Category Archives: around home

around home, Canada, friends, national park, snow

Simpson & Healy Passes

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That pesky little cold I picked up in London hung around for a few more days than I hoped for, but after surviving the week at work I was ready for a little skiing over the weekend.  Anya & I spent all day at Sunshine on Saturday.  It was a lot warmer than last time I went up & the day seemed to sit around -5ºC.  There was a few centimetres of the fresh stuff & the sun & continuing snowfall made it a very pleasant day.  We hit all the lifts over the day & with the exception of a couple of runs off Divide, there were few people queuing.  Funniest thing of the day was Anya getting a little confused & heading off to Teepee Town chair, ducking through some trees, hitting a roller & then straight on to a little jump & ending up stuck in a small tree well.  Forewarned is forearmed & all that & I managed to land it & have a little laugh as Anya eventually extricated herself from her little hole in the ground (“We were evicted from our hole in ground, we had to go & live in a lake.”).  After a big lunch, we skied all afternoon, had a drink or two at the bottom before a spot of shopping in Banff & a long soak in the Banff Hot Springs again.

Alex’s plans for a “quite interesting” (I interpreted this as “well beyond my capabilities”) ski tour on Sunday were scuppered by a call-in to work for his ski buddy, so I joined him on Sunday for an easier tour.  We took the Sunshine gondola up & skied off the back of Wawa looking for a derelict cabin near a lake up the other side of the valley west of where we left the Sunshine boundary.  Once again, it was another glorious day – still, warm & mostly sunny.  We skinned relatively easily for a while before we found a spot the Alex thought looked likely to reach the valley floor.   By this time we were in British Columbia, albeit briefly.

We skied a little way down before the slope got a lot steeper & we stopped so Alex could dig a pit to gauge the likelihood of us triggering an avalanche.  The avalanche forecast was for low or moderate risk (height dependent) & Alex’s field testing suggested that it wasn’t likely we would bring the face down on top of ourselves.  I had a go at my first snow-pack test (for want of a better word) – basically you isolate a 30x30cmxwhatever-height pillar of undisturbed snow & then tap/hit the top of it (shovel covered) with increasing force until it shears off.

The steepness & all the trees tested my ability, as usual – I managed reasonably well apart from one chute that was too skinny for me to be able to turn & slow down.  It was a quite spectacular dive right in front of Alex – pity I can’t find a link to Alex’s photo of me pulling myself out of the hole I’d created.

Down on the valley floor, we skinned up to Simpson’s Pass & then took off up to the left to find the hut.  It was quite a steep climb up to the lake, during which I was starting to feel quite worn out from that dastardly cold.  Eventually up at the lake we spent quite a long time traipsing around where the cabin should have been (at least according to old maps that Alex had found).  After squeezing between too many trees, getting showered in snow & just generally going around in circles I was definitely ready for lunch on the lake edge.  Disturbingly, for me, I didn’t have much of an appetite & after a bit more hut hunting (we never found it) we headed up to Healy Pass with me feeling more & more tired.  Thankfully, the pass wasn’t as high as I feared & we made it up there just after three o’clock – just as well it’s not getting dark until after six o’clock now.  Naturally, the views from the top were up to the usual high standard of around here.

It was a gentle ski down off the pass & that went pretty well for me until I tried to keep some speed up to get me further across a flat section, hit a rolling drop & then fell over about ten metres later.  We skied down the drainage back to the parking lot.  This bit was through trees & followed the skin track/hiking trail (season dependent).  When it was downhill, it was tight & twisty (a lot of snow ploughing for me) but manageable.  Unfortunately, there were a lot of flat & uphill sections – by now I was worn out & I hated these sections.  I really can’t wait to be back on my bike where it’s a lot easier to keep momentum & propel oneself along flat & uphill sections.  Back at the car about seven hours after we started skiing.  At least this week’s game of Cities & Knights was resource rich.

around home, bikes, Canada, friends, MTB, snow

Back on the bike

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After really starting to wish I was back riding sweet singletrack on my bike as winter drags on, I was quite surprised to get the opportunity to go for a ride yesterday.  I enjoyed a little sleep-in, lounging around reading my book (I’ve started another epic – “London” by the same guy that wrote the last book & epic I read.  The narrative is not quite as compelling, but the history of the city is fascinating.) & then having a nap before Alex texted with the idea for a ride.  It was a nice clear day & almost up to freezing point, so conditions were perfect.

I dragged my bike out, rugged up a bit & cautiously took my first ride on the snowy streets.  Thankfully it wasn’t too icy.  Riding on the hard packed snow was straight forward, although I was quickly reminded of the fact that my entire drivetrain needs replacing before the summer & that my rear tyre is particularly bald.  The riverside paths & Engine Bridge were easy pedalling.

Ice floating down the Bow River, from the Engine Bridge, the Three Sisters in the background

We took a detour around the small island that is in the river between town & the power station runout on Mineside.  There hadn’t been nearly as much traffic down this trail & it was a lot narrower & bumpier.  Alex progressed easier than I did as he had fitted studded tyres; progress was slow, it was hard to keep much balance & as soon as you dabbed your foot just sank in to the unpacked snow.

