10 MINUTES: With Colin Puskas
Word to the wise: When you’re lost in the woods without a compass or map and your gut tells you to go north and Colin Puskas tells you to go south, go south. This guy knows his way around mountains. The 26-year-old Calgary native has positioned himself in Banff, an idyllic base for a guy with a sled, a truck, and a desire to ski a new mountain range every month. Though he’s skied extensively in North and South America, Colin’s happiest at home in the Canadian Rockies. Fortunately for us (or we’d still be buskwacking to the car), we lured him to Central Oregon last month, for a late season ski in the Three Sisters Wilderness. Within a pitcher of Mirror Pond, Colin had successfully persuaded everyone at the table to move to the Big North. -Tess Weaver
What are you doing when you leave here?
Heading back to Whistler, meeting my girlfriend and camping and slowly making my way back to Banff.
CLICK HERE FOR A GALLERY FROM GRANT GUNDERSON.
How long have you been in Banff?
I’ve been there on and off for about 10 years. I spent summers in Whistler for the last eight years, working at Camp of Champs. And I’ve been living a little in Golden and Revelstoke. Just trying to see and ski as many different mountain ranges as possible.
Jumbo Pass, B.C.
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Favorite trip of the winter?
I spent two months in Revelstoke, exploring out there. We had pretty good stability; it was lots of fun. We were able to get out and do as much as possible, which is pretty rare out there. There’s not always good weather in those mountains, right?
What’s makes the skiing out there so good?
The huge snowfall. There are logging roads everywhere—the access in incredible.
It’s pretty stable for the most part. It’s a lot drier than the coast, you know? It’s not cream cheese, it’s dry powder. And it’s a land of outlaws. There aren’t too many people trolling it.
Any bad trips?
Yeah, on one trip, East of Banff National Park, out in the Kananaskis range, a friend got avalanched. He blew out his knee out and lost both his skis. It was a bit of an epic to get him out. There was a lot of new snow and it was coming upon dark. There were three of us and only two sets of skis. There was a over a meter, with penetration, and we had to one ski out. Fortunately he was able to self rescue, but it was a bit of an epic postholing with one ski.
Colin nearing the summit of Middle Sister.
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Weren’t you injured this year?
Yeah, there was a lot of snow in January. I was skiing powder at a local hill. There were stumps underneath the snow, which I clipped with a ski. My ankle felt really weird, but I thought it’d be OK. X-rays told us it was fractured, so I got a hard cast, which I wore for five weeks. Two weeks after I got it off I was skiing again.
What did you do for the five weeks?
I pretty much watched the Olympics for five weeks. If it wasn’t for the Olympics I would have been really bored.
Where are you hoping to ski next season?
Hopefully Europe. But even around home there are so many ranges and so many unexplored areas. It would take more than a lifetime to explore it all. I’m just happy out skiing good snow with good friends. But we’ll see who’s paying the bill, right? Or we’ll make the bill fit for where the skiing’s at.
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