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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.

city, Europe, national park, travel

An awful lot of talking (for me, probably not for some)

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Another airport, another chance to sit down & update these musings. This time it is Madrid Baribas Airport & I am at the end of ten days in Spain. Due to a slight adjustment in my sleeping hours towards what seems to be the Spanish norm & a very intense week I am having a little trouble remembering exactly all that I have done & seen in my brief time here. I do remember that for my first three days (spent in Madrid) the weather was pretty average (by London standards, bad by Madrid standards) – cloud, light rain & cold. First impressions were of the Metro from the airport in to the city – & those impressions have lasted; the Madrid metro has all the good things about it that the metro in Paris has (quick, on time, regular trains, clear & easy to understand maps & signage), but it is also much cleaner & newer & with far fewer beggars. In the central city my hostel was easy to find and about average. I think Thursday afternoon & evening were spent walking around the central city & getting orientated – which is very easy to do & I found plenty of parks, small side streets & hills to keep me interested.

Like most old European cities, the streets are mostly small & twisty – but with some quite wide arterial routes that help one from getting at all lost. I made the mistake of bringing a very good book with me (thanks a lot Neil) – the second in the Millennium trilogy by Steig Larsson, where one of the main characters is the most unlikely hero (if you like a good thriller/crime novel with a decent plot, I would do well to recommend these books – that’s for you Dad), so when I got sick of walking around in the gloom it didn’t take much to persuade me to go back to the hostel & read. Madrid of course likes to party, so my few nights at the hostel did not exactly provide me with sound sleep to prepare me for the exhausting week at Vaughan Town.

Back to Madrid, Friday was spent at various galleries & museums. The most famous of which are the Museo Nacional de Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum & the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. The Prado was a great collection of art & is a much more manageable size than the Louvre – a lot of Goya, Raphael, Bosch, Titian & pieces from other Spanish & European artists. My favourite of the three was the Thyssen – the landscapes (my favourite – I get a little sick of endless religious art – Rest on the road to Eygpt, & so on – & portraits of people that I know nothing about) there were fantastic & it wasn’t as crowded as the Prado. I’m still a complete ignoramus when it comes to modern art, so there was little to interest me in the Sofia. My antipathy towards modern art was well reflected by one of the first rooms I went in to in the Sofia – a long room painted in white that had a few slabs of steel of various lengths standing on their long edges. How a room that looks like the guys in the caster have got a little keen with the slab cutter & then done a little extra scarfing can be construed as art is completely beyond me. Steel can be used to great effect in architecture, but slabs are hardly interesting enough to look at as art.

Even Picasso’s Guernica was disappointing – needless to say was the highlight of the Sofia for me was the viewing point of the city from the third or fourth floor. Also that day was a rail museum which were interesting enough considering there was very little translation in to English & my Spanish can generously be described as poor.

A bit of lie in on Saturday, conceding that my book was much better than the weather, before heading to the Palacio Real de Madrid (the royal palace of Madrid). Thanks to my Madrid Card (which is not nearly the great value that the London, New York & Paris Passes have proved to be) I was able to skip the ever-growing queue to get in. Another typical impressive palace, but thankfully not nearly as extravagant or large as Versailles – but pretty fancy all the same.

I also spent a bit of time wandering around some of the many parks & green areas in Madrid, which were very nice considering the drizzle.

That night was a small tapas evening at a bar for the English-speaking volunteers to meet each other before the week of a lot of talking, something I was unsure I was up to but willing to give it a go. It was a little strange to speaking only English in Madrid, but nice to meet people with accents from all over the world. The night continued for a few of us in various other bars & I was back in the hostel late for me, but early by Spanish standards & the curse of “I know I have to get up early to meet some form of transport & so now I can’t sleep” struck & I had very little sleep before dragging myself out of bed & off to meet the coach & most of the rest of the other Anglos I would be spending the week with – one bonus of being kept awake was the conclusion of my book, I’m looking forward to starting the third one & the movie of the first installment that is just being released in English. A pleasant drive through the Spanish countryside for three hours south-west(ish) & we were almost in Portugal before we stopped at the hotel in the National Park that would be our home for the week.

