What better way to celebrate my birthday other then doing what I enjoy most, skiing! Wouldn’t be a party if I didn’t have friends join as well. I even got spoiled with not one but two birthday cakes.
6cm of fresh snow covered the trails in the morning with 66 trails opened. The snow canons were in full mode production. I was pleasantly surprised to see all the cars in the parking lot as we arrived at the hill, due to the temperature drop of -15 degrees Celsius. With clear blue skies and the beautiful sun, it actually felt much warmer.
One of my friends hadn’t skied in a few years so I decided to bring her in the “Brome” for a quick refresher. Always a nice run to start of the day. The trails conditions were hard packed snow which made it for some nice carving as well.
After lunch we ventured to Versant Des Cantons which was an unknown slope side to us. In the chairlift back up, I snapped a quick selfie as the weather was so beautiful. Barely a minute after, the chairlift suddenly stopped. I figured it was simply a skier that had fallen getting on/off the chair. Though time passed and we still weren’t moving. Then we spotted a four-wheeler coming down the hill, stopping at all the chairs which had people in the them. Thru his megaphone he was explaining how there had been a power outage at the mountain due to a gas leak. All the chairlifts were back up running again except ours and that they were working on finding a solution.
The smile on my face while taking that quick selfie 30 minutes earlier had vanished. I was getting cold. The sun was slowly fading away behind the trees. I was snuggled against my partner who was keeping me warm with his body heat. Then some patrollers came to advise us that they were possibly getting ready to evacuate us via ropes. Honestly, I’ve always been curious to see how they do this but that was the last thing I wanted to do on my birthday or any given day.
Finally after a 45 minute wait, the chairs slowly started working again. Slowest speed ever but at least we were getting back to the top of the mountain. As we got off the chairlift, a patroller was giving us coupons for free hot chocolate, which was greatly appreciated. We quickly skied down the mountain to make our way back to the chalet as I was desperate to warm up. The chalet was in totally darkness as the electricity still hadn’t come back. Just had time to remove our boots and the power came back. We finished our ski day sipping our hot beverages.
