Quirk Creek / Wildhorse MTB

Again, we were too late leaving Calgary.....so we hit the trail in the middle of the afternoon, and paid for it with a snowstorm up on the final pass. The riding was great, but we did get a bit lost for a while up in the McClean Creek OHV area. The benefit of that was riding some interesting trails usually used only by powered vehicles. Muddy, but fun. If you're doing this one it's important to know that at around 9.7 km, the right turn is grassed over now, and not immediately obvious, especially if there's a herd of cows lying on it......Turn right as soon as you've crossed the second creek, and the road will appear in 100 m or so. Because of that, and the arrival of heavy sleeting rain that soon turned to snow, we didn't make it to Threepoint Canyon, but that's OK. We'll do this ride again for sure. The trail climbs on double track for ~10 km, then the remaining riding is on single track (19 km of it), which sometimes disappears into the grass. The final 2 km descent on a packed dirt trail through the forest is not to be missed. You do have to ford a few branches of the Elbow River though.

Lou saw a grizzly just off the trail while descending, and there was an obvious territorial marker tree nearby with deep scratches on the trunk, so keep an eye out, and make noise. More photos here. By the time we got down the Banded Group were plastered with snow....winter is definitely on her way again, but the forecast for Thursday is 27C, so we're not done with the bikes just yet....

Sheep River Ride

This is a great double-track ride that allows you to get a good look at Gibraltar Mtn. It's only an hour or so from Calgary, and is pretty quiet. Take spare clothes, as you have to ford the river and its tributaries many times during the day.

The ride is about 40 km in length, lthough being an out-and-back you can turn at any point. We stopped shy of the Sheep Pass, because it was getting late in the day, but that would be the logical turnaround point. From there you'd have views of Cougar Mtn, the Banded Peak Group, Mt. Rae, and various others. Our turn-around at about 17 km still required fording 28 creeks/rivers, plus numerous sizeable muddy puddles.

The ride is described in Doug Eastcott's guide to the Canadian Rockies.

More photos here.

Cougar Mountain

A fantastic day out today. Photos here. I chose Cougar Mountain because it's on my Calgary Skyline tick list, close to home (35 minutes' drive) and offered a relatively short day, time-wise. It still requires 25 km of mountain biking, 12 km of hiking and 1,500 m or so of ascent, but these things are relative. I didn't choose it based on any recommendation of a quality outing, but as it turned out, it's a great hill to climb, and the scrambling is fun. We managed to ford both the Big and Little Elbow rivers (neither is on the 'official' route, but we mixed things up a bit later in the trip), which provided welcome coolness on another scorching summer's day. Our alternative descent via scree to the west of the false summit was a nice diversion, although the bushwhacking that followed was less entertaining, and cost us some time. We were the first people in the summit book for 2011; I'd estimate that the mountain may have seen only 200 ascents ever, which is a bit crazy given the great views and proximity to Calgary.

Ha Ling, AKA Muppet Mountain

Some years ago, Ha Ling was reclaimed and renamed from 'Chinaman's Peak', to reflect the name of the first ascentionist, who startled the Canmore populace with his ahead-of-the-times ascent of the mountain in around five hours, from Canmore town site. Was this merited? I don't object, but I'm not convinced by the sentiment; there must be plenty of Englishman's Peaks, Bays, and Points around that cling to their monikers in the frothing seas of political correctness, without challenge. Whatever - with so many pointless civil servants getting their names on our local hills, I suppose any move to reflect the efforts of those that first explored them must be worth supporting.

After a trip up Ha Ling on a sunny summer's day (my mistake - days like this were made for hike-a-bike misadventures), I descended with the impression that it might be time to rename this mountain to reflect the values of modern society. After some consideration, I believe that "Muppet Mountain" would be appropriate. For some reason (convenience, at a guess - it can't be just for the Tim's at the top) this trail has become the place for everyone who you wouldn't want to meet on a trail (apart, perhaps, from Vanessa Feltz and Dale Winton, unless they could pay for a sedan chair ride up the trail, with 'Hello' coverage) to congregate. Profligate litter droppers, shrieking and swearing pale-faced spotty youths with their backsides hanging out of their jeans below Nickelback-clone band T-shirts, people tossing rocks down the face despite climbers topping out nearby ("Haha - look at the signs! No rock throwing! Take a picture of me dropping this one!"), and others adding to the graffiti on the summit slab....and then there were the jaw-droppingly ignorant conversations. It would have been funny, if it was showing on Jeremy Kyle during the daytime, and not in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. We diverted to Miner's Peak, which in one hour hosted three visitors apart from ourselves. Perhaps two hundred people sweated and swore their way to the Ha Ling summit block during that time. Not one of them made the detour to the far better viewpoint on Miner's. It must have been my grumpy old negative waves pushing them away. Oh well, I can dream. It never works on the bus in the morning when the guy that hasn't washed for more than a month is looking for a seat.....

