Mt. Norquay Rules and TV Sucks
by Shanti Sosienski
(December 11, 1996)

You see, for a second I thought I wanted to be a TV star. It happened like this: a friend of mine tried out for a host position on a Canadian snowboard show, I just happened to be helping her tape a demo, ended up in her video, and a week later I was on a plane to Calgary, Alberta for an audition.

I've never thought about TV before and usually like most, laugh when I see how bad snowboarding looks in this form of media. But there I was with a bright red nose sitting in a large patch of untracked pow waiting for the camera crew to film Snowboard Instructor Rob Stevens, doing his bit through the trees.

TV is a strange creature. It's not really real, yet for some reason we believe it. I was believing it as Rob delivered his lines take after take into the large black camera sitting a top the filmers shoulder. I could see this guy zooming in and out on Rob like a bad version of MTV sports.

"You need to talk more about how to make that turn. We need to understand it Rob," the director patiently explained. "The kid's incredible, a real natural," he said over his shoulder to us and we all felt the inexplicable need to nod in agreement as Rob did another take. How could we disagree? Hypothermia was slowly killing every brain cell I owned making the easiest response a simple nod of the head or a grunt.

There I sat while the sun slowly crossed the sky and headed for the high mountains with a field of fresh, virtually untracked thigh deep powder in front of me. An already developed trail from snowsliders working for their early season turns passed by me on my right. The temptation to say "screw this" and go ride was there, and hiking sounded good in theory but, the lifts weren't even running. The ski patrol had brought us up specially so we could film Rob's "Session 2: Riding Powder." in the new fluff.

Mt. Norquay is across the valley from Banff in the Alberta Rockies, and was specially redesigned and built during the '86 Olympic. These days it holds its spot in the Banff area as the more local mountain for people who work in town, as well as being the tourist trap for many of the Japanese who flock to the Rocky mountains every year. About forty minutes down the road Sunshine, and then a little further past that is Lake Louise, both boast huge amounts of terrain and natural snow that this ant hill of a mountain in the heart of some cannot rival. But Norquay has a special charm in that remnants of the Olympics, like the high jump look out tower, have been left like a ghost town at the small area.

As of yesterday Norquay was still not open though, in spite of the excellent early season snowfall. Last year a few days before opening season, the lodge burned down and it's still being rebuilt. The scheduled reopening date is December fourteenth, the Marketing Director told me confidently. In the Valley below Temptation (the run we were on) the hammering from roofers on the lodge, drifted up to disturb my solitude. Judging by the looks of the slowly working construction crew pushing through the crazy cold weather I had to admit I questioned the marketing guys confidence.

Temptation is a black run that definitely has that Alpine race track feel to it. It's easy to see why they choose Norquay for the Olympics. The frontside of the hill has steep runs with nice knolls and drops. A slight valley connected two of the runs, creating a perfect natural snow wave that I wanted to slash if we ever finished taping. I knew eventually it would be all over, as everyone was starting to get that chattering-teeth-is-this-really-worth-it feeling.

Finally, free at last, Rob and I bid our momentary farewells to the film crew, as we knew it would be a while before they flailed their way down with all their gear to tape the final segment at the main lodge. Like two kids being released in to a candy factory we quickly slid off before they had a chance to change their minds and for a handful of turns we experienced Norquay's early season powder. It was lighter than anything I'd felt in a long time. Effortlessly we sprayed the slopes and shaved our mark into the closed mountain. Because we knew there would be no more runs we milked it swooping large from one side to the other. I got my valley snow wave slash following Rob. We even got a small cat track air that almost felt satisfying in spite of the large rock that I slid over moments later.

Honestly, it couldn't get much better than that and waiting all day for that short run made the day seem like it hadn't been a total waste. Norquay had shown me in less than twenty turns that it was fully worthy of a real visit sometime at a later date. And well, as for the TV show, I didn't get the job and I'm kind of glad now. After sitting on a hillside all day for one run, I definitely saw that all the fame and glamour associated with TV doesn't mean a thing when you lose out on what could have been an epic day of climbing peaks and floating down a perfect powder covered hillside.