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November/December 2006 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Wildlife stories Feature: Stealing the scene Feature: Lake Winnipeg Feature: Alberta’s Cypress Hills The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

Shortly after 6:30 on a frosty February morning outside Lachute, Que., I am learning an important lesson. Skiing 80 kilometres in a day means starting in the dark. As I approach the edge of a small ravine and lose sight of the track, I realize my equipment list should have included a headlamp.

So begins my adventure with the Canadian Ski Marathon (CSM), an annual two-day trek of up to 160 kilometres along the Ottawa Valley from Lachute to the Gatineau community of Buckingham (alternating directions each year). The event attracts more than 2,200 skiers ranging in age from 5 to 85, most of them from Ontario and Quebec. It got its start in 1967, when national ski team member Don MacLeod celebrated Canada’s centennial by leading a group of 400 skiers from Montréal to Ottawa. Some 40 years later, the marathon remains the world’s longest cross-country ski event.

For nearly 800 of the participants, the course is also something of a rite of passage. Like me, they’ve entered the Coureur des Bois category, which means we’ll try to complete the course’s 10 sections under progressively more gruelling conditions. I’m entered in the "bronze" class, and I must pass through five checkpoints both days. But to complete each day’s final section, I must check in before 3 p.m. After that, my race is effectively over. "Silver" competitors face the same time restrictions. They have completed the course once before and are now attempting it with a backpack so that they can enter as "gold" next year. "Gold" competitors must meet the same deadline and carry the gear they’ll need to sleep in the woods. The rest of us have the choice of coughing up the cash to settle into a cozy bed at the tony Château Montebello for the night or roughing it in a sweaty auditorium in a secondary school in Papineauville. Like many of my plebeian race companions, I opt for the latter.

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