Happy New Year everyone!! I hope you all had fantastic Christmas breaks and giggles over new year.

Marc and I decided to have a quiet new years eve so that we could get up early and have an epic start to 2019. It worked. We went to bed early, then woke up to make it up to the slopes for some Mount Seymour skiing. I wrote a post about Skiing for Newbies, as last year we had our very first ski lesson there. However, on our first skiing lesson, we spent most of our time on the super easy beginners slope, so there is quite a lot more mountain for us to explore! New Years Day was our chance to explore Mount Seymour a bit more!

Mount Seymour Skiing – the basics

Mount Seymour trail map:
You can see what the slopes are like here.

Getting there:
– It is 25-30 minutes drive from North Vancouver
– There is a shuttle bus from Rupurt Sky Train, or from Parkgate Community Centre in North Vancouver.

Facilities:
– You can rent equipment easily. Rentals are included in the price of lessons.
– The is a cafe and a restaurant, but the food is pretty dire. We tried it a couple of times last year, and I am not keen to go back!
– You can rent snowshoes and try snowshoeing at Mount Seymour too.

Lift Tickets:
Surprisingly, New Years Day did not seem too busy when we first arrived! We only had to line up for a few minutes to buy ski passes! This was MUCH easier than skiing at Cypress Mountain a few days previously, where the queue was complete chaos!
However, if you go on other days, you can buy tickets more cheaply online.

Mount Seymour Skiing – Getting started

Our first views from the skilifts were a little misty. Still, this was a pretty lovely view to start 2019! It was snowing when we first arrived, so most of the slopes were almost free of tracks. I have never made the first tracks on a ski slope before, so it was all quite exciting.

Skiing for Newbies – You’ll improve!

It’s funny to think that this time last year I found the longer runs on Mount Seymour pretty terrifying! The first few meters at the top of the green run (called Manning) are quite steep, and as a newbie, this can be quite intimidating. Last year, I HATED the start of this slope as I was so scared that I kept falling. This year my fear seems to have left me, and it was just great fun!

I do not have good balance and I am not particularly flexible, so learning to ski as an adult seemed like an impossible idea. Still, If I can do it I promise you can too! Don’t leave all this fun to the folks that were lucky enough to learn as young children!

Mount Seymour Skiing – Stunning views

I LOVED the views on New Years Day as we’d only skied in the clouds on our previous visits. We were even treated to some blue skies.

This is the view over to one of my favourite North Shore Mountains, Coliseum Mountain, which looks gorgeous under a blanket of snow.

Brockton Chairlift

Last year I thought we’d made it to the top of the mountain, but it turns out that there is an extra chair lift, the Brockton Chairlift that takes you even higher. There is a green (easy) run from the very top of the mountain, but most of the runs up high are black or blue.

After a few tries, I really loved the slopes at the top of the mountain. They are quite rolling, so you have to keep up your speed on the downhill moments, to get enough momentum to make it up the hills again. This encouraged me to ski at faster speeds, which is scary at first, but so fun.

My first ever black run

I am now fairly confident on the blue runs (they are a bit steeper then the green runs), but I have never tried to ski down a black ski (hardest) run before. Marc encouraged me to try one by telling me that it was blue. On my first attempt, I made the mistake of stopping at the top to look down the steep slope. Eep! I tried to ski down it, but somehow I ended up on my back with my skis in the air, sliding down the slope head-first and backwards! I then tried one more time, but the same thing happened.

It turns out, I am not quite ready for black runs yet!

Back to the easier slopes – More falls

As well as my fail on the black runs, I managed one spectacular fall on one of the non-steep sections of a green run. I had finally built up my confidence to zoom down some of the blue slopes, so I was going quite fast near the bottom of the mountain. One of my skis hit a block of ice, and so I went flying, landing on my front winding myself. Oops.

It didn’t feel too bad at the time, so I kept skiing for a couple of hours, until I noticed that one of my ribs was really hurting. I stopped skiing and headed to the cafe for a hot chocolate to recover. Ah well.

In some ways I am a good advert for newbies attempting to learn to ski as adults. I mean, I am having so much fun on the slopes this season, and I can now ski. At the same time, I do still fall over and cover my body in bruises! Marc is a far better example, as he is now a brilliant skier!

All in all, I am really glad that we moved to Vancouver and started to learn to ski.

Anyway HAPPY NEW YEAR from Marc and I! I hope you had as much fun as we did!

  

Learning to Ski near Vancouver

If you’d like to read more about learning to ski, have a peek at my posts on various mountains near Vancouver:

• Our first ever skiing lessons on Mount Seymour
• Our first day in Whistler (when I lost my ski!)
• Learning to ski on Cypress Mountain after work
• More fun in Whistler Blackcomb this post has gorgeous views
• Whistler skiing at the end of the season in spring
• Whistler at Christmas – this was our fun Christmas day!
• Cypress Mountain at Christmas