Ontario Snowboarding

First Turns at Mount St. Louis Moonstone

Well, if you follow this site you know that yesterday was Day One of my 2006-2007 snowboarding season. Unlike you lucky bastards in Colorado and British Columbia, who have been riding pretty much since the leaves started falling, I had to wait until early December. But I suppose it could be worse; I could live somewhere that didn’t have ski hills. Or winter!

But I digress.

We choose Mount St. Louis Moonstone as our destination for several reasons:

–When comparing their snow report to Blue Mountain’s, Moonstone indicated they would have more runs open (two lifts, three runs).
– It’s closer to Toronto. Driving to Blue Mountain for two open runs (which is what Blue’s website reported) didn’t make sense.
– As you have heard in my previous rants, I feel Moonstone and Blue are the only two ski hills in southern Ontario worth the road trip.

Now, a ‘first turns’ report like this isn’t anything like, say, a backcountry report from JP or a powder-filled entry from Justin (sorry about the QB situation, dude, but at least you don’t have to watch J.P. Losman on local television every Sunday). At Moonstone, there’s 500 feet of vertical and no backcountry to speak of. There is 40 centimetres of man-made snow frozen into a giant carpet, basically.

But I digress once again.

Thanks to great driving conditions, we got to Moonstone in an hour and 20 minutes (Tim Horton’s break included). When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that pretty much one-half of the ski area was open. Moonstone was actually running four lifts and 12 runs, which was much more than we expected. And lift tickets were only $37, so we saved a few bucks there as well.

As we geared up in the minivan we rented (playing ‘Mother’ by Danzig really loud, followed by ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’) I started to get nervous;  I was scared this outing could ruin my entire winter. I just wasn’t sure how my knee would hold up. But of course, there was only one way to find out: snowboard!

At the top of the hill, I let all my inhibitions go and was bombing it about 20 seconds into my first run. It took three seconds to realize I should have been way more concerned about how my thighs were going to hold up instead of my knee! But I was still cognizant of kickers and catching edges; I didn’t want some sort of a funny fall to do me in for the season.

There weren’t many people at Moonstone, so we got at least a couple of dozen runs in. But as the day progressed, I think we all got tired of spending more time on lifts than on runs – particularly when we only had 12 runs to choose from. Also, we have two big snowboarding trips in the next five weeks; trips to real mountains. I think we were excited to get some first turns in, but we quickly realized what we really wanted was a true mountain experience. So we packed it in around three and headed back to Toronto.

On the way home we talked about the day, our upcoming trip, stopped in Barrie for more Tim Horton’s and generally relaxed. I was ecstatic to be driving home like any other snowboarding day trip, and not worried about some sort of knee injury. I hope this trend continues.

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