Process: Stefhan Caddick
Two weeks spent trying and repeatedly failing to transform rough pine planks from the local timber yard into usable skiis.
Following several attempts at steaming wood on a woodburning stove in the prospector's tent (Cougar Cabin) at minus 20 degrees C (the tent itself took around 2 hours to thaw and the water in the kettle another hour after that), I moved into Chalet Balsam and disrupted the cooking to steam the skiis in a roughly made wood kettle.
At the first attempt the skiis splintered at the point of bending them, but by the end of the residency I had a pair of usable skiis to which I attached snowshoe foot holders and tried to learn to cross country ski.
During our time in Montreal I had bought some ski wax, marked with the byline 'Fart pour ski'. I still haven't worked out what this means.