Masses of people on a trail is one thing (and in some ways a good one - it beats being a couch slob), but I'm left wondering what they got out of their day on the hill, apart from sore legs, sunburn, and a photo of their names scratched into the rocks. Yes, I mean you, middle-aged mom and otherwise apparently intelligent daughter. Was my first impression ever so wrong?

On reflection, Muppet Mountain isn't truly reflective of the situation.....so "Fraggle Rock" it is. Watch out for the renaming petition coming your way. I'm sorry, Mr. Ling, because your first ascent achievement was awesome, and I am humbled and awed by the effort you must have expended (twice, to silence the disbelievers), but the mountain you aspired to climb has been claimed by others. And they're making a bloody good job of ruining it for everyone.

Cooking: Back to basics

Our house is a bit of a tip right now. Bags and barrels spilling their contents on every floor, canoe upturned in the yard to avoid the rain, midway through repairs/upgrades, and the dehydrator is going full-time. The Paull River trip is just a week away! The cats are definitely aware of the coming change, and I'm being careful to keep anything suseptible to peeing-on off the floor, as they are little gits when it comes to telling us off for going on holiday....

One thing we decided to change completely for this trip was the way we cook. Normally we'd take a Whisperlite, Dragonfly, or Superfly stove with us, but given that this is a wilderness trip we've opted to reduce the use of petroleum products, and trying cooking only on wood stoves. This has several advantages beyond making a miniscule change to the world's fossil fuel consumption (compared to even just the gas we burn driving 2,500 km round trip to Missinipe, it's really nothing). The main advantages are:

- Not having to carry potentially leaky containers of aviation fuel. Better for everyone!
- Not having to constantly ration the fuel, and worry about running out.
- Not having to pay for the aviation fuel.
- Not having to find space in the boat and use energy portaging several kg of fuel.

We've bought a new stove and made use of an old one. The new stove is a Littlbug, which burns wood up to half an inch in diameter. The old one is a Kelly Kettle that my old friend Frank gave to me many years ago. Back in the UK it had little more than novelty value, since 60 million people sharing a tiny island tend to get through the available wood pretty quickly, and what's left is either on private land or in protected parks. Over here, though it may well be in its element....or whatever you'd call the heating part of the stove.

We ran some tests in the yard this morning. The Littlbug was amazing - it forms a great wind tunnel for the fire, and I got a litre of water boiled in less than six minutes (possibly quite a bit less - I wasn't watching the pan, and then it boiled over). We tested the kettle using a Trangia meths burner (we're taking two litres of meths as emergency fuel). It worked really well, but unfortunately the inside of the kettle has gone a bit lumpy over the years - strange because it hasn't been used, but I contacted the company and got a great reply from Patrick, the director. Hopefully I can resolve the issue, but he'll replace the kettle if not - even though it's seven or maybe even ten years since the purchase.

Strong Paddling

Jeez those new paddles are hard work! They catch so much water; I got up this morning with aching chest and arm muscles. I did the Ghost Dam to Cochrane run with my CADS instructor buddy Mark Nelson, and opted to paddle bow for a change. That meant swapping to the left side for paddling, too; man am I sore now. The river was running 240 cms, which is four times the flow of a month ago. The Gas Plant Rapid, normally a half-metre ledge, was completely submerged and made a fun line of haystacks to bash through. The photo to the left is Carol Vickery-Sulis and her kids, with Mike Kelly, shoting a side channel that was above the water level last time I did this run. Good times!

Today's choice is a workout on the Lower Kan, in a large group. Lou is back in the boat, and it should be a good day. Thaks for Myrl for these photos. He has a load more posted at his secret blog site. Yes that's an oxymoron, well spotted :-)

Flood Time :-(

We managed a couple of trips the weekend before last - a day on the lower Kan and another on the Castle Junction to Banff run, both with BWCC members. The weekend before that, we ran Ghost Dam to Cochrane. I think that's seven trips for me so far this season. All of them have been great fun, although for the second time in eight months, the run into Banff was horribly windy and the end of the trip was deluged with rain. This time, however, I had my group shelter, and the rain quickly gave up when it realised it couldn't win.

