Short Version:
We find fat people and a drowned forest. Day-old bagels and chiropractic care in saturated Fernie. Hunting season is open.
Long Version:
Cranbrook was closed.
We did find a laundromat which was open, and there were quite a lot of people there, including a bunch of huntin' folks, who were drying their saturated camo gear after several days of downpour. Apart from that, though, nothing open and no-one about.
Until we found the Wal-Mart, which taught us where all the fat and horrible people of the town had gathered.
We hightailed it out of there, found a remote lake full of the still-standing trunks of dead trees, and set up camp in the torrential rain. Once we were set, and well and truly soaked, the rain stopped. Some critter decided to spend the night using our tarp as a trampoline, which made lots of awesome noise, and it was raining again when we left for Fernie in the morning.
Fernie was drenched. Bike store folks, camping gear salespeople, Canadian Tire employees from the Marlborough Sounds, and the chiropractor who manipulated my neck vertebra back into place were all lamenting the current waterlogged state of the usually-awesome trails, but we managed to beg free copies of maps to the least-affected trails, and then we bought an enormous bag of day-old bagels and disappeared out into the woods to begin my enforced neckrest period in a place with no people and plenty of hiking trails for Nene to run on.
There were also LOTS of hunters. All the ones we spoke to were really cool, but Nene still decided to wear bright colors while out running and to stay away from densely-wooded trails.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Blah
Short Version:
Nothing interesting happens
Long Version:
Nothing much of interest happened after the Bugaboos.
Someone drove so fast on the waterlogged mud roads that we now have a brown van (up to the windows front and sides, and to the roof on the back). Pulse-rate high at the time, but not so much in the retelling.
The town of Radium Hot Springs was really pretty, with masses of petals everywhere we looked, but that's not really very interesting.
There was a tight and twisty canyon we drove through on our way into the Kootenays, just before we reached - and passed by - the Hot Springs from which the town takes its name. Hardly earth-shattering.
Two nights camped at Horseshoe Rapids, where the rockflour-laden Kootenay River bends so far back on itself that the neck of the spit of land is no more than 30m wide hardly calls for comment, and our ride at the Nipika Mountain Resort was kind of blah - the highlight was seeing the natural rock bridge across the Cross River, where the river powers down through a jagged crack in the earth, twenty metres deep and forty long*, with water-scooped hollows alongside rigidly parallel rock layers, and drops through an arch into a huge rock bowl. The water boils and churns magnificently even at this time of year, and the huge bolus of branches and whole trunks at the top end of the canyon - which looked nothing like, but reminded of, a stick jammed into a crocodile's maw to wedge its jaws open - spoke of the huge volumes of water which must blast through the narrow gap during spring thaw. I'll not waste your time describing it, or the series of waterfalls we viewed from both sides of the river, the deep canyon where we rode precariously along the lip, or the three bald eagles we saw twenty metres away from us on the far bank of the river.
Likewise, the disc golf was nothing to write home about, with the tree-filled fairways providing more humor than exquisite play. Come to think of it, that's pretty standard for the two of us.
The cold seemed pretty extreme to us, and we thought the dusting of new snow on the peaks around us was kind of exciting, but the locals we spoke to were all fairly blase about it, and even when it got colder it seemed we were the only ones who deemed the fact worthy of comment.
The riding around Invermere was gearing up to be blah too, especially once we found out from the local bike shop that of the two trails we'd been planning to ride, one was no longer in existence** and the other was really too difficult to access and not worth the effort. Sigh. We drove past the house with the fisheye windows to the trailhead for the one mapped and rideworthy trail. One of us decided to ride. The other decided a nap was in order.
Then things got fun.
My innocent "Excuse me, could you tell me where I go to access the trail from here?" became a "Yes, riding with you guys would be great!" became "No, she decided to leave me to it and have a nap," became "What on earth is he doing? Oh, he's telling Nene she has to come for a ride. She'll be pleased!"
I was in trouble for a while, despite not having been the one who dragged her from her warm stupor, but she was pleased, eventually, because the Johnson Trail (Hi Matt!), ridden with locals who knew which way to go at each junction (Hi Mark and Lori!), was great fun. The bizarre shapes of the sandstone canyon were cool, although each of us rode off the trail more than once while looking at the sights. Luckily neither of us went over the edge, cos it was a long way down! The trail itself was fast and flowing, with some awesome surprise! trees and rock-drops both up- and downwards.
The conversation at the trail breaks was fun too, and we learned that the trail the bike shop had told us was too hard and not worth the effort was not that hard a slog up, and well worth doing. But not this late in the day, and not in the next three days, as the weather was about to close in for a spell. Rats. We went south instead, past classic cars galore, to the next Hot Springs down the road, where we soaked and did some high-dive springboard showing off, and showered. For ages.
