Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 8, 1998

“Now that my culinary standards have been raised, I’m going to expect more out of you at home,” my son Josh, 13, announced.

Our family had just spent three days skiing—and, just as important, eating—at Stokely Creek Lodge, a backcountry resort and ski touring center in Ontario with 125 kilometers of trails on 12,000 acres.

I suspected I’d like Stokely Creek when I saw deep snow, fluffy as meringue. “We run out of skiers before we run out of snow. People from further south have a hard time believing that the skiing is still good here in early April,” manager Deane Greenwood said.

I knew I’d like Stokely Creek when I saw the menu on a chalk board for our first dinner: Caesar salad, homemade whole-grain bread, cornish hen with peach chutney, baked brown and wild rice, seafood casserole of whitefish, winter squash and tomatoes; peas and braised swiss chard with balsamic vinegar; chocolate wafers and vanilla bean ice cream with sauce of pureed dates and rum.

Co-owner Anne Peterson saw me salivating. “Women used to eating 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day come here and eat 3,000 calories, every calorie nutritious. You work it all off on the trails,” she promised.

She wasn’t kidding about the workout. The well-marked trail network crosses bubbling creeks, frozen lakes, wooded valley and 1,882-foot King Mountain, the tallest peak in Ontario’s Algoma Highlands. None of the trails is flat enough to be considered a true beginner’s trail.

One morning, skiing through fresh powder white as confectioners’ sugar, we watched the sun advance over King Mountain. Silver light shimmered like a polished stockpot. Delicate mouse tracks zippered across the snow, signaling lunch, perhaps, for the fox whose prints outlasted the tinier tracks.

Yellow birch bark peeled away in swaths of creamy white and pale orange, the same colors as potatoes and rutabagas in chef Phyliss Burrell-Elyk’s dill-scented, tomato-based chunky vegetable soup. Sighting up a birch trunk into deep blue sky, I noticed a rainbow. “That’s a sun dog, caused by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere,” explained my husband, Steve.

At Walker Lake, he and the boys veered uphill toward Jackrabbit Loop, a steep curvy run, while I chose a tamer path. Only my heartbeats and swishing skis broke the silence.

Back at the lodge, I asked Burrell-Elyk about her creative menus. She’s two years from retirement and has black hair from an Iroquois ancestor. Her smile and this-secret’s-for-you air remind me of my grandma. But Grandma never cooked like this.

“I changed my menus during the last El Niño, when U.S., Canadian and Norwegian Nordic ski teams trained at Stokely Creek. Those coaches taught me about skiers’ nutritional needs; concentrated breakfast foods like whole grains, seeds, nuts and dried fruit; complex lunch carbohydrates like lentil stew or vegetable lasagna with spinach noodles,” she said.

Our son Abe, 15, pinpointed what made our ski-and-eat cycle so fun. “Nordic trails at downhill resorts go in circles around the main hill. You still hear the chairlifts and snowmakers. Here, you can actually ski somewhere specific.”

One day we skied 19 kilometers round trip to an old trapper’s cabin where Norm Bourgeois, 82, still spends weekends and feels offended if skiers fail to stop in for tea, cookies and conversation.

Our final trek was to Doris’ Groovy Café, a solar-powered cabin on King Mountain’s south slope, where a back-to-the-land family sells tea, homemade pretzels and apple strudel.

We still had room for dinner, though.

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