Pictures Ahoy!

Lots of pictures this time around. I looked at my camera this afternoon and realized that I had quite the backlog on that thing.

What's the brief skinny? Things are going on as usual out here. We had our May snows, our week straight of May rains (yep, 7 days straight), and now it's nice again. Work is the same and the town is much the same except that it's getting busier by the day.

Banff Refreshing, the redo of main street that began last spring, is back in business. They've got 2 of the 3 main intersections all but closed off, making driving downtown a total hassle and apparently the weather delayed the construction for 3 full weeks, making the new completion date just a few days before I get back from out East. That makes it about 9 months late overall! Well done!

First up on the pictures are some of the snow we got virtually overnight about 10 days back in mid May. Ah the May snows. These are both of our stairs and walk going down to our door.




Naturally, I couldn't not go skiing with all the fresh snow, so I went out. I got there late, much to my chargin, but was extremely pleasantly surprised that even at noon it was still impossible to NOT ski in powder that was a foot deep or more. NOthing like a mid May powder day!! Huzzah!!! Anyway, while driving there I was talking to mom on the phone and took this photo. Those little guys love the salt on the road.


Next up, a brief diversion just to assure the folks at home that we are, in fact, eating well and right. I tutor a neighbor's son in math and when i got home yesterday, Bonnie had this all laid out on the table. Mmm. And look at those keen dishes! We have so many nice things and love pulling them out all the time. Thanks everyone!


Moving on, we went on a spontaneous climbing outing yesterday evening. It's light here until almost 10:00 right now, so there's plenty of time after work for this kind of thing. This was also our first "Real" climb of the season, since the last one we spent more time fording the river than climbing.

So this time around, we went to the backside of Tunnel Mountain (the fake mountain that town sits on). We only got one route in for fear of it getting dark on us (that means 2 climbs for me, since Bonnie forgot how to clean routes) and we had some stuff to remember. Also, the route we chose was a rather lengthy and sustained 5.9, if you know what that means (Hi Erin!). So here's the shots

Bonnie getting lowered


Bonnie at the top


Me setting up the anchor


About 1/3 of the way there...


Bonnie took this shot while I was setting the anchor up, so this is from the bottom of the climb (the top was almost 30m higher). Pretty good!


The walk to this rock was through a nicely forested and (thanks to the 7 days of rain) newly green valley floor. It goes along the Bow River (which is, of course, raging right now) and that was all you could hear for the walk.
It wasn't nearly this dark when I took this photo. I should have turned the flash off and done it again.




And finally, on the way out we stopped to take a look at Bow Falls.


Mission accomplished! All pictures accounted for. With that, I'm signing off. Cheers to you!

The 100th Post!

Yea, that's right - 100 posts. How about that!

Let's start off with a moment of silence: the ski hills are now, officialy, closed. I didn't go up much at all in the last month; the warm weather really makes me disinterested in skiing. So I've finally packed up the ski gear and put it away for the season. But that's ok! Since I've brought out the climbing gear! Woot!

Bonnie and I made it out this past weekend to Cougar Canyon near Canmore. The rock was great, but the conditions could definitely have been better. The water in Cougar Creek was, as you'd expect, quite high, and the canyon itself was quite narrow and we had to ford it a couple times to get to any climbs at all (and the climbs we got too weren't that great). We would have loved to go in further to the wall we had initially planned on climbing, but couldn't stand the notion that we'd have to cross the raging torrent of ice-cold water more times.

In any case, it was great to get out and discover that I do, in fact, remember how to rock climb. Here's the obligatory pictures

Bonnie is holding my pants here. I took them off because I couldn't roll them up high enough to matter. By the time that we took this photo, Bonnie had given up with staying dry and was wearing her sneakers and not rolling up her pants



Finally at our climbing spot (or our substitute climbing spot), Bonnie wanted a picutre taken of how wet she is. She definitely fell in but your heroic author was there to save the day.


And speaking of your author, here he is ready to climb and looking uber.


In other news, I've now grilled a couple times this spring on our little patio thing and that's been great. Nothing better than grilling with a beer in hand. In downside news, the road is under contstruction again, including a giant hole right outside the internet cafe complete with constant machine-sounds and banging. Awesome....Can't believe it's going to stay under construction until our trip home.

Finally, the long weekend was crazy. You get lulled into this false sense of "Banff is a small quiet town" over the winter and then BAM it's full up and you can't walk down the sidewalk anymore. Just crazy. So glad i'm leaving for July

It was a beautiful day last Saturday and Bonnie and her parents had all left the house in Cochrane to do various things, so I milled around a little bit and then decided to take off for Banff. Since I was in no hurry and it was, as I said, gorgeous outside (about 15 degrees and mostly sunny), I decided to take the old Bow Valley Trail back to Banff instead of Highway 1 (trans Canada). It was definitely beautiful and amazed me how much seeing the same mountains from different angles so changes their appreance.

The road winds out of Cochrane and through the "Old West" for a while, before heading through the Indian reservation. There are no shoulders, to speak of, for almost all of the drive, so all of these photos are taken by just blind point-and-click out the window as I drove. I think they mostly turned out rather well. Here we are then, the inaugural pictures from my new camera!

Leaving: Cochrane. Entering: The Wild West


There are some horses at the far side of this little lake


Mt. Yamnuska in the very first range


More of Ol' Yam


Don't know the name of this one, unforutnately.


Sort of make you feel 19th century, doesn't it?


This happens more often than I can describe. Thought I'd try for a picture this time


Another mountain of which I don't know the name


I was trying to shoot something else and ended up with this. For some reason, I like it


These next couple are mountains across Lac Des Arc, which is much nicer from this side when your view isn't marred by the cement plants.


This one is back east, out of the mountains


The 3rd sister never gets any credit. I thought this was a unique, rarely phootgraphed view of a commonly pictured mountain.



SO what else is going on? The usual. It is definitely spring - haven't skiid in a couple of weeks at this point; my thoughts are turning to climbing and hiking as they did last year at about this time. The warm weather is just intoxicating.

This week we're getting the closest thing Banff gets to spring - couple days of cool rain. It's actually been nice; we haven't seen rain in about 6 months, believe it or not. The smell here is simply amazing too.

So a couple more shots. The first is of Cascade Falls. It's a waterfall fed high up by a natural spring that only recently has started running again. I pulled off to try to get a quick shot of it


And finally, the ol' home with my new toys. That huge TV and monitor. The computer is brand new too but you can't tell because, well, it's a picture of a computer tower.



And finally, I'll leave you with this. I put my back against the window in the picture above and took a shot. You've seen it before, but I think it's worth putting out there often. This is what we get every day :p I did about an hour of yard work since taking this photo and it looks great out there now - all raked and swept. Only in Banff do you rake about as many deer pellets as you do leaves of dead grass.

Non-Sequitor'd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!