The excitement continued when we encountered the Canadian equivalent of the Amerikan ATF*** on our way to Larchwood Lake, which was full of RVs. We drove up a steep hill to a deserted meadow, parked the van, and Janine cooked eggy burritos while I attempted to do awesome wheelies on her bike. I fell off, and hurt my neck. Sucks to be me. And to be Nene, to be fair, cos she has to listen to me whining.
* = Similar to Maligne Canyon in the Jasper National Park only without all the obnoxious oldies. And the ravens.
** = More accurately, it still exists, but the land it crosses is now privately-owned
*** = Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Nothing interesting happens
Long Version:
Nothing much of interest happened after the Bugaboos.
Someone drove so fast on the waterlogged mud roads that we now have a brown van (up to the windows front and sides, and to the roof on the back). Pulse-rate high at the time, but not so much in the retelling.
The town of Radium Hot Springs was really pretty, with masses of petals everywhere we looked, but that's not really very interesting.
There was a tight and twisty canyon we drove through on our way into the Kootenays, just before we reached - and passed by - the Hot Springs from which the town takes its name. Hardly earth-shattering.
Two nights camped at Horseshoe Rapids, where the rockflour-laden Kootenay River bends so far back on itself that the neck of the spit of land is no more than 30m wide hardly calls for comment, and our ride at the Nipika Mountain Resort was kind of blah - the highlight was seeing the natural rock bridge across the Cross River, where the river powers down through a jagged crack in the earth, twenty metres deep and forty long*, with water-scooped hollows alongside rigidly parallel rock layers, and drops through an arch into a huge rock bowl. The water boils and churns magnificently even at this time of year, and the huge bolus of branches and whole trunks at the top end of the canyon - which looked nothing like, but reminded of, a stick jammed into a crocodile's maw to wedge its jaws open - spoke of the huge volumes of water which must blast through the narrow gap during spring thaw. I'll not waste your time describing it, or the series of waterfalls we viewed from both sides of the river, the deep canyon where we rode precariously along the lip, or the three bald eagles we saw twenty metres away from us on the far bank of the river.
Likewise, the disc golf was nothing to write home about, with the tree-filled fairways providing more humor than exquisite play. Come to think of it, that's pretty standard for the two of us.
The cold seemed pretty extreme to us, and we thought the dusting of new snow on the peaks around us was kind of exciting, but the locals we spoke to were all fairly blase about it, and even when it got colder it seemed we were the only ones who deemed the fact worthy of comment.
The riding around Invermere was gearing up to be blah too, especially once we found out from the local bike shop that of the two trails we'd been planning to ride, one was no longer in existence** and the other was really too difficult to access and not worth the effort. Sigh. We drove past the house with the fisheye windows to the trailhead for the one mapped and rideworthy trail. One of us decided to ride. The other decided a nap was in order.
Then things got fun.
My innocent "Excuse me, could you tell me where I go to access the trail from here?" became a "Yes, riding with you guys would be great!" became "No, she decided to leave me to it and have a nap," became "What on earth is he doing? Oh, he's telling Nene she has to come for a ride. She'll be pleased!"
I was in trouble for a while, despite not having been the one who dragged her from her warm stupor, but she was pleased, eventually, because the Johnson Trail (Hi Matt!), ridden with locals who knew which way to go at each junction (Hi Mark and Lori!), was great fun. The bizarre shapes of the sandstone canyon were cool, although each of us rode off the trail more than once while looking at the sights. Luckily neither of us went over the edge, cos it was a long way down! The trail itself was fast and flowing, with some awesome surprise! trees and rock-drops both up- and downwards.
The conversation at the trail breaks was fun too, and we learned that the trail the bike shop had told us was too hard and not worth the effort was not that hard a slog up, and well worth doing. But not this late in the day, and not in the next three days, as the weather was about to close in for a spell. Rats. We went south instead, past classic cars galore, to the next Hot Springs down the road, where we soaked and did some high-dive springboard showing off, and showered. For ages.
The excitement continued when we encountered the Canadian equivalent of the Amerikan ATF*** on our way to Larchwood Lake, which was full of RVs. We drove up a steep hill to a deserted meadow, parked the van, and Janine cooked eggy burritos while I attempted to do awesome wheelies on her bike. I fell off, and hurt my neck. Sucks to be me. And to be Nene, to be fair, cos she has to listen to me whining.
* = Similar to Maligne Canyon in the Jasper National Park only without all the obnoxious oldies. And the ravens.
** = More accurately, it still exists, but the land it crosses is now privately-owned
*** = Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Porcupines Like Melons
Short Version:
We climb a wee hill, and see rivers of ice from a cool hut in the company of cheery cherry orchardists.
Long Version:
The hike to the Conrad Kain Hut started steep, and got steeper. Several sections had chain handrails, and there was one ladder bolted to a sheer rock face which brought back more memories of the Devil's Staircase on Tuhua/Mayor Island. The ride up the road to the trailhead had provided some spectacular views of the peak called the Hound's Tooth bifurcating the Bugaboo Glacier, and the higher we hiked the more we could see, with additional peaks (Snowpatch and Son of a Snowpatch; Pigeon and Eastern and Bugaboo Spires) visible round every bend, and a glacier experience we were glad we got after the overly-commercial Columbia and Athabasca fiascoes on the Icefield Parkway.
