A Surly Moonlander!
A snow bike with tyres so enormously fat that people are always stopping to comment, or just yelling out from the sidewalk about how awesome they are.
It turns out Santa was thinking of Alex more than me – it’s fun, but I haven’t fallen in love with it, it just reminds me of how much I like my real mountain bike. But there is something to be said for ploughing over the top of freshly fallen snow like a little tractor.
Because doing things the easy way is boring, I decided to try heading up to the summit of Ha Ling Peak on foot, all the way from town. That’s the way it was originally done by its namesake, so I’ve been meaning for a long time to do the full ascent. It would, perhaps, have been easier in summer though.
The temperature was hovering around -16oC in the valley, so I was really hoping for an inversion. It was jolly cold all the way up to the pass, and then interesting to get onto the trail. Huge snow drifts barred the way into the trees, but I waded through and hoped the going would get easier. It didn’t look like there’d been any foot traffic since the last snow, so I was slowed down to a slog. On the plus side, it started to get warmer and warmer as I climbed – an inversion, hurrah!
Although there were hoards in the Goat Creek car park, they all had skis and were heading in the other direction, so I had the whole mountain to myself. The only question would be whether I could actually make it past the treeline. There’s usually a section there with deep drifts of snow, before you reach the wind scoured scree slopes up higher.
Although the snow got deep, I could largely stay on the pre-compacted trail. The few times I lost it I immediately plunged into thigh-deep powder, and easily hauled myself out and back onto the proper trail again. That’s the only section I really wished for snow shoes. Beyond, the going was easy, and the summit was beautiful – warm and still, and gorgeous views. Well, comparatively warm.
And the only unfortunate part was having to descend into the cold weather again.
Distance: 20km
Elevation gain: 1324m
Time: ~3hr20min
It’s not a complete vocabulary list, but it was approximately correct as of a month ago. These are all words he uses in context. Although he keeps learning more words every day, on any given day approximately 50 percent of the words he says are ‘train’ or ‘track’.
|
mama papa fire (‘sah) door book light baby bridge tunnel phone keys mess ball train shoes |
dog (dok) duck rabbit monkey mouse cow rain water (wah-dah) |
stairs outside bed shower towel bubbles bath nap |
yes no this (dis) please (pis) no way uh-huh a bit one/want bye done gone coming more all gone yay! oh no! again go away ta one |
Lake Minnewanka and the Cascade Fire Trail share a trail-head; and so we hatched a cunning plan where I would run along the shoreline of the lake, while Alex would take Moosling and Chariot and go towing up the Cascade Fire Trail. The plan was to turn around after an hour or so, and be back at the car at 11.30am (so we could then get back to Canmore to watch the finals of the Cross-Country Skiing World Cup sprints at the Nordic Centre).
The trail was well-packed to the bridge and beyond,to the high point of the climb up and around the spur.
After turning around to head north-east though, the trail was progressively less and less travelled, and by the time things flattened out it was just me and some old animal tracks. Thankfully there wasn’t a lot of snow on the ground, but it was still slow going. And a little eerie, as I kept running about four kilometres past the last sign of people tracks. There wasn’t a sign of another creature, human or animal, the whole time I was out past the bridge though.
Thanks to relatively benign weather so far this winter, the lake remains un-frozen. The trail was in the shade until 11am though, so it still wasn’t the warmest of runs.
The appearance of the sun was cause for celebration though.
(And the plan worked, and we went and watched the World Cup, and clashed cow bells with great enthusiasm, and were amazed at how fast everyone could ski)
While we were hunting wild Christmas trees, we went wandering into the woods and happened upon an abandoned sled half buried in the snow.
So of course we had to test it.
I can thoroughly recommend sled testing, it’s good fun.