Nelson, BC

So those poorly captioned photos are a couple from this year. The one of the snow, trees, and valley was from our trip to British Columbia. We took a long awaited vacation (we've saved for months!) to explore a bit of the other side of Canada. Nelson is a small, quiet, hippie-friendly town in the Kootenay (pronounced koot-nie) mountains. When we got there on Saturday morning, John, Kelly and I went cross-country skiing.
Except cross country skiing is a bit of a misnomer. We went downhill skiing on cross country skis. Despite John and Kelly promising me that it is a piece of cake and there's virtually no way I could fall, it turned out to be quite an adventure. The easy trails were closed due to avalanche danger, and the black diamond trails were about the equivalent of an easy downhill ski trail. So an hour and a half of faceplanting later, we made our way deep into a valley, only to spend the next hour and a half climbing out of it. Basically, the 'gliding' technique they taught me turned out to be useless. The trip either was spent trying to stop or hiking up a hill. The views were gorgeous however. Even though I couldn't feel my nose when we returned.
On Sunday we went to the Ainsworth Hot Springs. The resort had a hot spring cave in addition to the pool. There was something about sitting in 100F water, while looking out on a lake surrounded by mountains covered in snow that just makes you think this is the life. If we had had more money/time we probably would've gone to Vancouver, and missed out on tiny Nelson.
Nelson also had its own organic brewery. Personally, I enjoyed their honey ale, though no one else did. The name of their winter ale? Faceplant.