Author: megan

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canada general hiking moosling

First Ha Ling Peak hike of the year :)

On a gorgeous sunny February afternoon, we decided to hike up Ha Ling. It was packed snow all the way, except when we finally got above the tree line, the snow cleared entirely in the end. Very nice conditions!

When we reached the top, the Moosling’s jacket was stashed in a pack that hadn’t made it to the top yet. So he had run around in my down vest. Very on trend.

There was barely a breeze too, perfect conditions up there.

And then the Moosling tried to descend on his own – this didn’t last long.

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canada general moosling snow trip reports

Not quite to Tower Lake (and definitely not to Rockbound)

This was another lesson in the “It’s quite hard to take a lot of photos when you’re the only one towing a Chariot and looking after an offspring” factor.

Rockbound Lake is just near Castle Junction, tucked in behind Castle Mountain. And I’d skied it before, pre-Moosling. At the time it had seemed like a fairly easy day-trip, a nice little easy jaunt. Towing a Chariot made the whole thing a lot more uphill. The hills! They didn’t stop! My legs! Ow ow!

It was a gorgeous blue bird day though, and lovely and warm (about 5oC in town), pretty much Spring weather. And we only came across two other people there the whole day! On a weekend!

Getting the Chariot up there was pretty easy, with a wide trail that wasn’t too off-camber. But then the trail swung around towards the west, and the skin trail became a narrow little winding path. Then I started to need help getting past trees and tree wells, and getting up some of the steep little rises. Do-able, but if I was to ski there with a Moosling again, I might use the Ergo instead.

We stopped for lunch in the sun. The sun had other ideas, and buggered off behind the peak about a minute after we sat down. And then half the party headed on to Tower Lake, while the other half went “blow this for a joke, snow-covered lakes are boring”, and started working the Chariot back through the trees (with only a few sideways Chariot on the snow incidents on the way) and stopping and chatting in any handy sunny patches they found.

We met up in time to do the fast descent together, flying down the icy track without incident to find the sun again in the carpark. Ow, my legs.

Elevation gain (to Tower Lake): About 650m?
Distance (to Tower Lake): 15.5km return

Categories
canada general moosling

Polaroid success

I got a Polaroid 420 Land Camera for Christmas – and so far it’s been a very gradual process of getting the power supply to the shutter working properly, getting things cleaned, and then working out how long things have to be exposed for at what temperature, and the best method for pulling out the photo from the camera without ending up with chemical stains on the final photo.

But we (the Moosling and I) wandered down to the river the other day, and I took a photo. We got back home, and I let the camera warm up, and eventually remembered to develop it, hours later. Which resulted in this:

Hurrah! Polaroid success. Now to improve my strike-rate…

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canada general

Some random January adventures

Because somehow yet again, another month has passed. They keep doing that now. Whoosh, and all these things I’d meant to do are still un-done – but on the plus side, at least the days are quickly getting longer again.

We went for a wander up Grotto Canyon, just because. And then wished we’d taken our climbing gear (ice, not rock, it wasn’t that warm).

grotto canyon

We skied, and there were mountains, and clear blue skies.

views from sunshine

And then, the weather decided to make up for the super mild winter by dropping down to the minus 25-30oC range, just for a bit. A few days later it was back up to 4oC. VERY CONFUSING. Also leading to all of the nice river paths being covered in acres of ice. I tried to go for a run with the Chariot, without any cleats on my shoes (it had been ok a couple of days before), and had a very interesting backwards slide down an icy hill, Chariot slithering down after me.

cold spell

And we had meme-cake for Alex’s birthday (EAT ALL THE CAKE!)

eat ALL the cake

More happened that wasn’t photographed, it seems my camera has been in hibernation for the month of January. February is looking good so far, and if this weather keeps up, the mountain biking/hiking season will start nice and early.

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general

2011 – the year in photos

January – We were visiting Australia for the first half of the month. The photo here is Finn with his great-grandfather (who didn’t make it through to 2012, but at least they got to meet).

 

February – Skiing, friends visiting, baby swimming lessons… the photo was taken at the Canmore Nordic Centre, where I spent a lot of time towing the Chariot around

 

March – I bought a 29er mountain bike after admiring it in the bike shop for weeks. But then there was nothing but snow to ride on, so I waited impatiently and skied some more. And we did our first overnight ski trip to a hut with Finn (to Elizabeth Parker Hut – photo taken just after leaving the trail-head).

 

April – Still heaps of snow around. We tried to bike, but there ended up being snow, and we tried to hike, but there ended up being snow, so it was more skiing. And a Winter Triathlon at the Nordic Centre that involved biking on snow anyway. I discovered the world of Waldorf dolls, and made my first one.

 

May – Brendan took off on his mountain-biking in the USA trip, and the hiking and biking season began in earnest.

 

June – Climbing, biking and hiking. Repeat.

 

July – Started off with a trip to the Okanagan, camping and visiting wineries. Riding lots of single trail, training for the 24 Hours of Adrenaline (mountain bike race in Canmore – photo taken at the transition zone). There were a lot of mountains hiked as well.

 

August – Iceland! And Finn turned one! And started to walk! (Photo from the highlands in the middle of Iceland)

 

September – A lot more hiking, and a lot of nice warm 25oC days. And I made my first pie.

 

October – A visit from one of Alex’s brothers, and some last ditch attempts to fit in some hiking and biking before the weather turned to the worse for good. And a lot of doll-making. Finn started using walking as his regular mode of transportation.

 

November – First ski of the season, then a last minute plan to spend a few weeks in Australia – starting with the disastrous 65 hours in transit flight epic, followed up with the gastro-bug of doom. The photo was taken at my parent’s farm.

 

December – Back to Canada, where the winter has been suspiciously warm. Snow has been skied on, we had our first Christmas tree, and Finn met Santa for the first time and merely stared at him with suspicion, rather than crying like most of the small kids.