Here we were seeing actual rivers of ice, with pressure ridges and crevasses, and not one tour bus driving around on them. There were several in our field of view: the Bugaboo itself, running down the western side of the Hound's Tooth; the Pigeon Spur of the Bugaboo, on the Tooth's eastern side; the Vowell Glacier and the Kain Icefield nearby; and several pocket glaciers; all uncontaminated by human presence, and all really, really cool.
Also very cool was the Hut. Perched on a rock outcrop, with incredible views out over the glaciers and the sub-glacial valley, with Mt Howser and the Sextet Ridge (where we'd perched the day before) on the far side. The Hut sleeps up to 40, is powered by a turbine in the nearby stream, and has a commercial-grade kitchen, fuelled by helicopter-delivered natural gas cylinders. The live-in Hut Manager was an old Austrian ski guide and mountaineer, and the place was decorated with maps and photographs of mountains and mountaineers throughout the ages, including many of and relating to Conrad Kain, who was a pivotal figure in mountaineering in both Canada and New Zealand around the time of the First World War, and is credited with a huge number fo First Ascents, including that of the Bugaboo Spire.
The weather closed in while we were at the Hut, so we forewent the trek up to the Applebee Dome and set off back down the trail, in the company of Dave and Laura, cherry orchardists from Central BC, who met in NZ a few years back, and who trap their tree-climbing, crop-munching porcupines using live-traps baited with melons. Apparently porcupines love melons more than they love cherries, which they love more than rubber.
We'd gobbled most of the easily-accessible raspberries on the way up, as well as seen more pika* and sung away a number of stinky bears. Except that we hadn't at all, as Dave and Laura were able to testify that the odour of bear to which we'd been singing for the past several weeks was actually the scent of a plant. Sigh.
We said our farewells at the trailhead, unwrapped the bikes**, and went home, to the wet Reaper.
* = Apparently they rarely show themselves - which surprised us a bit, as Nene in particular seems to have a talent for spotting the wee beasties
** = There were several large, wooden-railed corrals at the trailhead parking area, all full to the brim with chicken wire. Rocks and pieces of wood were piled all around the place, for use weighting the wire down. The three vehicles there were all wrapped, and having seen the diurnal porc the previous day we were taking no chances.
We climb a wee hill, and see rivers of ice from a cool hut in the company of cheery cherry orchardists.
Long Version:
The hike to the Conrad Kain Hut started steep, and got steeper. Several sections had chain handrails, and there was one ladder bolted to a sheer rock face which brought back more memories of the Devil's Staircase on Tuhua/Mayor Island. The ride up the road to the trailhead had provided some spectacular views of the peak called the Hound's Tooth bifurcating the Bugaboo Glacier, and the higher we hiked the more we could see, with additional peaks (Snowpatch and Son of a Snowpatch; Pigeon and Eastern and Bugaboo Spires) visible round every bend, and a glacier experience we were glad we got after the overly-commercial Columbia and Athabasca fiascoes on the Icefield Parkway.
Here we were seeing actual rivers of ice, with pressure ridges and crevasses, and not one tour bus driving around on them. There were several in our field of view: the Bugaboo itself, running down the western side of the Hound's Tooth; the Pigeon Spur of the Bugaboo, on the Tooth's eastern side; the Vowell Glacier and the Kain Icefield nearby; and several pocket glaciers; all uncontaminated by human presence, and all really, really cool.
Also very cool was the Hut. Perched on a rock outcrop, with incredible views out over the glaciers and the sub-glacial valley, with Mt Howser and the Sextet Ridge (where we'd perched the day before) on the far side. The Hut sleeps up to 40, is powered by a turbine in the nearby stream, and has a commercial-grade kitchen, fuelled by helicopter-delivered natural gas cylinders. The live-in Hut Manager was an old Austrian ski guide and mountaineer, and the place was decorated with maps and photographs of mountains and mountaineers throughout the ages, including many of and relating to Conrad Kain, who was a pivotal figure in mountaineering in both Canada and New Zealand around the time of the First World War, and is credited with a huge number fo First Ascents, including that of the Bugaboo Spire.
The weather closed in while we were at the Hut, so we forewent the trek up to the Applebee Dome and set off back down the trail, in the company of Dave and Laura, cherry orchardists from Central BC, who met in NZ a few years back, and who trap their tree-climbing, crop-munching porcupines using live-traps baited with melons. Apparently porcupines love melons more than they love cherries, which they love more than rubber.
We'd gobbled most of the easily-accessible raspberries on the way up, as well as seen more pika* and sung away a number of stinky bears. Except that we hadn't at all, as Dave and Laura were able to testify that the odour of bear to which we'd been singing for the past several weeks was actually the scent of a plant. Sigh.