Most of the Spaniards at this particular course work in the hospitality industry & quite a few of them work for the same chain of government owned hotels & know each other; even so I imagine there were quite a few nerves on their part as the program kicked off with introductions from all participants & a basic outline of how the week would work. The whole idea of the program is to improve the English conversation of the Spaniards & get them used to hearing different accents (of which we had quite a few – different parts of England, Glaswegian, Aberdeen, Irish, American, French & my Kiwi one – thankfully, a lot of the more difficult accents for the Spaniards to understand [including mine] had been softened somewhat by travel). We must have had about twenty one-to-one sessions during the week, each of the three meals of the day were at tables of two Anglos & two Spaniards, a few group activities of the team building type & the socialising were all of course in English – it was quite intense for the native English speakers, & was clearly exhausting for the Spaniards who had to think almost every time they said or heard anything. I was surprised that I managed to talk so much, even if I often found myself repeating similar stories to numerous people. Of course, working & growing up in NZ were common subjects (which started to make me a little homesick after the third or fourth time) as well as my trips to Kenya & Canada and also what I was planning on doing in Britain. For me, it was a great way to meet some local people (rather than just being a tourist the whole time), understand the country & culture, & get to know some great people.

Perhaps the most surreal part of the week was during the evening meeting (a chance to perform a song, skit, tell a story or so on) on Monday night when two different groups of people got up & performed Argument Clinic and the Four Yorkshiremen skits made famous by Monty Python. I was slightly annoyed I missed the opportunity to participate in those – the saddest thing would have been that I could have probably done so without a script. These sketches led in to a long discussion at dinner with one of the Spaniards about Python & how well it translates in to Spanish, our favourite movies & lines – that was one conversation I would never had thought I would have! After a couple of grey days, the sun came out for the rest of the week on Tuesday & many of my one-to-ones were spent walking in to the small village close by, or the opposite direction down the road, to escape the confines of the hotel & ward off cabin fever.

We were lucky to be able to do so – apparently the other group were in a much smaller hotel & had a lot of snow & were stuck indoors for most of the week – it may have driven me mad. Bird watching, gypsy jump, castle… bridge. It turned out that just down the road from the hotel was one of the best places in Europe & the world to see various species of birds – vultures, eagles, storks & many others. During another one-to-one, Ricardo drove me down to the Gypsy Jump (the name – from a local legend – given to the two large rocks standing tall either side of a narrow gap in the Rio Tajo – the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula) to spot the vultures – with the aid of some binoculars & Enriques’ powerful monocular we could easily see many vultures flying around & nesting on the rocks; we were also lucky to spot a couple of the less-frequently seen black storks. Another outing was to the small castle (a keep really) on the top of the rocks above the Gypsy Jump that was built by Arabian goodness knows when – the panorama from here was spectacular & it wasn’t all that cold.

On Friday it time for goodbyes & the bus back to Madrid. After a week of way too much food & too little sleep it was nice to get back to Madrid. But of course there was that common drawback of travelling & meeting so many wonderful & interesting people – every silver lining having a cloud & all that – you go your separate ways with no guarantees of crossing paths again, but what happens there remains to be seen. Six of us English speakers found a much quieter hostel than the one I had been in the week before & after a movie for some of us, I was in bed at the comparatively early hour of one o’clock to have the best sleep I had had for some time. Up to see brilliant sunshine, pack up & on the Metro to have brunch with a distant cousin I had never met – our great-grandmothers were sisters, that makes us third cousins (I think). A very pleasant two hours meeting Christine & her roommate & once again eating well too much (not to mention three cups of tea – Christine is British after all) before heading to the airport…

