rather than slogging through the backcountry in -21C! Still, any sneeze, cough or sitting up or down is painful and it will no doubt take another three days to subside.