It was ambitious, it was dark, but I headed out to the highway, still wearing all my ski gear, to try to hitchhike from Apex ski hill near Penticton to Big White near Kelowna.

It had been a great day in the powder of Apex (which is one of the unknown gems of British Columbia) but by the time I got to the highway, it was snowing very heavily. It was very dark when I made it to the turn off to Big White, but the car let me out there because he wasn't driving up to the hill.

After twenty minutes standing under when the one streetlight, there was about five centimetres of snow on my backpack. An hour passed and I was standing in a full blown blizzard. No cars.

Finally, a car came, slowed downed, looked at me to confirm I wasn't the Yeti and then drove on. A truck following slammed on its breaks and stopped. The door opened and I saw four guys squeezed into the cab.

'We thought the car in front would stop,' one of them said. 'We'll try to take you.'

They opened the back of the truck. It was completely full and we ended up putting my snow-covered backpack in a refrigerator. Then, five of us somehow got into the cab. I remember the gearstick was between someone's legs. The drive up the hill was frightening with the truck slipping all over the place and sometimes going backwards. But we made it eventually and I was extremely thankful to those guys.

And, of course, with the blizzard, the hill was covered in fresh powder the next day.