Canada, family, friends, hiking, national park, snow, travel

A lot more skiing

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The ten days or so after returning from Bow Hut until departing Canada is a bit of a blur of various types of skiing & a few other activities. Having decided my arm had had enough rest (not exactly a medical opinion – more not wanting to miss the chance of any more skiing without testing it), the day after Bow Hut James & I headed up to Sunshine. We skiied a few runs off the top of Strawberry lift before I headed off to my second lesson – hoping to get a bit more control & more consistent parallel turns. I didn’t have the instructor to myself this time, but three wasn’t a bad sized class – & as last time, the lunch was huge & fantastic. During the course of the lesson I became a real skier & was bowled over by an out of control snowboarder. Apart from that it was good day with much improvement. A quiet DVD night with an ever filling lounge as people finished work (James) & got back from collecting new cars in Calgary (Megan & Alex). Megan had the rather exciting news that she was off for four days of heli-skiing courtesy of her new employers.

On Mark’s last day on Canmore, he, Adele & I went to the Nordic Center for a spot of cross-country skiing.

It turns out Mark is quite the accomplished skate skier & he spent a lot of time waiting for Adele & I as we slid along in the XC tracks (tracks groomed in the snow to fit the skinny XC skis in them).

I had not been on XC skis before, so it took a little while to get used to them – I was fine as long as I was in the tracks, but when the tracks ran out it was quite difficult to stop in a hurry as the XC skis don’t exactly have edges. Nonetheless I survived the 110 minute loop we did without falling over – XC skiing turned out to be quite the workout as you use the poles to propel you up the hills & along the flat & try to tie the propulsion with a gliding/skating action on the skis. <

Although enjoyable, it was a little boring being limited by my skill to the tracks; on the bright side, the day lodge serves a good plate of poutine. One last dip in the hot springs in Banff & we back to Canmore for our last dinner with Mark – at the Grizzly Paw. As well as making great beer (which I was not surprised about) they also make a good Ginger Beer – a rarity in North America – the sirloin was very good too. I said my goodbyes to Mark that evening as there was not much chance I was going to get up at half past four in the morning to do so. Sunday was pretty lazy as Adele & I spent the morning cleaning the cabin & the afternoon relaxing before moving back to James & Becca’s house.

Becca got the day off work for her birthday, so unsurprisingly she, Adele & I were up to the hill to celebrate with a day of skiing.

Over the course of the day we were joined by a few of her friends from working on the glacier over the previous summer. Sunshine had even managed to have a bit of fresh snow overnight to aid in the celebrations – not quite the metre Becca was asking for, but that may have been perhaps a little hopeful. Of course, we had masses of food & lunch was a pleasantly drawn out affair – it quickly wore off after a run or two. Twas a great day & I was able to explore some new lifts (new to me anyway) & didn’t fall until the ski out to the car park when I accidentally took a side route that should have had a black diamond posted before it.

The light at the top of Goat’s Eye was really flat & the snow quite icy, but the second half of that mountain was great fun. After James cooked up another storm for the birthday dinner & then it was endless games of Monopoly Deal until Becca finally picked up a “It’s My Birthday” card from the draw pile – Murphy of course saw that these cards were in short supply, & when they did come around they went in to the hands of other players.

While Adele was off climbing Cascade Falls (the formation of ice that we had seen from the TransCanada every time we drove to or past Banff) with Craig, I had a relaxing morning until Becca came home in the middle of a split shift with XC skis. After a large lunch of last night’s left over roast, we were off to the Nordic Center (not before we had broken in to Scoobie [the Soobie – bare bones, but reliable Legacy] with a coat-hanger to retrieve the keys; honestly, who keeps the spare key to their car inside the car?) for another good workout. There were far fewer people on the trails this time, the sun was out & the temperature must have almost been reaching 0ºC – it was very pleasant. Unfortunately, the trails weren’t quite as groomed and further away from the pavilion the snow was getting quite thin & at times we were skiing on a little grass. Still, we managed to hardly stop (except for the odd photo)

& finished well worn out in forty minutes less than I had the previous time. XC skiing started to make a bit more sense.

