Posted by Topher Donahue on Tue, Jul 27, 2010 @ 09:05 AM
The CMH kitchens produce the kind of dining experience you see in the lefthand photo, in the kind of locations you see in the righthand photo. The juxtaposition seems kind of unreal to me, so to get a glimpse of how they do it, I asked Rick Carswell, veteran chef of heliski lodges, CP Hotels, Holland America Cruise Lines, the film industry, pirate ships and the food and beverage manager for CMH.
TD: What issues do you face cooking at a CMH Lodge compared to an equivalent restaurant?
RC: As a chef at CMH you have an incredible amount of culinary freedoms, and on the flip side lifestyle restraints that are different from your average restaurant job. There is no-one else qualified in the lodge to cover for you if you get sick or injured and that can be intimidating and all-consuming. I remember being sick once and I had a dream that I walked down the hall to the managers room and told him that I was sorry that I wouldn't be able to cook breakfast because I was going to die - and I was terribly sorry. He thanked me for telling him and said it had been a pleasure getting to know me, then I turned and walked toward my room were I was going to die.
TD: How do you get all that food in there anyway?
RC: It takes about a week per lodge to refit them in the fall for the coming winter with all their food and beverage inventory. I figure as accurately as I can the amount of food they will need for this coming winter, run quotes for those supplies from all our vendors and then drive it to the lodge by the semi load. If you are at a lodge early in the season ask to have a look in the store rooms. It's impressive to see the wall of Kokanee beer, or the 100 bags of flour. During the operating season, the fresh food is ordered weekly by the chefs, received in Banff from the 15 or so suppliers where it is then sorted by area, reassembled and shipped to the appropriate helipad to meet the helicopters for it's trip to the lodge. Quite an interesting journey if you're a fresh mussle from PEI to a mountain lodge in three days, one plane ride, three different truck rides, one helicopter ride, one ski-do ride and passing through about a dozen sets of hands to get there.
TD: What does a CMH chef typical work day look like?
RC: Long. At CMH workday begins at 6am and finishes at 9pm and goes day after day for two weeks before you get a break. As a chef, if I got out skiing it meant that I would work into the night to get pay back for my reward of skiing, but man is it worth it. I can work on six hours sleep if I can get a few runs in the middle of the day and I find that I work much more effectively if I get outside for a bit.
TD: If an experienced chef wanted to work for CMH, what advice would you have for them?
RC: This is a serious work hard play hard environment. But you need to have the experience and confidence to be able to pull it off. We look at chefs with about five years post apprenticeship experience and hopefully in the eight years of their work experience they have moved to lots of different places, worked different styles of cuisine and have some management experience. It's a hard position to fill and certainly we have taken the chance on lesser experience levels for exceptional personalities who mostly have worked their way up our ladder but team is sustainable because we manage to retain about 80% of our chefs from one season to the next. The average work/life expectancy for our 44 chefs is around ten years, which is pretty spectacular in this industry of nomadic pirate chefs. My best friends are CMH chefs and we go back 20 years with this company. They are a book of stories and talent.
TD: Anything else you'd like to add?
RC: Come, enjoy the mountains and the skiing, but when you get back to the lodge stop by the kitchen and visit the chefs, I'm sure you'll be impressed with my friends, ask them about the vegetarians who eat lamb when they are at CMH, ask them what wine they will be drinking with dinner, ask them about their greatest culinary disaster and how, as a good pirate, they pulled it off and nobody noticed. My friends tell good stories.
Posted by Topher Donahue on Tue, May 11, 2010 @ 04:22 PM
I just picked up one of those books that could change the world. Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv, is a best seller of such magnitude that its implications will send ripples through families, universities, and - hopefully - our entire culture.
In it, Louv coins the term “nature deficit disorder”, and gives the reader a shocking view into the wide range of issues today’s children face and how many of the issues can be blamed –at least in part - on how little direct contact with nature they have compared to earlier generations. The book opens the floodgates of contemporary studies that are in the process of proving that our electronic, indoor, hyper-compartmentalized lifestyles are liable for issues including ADHD and obesity – and that time in the natural world has therapeutic potential to help with the very same issues.
This morning I watched my twin three-year-olds grow hyper and irritable as a spring snowstorm prevented even a short play in the garden. It seemed obvious that the time outside was crucial to their learning and happiness as I reread a few of Louv’s best lines:
“Increasingly, nature is something to watch, to consume, to wear – to ignore.”