We said our farewells at the trailhead, unwrapped the bikes**, and went home, to the wet Reaper.
* = Apparently they rarely show themselves - which surprised us a bit, as Nene in particular seems to have a talent for spotting the wee beasties
** = There were several large, wooden-railed corrals at the trailhead parking area, all full to the brim with chicken wire. Rocks and pieces of wood were piled all around the place, for use weighting the wire down. The three vehicles there were all wrapped, and having seen the diurnal porc the previous day we were taking no chances.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Spiky Menace
Short Version:
Hot sauce, scared of the spikes, lost, a new stowaway, BEARS! (including a grizzly grizzly), a hike, some spikes, safe rubber
Long Version:
We were out of water, and fuel for the stove, so we went to town. We stopped for internetting, and were unable to resist the lure of dark beer and burritos, and the huge variety of hot sauces available to sample. Anal Agony was quite warm, as was the Texas Tail Torcher, but the Smokin Hot Chipotle was the most delicious.
Full to the brim, and pleasantly chillied, we set off south, towards the Bugaboo Septet campground, but changed course when we read the warning about the nocturnal activities of the porcupines in the Bugaboo area: they eat car parts. Visitors to the region are advised to wrap their vehicles in chicken wire overnight, lest they wake to find themselves immobilised for want of tyres, fan-belts, and brake hoses. Naughty porcupines!
We headed towards Cleland Lake instead, except for the bit where we headed away from Cleland Lake because we thought we'd gone the wrong way at the last intersection. We got there in the end, and ate delicious foods and read books, and looked at the pretty view. We went to bed early, where we slept appallingly; kept sleepless first by the sound of the rain smacking onto the roof of the Reaper, and then by the stowaway critter exploring our food storage containers, and us.
We were both tetchy in the morning, so decided to go to the Bugaboo area for a day's hiking up the Cobalt Lake Trail. On the road in we saw our first bear since Dunster, which was kind of nice - we'd been missing the furry wee beasties since our sixteen-day bear-spotting stretch was broken when we headed up the hill into the Rockies. Parked the van roadside at the trailhead, secured it (not much fun with that much mud under the sill), and then read the big sign that said:
NOTICE
Bear Warning
A problem Grizzly bear has been interfering with hikers on the Cobalt Lake Trail
Travel in this area is NOT RECOMMENDED
Oh. OK then.
So we unsecured the van and looped around the lodge towards the Silver Basin Trail instead. Found a parking spot, in an area where folks had camped in the past, and set off up the dirt road. Crossed the river, passed a cool-looking log cabin, and got picked up by a guy in a utility ATV. He was on his way to check on the progress of the pre-season brush-clearing crews whose chainsaws we'd been hearing; they were clearing the ski runs down which the lodge's patrons blast after being dropped at the top of the hill by a helicopter.
The hike from the trailhead to the basin and then up onto the Sextet Ridge between Mt Howser and Frenchman Mountain took a couple of hours, the views at the top were pretty awesome, and we doubled our week's bear-spotting tally on the way up with another shiny-coated healthy-looking beast. We smelled more of them than we saw, though, and whether that's because our tactic of singing and talking loudly whenever we got a whiff was working; or because we were smelling them from afar; or because we were wrongly identifying some plant as a bear, we'll probably never know. Misplaced the trail a few times on the way back down, but not seriously, and were almost to the trailhead when Nene spotted a porcupine, in all it's spiny glory. Crazy-looking critter. We were pleased and excited, until the ramifications of its pre-dusk out-and-aboutness hit us: Porcupine + unprotected Reaper = feast = stuck + expensive.
Argh! Quick! To the Reaper!
Except there was nothing quick about the rest of the hike: turns out the bloke with the ATV had actually saved us more than an hour of dirt road slog when he picked us up, based on how long it took us to get down. We were quite pleased to see the van, sitting unmolested where we'd left it, and we made it our first order of business to scamper down the road to the lodge gates, to the chicken wire repository our chauffeur had offered us the use of if we wanted to stay in the area. He'd told us the bear warning was an old one, and offered us the loan of some bear spray if we wanted to head up there with insurance. He'd also recommended a different hike, up to the alpine hut at the base of the impressive-looking craggy Spires, as worth doing, so we wrapped the van, parked the bikes on the roof, and settled in for the night, all rubbery possessions safe from spiky evil-doers.
Hot sauce, scared of the spikes, lost, a new stowaway, BEARS! (including a grizzly grizzly), a hike, some spikes, safe rubber
Long Version:
We were out of water, and fuel for the stove, so we went to town. We stopped for internetting, and were unable to resist the lure of dark beer and burritos, and the huge variety of hot sauces available to sample. Anal Agony was quite warm, as was the Texas Tail Torcher, but the Smokin Hot Chipotle was the most delicious.