For Adele’s last full day in Canmore (sniff, sniff) we were of course back to Sunshine for a day on the slopes (well, Becca, Adele & I were – James was off super early to climb some multi-pitch piece of ice). There was more powder around up the hill than there had been two days previous & it continued to snow for most of the day. We had a pretty good day – although Becca seemed to have a target on her back & a big flashing neon sign attached to her helmet that said “Try & Crash in to ME”; to say she had a few close calls would be putting it mildly, I was not completely without blame in one of them but managed to cross behind her just avoiding what would have been a spectacular tangle. We spent a lot of time trying to find little tracks through the untouched powder in between trees – some were better trails than others, no-one managed to wrap themselves around a tree although some tried a little harder than others.

Finding little jumps to hit also provided a good diversion from just skiing runs; of course Adele’s last runs for this trip to Canada were off the top of Strawberry.

Despite Megan having just returned from her four days of heli-skiing, we took her & Alex out dinner – ended up back at the Grizzly Paw after Adele & I rather rudely shot down the idea of sushi in flames. Adele & I were completely boring & both took the same option for mains that we had had on Saturday. I think the night will be remembered for Megan being so tired that she could hardly eat any of her pasta & me getting some of my own back on Adele – after having endured a month of conversations about gear & climbing, it was nice to have others around who would happily quote Blackadder, The Big Bang Theory & so on & Adele didn’t have a clue as to what we were talking about. Not to mention Alex’s rather amusing Communist Party T-Shirt – with the emphasis on ‘Party’.

Adele had the rather gargantuan task of trying to pack all the gear she had bought over the last month in to her Macpac & a ski-bag before James, Becca, Adele & I headed off for yet more gear shopping in Calgary before heading to the airport to drop Adele off. Surprisingly, I took an early lead in the gear-buying stakes with a pair of shoes, a pocket knife & very pleasingly a replacement pen for my Swiss Army card (yes, I still have it if you are reading this Kate Southern – it’s fantastic) – one of the most useful things in the card, at least it was until the ink ran out. Eventually, Adele found the jacket she’d been looking for for weeks & Becca got some elusive soft shell trousers (I quite happily relinquished my lead). A grand (had to get that word in once more) Indian dinner in Calgary & it was off to the airport for (dammit) goodbyes (& a few more TimBits of course).

The XC World Cup was in town over the weekend & Friday morning James & I headed out to the Nordic Center to catch a bit of the action. Now that Adele had left, the sun decided to shine all day & it was a glorious day. The event that day was the Free Technique (10 & 15 km for women & men respectively) – which was the skate style of XC skiing, not in tracks. We had enough time before James had to start work to see the sixty-odd women start & finish their time trials (staggered starts).

Some of them were really quick, I was surprised to see a Kiwi out there – apparently she is living in Canmore, she got quite a cheer from us. There was a great crowd out & the ones around us were really chatty & helpful in explaining things about the sport & the competitors. Catching the shuttle back in to town it was funny to see the main street closed off & covered in one and a half feet of snow with XC tracks set in the sides – all part of the festivities.

Back home for a quick lunch, James was off to work & I had the afternoon to myself – I seem to remember sleeping a bit before making an early dinner, Becca came home, we ate & headed to Norquay for a bit of night skiing. Norquay had just the one lift open with a couple of short floodlit runs coming back down to the daylodge. It was just as well the runs were quite wide as I probably would have plastered myself on to a tree if they were narrow – both the runs were quite fast & after a few quick runs down I started to work on my technique & stopping a bit more.

It definitely novel skiing at night; we had a much easier drive home after the dust was wiped off Scoobie’s headlights & our vision was increased by orders of magnitude. Picking James up from work we were off to watch some mixed-climbing at the local indoor rock wall; from what I could work out the competition was basically indoor rock climbing with ice axes to help. Only one competitor finished the route that we saw.