Mt Rundle behind me

Looking across the Bow & town to Grotto

I made a snow-bike angel

Ready-made bike stand

Back on the packed trail we ambled up to Quarry Lake – I was pleased to find I still had some climbing legs left.  We rode along under the power line to Peaks of Grassi before winding our way down various paths & stairs (some of which Alex could ride) to the Riverside Trail.  I was grinning most of the time with the pleasure of being back on my bike.

around home, Canada, friends, snow

Mt Stanley Touring

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I did intend to write this yesterday as it was a public holiday (as far as I can work out Family Day is a “we haven’t had a public holiday for almost two months – let’s make one up so we have the day off” type of holiday), but just as I got home to start writing the tragic events in Christchurch started to unfold.  I was well pleased to get a text from Adele ninety minutes later to let me know that she, Mum & Dad were safe & well.  It’s such times that one does feel a long way from home; watching & reading all the coverage has been pretty shocking, sobering & just plain hard.  I’m very much looking forward to seeing some close NZ friends & family in thirty-six hours.

Back to the long weekend’s adventures.  It was nice & clear & not too cold Sunday morning when five of us popped over to BC & Kootenay National Park for the easyish tour Alex had planned.  Basically we crossed the creek by the parking lot, climbed gradually while traversing towards a spur for an hour & then climbed a lot more rapidly up the spur.  The climbing was quite manageable (but then I was plodding along as tail end Charlie for a lot of the time) & after three months of winter I was starting to miss my bike & the challenge & technical variety that is climbing steep hills (not to mention the sweet downhill).  Most of the trees we went through had been burnt out in time past, leaving blackened trunks & a few spindly branches.

Lincoln, me & Al

As we got nearer to our highest point I was starting the eye the thickening trees on the steepening slope nervously.  Would I be able to get down through those gaps while making turns & staying in control?  I was starting to feel like Dennis Denuto standing outside the Federal Courthouse.

The trees thinned as we reached our lunch spot where it was nicely warm & we had great views down the valley along Highway 93S.

Lincoln & Jess(i?)e

The ski down wasn’t as bad as I feared & I was able to make some turns & negotiate my way through most of the gaps between the trees – there are some advantages to being a skinny weed.  The trickiest things were the small skinny trees that were hard to see straight away & any fallen wood that wasn’t immediately apparent.  I managed to stop myself against one pretty large tree, glide in to a bit of treefell & get tangled in a lot of spindly trees.  Overall the ski down was quite fun & I was pleased that the climb was worth it.  Here’s a few more pictures of me that I’ve once again shamelessly pinched from Alex – when you’re the fast one, you can afford to stop & take pictures.

around home, Canada, friends, snow

Most of a hockey game & cold Sunshine

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It was still proper cold on Friday night (-20ºC) as I wandered the few blocks west to meet up with work-mates for pizza before we headed to the hockey game over the road at the Rec Center.  The hockey in this game was much better than the previous game I had been to – much faster & open, I was quite enjoying the play.  Unfortunately, when you go to hockey games they spend more time not playing than on the ice.  After the first period (of which there are three, each twenty minutes long) they brought out the Timbits (Tim Hortons must sponsor local hockey, as timbits are little balls of donut goodness that must be made from making the hole in donuts) for a little game.  These were five or six year olds having a little game in the centre of the rink – & possibly the cutest thing I have seen in a long time.  Most of them looked about as good as me on skates & spent a lot of the time dragging themselves off the ice.  It was hilarious.

The second period was pretty good also, even though we were losing (I think this game was a dead rubber – last week of regular season before the playoff & all that) & then came another indeterminable interval.  In two hours we had seen forty minutes of the game – which is just retarded, in two hours you can get through eighty minutes of rugby or ninety minutes of football (soccer).  I’d had enough of the waiting & snippets of bad songs, so it wasn’t difficult to persuade me to pop around to a workmate’s house for a drink or two – which was a pity, as the game was interesting.

For the second day in a row, it started off at -30ºC so I wrapped up with five layers of icebreaker (& outer layers of course) before driving up the hill to get (snowboarder) Alex for a morning at Sunshine.  For a long weekend, it wasn’t overly busy (probably something to do with the frigidness).  I think I’ve been spoilt this year – I wasn’t enjoying the lack of fresh snow & the hard pack was just plain slow.  Nonetheless, it was a gorgeous clear day & we had a good seventeen or so runs in between popping inside to warm up.  Alex thought I would handle the double black diamond South Side Chutes, but I wasn’t overly convinced.  But a bit of encouragement is a good thing, so we ended up at the top of the chutes where there wasn’t a lot of snow & plenty of rocks that slowed my entry down a bit/lot.  Looking at the map, I think we dropped in to Far Side – which wasn’t too bad.  I had one of my little backward falls coming out of a turn, but managed my way down with some long turns.  The snow was friendlier in the bottom half & we passed the camera around a bit.

The chutes run in to Eagle Creek, another black diamond run that is first a pleasant little road-ish ski before dropping in to the much skinnier creek canyon – this was good fun as it was twisty & bumpy.  Avoiding the cliff face (where apparently someone went over unbeknown to them, landed heavily & broke their back) we were eventually back at Goat’s Eye base station.  A couple of nice runs down Scapegoat & we’d had enough of the cold – so we headed home.

Some kind-hearted & smart person had got Megan the wonderfully titled “Killer Bunnies” card game for her birthday.  That’s amusing on many levels with the obvious Monty Python reference (there’s also a weapon called the Trojan Bunny),

& my fear that the plague of domestic bunnies that have infested downtown Canmore will one day turn crazy & started jumping at people’s throats.  The game is quite amusing with many different cards ranging from the Cyber Bunny, the Ebola Virus, Large Prune Danish & so on.  I’m still not completely won over as the winning of the game pretty much comes down to a lottery & the rules & cards are somewhat ambiguous.  Still, it’s a bit of fun.