KEY POINTS:
I like relaxing in a sauna, sitting in a dim room while an all-enveloping heat forces perspiration out of my pores and niggling aches out of my body.
I like to wait until I am lathered in sweat then jump into a freezing cold plunge pool. After that the pores seem to open and close more quickly.
Hot, cold, hot, cold, until thoroughly sated, you towel off, flop down somewhere with a cold beer and wallow in the land of Blob.
Luxury, sheer luxury. No wonder native peoples have perspired around piles of hot rocks since the dawn of time and innovative kayakers and rafters fashion their own little saunas in the wilderness.
Can the experience get any better? Well yes, it can, actually. It just takes a bit of effort to get to Skoki Lodge, 2164m up in the back country of Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies.
To be honest, I hadn't even thought about a sauna when I parked at the Lake Louise Mountain Resort, the huge lift-serviced field on the Great Divide between British Columbia and Alberta. This is one of North America's most famous ski resorts but it's also a United Nations World Heritage site.
"Pee off the top of that mountain over there," my companion on the chairlift advised me the day before, "and, depending on which way you're facing, it will either flow into the Pacific Ocean or all the way to the Atlantic."
You learn fascinating stuff like that on chairlifts, except I wasn't heading to the top of the mountain to try out the theory but 11km into the back country of the Slate Range, one of the many jumbled ranges in the Rockies.
Back in 1930 a bunch of dedicated ski bums from Banff came this way too, seeking somewhere away from the madding crowd where they could ski untracked powder all day and every day.
The group called itself the Ski Club of the Canadian Rockies and perhaps figured that if it built a lodge in the lee of Skoki Mountain and let tourists stay there, the taxman would pay for their skiing. Skoki Lodge, a simple log cabin made from trees felled on the site, opened for guests in 1931, making it one of the first commercial ski resorts in North America.
Over the years it's gained an upper floor and a bigger kitchen, and a few log cabin outbuildings for staff and honeymooning guests, and been kept in good repair. It's also had a few changes in ownership and is now run by the Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, the same company that owns Lake Louise and a clutch of other ski hills in the region.
Perishable food and fuel is no longer backpacked in daily on a 38km round ski trip to Lake Louise township. Now it's brought in by snowmobile.
But not much else has changed. There's no electricity, your cell phone or Blackberry won't work, the roof beams are blackened with 70 years of candle smoke and the dresser beside your bed is furnished with a washing bowl and water pitcher.
Nothing's changed on the passage to Skoki Lodge either. There's a crude sign at the bottom of one of the Lake Louise runs pointing into the trees with the message "Skoki Lodge" - and that's all the help you get for the next 11km of snowy wilderness.
Fortunately, others have been on the trail since the last snowfall so there are tracks to follow, although they are fairly indistinct.
I'm shod in my short Dynastar all-mountain skis equipped with Fritschi Diamir alpine touring bindings. It's the one-package-does-all gear that I find is perfect for New Zealand and Australian conditions, but perhaps not as appropriate on this trail as the cross-country skis most of the locals use.
I follow the trail through trees along a valley floor, slowly leaving the sight and happy sounds of the ski area behind me. It's a gradual climb and I need skins on my skis most of the way. A short, steep incline that's probably a cascade in summer leads to frozen Ptarmigan Lake and Deception Pass, reached by a 1km blue-run slope.
I stop to watch some returning guests skiing down the slope on their cross-country skis and decide perhaps my AT (Alpine Touring) setup isn't such a bad idea after all - at least, that is, until I'm passed in a hiss and a roar by a woman on skinny skis.
From the top of Deception Pass it's a schuss almost all the way to Skoki Lodge, where a huge afternoon tea spread of thick vegetable soup, cold meats, cheese, fruit and fresh buns awaits. It's the traditional, daily afternoon fare at Skoki and is what the flying woman on the cross-country skis has come for.
She's from Calgary on a ski holiday with her family but got fed up with their sloth so took off for a "blow out" to Skoki. It transpires a group has piked out in the face of an unfavourable weather forecast - which never eventuates - and I have the 22-bed lodge to myself.
Bliss, oh bliss, I'm to discover - because it means I have the Skoki sauna all to myself too.
Inside is a bench and a wood stove. It looks like a small, cast-iron pot-belly stove except the metal is as thin as a cake tin. Neatly stacked beneath the bench seat is a pile of pine firewood and a tin of wood shavings impregnated with diesel oil.
Throw in some wood, a handful of shavings, a lighted match, and wait - for less than five minutes.
By the time I'm undressed the little hut is a cosy sauna and the tin stove already giving out a fierce heat. Luxury; sheer luxury. But wait - there's more. There's no plunge pool here but neither are there any other guests. The answer is obvious. Lathered in sweat I jump out of the sauna and dive into the nearest snow drift, rolling around like a horse in a dust bath.
Hot, cold, hot, cold. Eventually I head back to the lodge for a wonderful cold beer and dinner.
In the morning I'm still in the land of Blob and chide myself that I'm in the Canadian Rockies, with a plethora of untracked slopes all to myself and I'm still lounging around, lingering over breakfast. I really should be skiing down "Bunkers" off Fossil Mountain.
I've got my laptop with me so I do a couple of hours' work to ease my conscience, then grab something for lunch from a laden table and skin off on a loop track in Skoki Valley and the Canyon that I'm told will take little more than an hour.
In fact, I take a leisurely two hours plus, stopping for lunch on a fallen tree.
That night the lodge is full with a rollicking crowd from Calgary. The women dress for the sumptuous dinner of Canadian salmon and we dine by the light of kerosene lamps. Coffee and liqueurs are served while one guest tickles the ivories, another plays a wild harmonica, others sing and chef Laurie Clark strums her guitar.
Last year National Geographic labelled Skoki Lodge its "top winter hideaway". I reckon my slow progress on the return trail the next day has more to do with my reluctance to leave such an abundance of ambient warmth than my fitness.
- Detours, HoS