After good sleep-ins (Megan I think was still recovering from the heli-skiing) we rode the few kilometres to the Nordic Center to catch a bit more of the World Cup action. It was much more exciting the second day as the racing was head to head around a much shorter course – what we couldn’t see live, we could see relayed on the big screen. Having six racers on the course at once, with only four sets of tracks led to a few entanglements. The biggest crashes were on a tight right-hander on the last down hill. It was interesting to see the different techniques that the racers used depending on the gradient they were on. In the gap before qualifying & the finals we left the bikes (it must be noted that this was my first bike ride of the year – in February! Shocking!) at the Nordic Center before heading down to town for no reason other than to lunch – my last bagel & chocolate chai at the Bagel Company. The racing was even better after lunch, with only three & a half minute races we were quickly through the quarters & semis & in to the finals. In both finals the champion completely dominated the field to win by a large margin – a Pole in the women’s & a Swede in the men’s. The biggest cheer of course was for the local Canadian who finished third in the women’s. As an aside, I was very surprised at how many Kazakhs were competing – a lot of them made it in to the latter finals too.

With such a beautiful & warm day we couldn’t waste the rest of it. A short drive from town & we were at the start of the track to the summit of Hi Lung (or Chinaman’s Peak). It wasn’t long before our shoes were shod with YakTraks – a wide rubber mesh surrounded by steel coil that enables one to walk on snow & ice, not quite as hardcore as crampons. We climbed pretty steadily for an hour before breaking through the tree line & the view towards Banff started to open up. After another twenty or thirty minutes of climbing through a mixture of snow, scree & slabs of rock we were at the summit looking out over Canmore, the Bow Valley, Kananaskis Country & up towards the summit of Lawrence Grassi. It was very still at the top & the sun was still out so we managed to keep warm – we had been shedding layers most of the way up as the weather was so good.

Sunday was also spent with Megan – she is the only person in Canmore that I know that has normal Saturday & Sunday weekends (& she’s pretty cool too). After some indecision as to what to do with another stunner day close to Canmore (thinking of the head gasket on the way out in the Outback) we went & paid Becca a visit & hired light touring skis (a little bit wider than XC skis). Parking in the same lot as yesterday’s walk to Hi Lung, but heading in the opposite direction we headed off (mostly) down the Goat Creek Track – this goes 19 km to Banff, but as we didn’t have someone to meet us we decided to see how far we got in a couple of hours & then turn back. It wasn’t long before I discovered that it is really hard to stop easily on these skis as there are no edges – it just so happened that the steepest hill of the day was heading down from the parking lot & I spent a fair chunk of it on the ground sliding. The trail was of course no where near as groomed & nice as those at the Nordic Center & of course the tracks were no set, rather just those that had been worn out by many previous tourers. This mean that they were generally pretty shallow & usually disappeared altogether on the downhills. We kept up quite a reasonable pace & stopped for the occasional photograph as it was a beautiful area. Just before our two hour turnaround we reached the Spray River – the snow on the hand rails over the bridge has started to turn in to pretty cool crystals. Turning around, it was of course mostly uphill back up the valley – a few people we passed thought we were nuts & perhaps we were. But as it were, as I wasn’t falling over so much & we weren’t stopping to take duplicate photos we got back to the car in the same time as it took to get to the river. Believably, half way through the return journey I was beginning to feel the lack of lunch & my gliding technique was suffering – never mind, made it back quite alright & it was another great little adventure. Who would have thought so many different types of skis existed? Not me.

For my last full day in the Rockies, I was also keen to spend it at Sunshine. It turned out to be the clearest day that I had out there. I caught a ride up there with Craig & Kelly – we did a couple of runs off Wawa together before they headed out slack-country to do a little touring. I was keen to get my money’s worth out of my lift pass for the day so I spent the day exploring bits of the hill that I hadn’t been on yet & visiting favourites. As I was by myself with no one to keep up to or avoid, I was much slower than normal & could spend the time working on my turns & stops. There was also plenty of time to take photos of the spectacular mountains.

