A very belated video of Summer 2013. Lots of bike trips, the Moosling riding Get In, Get Out and Baby Beluga at the Nordic Centre, and some general shenanigans. Sorry about the quality of the footage, for some reason all I had was dodgy phone videos from the summer months – lazy, lazy videographers we are.
Category: general
For once it wasn’t me racing, but Alex. The event was the Lake Louise to Banff Loppet, a cross-country ski race which is usually 70km long, and travels the entire distance from Lake Louise to Banff, but this year was shortened to 50km due to flood damage, finishing 20km before Banff.
Alex skied the entire thing solo, while we noble crew cheered him on at the start, then at the exchange points at the end of each of the four legs. It’s a very small-scale event, due to the limitations placed by Parks Canada. There were around 110 people on the course at any time, with a mix of solo skiers and teams.
But first, after waving off the hordes at the start, we spent some time enjoying the Ice Magic Festival at Lake Louise. The Moosling was quite taken by the ice castle, and kept wanting to go back there. He even taste tested it: “Mmmm, tasty ice Mama!”
A few friends from work were doing the race as a team, I caught them finishing up the first leg before Alex skied in.
The weather was wonderful – the middle of January could really bring any kind of weather, so blue skies and temperatures between -10oC and 2oC were pretty much perfect.
Just to make things more difficult, I set an excitable toddler onto Alex just as he was crossing the finish line, narrowly avoiding making him crash.
The Grande Tour of the Nordic Centre started off as a vague idea I had, that I should really ski all of the trails at the Nordic Centre. And that it should definitely be possible to ski them all in one day. And then I went and mentioned this idea to a couple of fellow lunatics who considered that this may well be a worthy thing to attempt.
When it came down to it though, the day we had chosen had the unfortunate problem of TOO MUCH SNOW. It is something you feel terrible complaining about, but it really makes for awful skate skiing when you’re wading through inches of ungroomed fresh powder. Nontheless, the other two were happy to start with the attempt, and so I felt compelled to join them.
We starting skiing not long after 9am. Conditions were not fast. And if Miles and I were smarter, we would have been on classic skis, at least at first. I’m not sure what Miles’ excuse was, but mine is that classic skiing irritates my hip flexors.
I had a route all planned out, based on five separate loops of the trails. Of course the whole thing was complicated by the fact that a huge chunk of the trail network was closed off for the Winter Olympics qualifying races (amongst other things), and they wouldn’t be re-opening until around 3.30pm. So we were re-routing on the fly. And then re-routing some more when people came up with cunning plans. While simultaneously trying to keep track of the mess of trails, and which ones we had and hadn’t skied.
The idea of actually finishing all the trails seemed fairly unlikely. The skiing was such hard going that I stopped even bothering to check how far we’d gone. It was just too depressing. By the time we returned to the daylodge for lunch, we’d only managed to ski 27km or so in over three hours (for reference, a few days later I easily managed 16km in one hour).
After lunch we lost Alaric to family skiing time, and so the remaining two musketeers set out to conquer the green loop – Salt Lake trail, and what was left of the biathlon trails. The snow was packing down as it warmed up and more people had been skiing it – so the going was getting marginally easier, and we were skiing a little faster.
Somehow instead of returning to the daylodge for more food after finishing that loop, we kept going. And started to get hungry. Rationing was in force and I was feeling shaky, low on water and out of food.
It was on the home stretch of the last of our far loops that Miles let me know that his back had started to cramp, and that he didn’t want to push it. At the same time, we were beginning to realise that it wasn’t a safe bet by any means that we’d make it to the daylodge before it closed at 5pm. And so I put my head down to ski the rest of the loop, and huzzah, made it back to the daylodge at 4.59pm.
After retrieving the duffel bag full of useful things, like food and headlamps, I graciously relieved Miles of most of his brownies, then sadly waved him goodbye and got ready to set off into the darkness of the Olympic loops. After eating I felt tired but ok, and mainly I really didn’t want to let all of the hard work that morning-Megan did go to waste. I pulled out my iPod, started some songs playing (ska!) and got ready to head off.
But then I got a message from Lincoln – he could come ski with me! I waited 20 minutes for him to finish up at work, and we set off together at 5.40pm.
The final 11km required a ridiculous level of concentration and route finding. Another added ‘benefit’ was that the trails around Centennial and Olympic that hadn’t been raced on (but had been closed to the public) were ungroomed slogs. The race trails on the other hand, were nearly all set with 4 classic tracks, or were hardpack icy doom. Or both. I managed to avoid hurting myself or losing my iPod, and we only ended up missing one short connector trail that I’d meant to ski.
