Apex Alpine Adventures Part 1

By Kevin Cheng and Michael Maruno

Day 0
The semester draws to a close and thus, the ENSC ski season officially begins. In anticipation of the ski trip that's been on the drawing board for a month and a half, we began to truly prepare. Renting a van, last minute shopping, more last minute shopping, luggage packing and a plan for the next day's route seemed to cover everything we needed ("we" being Mike Ho (Hoski), Mike Maruno, Mike Wong (Hougee), Gigi Kwei, Ben Ko, Kevin Cheng, Frances Chan, Jesse Malm, Albert Yuen, Denise Tung, and Shirley Tung. Yes a whole whopping 11 of us with all but one an SFU engineer).

Wait... what about food? Who's cooking? What are we cooking? What do we need to cook that? Do we know how to cook that? Who's bringing skis? How are we going to transport the skis? All in all, it looked like a lab write up for 222. Everything was quite chaotic but eventually sorted itself out (no extention for the deadline, though). Jesse had a ski rack which we quite literally forced on top of the van, Ben and Gigi had food arrangements with some of the other people we were to meet and the rest of us split into 3 groups of 3 to take turns cooking. Come midnight or so, the van was packed with most of our luggage and the skis loaded.

Day 1
6 in the morning and we're travelling across the Lower Mainland picking up all 11 of us. With one van and a Civic, we were on our way and ready for the five hour drive. Or so we thought. Not even ten minutes into the trip, like the whiners we were, hunger overcame us and the Golden Arches was designated our first pit stop.

Some lame jokes, pit stops, radar traps, one missed exit and many CDs (including Yakko's World) later, we arrived at the cabin... only to find ourselves waiting for the group with the key to the cabin. Not to be normal and sit around waiting for them, we found various creative ways to pass the time. Some took to tobagganing on a nearby slope on the many garbage bags we had. The same group later used the slope as a fort and began the obligatory snow fight. Others took to drawing massive works of art in the snow. Others still decided to do some target practise and attempted to knock down foot long icicles hanging from the roofs.

Finally tiring of these cheap thrills, we decided to head down to the nearby pub. Our mode of transportation: Van surfing.

Several hours at the pub and many beers later, we "surfed" back to the cabin. An hour or so after that the key to the cabin finally arrived.

The rest of the night was fairly uneventful. Any hope of getting any skiing done that day had passed with the visit to the pub. Albert, Denise and Shirley had first shift for dinner and treated us with some gourmet curry beef (arguably the most impressive dinner of the trip). Gigi and Ben's group enjoyed the magic of Shake and Bake. All through this, a video tape of the Simpsons played in the background. Some watched these re-runs. Hoski, drunk beyond belief after downing 3 pints of beer in ~5 mins, simply lay on the couch bordering on unconciousness. After dinner activities included a few games of cards (the ever so popular Big 2 or chinese poker) and Mah Jong, but the late night entertainment wasn't really on our minds. After selecting our individual sleeping spots in the room, only the next two days of skiing seemed to matter.

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