This weekend I tackled telemark skiing and won. Well, sort of.

It was a trip of fun and revelry with friends at Sun Peaks ski resort. Of the group of eight that we headed up with, five friends - including Scott - had long ago embraced the challenge and apparent rewards of free-heel skiing. Five years of endless nagging, cajoling, teasing and convincing had pushed me into agreeing to rent telemark gear and give it a go. The last two members of this band of eight were newbies to the sport of skiing entirely, so I knew that I could stick to the easy runs with them, even if the rest of the group was itching to go higher and steeper.

Telemark skiing involves a style of turning down the slopes with one foot ahead of the other - different from the standard alpine-style skiing of parallel legs and feet. In order to put one foot in front of the other, both knees bend, and the back heel comes up, kind of in a deep-knee walking - or lunge - position.

It turns out that years of watching Scott and the others master this technique paid off, because I was able to copycat their style pretty easily, even if my execution was a little shaky. But as you can imagine, repeating this turn all the way down the mountain requires Herculean leg strength and control, and by late afternoon each day my knee-bends were becoming microscopic and my heel was barely leaving the ground. The bane of my weekend was crossing my skis, again and again and again. The more tired my legs got the less control I had, then that damned back ski would start flapping in the wind and cross over the other, and down I'd go.

However, the classic wipeout of the weekend came when I was in full control, and busy trying to demonstrate 'proper' technique to our newbies on how to stop on a steeper slope. I stopped alright - and felt my heels come off the skis as my whole body fell forward past my ski tips and whap! I hit the soft snow like a giant tree being felled. "I really hoped you weren't hurt," Carla said afterward, "because I really needed to laugh."

So it seems I'm like the idiot savant of telemark skiing ... quick to pick up the basics, but slow to develop any skill. I'm not sure I'm ready to give up my downhill equipment just yet, but I'll keep working on the telemark and see where it takes me.

Meanwhile, our apres-ski time was spent lounging in our winter palace. The house we rented turned out to be a rock star pad. Scott particularly enjoyed living up to the roll.

Had we known that the kitchen would be bigger than most of our homes - and decked out with top-of-the-line-appliances - we probably would have gone crazy with the cooking. But even so, we had some stellar meals and all the extra space and food was put to good use when local Kamloops and Sun Peaks friends dropped by to visit.

Good times!