Full to the brim, and pleasantly chillied, we set off south, towards the Bugaboo Septet campground, but changed course when we read the warning about the nocturnal activities of the porcupines in the Bugaboo area: they eat car parts. Visitors to the region are advised to wrap their vehicles in chicken wire overnight, lest they wake to find themselves immobilised for want of tyres, fan-belts, and brake hoses. Naughty porcupines!
We headed towards Cleland Lake instead, except for the bit where we headed away from Cleland Lake because we thought we'd gone the wrong way at the last intersection. We got there in the end, and ate delicious foods and read books, and looked at the pretty view. We went to bed early, where we slept appallingly; kept sleepless first by the sound of the rain smacking onto the roof of the Reaper, and then by the stowaway critter exploring our food storage containers, and us.
We were both tetchy in the morning, so decided to go to the Bugaboo area for a day's hiking up the Cobalt Lake Trail. On the road in we saw our first bear since Dunster, which was kind of nice - we'd been missing the furry wee beasties since our sixteen-day bear-spotting stretch was broken when we headed up the hill into the Rockies. Parked the van roadside at the trailhead, secured it (not much fun with that much mud under the sill), and then read the big sign that said:
NOTICE
Bear Warning
A problem Grizzly bear has been interfering with hikers on the Cobalt Lake Trail
Travel in this area is NOT RECOMMENDED
Oh. OK then.
So we unsecured the van and looped around the lodge towards the Silver Basin Trail instead. Found a parking spot, in an area where folks had camped in the past, and set off up the dirt road. Crossed the river, passed a cool-looking log cabin, and got picked up by a guy in a utility ATV. He was on his way to check on the progress of the pre-season brush-clearing crews whose chainsaws we'd been hearing; they were clearing the ski runs down which the lodge's patrons blast after being dropped at the top of the hill by a helicopter.
The hike from the trailhead to the basin and then up onto the Sextet Ridge between Mt Howser and Frenchman Mountain took a couple of hours, the views at the top were pretty awesome, and we doubled our week's bear-spotting tally on the way up with another shiny-coated healthy-looking beast. We smelled more of them than we saw, though, and whether that's because our tactic of singing and talking loudly whenever we got a whiff was working; or because we were smelling them from afar; or because we were wrongly identifying some plant as a bear, we'll probably never know. Misplaced the trail a few times on the way back down, but not seriously, and were almost to the trailhead when Nene spotted a porcupine, in all it's spiny glory. Crazy-looking critter. We were pleased and excited, until the ramifications of its pre-dusk out-and-aboutness hit us: Porcupine + unprotected Reaper = feast = stuck + expensive.
Argh! Quick! To the Reaper!
Except there was nothing quick about the rest of the hike: turns out the bloke with the ATV had actually saved us more than an hour of dirt road slog when he picked us up, based on how long it took us to get down. We were quite pleased to see the van, sitting unmolested where we'd left it, and we made it our first order of business to scamper down the road to the lodge gates, to the chicken wire repository our chauffeur had offered us the use of if we wanted to stay in the area. He'd told us the bear warning was an old one, and offered us the loan of some bear spray if we wanted to head up there with insurance. He'd also recommended a different hike, up to the alpine hut at the base of the impressive-looking craggy Spires, as worth doing, so we wrapped the van, parked the bikes on the roof, and settled in for the night, all rubbery possessions safe from spiky evil-doers.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sensory Overload
Short Version:
Fall Faire in Golden, Grumpy Bears, brief sun, a ride too short
Long Version:
Second Saturday in September is Fall Faire day in Golden, with all manner of fun activities*, culminating in a big fireworks display. We didn't go.
Instead, we picked up a trail map and campground directions from the Derailed bike shop, stole some internet from a cafe, got a wasp sting, and bailed back out into the woods, to the campground we'd failed to find the previous night, where we set up camp just in time to be accosted by the fee collector doing his rounds. The $12 fee (charged only on Friday and Saturday nights during summer**) took our running total of accommodation costs for the BC leg of the trip up to $39.40, which is still not too bad, but later on each of us admitted mild peevishness about paying, largely because no-one else did: the fee collector guy told us the chap in campsite #5 had been there all summer without paying a cent; the couple in the blue van turned up an hour or so after the fee collector left; and this was the last chargeable night of the season. Bah humbug.
Grumpy Bear Honey Wheat Beer in the sun (SUN!) cured all our grouch, though, and we were in high spirits watching the dragonflies (several of which liked the look of Nene as a resting perch), the industrious cone-collecting squirrels, and the incredibly cheeky chipmunk which looked like someone had shot him through the midriff at some point but was still daring enough to invade the van and to climb my leg. Twice.
We ended up staying two nights there, hiking in the woods, playing disc golf, wading in waist-deep vile-smelling mud to retrieve someone's wayward disc, climbing back up to the road from the bottom of the muddy bank she pushed me down... we had a grande olde time. The first night we stayed the sky was clear for the first time in a long time, and we listened to the echoes of the fireworks bouncing from the surrounding mountains while watching satellites and meteors tracing brightness across the sky.
