Category Archives: snow

Canada, friends, history, snow

Dinosaurs & Badlands

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Over many homemade pizzas & another hilarious instalment of the name-game Friday night, the plan for five of us to drive a few hours east on Saturday to visit Drumheller & the Royal Tyrrell Museum was finalised.  I was a little sceptical of spending six hours of my weekend sitting in a car while I could be skiing, but with some rave reviews I decided it was worth it – plus this would be the furtherest east in Canada I was likely to go in the foreseeable future.  Past Calgary on Saturday morning & into the prairies, things got very flat – as one would expect.  It was just as white as I have gotten used to over the last five months (it’s been a long winter).

First stop was Drumheller itself, which definitely playing up to all the dinosaur hype – which is fair enough, I couldn’t really ascertain what else was going for it.  We got a few pictures on the feet of the “World’s Largest Dinosaur”, but it is so big that you can’t really see us – so here’s another one.

It’s definitely more intimidating than a large kiwifruit (& the assortment of other large fruit around New Zealand).  There were brightly coloured, albeit smaller, dinosaurs all around town – we wandered around a little for the hell of it.

We spent a good couple of hours wandering the museum (+ lunch).  I’ve never been much into dinosaurs, but it was pretty interesting – the first exhibit detailing the biggest finds palaeontological finds around Alberta was the best presented.  There were numerous stories of how people had just stumbled upon what would be come great discoveries – the best was the two high school kids who were out fishing & found a T-Rex.  By the end there was definite overload of big words, different periods in prehistory & too many dinosaurs with horns – like this guy.

Leaving the museum (worth the trip, if that wasn’t apparent) we went for a little exploration around part of the Canadian Badlands.  It was really quite strange being in a landscape so different to the Rockies – the softer sedimentary rock has been worn away to leave it looking like this.

With the decidedly overcast day & the snow cover it was eerie.   In amongst napping in the car (which was a whole lot quieter on the return trip) we arrived in Calgary to stop at Peter’s Drive-In – a Calgary institution I’ve been hearing about for quite some time now.  The burger was good & the milkshake even better.  I had blackberry-butterscotch, probably one of the more conservative of combinations of thirty flavours.  Apparently, thirty flavours gives over 4500 possible combinations (a maximum of three flavours in one shake) – so geeks that we are (at least some of us) had to go back to high school maths & a basic iPhone calculator & work out if that was true.  4525 – but how many of those combinations you would actually like to try, I am unsure.

around home, Canada, friends, snow

Lesson & Main St skiing

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It was unusually busy in the Sunshine parking lot at the early time of 8.15 yesterday morning, considering there wasn’t that much fresh snow & it wasn’t a long weekend.  It turned out that there were a few races on around the hill.  As I had no ski buddy for the day & after Alex encouraged me to last week (he must have noticed that I really don’t ski that well – it was hardly a secret), I spent the day in a lesson.  I managed my trick again of paying for a group lesson & getting a private lesson as there was no-one else in my class – score.  I also lucked out & got the longest serving Sunshine instructor, Daniel – who was very good (not to mention overly enthusiastic & talkative, as one expects with such jobs).

As it was just me, we had a pretty chilled day at my pace & lots of time to talk about my technique.  My goal for the day (made up on the spot – I hate being asked such things) was to be able to ski where I want to go when it gets bumpy or mogul-ly (funnily enough, that’s not a word), instead of having the terrain dictate my turns, & therefore, my path.  Considering I’ve only being skiing for a year, I apparently have good steering & other parts to my technique – this came as a bit of a surprise, so I took that with a pinch of salt & put it down to instructor’s encouragement.  What I really needed to work on, or so I was told, was completing/coming out of turns – so we spent a lot of time getting me to flex my legs (particularly the outside/bottom one).  This involved a lot of touching the cuff of my boots as I completed turns.  By the end of the day, I was getting around & diving into the moguls much more confidently.  The lesson was also good in that I got dragged down a lot of black runs I’ve never been down before & I made it down the only double-black I’ve done at Sunshine in much better shape.  All in all a great & very worthwhile day – sorry to bore you with the details, but it’s mostly so that I don’t completely forget it.  Apparently, I passed the test-slope for entry in to Delerium Dive, but I find that rather worrying on a few different levels.

We lost an hour’s sleep last night with the start of Daylight Savings (now nineteen hours behind NZ).  Spring seems to have decided to turn up in the last few days – hard to believe when it was -37ºC less than a fortnight ago.  The forecast this week is for mostly sun & daytime highs all above freezing & the lowest overnight low only -9ºC – crazy talk.  So, there are many big puddles around town & much slush.

But it’s still beautiful in town

With a bit of luck, there will be some uncovered (we live in hope) singletrack soon – I just have to get around to changing the tyres & the drivetrain on my bike.

No one really had the motivation to do anything too energetic today, so after a sleep in & a lazy morning, a few of us spent the afternoon mozying around town.  The Big Head (the meaning of ‘Canmore’) is all dressed up for this year’s Ski Nationals.

Canmore has been having a bit of a celebration of that fact – on Wednesday night sitting in the pub eating copious amounts of wings we saw truckloads of snow being trucked in & then dumped on Main St.  For four or five days two blocks have been closed off with XC skiers on the groomed snow replacing the cars & pickups.  It’s a little odd to walk down the street & see a groomer & tracksetter working away.

While we were walking, & later sitting enjoying chocolate chai & bagels, around town this afternoon in the balmy weather the final leg of a small X-Terra triathlon was run/skied on Main St.  We had a spot near the start of the XC skiing (the other legs were swimming [don’t worry, in a pool – not the river] & running) & the finish line.  The competitors had to do five laps of the snow to make up their three kilometres.

After that had died down, the snow was open again for public skiing.  Although the skiing wasn’t great it was quite novel to be skiing down Main St so we got sufficiently motivated (only just) to get our skis & join in for a couple of laps.  It was the first, & probably last, time that I’ve ever skied in jeans – but with so many people around it hardly matter.  At least I didn’t fall & get soaked; actually, the highlight of the skiing was seeing so many people fall over in quite ridiculous ways.

Megan & Finn enjoying the warmth – outside our favourite toyshop.

around home, Canada, friends, national park, snow

More pictures of last Sunday’s touring

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Here are some of Alex’s photos from the little trip he & I took from Wawa to Simpson’s Pass to Healy Pass & back to Sunshine base last weekend.  Mainly it’s an opportunity for me to post a few photos of myself – some of them a little embarrassing.

Taking a rest in the warm snow after trying to keep my speed up for the approaching flat & losing it over that little convexity.

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.