Happy Australia Day!!! Everyone is getting excited about celebrating Australia Day away from home and plans underway for a great day. The hottest 100 will be playing in town so will be heading down town for the night to listen to triple J.

Over the last few weeks I have managed to get a few trips away. We went to Kicking Horse, which had 15cm of snow overnight so it was an awesome day. Managed to get to Banff for a night and see another town, which was nice after being in the same spot for the last 3 months!!

Taking a break with the fellows at Kicking Horse

Last week I took a 2 day introductory avalanche course. The first day involved the theory and youtube videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qVwIuznFW0) followed by a day in the backcountry learning how to navigate through and identify avalanches.

Hiking out into the backcountry for the avalanche course

Setting up avalanche test

Testing avalanche conditions

Practising digging someone out after an avalanche

One of my mates managed to get access to an ice fishing hut on the lake. So we organised a day and headed out onto the frozen lake for some ice fishing. We managed to catch a couple of fish and the bloke that owns the hut came down and gutted the fish, which we then cooked on the stove in the hut. A great Canadian tradition ticked.

Work is going well with the resort about to get busy with a few public holidays coming up. There is good snow forecasted through until mid feb so hoping for plenty of pow days coming up. Hope everyone is doing well and enjoys Australia day.

Hi All, It has been a while since my last blog as the last few weeks have flown by. The resort has been very full over the Christmas period so I have been working many hours at the heli skiing restaurant. Christmas day was great spending it with mainly the snowmaking friends. Food was plenty and many drinks and laughs were had.

Christmas Dinner

I guess the biggest news since I last wrote was that I went heli skiing 2nd January 2012. It was an amazing day consisting of 6 runs through a glacier in the Canadian Rockies. The Helicopter took us about 60km away from Mt. Panorama. The day was a clear blue sky, which was great as I used my GoPro and made a video of the day, which is going to be put on the RK Heli Skiing website hopefully.

Heli Skiing Video Link (Copy into your internet browser to watch, Clicking link doesn't seem to be working at the moment)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTN8croGBuo

A photo taken by one of the heli ski guests

The other big news is I managed to get a job as a water ski instructor in a summer camp in the USA. Still need to do a bit of practice water skiing but how hard can it be? A mate from college had a contact at the summer camp as he had done it for the last two years so I was fortunate to bypass the normal application process. The camp is in Wisconsin for 9 weeks starting at the beginning of June. The camps are for kids between 7-15 with 2 camps lasting 4 weeks each. I will be a boat driver and teacher for the waterski activities at the camp along with about 5 other people. My plan at this stage is to travel after the Canadian winter down the west coast of the states, through the south and then up the east coast to New York and then the summer camp in June. Plans are starting to develop about the route and I am looking forward to some sun in the states.

The new camera is going well and I managed to burrow someones tripod and take some night pictures around the resort. The picture below is just after I finished work at the restaurant.

Choppers Restaurant - Practicing some slow shutter speed pictures

That is about it for the moment. I hope everyone is doing well around the world and look forward to hearing stories of what you are up to.