Categories
canada general snow

ski tour: simpson pass

Touring loop up to Simpson Pass and returning via Sunshine Village

We started at the Sunshine Village carpark, heading out along Healy Creek, passing through several large avalanche run-offs, before reaching the Simpson Pass turn off. From the turn off you’re heading south for about a a kilometre up a drainage, then it flattens out as you reach Simpson Pass.

 

Touring along under the bluffs above Simpson Pass

 

 

Lunch time tongue poking

 

We ate some lunch at Simpson Pass, then headed up around under the bluffs above Simpson Pass until a reaching a weakening in the cliff-line, then up onto the Sunshine Meadows.

 

Sunball (aka Pinwheel) – it was warming up after a colder spell

 

 

Jumping for joy once we reach Sunshine Meadows

 

You hit Sunshine Village at the top of the Wawa Chairlift, then ski down through Sunshine Villlage back to the car. It’s a nice easy day tour with fairly limited exposure to avalanche risk.

Categories
canada climbing

the junkyards

One of the handy things about Canmore – if you want to go on a quick ice climb, but still get other things done that day – the Junkyards. A little ice climbing location just on the edge of town, with one huge sheet of ice and a few more sections of ice further up the hill from that. Just a 5 minute drive and a 5 minute walk, and you’re climbing.

 

Adam climbing at the Junkyards with Ha Ling Peak in the background

 

Just one of the things I’ve been distracted with recently instead of writing new posts.

Categories
general

mountains

 

By day

 

 

By night

 

Categories
general

interesting journalism

From an article in The Age about the Wilson’s Prom bushfire:

“In some places it has been pushed by easterly winds over hills and across coastal flats to the beach, its path presumably only then stopped by sand.”

Well, yes.

Categories
general

ice sculptures

I wandered down into town the other day and stumbled across these ice sculptures. It had been warm though, and they were all a bit melty by the time I got there

 

Big Horn Sheep

 

 

Ferocious cobra?

 

 

This one seemed to be an upside down fox with a rabbit standing on it, and an upside down rabbit balancing on that. It didn’t make much more sense in real life