It was all downhill from there, though: the weather packed in and the unnoticed dishwashing liquid spill meant we each got a big mouthful of soapy filth instead of the glorious rich morning coffee we were expecting. Still, there was riding to be done, so it was on with the gear and off into the drizzle, up what looked on the map like a decent climb on gravel road, followed by singletrack along and down and down and down...
It's not often I'm left wanting more when an uphill section is over, unless the wanting is for more lung capacity, or leg power, or the ability to hypnotise with a glance, or X-ray vision, or various other powers, like invisibility, or the ability to pause other people. So it was kind of weird to find myself sitting at the top of the road section, half an hour after we left the campground, looking at the singletrack leading across and downhill, thinking: That climb wasn't long enough.
I was right, too - it wasn't long enough. The downhill trail was pretty nice, with spectacular views down into and across a canyon, but it was short. The cruisy traverse back across the slope was also nice, with some fun descents, but it didn't take very long, and neither did the extra loop we tacked on, back across the hill-face towards the canyon. We were left feeling a little bit ripped-off: we'd heard so much about the riding at Golden, but when it came down to it there just wasn't enough there***. The highlight of the day's ride was the drop into the bowl where we found ourselves blasted by brilliant, contrasting colours: rich black and chestnut soils; the deep browns, sombre greys and shining silvers of trunk and branch; and on every side the bright yellow, burnt orange, dark red, and million shades of green leaves, leaves, and more leaves. Stunning stuff.
* = Including wife-carrying. I thought about it, cos she's only little, but then thought about how dense she is, and decided it would likely be an inglorious endeavour
** = And on the Sunday night of public holiday weekends
*** = Impression we've garnered is that the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort**** is a chairlift-enabled gravity-assisted rider's paradise, and the chap at the bike shop reckoned there was a new XC trail system under development at the foot of Mount Seven*****, so maybe we were just the wrong kind of riders in town at the wrong time
**** = They have a Grizzly Bear Reserve halfway up the mountain - a fenced-off area where a rescued grizzly spends his days. I wonder what he thinks of the endless procession of gondolas and chairlifts full of skiiers, cyclists, and sightseers passing overhead. Probably that they look delicious.
***** = Named for the distinctive 7-shaped snowpatch which appears every April as the Spring Thaw melts the surrounding snowfield away to nothing
Fall Faire in Golden, Grumpy Bears, brief sun, a ride too short
Long Version:
Second Saturday in September is Fall Faire day in Golden, with all manner of fun activities*, culminating in a big fireworks display. We didn't go.
Instead, we picked up a trail map and campground directions from the Derailed bike shop, stole some internet from a cafe, got a wasp sting, and bailed back out into the woods, to the campground we'd failed to find the previous night, where we set up camp just in time to be accosted by the fee collector doing his rounds. The $12 fee (charged only on Friday and Saturday nights during summer**) took our running total of accommodation costs for the BC leg of the trip up to $39.40, which is still not too bad, but later on each of us admitted mild peevishness about paying, largely because no-one else did: the fee collector guy told us the chap in campsite #5 had been there all summer without paying a cent; the couple in the blue van turned up an hour or so after the fee collector left; and this was the last chargeable night of the season. Bah humbug.
Grumpy Bear Honey Wheat Beer in the sun (SUN!) cured all our grouch, though, and we were in high spirits watching the dragonflies (several of which liked the look of Nene as a resting perch), the industrious cone-collecting squirrels, and the incredibly cheeky chipmunk which looked like someone had shot him through the midriff at some point but was still daring enough to invade the van and to climb my leg. Twice.
We ended up staying two nights there, hiking in the woods, playing disc golf, wading in waist-deep vile-smelling mud to retrieve someone's wayward disc, climbing back up to the road from the bottom of the muddy bank she pushed me down... we had a grande olde time. The first night we stayed the sky was clear for the first time in a long time, and we listened to the echoes of the fireworks bouncing from the surrounding mountains while watching satellites and meteors tracing brightness across the sky.
It was all downhill from there, though: the weather packed in and the unnoticed dishwashing liquid spill meant we each got a big mouthful of soapy filth instead of the glorious rich morning coffee we were expecting. Still, there was riding to be done, so it was on with the gear and off into the drizzle, up what looked on the map like a decent climb on gravel road, followed by singletrack along and down and down and down...
It's not often I'm left wanting more when an uphill section is over, unless the wanting is for more lung capacity, or leg power, or the ability to hypnotise with a glance, or X-ray vision, or various other powers, like invisibility, or the ability to pause other people. So it was kind of weird to find myself sitting at the top of the road section, half an hour after we left the campground, looking at the singletrack leading across and downhill, thinking: That climb wasn't long enough.
