Strange Days at Malakwa

Possessive locals? Logging company trying to reduce the number of vehicles on the road? Aliens? Whatever the explanation Malakwa is indeed still open and the conspiracy theorists are having a field day.

And as if not quite willing to allow us back without a fight we had a very odd day at Malakwa on Saturday.

The first strangeness was that there no other cars when we arrived at the 12K parking area. Where the heck was everyone?

The next and increasingly more urgent concern was that the other vehicle in our party, ahead and uphill of us, was now slowly sliding down the road towards us with all four wheels locked up. Feeling that collision was imminent we gently reversed the heck out of the way while they performed several lazy pirouettes back down the road, periodically crunching into snowbanks as they went.

Eventually they came to a rest and we put the tire chains on as they gingerly picked their way further down the road to find a safer parking spot.

What else? Well the uptrack lead us away from the usual path that we follow at Malakwa. Being a large group there was plenty of moaning from the back that "no one seems to care where we're going" but none from the peanut gallery were actually willing to do anything about it so we continued on upwards into the murk.

Ah yes, the murk. It was pretty clagged in. When the track finally ended we found ourselves atop a little knoll with few options. We simply couldn't see any of the familiar landmarks to get a reference. GPS and map weren't much help either.

We pointed the skis down hill and within a few turns had released several not-so-insignificant slabs on the February 4th frost layer. Well that did it. Some of the group justifiably wanted to call it a day a day and some others wanted to explore a bit further.

Much discussion later we had decided to head back -- but which way? We could of course retrace our tracks back up the slope that we had just skied but that route had already been shown to be pretty dodgey. Alternatively we had crossed another uptrack during the short ski down. Perhaps this was the better option? More discussion as the snow swirled about us.

You can see where this is leading right?

After much agonizing we decided to follow the new track and it of course proved to be the track which we had followed up in the first place. Yes, our own track.

To end the day we decided to visit "The Burner". The Burner is a roadside pub and restaurant in the middle of nowhere but handily near where we ski. It's built inside one of those huge metal beehive burners that lumber mills use to burn off waste wood. We had of course driven past the place a hundred times but had never been inside. If you could see it you'd understand why because from the outside it's just a giant metal rusting hulk with a neon "Open" sign hanging from it. So we were expecting a real cultural experience.

To our shock it's a great place! The inside is framed with enormous square cut pillars. Chain saws of various vintages hang from the beamed ceiling. There's a great atmosphere, and the proprietor sports a gigantic flowing mustache of Edwardian proportions. Best of all they have about a dozen interesting micro-brews on tap. I tried a dark chocolate-coffee beer called "The Backhand of God".

Strange days indeed.