Frozen Ropes

Ey up all! 't has been a while since the last post regarding avalanches; due to avalanches of a different kind - the report papers piled high on the desk kind of avalanches. I've been swamped with bloody school work, burried beneath mounds of paper (all as a result of my own deathly procrastination throughout the preceeding few months) and thus have just managed to complete my final report - it is Friday night now and the deadline was a good few hours ago (midday to be precise). Ho hum.

Anyway, not wanting to let work get too much in the way of freezing your brass monkeys off kind of fun, last Sunday was dedicated to a day out in Kananaskis searching out the easiest ice climb this side of the Rockies in a vain attempt to reassure myself I could still thwack an ice axe around with some kind of conviction (although I was still debating this by the end of the day).
This is the route we stumbled on - Chantilly Falls in Evan Thomas, and it proved to be all good fun.

The guy I was climbing with was a scouser no less - so I had to keep a close eye on my gear all day and double check that all my wheels were on the car when we left, but it was good fun none the less. There wasn't even much smug satisfaction about the scousers 2 nil win over Chavski and the Gooners jammy 2-1 injury time victory over Man U.

It was great to be out in the quiet cold mountains - and a super feeling that this place is less than an hour from home. Despite the simplistic nature of the route, my concentration was a bit much at times - see the next shot, I look like I'm trying to work out some formula for splitting the atom (or look like I'm worrying about an exceptionally wet fart).

All in all, a bit of a different jolly for the winter weekend fun which was a blast. I had kind of written off any ice climbing this year in a manic obsession with boarding and keeping the biking legs in some kind of shape - but it was great to get out and I'm sure there'll be a few more days of crampon renting before the season is out!
This weekend sees a return the calving the powder (and a gear freak excitment at testing out the new soft shell), although Saturday is a wife day. We're off for a mooch around Bragg Creek for breakfast and a hike tomorrow with beers on the agenda for the pm! (afternoon, not Prime Minister). Brina is still fighting off her sickness, but it seems like we're getting to the bottom of it so hopefully we'll have a healthy house soon (for the first time in a good while).
(Here's the second pitch).

Anyhow, the Canadian roller coaster continues (I shall avoid any comments regarding legality of certification here in case it is ever held against me in a future law suit), hopefully some of you are putting coins away in a tin to help me out with bail money for the inevitable illegal immigrant customs bust that's going to happen in Cochrane soon.

Keep smiling, breathing and checking your undies - just in case.
Good health and laughter to you all,
S&S.

Big white thunder

You know you're having a good day when your fall lines take you through the steeps, trees and beyond the orange string boundary line. The snow was all very safe, despite the sheer slope angles, but it's always playing in the back of your mind "Caution Avalanche Danger". As I was making a few deep turns I heard an ear splitting BOOM!!!!! "Oh Bollocks" was my first utterance, I'd forgotten that the ski patrol were doing an avalanche demonstration at 2pm (and here I was in the avi terrain). I expected to see a cloud of white concrete chasing me down the mountainside as I nervously craned a glance back up slope. Thankfully though the avalanche demo was on the mountainside on the opposite valley, so I had a front row seat.

Now, anybody familiar with the Euro resort avalanche control will be aware that all this gubbins of detonating slopes with rather sophisticated explosives to rid of avalanche danger goes on in the earlier hours of the day, before the masses reach the slopes. But Canada, being a sharing and caring nation, elects to prime the slopes just after lunch, for everyone to enjoy the spectacle of hundreds of tonnes of snow being blasted down the mountainside at two hundred miles an hour.

I was at first a sceptic, however, it was all rather impressive, and I feel that the boys with the explisives did a good job - perhaps too good, seeing as though the snow cloud from the slide carried all the way up the other side of the valley, covering me in my own little whiteout blizzrd and freaking out a hoard of people who were still on the summit on my side of the hill!

Asides from gouging a chunk out of my board all the way to the core, it was yet another pucker day at Sunshine - but what else could it be when the sky is this colour;

I was looking for a cloud for scale in the photo, but alas...

