Tag: canada

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bikes canada general hiking trip reports

on the rise

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming with an exhilarating account of Megan’s ascent of Ha Ling Peak.

 

Bike rests at the pass (note water crackers in drink bottle holder)
 

The cycle from home, through town, and up the hill to the pass between Mt Lawrence Grassi and Mt Rundle went something like this:

 


(click to embiggen)
 

Then the bike was hidden in the trees, and bike shoes were switched for Chaco sandals. And the hike went something like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The summit of Ha Ling is at 2407 metres (7897ft), so an elevation gain of 700 metres for the hike, or 1.1km if you count it all the way from cycling through town. Basically, it was high enough for the intermittent rain to turn up as snow just as I arrived at the summit (while I was quite warm in shorts and a t-shirt down in the valley).

 

 

After some summit photos and snacks, I trotted back down the hill again, singing along to the songs in my newly created adventuring soundtrack…

I’m burning through the skies Yeah!
Two hundred degrees
That’s why they call me Mister Fahrenheit
I’m trav’ling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic man of you

(Queen are fun – although I’m not sure how much sense some of the lyrics make, particularly that one about a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva).

Back down from the hiking, I collect my bike and just after taking this photo, realise my wallet is not in my pack. This was nearly the sad tale of a wallet lost somewhere on the wilds of Ha Ling Peak, but instead is the feel-good story of a lost wallet found by someone and handed in to a passing Park Ranger, who in turn got the wallet back to its owner.

 

 

Thanks for that Tom. After the weather, we’ll be coming back to you with more hard hitting news from the Yukon.

Categories
canada general travel

the day of two mooses

After visiting Dawson City, where I didn’t really take any photos for some reason (possibly related to my camera issues – although the 50mm is nice, it never focuses well and isn’t ideal for landscape type shots, and my lovely wide-angle lens isn’t focusing properly due to an incident with a slippery rock, and when I switched them over I got dust on my sensor again)… but anyway, Dawson City was very quaint and had Ye Olde Time boardwalks, and shops selling a vast variety of dead animals. We continued on to the Dempster Highway, which was in really good condition. Nice and dry and hard, the only problem was the random potholes of deepness. Given some of the photos I’ve seen of the Dempster (like Vik’s from his bike tour up there just recently), we were pretty lucky.

 

 

This was the day of the moose sighting at the appropriately named Two Moose Lake. It is suspected the moose sighting was brought about by the finding of this good luck charm/passport-photo (supposedly it’s someone’s father).

 

 

So we drove up the Dempster Highway, gazing at the beautiful scenery, stopping to skip through the fields of lupins and take photos, until we reached Eagle Plains, where the ubiquitous fireweed (with the purple flowers) surrounded our tents.

 

 

That evening we tried to escape the insects in the Eagle Plains Hotel, which has a lovely chandelier made of antlers, as well as several antlered heads on the wall and a complete caribou. We played shuffleboard and waited for it to get dark. Then we realised shuffleboard was actually a fairly boring game, particularly when noone can remember all the rules, and that it wasn’t actually going to get dark, at least not before the pub closed (there’s something fundamentally wrong about a pub that isn’t dark in the evening). We were kicked out at 11pm closing, in full daylight, and wandered off to try and sleep in our tents. That were full of light.

 

 

The sun set close to midnight, but rose again at 4.45am or so anyway, and there was still plenty of light around at dusk and dawn. I didn’t actually see any darkness the whole time we were there.

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canada general travel

your life or your lupins, my lord

Memorable events from my first day in the Yukon, in order of happening:

    * A German girl playing Abba’s song S.O.S. on the piano in the Bed and Breakfast we’d stayed at, thus inspiring me to start learning how to play the piano (I’m easily excited).
[This was followed by an uneventful period in which we picked up a rental Subaru, looked at a gorge, picked Emma up from the airport, purchased food and camping things, then drove up towards Dawson City – which really isn’t a very exciting drive.]

 

 

    * Testing the bear spray in calm air, leading to a cloud of spray which slowly dissipated in all directions. This lead to much coughing and sneezing and teary eyes and cursing of Megan by everyone concerned.

 

 

    * Finding lupins in Moose Creek Campground (LUPINS!!!.. She’s bloody dying and all you bring us is lupins).

 

 

(So not that much happened – it’s quiet up there!)

Categories
canada general travel

a moose! a moose! (two mooses actually)

After about a year in Canada, I finally saw a moose while up in the Yukon. Two mooses. Conveniently located at Two Moose Lake, along the Dempster Highway.

 

Moose Two
 

Moose One

More tales of the Yukon coming soon, once I’ve had a little more sleep.

Categories
canada general travel

chipmunks and RVs – tales of the road

After living here for nearly a year, we finally visited Lake Louise and drove up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper on the weekend, in a bout of touristing with Mum. It wasn’t fatal, but camping and road trips sure are popular round here in Summer. We fought our way up the highway through streams of traffic, and battled for campground space with RVs. Vicious chipmunks attempted to eat our shoes and car tyres, and vicious panpipe and trumpet players attempted to assault our ears. We were not crushed by the relentless retreat of the Athabasca Glacier, and no tourists fell down a crevasse, despite crossing the barriers and dancing round on the glacier and posing for silly photos. Oh, and we also escaped unscathed from the man-eating Canada Geese at Maligne Lake.

 

Golden-mantled ground squirrel, at the Lake Agnes Teahouse near Lake Louise
 

 

Poppies outside the Lake Louise Chateau
 

 

Athabasca wuz ere in ’82
 

 

Train tracks outside of Jasper
 

Tomorrow we’re jumping on a ship and sailing up to the Yukon, where I’ll wrestle a moose, then tame it and ride it back to Canmore. And also drive up to Dawson City, and the Dempster Highway – well that’s the plan anyway.