I have various photos from the trips, and am gradually resolving the problem of running out storage, courtesy of Paddington, who has lent me his email account. Good boy; I knew he must have a use.

Unfortunately last week was characterised by heavy rain, which has raised the rivers to flood stage. This was pretty amazing to watch, but scuttled our chances of paddling, and stole several MTB trails in Fish Creek forever. The picnic sites don't look so great, either.

Of course, with the two main rivers in Calgary closed by the Fire Dept and the third running at 90 cms instead of its usual 1 cms, it was inevitable that our new paddles would arrive.......only to sit unused in the basement.

I managed to get out on the road bike last night, as the weather cleared, before taking the Fish Creek pictures on an evening walk. It was lovely out there, but the guys I was riding with were pretty fit, and I was hard pushed to keep up. We averaged 25.5 kmph over 37 km, with 500 m of ascent. I need to get riding more often!

A little closer

I feel like my whole life is becoming about this trip already....get up, go to work, think about paddling all day, spend lunch time eyeing the dehydrated food at Sobeys, then head to the shops, looking for solutions to the varius problems we have to resolve. Tonight's job was a trip to Candian Tire to look for a roll-up aluminium table. They were out of stock, but I managed to come home with a food dehydrator, a folding washing up bowl, some wood for the stove (needs cutting up), cutlery, clear garbage bags, a skillet, and multiple plastic bottles for spices. And I thought we had everythig! I agonised over fishing rods. There was one for $20 that might have done the job, but then I noticed that the kids' rods next it (fluorescent orange and green plastic) were $10, and decided that there must be a catch (forgive the pun).

We've spent all evening talking about dehydrated food (and whether a whisky platypus looks a bit desperate). Six weeks to go......

Paull River Trip Post 1

We're getting pretty excited about the forthcoming summer trip to Saskatchewan. "What? Do you like, like....wheat?" is the standard response from anyone I say that to. So I have to explain that while the southern half of the province is perhaps best known for Corner Gas, and Canadian Football fans getting smashed while wearing watermelons on their heads, the northern half is pristine Canadian Shield wilderness, and an entirely different ballgame. So in July we'll be driving quickly north past the population centres, via the odd Dog River lookalike, to Missinipe, where six of us will load a float plane with three canoes and a ton of gear, and fly north for an hour to Paull Lake. From there we'll be on our own for ten days, paddling back to Missinipe via a series of river reaches, rapids, and lakes. The rapids vary from class I riffles to a class VI ledge; we're planning on a minimum of seventeen portages, and a lot of Class II-III water. Or maybe thirty portages and a lot of class II.....we'll see! It's a reasonably well-known trip, but not likely to be busy. There are a few accounts of doing it in shorter time scales than we're aiming for, e.g. this one, but we plan to enjoy it, and be able to take a day or two off if the weather is good, maybe play in some rapids, etc.

I was meaning to record the preparations as we went along, but am only just starting, with six weeks until the trip. Not to worry. So far we have identified the odd risk: bear, cougar, moose, mosquito, blackfly, leeches, whitewater hazards, drowning, too much sun, cold and wet weather, snow, all the usual camping stuff, plane crash, etc....and started to plan for a few of them. Some you just have to try to buy your way out of - e.g., we have bought fancy new bug jackets. Some you can engineer out with careful preparation and good camp habits - bears in particular. Others are going to take a little more effort....like getting our paddling up to scratch. As a cheat, we ordered new paddles from the US almost eight weeks ago, but they have yet to show up, which is rather disappointing. Apparently the US Olympic team paddles all snapped and the guy is working full time on supplying them. I'm not sure why I should care about that though...

So while we waited - and waited - for the paddles, we caught up on a vital skill set this weekend - four of us who are headed north have just spent two days qualifying as Swiftwater Rescuers (Level II) with Rocky Mountain Adventure Medicine. The course was held on the Lower Kananaskis River, an hour from home. This was great for us, as we'd like to paddle sections of the 'Racecourse' on the lower Kan, and now we've swum several of them, so they've become less intimidating. The water is 4C all year, as it sinks to the bottom of Barrier Lake before discharging via a sluice - dry suits make a massive difference, but people were still pretty cold by the end of the weekend - in fact Lou had to sleep for an hour when she got home; she's just got up and headed to the bath to warm up some more. She did fantastically well in the swimming; for someone who hates getting her face wet in the pool, she excelled at swimming the big water - and had fun doing it.