I was right, too - it wasn't long enough. The downhill trail was pretty nice, with spectacular views down into and across a canyon, but it was short. The cruisy traverse back across the slope was also nice, with some fun descents, but it didn't take very long, and neither did the extra loop we tacked on, back across the hill-face towards the canyon. We were left feeling a little bit ripped-off: we'd heard so much about the riding at Golden, but when it came down to it there just wasn't enough there***. The highlight of the day's ride was the drop into the bowl where we found ourselves blasted by brilliant, contrasting colours: rich black and chestnut soils; the deep browns, sombre greys and shining silvers of trunk and branch; and on every side the bright yellow, burnt orange, dark red, and million shades of green leaves, leaves, and more leaves. Stunning stuff.
* = Including wife-carrying. I thought about it, cos she's only little, but then thought about how dense she is, and decided it would likely be an inglorious endeavour
** = And on the Sunday night of public holiday weekends
*** = Impression we've garnered is that the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort**** is a chairlift-enabled gravity-assisted rider's paradise, and the chap at the bike shop reckoned there was a new XC trail system under development at the foot of Mount Seven*****, so maybe we were just the wrong kind of riders in town at the wrong time
**** = They have a Grizzly Bear Reserve halfway up the mountain - a fenced-off area where a rescued grizzly spends his days. I wonder what he thinks of the endless procession of gondolas and chairlifts full of skiiers, cyclists, and sightseers passing overhead. Probably that they look delicious.
***** = Named for the distinctive 7-shaped snowpatch which appears every April as the Spring Thaw melts the surrounding snowfield away to nothing
Breakdown Town
Short Version:
We get stuck in Dead Man's Flats, a man with ginger mo comes to the rescue, we play at an old Olympic site, and we say farewell to the Rockies
Long Version:
The squirrel had stayed unbowed and defiant right up to bedtime, dodging thrown cones and taunting us with tree-trunk acrobatics. And he'd started again first thing in the morning. His palpable anger was entertaining initially, but became tiresome and eventually irritating. We began to question the wisdom of having children, but decided that making life choices next to HT powerlines at a place called Dead Man's Flats might not be the smartest thing we've ever done, so we packed up camp and plotted our route to the Nordic Centre, a few km up the Trans-Canada Highway at Canmore.
On our way down the Icefield Parkway we'd passed 18000km since driving the Reaper off Sid the Used-Car Salesman's lot back in May, and 3000km since leaving Vancouver a few weeks ago. We'd done and had done a bunch of work on it initially, and since then it's refused to need much physical loving: one oil and oil-filter change after the great southern loop; fuse replacements for the horn/radio/12v-power every couple of months; oil and transmission fluid levels checked every so often and found to be A-OK. So when turning the key in the ignition produced dash lights but nothing else, we were taken aback. The Reaper doesn't not go, it goes!
Not today, it doesn't.
No clicks, no turning-over, nothing. Radio cut out as usual, but that was the only effect. Hood up; nothing obviously disconnected; bafflement.
Up the road to Thunderstone Quarry, then, to a borrowed phone and a call to the Alberta AA*, which involved long periods on hold while the guy worked the non-Albertan membership number through his systems. He eventually called the AA in NZ, and came back on the line to me to say they still hadn't figured it out, but he'd send a tow-truck our way anyway. I was surprised at that, as in NZ they send a mechanic - often semi-retired when outside major metropolitan areas - who has a crack at fixing the issue. A tow-truck is only called as a last resort. Here it's the other way around. So I said my goodbyes to the Thunderstoners** and biked back to the derelict Reaper, where Lovely Wife had made a delicious coffee.
We were still drinking when a flipping enormous flatbed truck arrived and parked at the top of the powerline access road. The driver wasn't a tall man, but he had a great (and great big) ginger moustache and a bald head under his baseball cap. We liked him immediately, right up to the point where he said there was no way he'd be able to get his truck down to where the Reaper was. He came for a walk down the track anyway, and despite avowals that he was just a driver, not a mechanic, asked about symptoms and what we'd tried so far. And then he started the van. Loose neutral safety switch. Really common on older Chevy, Dodge and GMC vehicles, apparently. Holding the gear-shift in Neutral in just the right place, and holding your tongue just right, essentially tricks the transmission into allowing ignition. Sweet.
Reaper tricked, off to the Nordic Centre, which had:
- a huge Canadian flag
- lots and lots of XC ski and bike trails
- a bike skills park with excellent dirt jumps
- a disc golf course
- lakeside picnic tables
- a biathlon training race in progress, with competitors on wheeled training skis
- sun-kissed high mountain peaks
We used as many of the facilities as we could fit into the afternoon, then made our way into town to the Grizzly's Paw Brewing Company, where we bought some Grumpy Bear Honey Wheat Beer before setting off to Banff for a looksee*** and then onwards, down out of the Rockies. Past a scary-looking runaway-truck run-off lane; passed on the right on a narrow viaduct by a scary big black pickup truck; past the town of Field, which looked welcoming in the dusk with its lights glowing; into and through Golden, to the forest, where our hitherto reliable free camping guidebook sent us completely off track. We ended up parked in the dark 700m down a dirt track off a Fire Service Road, and slept most of the night before being woken by pounding rain on the roof of the Reaper at 0430, which had us up and about and moving the van to a less-muddy spot before we ended up trapped somewhere we shouldn't be.
