Categories
canada general moosling snow

Chester Lake

Against my better judgment, we headed over to Chester Lake for some ungroomed skiing – for the first time this winter! The backcountry hasn’t exactly been appealing, so we’ve been sticking to nordic skiing on groomed trails. Sadly everything was a little crusty, and the weather remained pretty overcast, so the old familiar trail wasn’t rendered exciting by awesome weather.

Thanks to the crusty trails, we didn’t get the boy to ski much, but he did manage 600m or so once we were up around the lake. The rest of the time he was hanging out on my back in the Ergo, not getting any lighter.

We even found an excellent hole for our midday luncheon:

It provided no end of amusement, as additional holes were dug, and small people climbed in and out and in and out… and then complained about being hungry because they were so busy climbing in and out of the hole that they’d refused to eat lunch.

An updated version of the “Chester Lake family in a hole” photo was taken too.

Here’s the January 2013 one, for the sake of comparison.

And then nothing remained but to snow plough my thighs into oblivion, down the chopped up, icy trail with an excited wiggly weight on my back.

Categories
canada general moosling snow

A day on the hill

A day at the ski hill with the boy. But first, he had to climb the mountain in the car park.

After some time in daycare, and then some lunch, we headed out together. And I towed him up to the magic carpet.

Mama was only allowed on for one ride, then I was told off if I tried to follow him up the hill.

I spent some time skiing backwards, unable to convince him to snow plough (or pizza, as it’s apparently known in these circles)

I tried to see if he wanted to ride the Strawberry lift, but he wasn’t keen. So we skied down towards Goats Eye, and then – well, there’s only one way to get to Goats Eye, you have to ride the Jackrabbit chair. So he had his first chairlift ride.

The first run was so successful that he demanded: “More chairlift!”

And so we had some more chairlift, and more skiing!

And then a long nap at home.

Categories
bikes canada general snow

Winter Meltdown Triathlon (more of a ‘Do your worst winter, who wants spring anyway’)

Despite all rumours to the contrary, it’s supposed to be Spring by now. No-one has told the weather yet. They’re worried it will start hitting us with -10oC days to go with the snow.

Anyway, somehow I ended up doing a Winter Triathlon. Sensibly, it involved no swimming. Instead there was a ski leg, which I ended up doing. As a result, there are no photos of that part, so instead I bring to you photos of people trying to bike in 15cm of fresh snow (heh heh), and running through 15cm of fresh snow (heh heh heh).


A bike pedals through a field of white

 


Alex coming round past the Red Bull girls for his second bike lap

 


Anya, the runner for team Finn’s Minions, arrives back after a slog through the snow

 


Alex finally finishing after skiing 10km, biking 10km and running 5.6km

 


Team Finn’s Minions – victorious in our own minds, if not in actual fact, thanks to the copious quantities of elite athletes and excessively fit people in Canmore

 

Categories
canada general moosling snow

Redearth Creek

On Tuesday we went for a ski up the Redearth Creek trail – you can keep following it all the way to Egypt Lake, and then around to Sunshine Village if you really want, or to Shadow Lake Lodge, but we just skied along for 5km before turning around. It’s a nice enough little trail, and there was still plenty of coverage – but the last downhill back to the car could be treacherous when icy!

Categories
bikes canada general snow

biking to the nordic centre

The things you do when you don’t have a functioning vehicle.

 

 

(Yes those are nordic skis and poles strapped to the bikes – it worked quite well)