We had a great time - normally throwing yourself into a river above a 1.5 metre drop followed by a big wavetrain would be viewed as foolhardy, but on this course, that's exactly what you have to do in order to pass. Oh - and then swim the rapid, adopting various swimming positions, such as aggressive, defensive, and 'barrel roll'. Plus you throw bags of wet rope at each other, and tie a lot of knots. Even better, you're taught to dive into the fastest parts of the flow making the biggest belly flop possible. It's like being in Scouts all over again, albeit without the chain-smoking leaders and their strange literary tastes.....but you still get a badge for it. I swallowed half the river today; to fight off Guardia and Cryptosporidia, I may have to indulge in a medicinal whisky soon. :-)

So what's next? Well, we have a massive list of equipment to be tested, packed, unpacked, repacked- or discarded - and generally balanced around the boat. I had envisioned taking two barrels and small pack. At the last count we had two 50 L barrels, two 60 L dry sacks, two 40 L dry sacks, two 30 L dry sacks, one 35 L dry rucsac, four 20 L dry bags, a dry document case, a dry day bag, a double-walled ijnflatable camera dry bag, and a bunch of stuff like chairs, axe, etc that won't go inside anything. How did this happen?! I had to re-outfit the boat completely to accommodate the gear. Since it's not a very long boat (16.75 feet) we will be well loaded!

Next weekend we're off to Waterton Lakes National Park to paddle three rivers in three days, and test some gear for the summer trip. Let's hope we come back still liking the whole idea....

Summer's Here - Kind of...

This will be a funny summer. There's so much snow in the hills that the melt will take months. It's unlikely that some of the higher scrambles will come clear of snow at all. Fortunately we have too many pastimes these days to do any of them well, so we'll just be putting that to rights. So far this season I've been on the road bike a few times, just for short (28-42 km) rides, and we've enjoyed some great trails in Fish Creek on the mountain bikes. Plus, of course, it's going to be a great paddling season. Various pictures from May are posted here.

From May 2011 Miscellaneous

How the winter ended

....slowly? It did seem like the cold and snow lasted a while this year, but on the plus side we are now enjoying sunny weather with temps in the twenties, and the local bike trails are dry. The mountains have record snowpack in many locations, so paddling this season will be good for longer, but the hiking season may barely happen before it's time to put on the skis again.

My tally for the winter, for the record: no days of ice climbing, one day slowshoeing, and fifty outings on skis of one sort or another. Perhaps a little unbalanced, but it has paid off, as we've done our first ski tour (just a small overnight trip to Mt Bryant), and started skiing double black diamonds on a regular basis.

It's May now, and I intend to post more frequently, but am considering a switch to a different blog location, as the Google limit of photos is causing me grief. We'll see. So far this spring we have been easing into the alternative activity schedule (i.e. no skiing). We've biked in Fish Creek a couple of times and found some previously unexplored single track (see photo), been out on the road bikes a couple of times, and been on the lower Kan, the Bow (Ghost Dam to Cochrane), and the Elbow (Sandy Beach to Inglewood). Last year our stats were something like 'paddled 15 times, no swims'. My stat so far this year is'paddled three times, with two swims'. I'd like to say that we're trying harder, but I think I'm just getting clumsier with time.

Right, back to work. Occasionally we do that, too....

February round-up

Where does the time go? Well, mainly working and doing stuff outdoors. I always think that winter is the time I'll chill out, do some painting, and read a load of books. Somehow (mainly thanks to CADS) winter seems to be the busiest time now, with no time for posting photos.


The CADS season is almost over, although we still have two trips to Nakiska coming up. Hopefully they'll be as sunny as last year. I've been teaching the same student (Alex) this season, but have a new volunteer partner, Sharla. Here they are at the CADS family night, when we have the whole of Canada Olympic Park to ourselves. It's an amazing sight, looking round the hill and realising that you can see around 350 volunteers and 170 students, plus families and friends, all turning out to ski together. Lou has had a great season too, with her student Lorinda going from never having been on a monoski, to comfortably putting in tight turns on the pitch. She's an inspiration to watch.