We're still trying to get Brina fit and healthy. There's some mystery bug plaguing her system and hopefully an appointment with the powers that be at the hospital on Thursday will be able to shed some light. An on another health note, the bollock cancer scans are still showing that things are remaining A.OK in 2007 (lets hope it stays that way).

Work remains to be roomfulls of screaming and shouting little children, but so long as it's paying the bills for snowboard repairs then it's OK.

I hope the start of the year is going as you all planned and that you haven't broken your resolutions just yet (I still have to make one).

May you all stay within the boundaries (just)

S&S.

The Powder and the Glory

Just a quick post as I procrastinate from marking the tests which I've been meaning to grade for the past two weeks. Work resumes tomorrow with minimal levels of enthusiasm emitting from the Williams' household.

Just to cap off the holiday season though, yesterday was spent in the backcountry of Kananaskis, slogging up to the top of Black Prince Mt with the snowboards, to get the ride of our lives down through the waist deep powder!

We got just above the treeline in about three hours of snowshoeing! The snowshoe thing was all a bit much, and tipped Brad ove the edge, so much so that he was prepared to fling the tortuous things off the summit. After reminding him that there'd be some hefty damage deposit to pay the University rental dept, we stashed the shoes safely away, vowed to bring up split boards next time and latched onto the snowboards!
So many posting on our blog ramble on about the winter, ski-ing, boarding, mountains etc... but this was really the business. 30 minutes of calving down through the trees, making fresh tracks all the way through powder so deep you needed a snorkel, spraying waves of snow two metres high on every turn! - God bless Canada! We're looking forward to what else 2007 will bring - hopefully more of the same next weekend!
In the meantime I'd better get off and make up some grades for those kids' tests! A certain wife of mine is all up to speed with her work - oh to be prepared! Maybe one day!
Riding High,
Watch out for the branches (they'll scratch your goggles),
S&S.

Happy 2007

Happy New Year to all!

I hope that you all had a suitably fun filled New Year! We weren't too sure what New Years eve would bring this year; having spent recent New Years in Time Square NY watching the ball drop, Queenstown watching fireworks over the silhouetted Southern Alps, remote Scottish islands charging brandy glasses and fat cigars at midnight - surely this year would be another to remember - but alas... Maybe age is creeping up on us, but we were both flat out by 10.30pm. I was stirred at midnight by somebody halfway down the street popping a bottle of champers and welcoming the New Year in for everybody, and that is about it!

Admittedly, we'd been ski-ing / boarding over the tops of these clouds in Kimberley BC all day New Years eve, and coupled with the drive home, we were both cream crackered.
We spent the previous few days to New Year over in BC and hit the slopes of Fernie and Kimberley. They really get the snow over on the other side of the mountains, and it was great to go and see what all the fuss is about with regards to these two resorts. As it turns out, the fuss is very well deserved, the powder was awesome, the terrain great, weather was on our side and the little town of Fernie is very much reminiscent of a French Alpine resort - so we felt rather at home supping on a cold apres ski pint. Kimberley had all of the above, minus the nice town feel. It's in a beautiful setting but I expected to see tumble weed bouncing down the road on the tail of a howling wind - it's pretty dead in the townsite - but that makes for quieter slopes (see above).

The New Year has only brought us one days ski-ing so far (although the balmy Cochrane weather allowed me to get out on the bike yesterday), and the piccie shows Brina trying to break the spead limit coming out of Cascade Valley (with scant success). We've got a couple more days at Sunshine to fit in before work resumes on Monday (these two weeks of the Christmas hols have just flown by).

Here's another ditty from today's venture ski-ing around Cascade (although that's the Fairholme range in the background). It's a nice jolly close enough to Banff to muster an excuse to visit the local coffee emporiums post ski. Part of the road on the drive in is closed for wolves and cougars - we were keeping an eye out for their tracks, but the beasties seem to have been in hiding.

Wishing you all a super 2007,

Trying to stay awake,

S&S.