Category: canada

Categories
bikes canada general trip reports

The beginnings of the Moab adventure

In the beginning there were some bikes. And then there was an idea. “We should ride these bikes!” we said. “We should ride them somewhere warm, with awesome trails and spectacular scenery.” And so we drove south to Moab, Utah. And we rode the bikes in and around Moab. But first, we had to get there…

We drove down via Fernie, where the two Australian-Canadian boys got to hang out together, and discuss the issues they’ve had deciding between cricket and hockey as the most appropriate sport to follow.

The road trip continued on through Montana, to the hippy town of Missoula. There we stayed a night in an enormous bohemian bike-loving share house, where jazz concerts regularly occur, and where musical instruments, artwork, old computers and bicycles were likewise strewn about the place. Missoula itself was a wonderful hippy town, and I went for a run up to a letter M on a hillside – the letters on hillsides were quite a common theme throughout the states we travelled through.

After Missoula we travelled on through Butte, to Bozeman, and had a lovely stay in nearby Belgrade.

The following morning it was on to Jackson, Wyoming, skirting the edge of Yellowstone National Park rather than driving through (as the roads had not been ploughed for opening yet). We were snowed on in Wyoming and Idaho when we weren’t being rained on, but the scenery we could see peeking out from the clouds seemed nice enough.

And then it was onwards to Salt Lake City, Utah, where we rendezvoused with Brendan, and spent a night in the basement of the lovely Jeremy and Pam, where the Moosling had a good time playing with their Star Wars Potato-Head figurines. The next day we were to drive to Moab.

Categories
canada general moosling

Easter

The opening

A raddid!

The eating of the chockick raddid

Categories
canada general moosling

Throwing rocks at the river

That’ll teach it for being a river.

(All the rocks are his: “Mine! No, that mine!”)

Categories
bikes canada general moosling snow trip reports

Goat Creek (Spoiler: There were no goats in the creek)

There was movement at the bike shop, for the decision had been made
That we would bike the Goat Creek trail today,
And all the way to old Banff town — and maybe back again,
so we needed one more snow bike for the ride.
All the gear was gathered from the cupboards high and low
And piled in heaps upon the hallway floor,
For we’d learned to love hard riding through the snow and mountain air,
And the toddler in his carriage cried for more.

The bikes were fully loaded, so we set off up to Whiteman’s Gap,
The old pass that takes forever just to reach;
But from the top the views around could not be beat —
On a day with such a blue and cloudless sky.
As we reached the trailhead we switched the Chariot to skis,
The better then to glide over the snow;
For things were getting tougher as we pedalled down the trail,
Could be we’d bitten off more than we could chew.

The snowy path we pedalled — staying out of skiers tracks
So the going was as hard as it could be,
For we rode on deep fresh snow, completely uncompressed
A straight line was hard to keep, and so we tired.
Then we halted for a moment, for a snack and sip of tea,
And for the wee young toddler to run about,
Before long we returned sore rears to seats and then were off,
Churning through the snow with heavy legs.

And down by Banff Springs Hotel, where the tourists flock about
The mountains rise majestic up on high,
Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze
At midnight in the cold and frosty sky,
And where around the ski trails the pine trees sweep and sway
To the breezes, and their icy beauty cannot be denied,
The snow bikes are still looked at with amazement and dismay,
And the people tell the story of their ride.

 
 

(My apologies to Banjo Paterson, I have no idea what possessed me.)
(Distance covered: 30km, Elevation gain: 750m, we didn’t bike back to Canmore as we ran out of time, and weren’t feeling that masochistic anyway)

Categories
canada general hiking snow

Full moon (ish) ascent of Ha Ling Peak

It was actually the day before full moon, but the dubious forecast was looking slightly better for Sunday than the actual full moon, and I had managed to convince a fellow mad-man that it would be a good idea to come with me and go for a night-time hike in the snow. Towards the evening there were threats of winds gusting to 40-60 km/hr, but we laughed in the face of danger and decided to go ahead and hike anyway.

We managed to leave town not too long before 7pm, driving to the trail-head on the grounds of common sense/boringness/time considerations (delete as appropriate). The sky was looking thoroughly overcast, and my fellow mad-man was making comments about the clouds thickening about the Three Sisters and the east end of Lawrence Grassi, yet we decided to push on.

The trail was just packed snow until we hit the tree-line, where we were suddenly slowed by deep drifts and very breakable crust. There was a little waist-deep wallowing, and then a little more waist-deep wallowing, some scuttling across wind crust and hoping it wouldn’t break, and then we were hopping from rock to rock, making our way through the scree.

On sticking our heads over to admire the view from the saddle, we decided that the wind really wasn’t too bad, and we may as well push on to the summit. It was a bit too windy for any camera balancing or long-exposure tripod action though, so there was just a lot of trying-to-stay-quite-still photographs, while not really wanting to remove gloves or turn off my headlamp, as it was still quite cold up there, and getting colder with all that messing about with a camera.

In a strange moment of serendipity, the clouds in front of the moon cleared for about 15 seconds just as we reached the summit, and the full moon peered out at as from a tiny hole in the overcast sky. Not long enough for a photo, but long enough to go “Ooh look, the moon really is out tonight”, what an excellent idea this was.

As we turned around and started to head down, we realised that it was indeed quite windy, and battled downhill into the gusty wind, back through the scree and down into the punchy snow for some good old-fashioned snow slogging. After not quite forever we actually made it into the trees, then scampered/slid our way back down to the car again.

In the end it was a three hour return trip, door-to-door, which is fairly slow, but not bad given the amount of the hike that was spent waist deep in snow. Same time next month?