Outside of CADS we've not skiied that much this year yet (although my tally sits at 34 outings - mustn't grumble). We have had some great days out on Nordic skis since Christmas, including a great trip down Goat Creek last weekend. With all the furore over at Sunshine Village, I've not been inclined to ski there (I believe Mr. Scurfield can do without the $1500 or so that we've not spent there so far this season between us, after the way he's behaved), and was rewarded with a perfect day at Lake Louise recently, including the sight of Mt Temple standing proud above a cloud inversion. Sadly I fogot my camera....

We've also had great snow in Calgary. Fish Creek is always good for a laugh, but a couple of weeks ago, we were skiing fresh powder right on our doorstep. Slopes that are normally tough on a bike became fun downhills. Here's Jane Terry straight-lining near MacLeod Trail, and staying well away from the 30 m cliff to her left. Looking at the forecast, I suspect there will be a lot more skiing to come before the bikes and boats are back in action!

A Spin Around the Nordic Centre

I had a great day on the nordic skis in Canmore today. Lou was still sore from skiing earlier this week, so while she hit the climbing shop sales down in the town, Jane and I tackled a 14 km 'blue' (intermediate) circuit. The skiing was great fun, and once we got clear of the general zoo that surrounds the day lodge, it was reasonably quiet on the trails.

Overall, the grading of the runs at the Nordic Centre seemed a bit soft compared to West Bragg Creek, where we usually ski. Black runs at Canmore are fairly wide (4 m+) and because they're groomed, you get plenty of friction for braking on the downhills. The black runs appeared similar in difficulty to parts of blue runs at Bragg, and I saw nothing at Canmore that approached the conditions encountered on the Telephone Loop trail, scene of my hand-breaking episode in 2008. That run is considered to be either blue or black (like my hand afterwards). It seems that Nordic ski gradings are even more subjective than climbing grades.

The big blue loop that we skied ended after about 13 km, 1 km from the day lodge. After that, you're on blacks, or Shanks' Pony. It's a little bizarre that they've created an intermediate loop with no consistent finishing section. Oh well - it gave us a good chance to ski some black runs and find that they're not as bad as you'd expect. We had fun, and no nasty falls (unusually for me...)

New Year's Day 2011

Happy New Year!

Hallam and I decided to shake off hangovers with a short ski around Fish Creek Park. The trails are in good condition, although the creek is still open in a couple of places. Not much happened on our ski, except that we got separated at one point and spent a while looking for each other. We did get very close to some deer on the way back to the car - the deer in Fish Creek are extremely habituated. I suspect they make a fat living off marmalade sandwiches during picnic season....

Kicking Horse Christmas

We had an awesome time in Golden over Christmas 2010. The snow conditions aren't yet up to scratch, but Kicking Horse still offered some great, steep skiing. Lou and I rented a chalet at the Cedar House, which was a cosy retreat after a hard day on the slopes, complete with log stove and hot tub. Upon arrival, Darrin issued us with sleds to transport our bags to the chalet - much more fun than carrying in the mountain of booze and food that we'd transported to BC.

We had three days at the Horse, and only scratched the surface. Thanks to Mark and Nick for showing us around the mountain - there's a lot of potential if you're willing to take off your skis and walk a short distance. Without the local knowledge we'd have missed that aspect - the piste signage at Kicking Horse is a bit random. It was great to catch upm with Mark and Vicky again, and meet their new addition to the family, one-week-old Olivia.

Christmas Day began with a bit of a surprise - I managed to fall out of the loft sleeping area and clatter down the ladder, gaining some impressive bruises. Nothing broken, but I'm still sore a week later.

I met a grumpy old Scotsman in the day lodge on the first day; he was bemoaning the lack of powder, but in truth December is a bit early to be expecting waist-deep champagne. He probably got even more dour shortly after we met - he walked off with Lou's hot chocolate instead of the fancy coffee he'd just paid for. The irony was that he'd struggled to get out of the UK because of snowfall. He should count himself lucky - anyone from the UK who'd booked a trip to Lake Louise for Christmas would have been pretty pissed off. We headed to Louise on the way back from Golden. Their conditions were more like June than December, although it didn't stop them proclaiming the snow to be 'generally good' on their website. The runs we tried were littered with bare rock sections, and often horribly icy. I ended up walking down one section, carrying my skis. We returned to the lodge and got a refund. I've never held the management of Lake Louise in very high regard, and this latest episode just added to the long list of similar stories that get swapped around whenever Calgary skiers get onto the topic of best and worst hills. I put a selection of pictures from the trip on my Picasa site, here.