It was also the quietest day that I had visited Sunshine – I don’t think I waited for a lift all day. It was especially dead when I hit the lifts & slopes again after an early lunch – the few people that had been on the mountain were all still inside eating. It was bliss. The light and snow at the top of Goat’s Eye was much better than it had been last week so I spent quite a bit of time on the blue runs there – a couple of the new ones were a bit steeper than I was used to, but I somehow managed without planting myself in the snow.

After Craig & Kelly got back from their little mission we did a couple of hours of Angel, Tee Pee Town, Strawberry, Jack Rabbit & Wolverine together – some amusing moments going through the trees in various parts.

When we left for the ski out at 4.30, we must pretty much had the run to ourselves – I did manage hit a big hole in Upper Canyon, but some how recovered. For the first time I managed to ride all ten lifts & not fall on a whole day on the hill. I even threw in a couple of easy black diamond runs – it turned out they were easier than some of the blue runs I’d been doing previously, go figure. Final dinner with Megan & Alex – which of course included a couple of Big Bang episodes – unfortunately, I discovered I quite like port, particularly the bottle I bought Alex, just as well I was leaving.

Not much of note on the Tuesday – somehow crammed all my gear in to my pack & small suitcase, a bit of cleaning of my room & bathroom; Becca kindly came home during her split shift & then dropped me to meet the shuttle. A few lasts – last A&W burger (they are pretty good) & last box of TimBits (these are pretty good to take on the plane – good snacks between the inadequate Air Canada meals). A great holiday – thanks especially to James & Becca, Megan & Alex, Adele, Mark, Craig & Kelly and the staff at Gear-Up for such a wonderful five weeks in & around Canmore. I would like to be back some time in the reasonably near future.

Canada, family, food, friends, hiking, national park, snow

Back-country skiing & snow-shoeing to Bow Hut

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Having checked in almost four hours early (not by choice – the best shuttle from Canmore got me here that early) for my return flight to Heathrow, I’ve got a bit of time to sit down & try & remember the blur of activity that was the last two weeks. Wednesday a fortnight ago, we loaded up Mark’s small hire SUV with four sets of skis, a pair of snow shoes (for me – still trying to give my shoulder a bit of a rest), avalanche gear & an awful lot of food & wine for an overnight trip. We were off to Bow Lake (we had passed the lake a couple of weeks before on our Icefield Parkway roadtrip) to skin/walk up to Bow Hut to stay the night – this trip was planned for the week before but the avalanche danger was too high. Finally (after almost three weeks) it had got proper cold – it got down to -24ºC on the way there; not the coldest it had been all winter, but about the temperature I had been preparing myself for in London & which was beaten away by a pretty mild January.

Parking at the lake, we were under way & skinning/walking across the lake at about eleven o’clock.

I’m not sure I was completely used to walking across a lake for half an hour, it’s kind of odd to think about. As the day was so cold & clear the scenery was already spectacular before we’d even begun to climb.

Also, I was finally able to experience the sensation of hair on one’s face freezing up – mostly nasal hair & eyelashes for me, but James’s beard looked pretty cool.

Across the lake we slowly begun to climb up a gentle & wide canyon before we turned up in to the trees, coming out in to the open again for a view of Bow Falls & a good lunch stop.

Following lunch we skinned/walked up a much narrower & steep-sided canyon for a while. The stream running down it was frozen over in places – but not usually when we were trying to traverse above it, it made for some hairy moments. It was also very beautiful.

