Ochre beds by the Paint Pots in Kootenay National Park that were used for their colour by both Aboriginal groups and Europeans, before being retired to National Park status.
Category: general
Daisies down Highway 93, near the border of Banff and Kootenay National Parks
Mum is here at the moment, so we’ve been touristing around through all the National Parks that surround us here in Canmore.
The falls at Marble Canyon
Grassi Lakes – it lurks on the edge of town, with its soft grades and its buckety holds and its tendency to always be ok to climb at even if it’s threatening to rain. The outdoor gym crag of Canmore, with shiny ring bolts on sport climbing routes as easy as 5.5 (and up to 5.12a, but I may have had to check the guidebook for that number), nicely set up stairs and flat areas to stand on, and a lovely view. There’s even the kiddy wall section of Gardener’s Wall, where precocious children can learn to lead climb on bolts 1 metre apart. Realistically this is more commonly used by scared fully-grown lead climbers who have to struggle to avoid Z-clipping at every clip.
Wet from the rain shower, Ha Ling Peak glistens in the setting sun (as seen from the Graceland area of Grassi Peaks)
And there’s a good view.
I’d meant to do this for a while, but just not gotten around to it – the ride home from work. Theoretically I should be riding there as well, but it’s a 42km (26mi) ride including a nice 7km hill climb tacked on the end. So instead I took the easy way out, and ferried my bike into work this morning in one of the work trucks.
The coast down hill I was expecting for the first 7km turned out to include two of the three biggest hill climbs of the whole ride – that’s what you get for making assumptions about a road you’ve never biked before. But from then on it was off the road and onto trails – soggy horse trails at first, then the wide packed hiking/trail-riding trails out towards the Cave and Basin at Banff. Through the back ways of Banff, past the golf course, and onto the single trail on the east side of Mount Rundle. At which point I started wishing I had a dualie instead of the trusty hardtail, as the trail had a consistent mix of pine tree roots and rocks. I rode along dreaming of the smooth trails of the Gravity 12 hour near Myrtleford back in Australia – ahhh, the land of no pine trees, where all single trail is perfectly smooth (at least in my daydreams).
So I rode along doing my best to cushion the bumps, and yelling sporadically to keep the bears away. I have a bruised tailbone now.
Categories
get thesis bound
I got one of my favourite emails ever this morning. It’s subject-line read: ‘Get thesis bound’. And it wasn’t a trick, I really have been instructed to get my thesis hard bound. HURRAH! Provided everything goes according to plan this means I can make the October graduation. And then you may call me Dr Moose.