“As far as physical fitness goes, today’s kids are the sorriest generation in the history of the United States.”
“They (researchers) say the quality of exposure to nature affects our health at an almost cellular level.”
“Pediatricians now warn that today’s children may be the first generation of Americans since World War II to die at an earlier age than their parents.”
“The CDC found that the amount of TV that children watch directly correlates with measures of their body fat.”
“A study of Finnish teenagers showed that they often went into natural settings after upsetting events; there, they could clear their minds and gain perspective and relax.”
“There is a real world, beyond the glass, for children who look, for those whose parents encourage them to truly see.”
“Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle maintains that each hour of TV watched per day by preschoolers increases by 10 percent the likelihood that they will develop concentration problems and other symptoms of attention-deficit disorders by age seven.”
“I was intrigued by the way children defined play: often, their definition did not include soccer or piano lessons. Those activities were more like work.”
“Typical Americans spend 101 minutes in their car daily, five times the amount they spend exercising.”
“Time in nature is not leisure time, it’s an essential investment in our children’s health (and also, by the way, in our own).”
“Two-thirds of American children can’t pass a basic physical: 40 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls ages six to seventeen can’t manage more than one pull-up; and 40 percent show early signs of heart and circulation problems.”
Louv reveals that even our playgrounds, parks, and arenas are not providing the experience in the natural world that has nurtured children’s development since the beginning of time. And the Internet, while a gateway to the world in so many ways, is entirely devoid of the very same sensory experiences that nature supplies in abundance: the smell of a pine tree; the deep vibration of a wave crashing into a rocky shore; the tickle of a cool breeze blowing off a snowfield.
For adventure travelers, skiers, mountaineers, hikers, farmers, gardeners, sailors, surfers, people like us in the business of providing exceptional experiences in the natural world, or anyone who finds time in nature is essential to their health, "Last Child in the Woods" puts to words something we have been feeling for a long time.
Photo by Topher Donahue
Posted by Topher Donahue on Fri, Apr 23, 2010 @ 09:01 AM
When you show up at the airport these days, just getting on the plane is an adventure. It reminds me of travel in parts of the third world where you need a pocket full of bribe money, extra time to get anywhere, the mental fortitude to patiently handle whatever you encounter - and a sense of humor.
Remember when air travel was fun?
First they ding you for your checked luggage. Ok, if we all travel lighter, the airplanes use less fuel. It also gives the marketing department at airlines like Southwest endless advantage over the other carriers: they just advertise NOT doing what the other airlines are doing. Now Southwest advertises, “Your 1st and 2nd checked bags are free only with Southwest Airlines!”
More recently, Spirit Airlines unveiled a plan to charge for carry-on bags. Anything that goes in the overhead bin will cost passengers $45, almost double the cost of a checked bag. Some items will be exempt from the rule including “umbrellas, coats, cameras, car seats, strollers, medicine, reading material and food for immediate consumption. “ I can just see the new travel luggage that looks like a Burger King go-bag but is actually a high-quality roller bag, hair driers that look like Nikon cameras, and jackets with pocket capacity for a 2-day trip.
Now Ryanair, a low-cost European carrier is taking the next step: charging passengers to use the toilet! And they are trying to convince aviation authorities to allow them to redesign the cabin with only one toilet to make room for more seats. If passed, the new ratio will be 189 seats for one toilet! In an article in Business Week, the Ryanair CEO, Michael O’Leary rationalizes: "The purpose of charging for the toilets is to change peoples' behaviour," he said. The company sees profit in the theory that by giving people incentive to use airport toilets before they depart, it would be able to remove two out of the three toilets on each plane, making space for six additional seats. Seats they can sell.
Who are they kidding? Changing people's bodily functions? Everyone I know already tries to avoid using the cramped cabin toilets by using the airport toilets just before boarding. I don't know of anybody who waits to get ON the plane to use the toilet. I can just see Southwest Airline’s next slogan: “Use the toilet for free!”
Do you think this family is waiting until they board to use the toilet?
The nice thing for us at CMH is that these trends in the air travel industry make our all-inclusive approach and helicopter travel seem that much more refreshing. Just show up for a CMH Heli-Ski trip and we’ll take care of the rest. Sure, we charge additional for massages and alcohol, but everything else is part of our award-winning
adventure travel package. We’re not about to start charging for the spa, nor do we charge rental fees for our fleet of powder skis and guest packs - and we certainly don't charge you for using the toilet.
Photos by Topher Donahue