We left the canyon before it got too steep for us & climbed up to the left (true right really) & through more trees. All this time I was making reasonably good time on the trusty (but boring) snowshoes & had plenty of time to wait & take photos. Being out in the -10 to -15ºC clear day surrounded by magnificent mountains was just fantastic & I was pleased to have the time to take it in as best I could. We were soon out of the trees for good & left traversing across the top of a nice little cliff down to the canyon (it was a little way away) we had just climbed out of. The skin track wasn’t really wide enough for snowshoes (who would wear such ungainly things on such terrain?), so provided me with a little bit of trepidation. The hut was spotted with an hour to go perched up on a ridge & it looked big –

Beneath the said glacier, we turned a hard left & had the biggest climb of the day to reach the hut; by now I was sick of trying to stay on the skin track that snaked its way up the climb – it was much easier just to power straight up the steep stuff.

Only four hours after setting out we were at Bow Hut.

It turned out to be (relatively) salubrious & rather large with the bunkroom separate from the kitchen & dining area. The kitchen was well stocked with propane cooking & lighting & plenty of firewood to keep us toasty warm. Becca & James headed out shortly after up towards the glacier a bit so they could ski some of the runs down in the lovely powder that we had been walking through all day. By the time they got back it was dark – but only just, as the full moon provided us with a stunningly bright night. Mark, Adele & I had set to preparing some of the masses of food the others had carried out – in deference to my shoulder I was not allowed to carry more than a packet of corn chips in my small backpack, on the proviso that they were not broken. Carrying such a precious cargo I made extra sure not to fall & they came through whole & ready to be devoured with all the ground beef (what they call mince over here) & fresh veges. For once, we were the noisy one in the hut (much to the bemusement of an older German couple; the two young guys up from Lake Louise were too busy taking photos & smoking pot they probably didn’t care how much noise we made) – I’m not sure if this was because it was such a great day, the company, the quality & quantity of the food or the fact that Mark & Adele had discovered TetraPak cartons of good wine in the bottleshop. Probably a combination of them all, but weighted towards the end of the list. Just before bed we all popped outside to have a look at the night sky – all wrapped up out there it wasn’t too bad, the outside temperature was pretty constant up there at -12ºC. And what a night it was – these photos were taken at nine-thirty (sunset was about five-thirty at that time) without a flash, James has a very distinct shadow in the second picture.

After we all had varied nights’ sleep, we were up & refuelled with another large meal before heading up above the hut & on to the glacier. Here’s James cutting the wood to fuel the fire to melt the snow to provide the water to boil to make our porridge.

The others skinned up so they could have some nice powder runs back down, I of course just went for the walk & the vista. Here’s Adele & I with our makeshift harnesses, just in case we fell in to a crevasse, on top of the glacier – you can just see my gumby snowshoes (there’s not many photos of them thankfully).

I think all had a great time skiing on the longest & deepest powder runs of their lives (a not completely substantiated claim, but I’m sure someone said that). James particularly left some nice squiggles behind him in the snow.

After two runs down that slope, we were back to the hut to tidy up & have another huge meal – we were determined not to carry any food out (that was quite ambitious as it turned out, but we got there in the end). The steep hill that we climbed up to the hut was pretty sketchy descending on snowshoes & I had my first little fall of the trip.

We got down with only a few little falls (Adele had a good faceplant that I missed, after she hit a submerged rock: & I seemed to spend a bit of time pulling Becca out of the snow as she made good acquaintance with some small trees). The last section through the trees was the only bit I really missed not being on skis, it was so twisty & flowly – really I was probably just missing my bike. I stopped & waited after a little rise to take photos of everyone skiing down; James got past in style,

Becca went past & I got my photo & then she stopped & fell over, Mark waited just as he came in to shot & then came down & crashed right in front of me,

& Adele did a convincing impression of someone scared of a camera & ran right off the trail just before me. Out of the trees it was pretty gentle down to the lake; by the time we reached the lake all Adele’s activities of the previous four days were catching up with her & I ended up towing or pushing her across the lake with her poles – snowshoes really aren’t all that slow, you just look like a muppet.

That’s really the end of that adventure – what a great couple of days & beautiful scenery & great friends & food. Thanks James for organising that & James, Becca, Adele & Mark for carrying my food & other stuff.