Categories
canada general moosling snow

Chester Bloody Lake

Against my better judgement I visited that accursed lake again, and found the weather pleasant, the snow soft, and the crowds a little alarming. It could have been worse! And now I don’t have to go there again for another year at least.

The Moosling skied for a little while from the carpark, then just got distracted trying to dive into the powder at the side of the trail.

And so he was carried for a while…

Before spending some time napping in the Chariot.

After lunch at the lake, Alex dug a hole. Then it filled with people.

A little running around at the lake, and then we started our descent.

The Moosling and I found an awesome method of descending – he could run between my legs while I held him and skied, lifting him up when we started going too fast for him to run.

We descended the the final kilometres of the path like that, and my thighs are still burning today (and I do have video footage, which I’ll have to try and edit and upload, because photos just don’t quite capture how amusing the whole thing looked).

Categories
canada general snow

A couple of days in Invermere

A day skiing at Panorama (well, half a day, after a good sleep-in and a lazy morning), followed by food, and fireworks, and watching a bonspiel (a curling tournament) out on the frozen lake.

Then the next day we went out for a ski on the lake, and weren’t eaten by a Bald Eagle. The fog lifted, and it was a gorgeous day.

There was even some Moosling skiing action. The groomed loop was about 10km, but we just went out and back. Rough going in places, but fun.

Categories
canada general moosling snow

Skogan Pass

Our wonderful plan to get an early start back-fired a little, as we set of skiing in the freezing cold. It didn’t take much convincing to make a stop at Nakiska for a quick hot chocolate before we continued. By the time we re-emerged there was a little more sun around, and it felt a little less like we were about to freeze our toes off.

As the sun rose higher it even turned out to be a nice day. The trail had been groomed yesterday, and the going was easy.

We ate lunch in the sun at the pass, admired the hoar frost, and then flew back down the hill, dodging the walkers and fallen learner-skiers that had swamped the trail.

Categories
canada general moosling

Mountain Toddler – the latest video (finally)

From 1½ to 2¼ years old. Filming locations, in order of appearance, are: Bow Lake, Mount Shark, Ross Lake, Lake O'Hara road, around Canmore, Lake O'Hara Road, Mount Lougheed trail, Canmore, Lake O'Hara, Mt Edith/Mt Cory Pass trail, Canmore Nordic Centre. Plus stills from Mount Lougheed, Black Prince Cirque, Iceline Trail (Yoho NP), Lake O'Hara, Sunshine Meadows, Ross Lake, Pigeon Mountain and the Elbow Loop (Kananaskis)

Categories
bikes canada general snow

What Santa brought for us

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.