Walking out the front door of my night class I can’t quite make out what’s going on. It’s “snraining” - snow mixed with rain.

Yes, it’s April 18th, and exactly one month from tonight I will be sitting on the ferry en-route to the cabin. Some people get excited about Christmas, but for me the May “two-four weekend” (an Ontario expression) is all about the start of cottage season.

I must admit, I’m starting to get a bit worried. The last three long weekend openers have been cold and rainy, but this year I’m afraid it’s going to be cold and snowy. There’s nothing like opening up the cabin in the freezing rain.

In Ontario it’s customary to take your docks out on Thanksgiving weekend so it doesn’t get smashed by the ice. The beauty of west coast cottaging is the lakes don’t freeze. We leave our dock in, loosen off the lines and let it float.

Standing in hip waders trying to mount pieces of dock onto pipes, or worse, hunting for cement blocks to secure posts in frigid water was always my least favourite job, usually because we did such a bad job of taking it out in the first place.

We still have to crawl under the cabin to get the pump primed and close all the open valves, but I don’t get too fussed about it, especially since it’s a “blue” job. Bill gets to do it. I do the “pink” jobs, bedding, cleaning, organizing, and yard work.

While part of me is really excited about the approachiing cottage season, another part of me is worried we’re going to have another cold rainy wet summer like last year.

Oh well only time will tell. Until water skiing starts, I think I’ll keep downhill skiing. Whistler has 5 cm fresh snow and more expected this weekend.

The last day to ski Whistler is April 20th, but Blackcomb stays open until June 8th. You can buy an $89 lift ticket and ski the rest of the season on it. The irony is they’re closing Whistler so the mountain biking can start. Good luck, there’s so much snow on those trails, unless you’ve got snow tires, it’s going to be pretty tough slogging.

On one final note, it seems Quebecers aren’t the only ones hosing down their snow in an attempt to get rid of it. Rumour has it Grouse Mountain, one of the north shore mountains, is hosing the snow off the trails so people can go hiking.

I guess that’s why they call us “the Great White North.”

Cheers,

Julie

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.