Finally, I was done at 7.25pm.
Distance travelled: 74.5km
Elevation gain: 1,767m
Things I learned
- It’s best to have out and backs out of the way early on. Later on, you’re tired, and less committed to map reading, and just want to focus on skiing.
- Always carry lots of food.
- Don’t leave your duffel bag in the daylodge unless you’re 100% certain you’ll easily make it back before closing.
- Carrying a headlamp is always a good idea.
- Having crazy people for company when you’re setting out to do something crazy makes the whole endeavor much more enjoyable.
Here is a before and after map, with the five coloured loops. The one on the left is the track of where I skied. The one on the right is how I’d try and do it next time (although it still has a couple of things that need to be fixed up, it’s a bit easier to read than the original, and has a few better route options). If you click on them, they’ll embiggen to full size, so you could use them for your own attempt – if you do, please let me know :)
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Categories
Emerald Lake ski trails
The original plan was to ski up to Lake O’Hara. But there was TOO MUCH SNOW! And so we kept driving to Emerald Lake, where there was still a lot of snow, and it was snowing, but at least it all seemed a bit more manageable, and we had never been there before, in summer or winter.
At first we headed out into the trees, along the Connector Trail.
It was pretty, but uninspiring skiing, and we turned around when we reached the part of the trail with avalanche danger.
Then after a snack we scooted out onto the lake, with the Moosling on his skis too. That lasted just a couple of hundred metres, then he started falling into the snow and complaining about being stuck, so we threw him into the Chariot, where he screamed and complained the rest of the way around the lake, which rather put a damper on the enjoyment levels for all concerned.
And so after our loop of the lake, as it had finally stopped skiing, we drove back home again. A nice little exploration.
Categories
Plans for 2014
Just because I’ve been dreaming about summer, here’s my am-hoping-to-do-in-2014 list:
Races
May – Salty Dog 6hr MTB Enduro (Salmon Arm, BC – maybe as a mixed pair, otherwise solo)
May – 24 Hours Round the Clock MTB Enduro (Spokane, WA – first solo 24 hour)
June – Rundles Revenge Iron Donkey (Canmore, AB – 100km MTB on Saturday, 50km run on Sunday, what could possibly go wrong?)
July – 24 Hours of Adrenalin (Canmore, AB – probably as part of the work 5-person team)
October – Grizzly Ultra 50km run (Canmore, AB – again! Hopefully with enough running beforehand that I can finish in under 5 hours this year)
Other summer plans
* Long family bikepack into K-Country from home – I’ve already plotted a route for this, and it will be 3 days of biking, and thoroughly epic
* Bike (solo?) to Fernie from home via Tour Divide route (233km offroad) – probably in two days
* Lake Minnewanka family bikepack again – because it was really fun the first time around
* Maybe family bikepacking the Elbow loop in K-Country
* Mt. Assiniboine hike (in 3 or 4 days?) – last completed when I was 34 weeks pregnant, this time we’ll be attempting to get him to walk most of it, which I suspect will be even more challenging.
* Run the Lake O’Hara Alpine Circuit – still haven’t done it, and would love to
* Run Mount Allan through, from Nakiska to Canmore
* Run the Mystic Pass loop – Inkpots to Norquay at least?
* Run Hwy 93 to Sunshine (there are a lot of trails to explore out there – Gibson Pass? Whistling Pass? Honeymoon Pass? Redearth Pass? Egypt Lake?)
* Run Rockwall Traverse (either the full traverse, or the northern section I haven’t been on yet)
* Run Sunshine Village to Mt Assiniboine and out to Mount Shark (especially if we don’t end up getting organised to do the hike with Finn)
* Scramble/hike the Windtower
* Scramble Cascade Mountain (it’s been on my to-do list for 6 years now I think)
* Scramble/run Nihahi Ridge
* Explore the biking in the Moose Mountain/West Bragg area
* Bike Jumpingpound/Cox/Powderface
* Maybe a long weekend biking down in the Rossland area? Or definitely Fernie at least!
* Biking/bikepacking holidays in April and October (in Oregon? Chilcotins, BC? Arizona?)
Beyond this my list gets even longer and crazier, and seems to completely ignore the fact I work full time, and summer only lasts 4 months, and that I also want to spend time coaxing the Moosling out on some short and easy hikes, to see if he can reclaim the hiking enthusiasm he had as a 1.5 year old. And spending time teaching him to ride a bike. But a person can dream.