Coquihalla Lakes: Smorgasbord Christmas

We spent this past Christmas up the the Coquihalla Lakes Lodge along with Miriam and 2 other families. Ignacio and Pascale stayed in our cabin along with their twins and Pascale's mother. Our friend Anne arrived later with her entire (adult) family visiting from France (Father, Mother, Sister) and stayed in another cabin. We were fortunate to have good snow conditions - a reasonable base/coverage with some medium density powder on top. On the first day Ignacio, Pascale, Line, and I left the kids to play at the cabin with Miriam and Pascale's mom while we went to check out Zoa for a possible trip with the whole family (ok, and to get a little kid-free skiing).

The coverage (and skiing!) was actually pretty good up on Zoa, so we decided to come back the next day with our family as well as Anne's, who had just arrived. We figured that the forest section between the pipeline cut and the meadows might be too tough for F, but that we could always carry her through it if necessary (both up and down). This would also be Miriam's first ever backcountry ski trip. She's fortunately (more or less) the same foot size as Line, so borrowed Line's AT setup. We discovered, however, that the fit was not quite good enough - Miriam didn't complain on the trip, but suffered some pretty bad toe-bang and ended up loosing the nail off of both her big toes. F was happy to be towed up Anne on the way up the pipeline, and by me in the forest. It actually went pretty smoothly - F is getting pretty good at being towed. F surprised everybody by skiing down quickly and efficiently through the forest. "I'll just ski exactly where daddy skis!" she declared, before zipping down mostly following my tracks but sometimes throwing in an extra turn or two. I didn't really realize until I watched her, but the trees are way less tight for her, because she's so small. Miriam had no problem on the way up, but a tough time on the way down.

Christmas day we spent in and around the cabin; after doing the present thing the kids played outside making snowmen and tobogganing. Dinner featured a variety of cultures with Danish, French and Mexican dishes.

On the last day we all went to Falls Lake, which was a good destination for a half-day due to the short approach. The kids played in the snow, Miriam took a snowshoe tour around the outskirts of the lake, and Anne and I bootpacked up a couloir we spotted. N even got to try "skiing" for the first time on the little plastic skis we'd brought. She managed to actually put some weight on her feet, which is pretty good for only a year and half.