* = The NZ Automobile Association has a reciprocal agreement with both the Canadian and Amerikan AAs, which is kind of handy
** = One of them was quite interested in my speculation that the 4x4 from the previous evening might have been checking a pot plantation: "If it's on our land that means it's ours."
*** = Tourist town. Like Queenstown would be if it had more money. Gas was 8c/litre more expensive than it had been in Canmore, 22km away
We get stuck in Dead Man's Flats, a man with ginger mo comes to the rescue, we play at an old Olympic site, and we say farewell to the Rockies
Long Version:
The squirrel had stayed unbowed and defiant right up to bedtime, dodging thrown cones and taunting us with tree-trunk acrobatics. And he'd started again first thing in the morning. His palpable anger was entertaining initially, but became tiresome and eventually irritating. We began to question the wisdom of having children, but decided that making life choices next to HT powerlines at a place called Dead Man's Flats might not be the smartest thing we've ever done, so we packed up camp and plotted our route to the Nordic Centre, a few km up the Trans-Canada Highway at Canmore.
On our way down the Icefield Parkway we'd passed 18000km since driving the Reaper off Sid the Used-Car Salesman's lot back in May, and 3000km since leaving Vancouver a few weeks ago. We'd done and had done a bunch of work on it initially, and since then it's refused to need much physical loving: one oil and oil-filter change after the great southern loop; fuse replacements for the horn/radio/12v-power every couple of months; oil and transmission fluid levels checked every so often and found to be A-OK. So when turning the key in the ignition produced dash lights but nothing else, we were taken aback. The Reaper doesn't not go, it goes!
Not today, it doesn't.
No clicks, no turning-over, nothing. Radio cut out as usual, but that was the only effect. Hood up; nothing obviously disconnected; bafflement.
Up the road to Thunderstone Quarry, then, to a borrowed phone and a call to the Alberta AA*, which involved long periods on hold while the guy worked the non-Albertan membership number through his systems. He eventually called the AA in NZ, and came back on the line to me to say they still hadn't figured it out, but he'd send a tow-truck our way anyway. I was surprised at that, as in NZ they send a mechanic - often semi-retired when outside major metropolitan areas - who has a crack at fixing the issue. A tow-truck is only called as a last resort. Here it's the other way around. So I said my goodbyes to the Thunderstoners** and biked back to the derelict Reaper, where Lovely Wife had made a delicious coffee.
We were still drinking when a flipping enormous flatbed truck arrived and parked at the top of the powerline access road. The driver wasn't a tall man, but he had a great (and great big) ginger moustache and a bald head under his baseball cap. We liked him immediately, right up to the point where he said there was no way he'd be able to get his truck down to where the Reaper was. He came for a walk down the track anyway, and despite avowals that he was just a driver, not a mechanic, asked about symptoms and what we'd tried so far. And then he started the van. Loose neutral safety switch. Really common on older Chevy, Dodge and GMC vehicles, apparently. Holding the gear-shift in Neutral in just the right place, and holding your tongue just right, essentially tricks the transmission into allowing ignition. Sweet.
Reaper tricked, off to the Nordic Centre, which had:
- a huge Canadian flag
- lots and lots of XC ski and bike trails
- a bike skills park with excellent dirt jumps
- a disc golf course
- lakeside picnic tables
- a biathlon training race in progress, with competitors on wheeled training skis
- sun-kissed high mountain peaks
We used as many of the facilities as we could fit into the afternoon, then made our way into town to the Grizzly's Paw Brewing Company, where we bought some Grumpy Bear Honey Wheat Beer before setting off to Banff for a looksee*** and then onwards, down out of the Rockies. Past a scary-looking runaway-truck run-off lane; passed on the right on a narrow viaduct by a scary big black pickup truck; past the town of Field, which looked welcoming in the dusk with its lights glowing; into and through Golden, to the forest, where our hitherto reliable free camping guidebook sent us completely off track. We ended up parked in the dark 700m down a dirt track off a Fire Service Road, and slept most of the night before being woken by pounding rain on the roof of the Reaper at 0430, which had us up and about and moving the van to a less-muddy spot before we ended up trapped somewhere we shouldn't be.
* = The NZ Automobile Association has a reciprocal agreement with both the Canadian and Amerikan AAs, which is kind of handy
** = One of them was quite interested in my speculation that the 4x4 from the previous evening might have been checking a pot plantation: "If it's on our land that means it's ours."
*** = Tourist town. Like Queenstown would be if it had more money. Gas was 8c/litre more expensive than it had been in Canmore, 22km away
Icefield
Short Version:
Mountains. Mountains. Mountains. We camp for free in a place where camping is expensive, and are told off by a squirrel.
Long Version:
We'd been told that the Icefield Parkway between Jasper and Lake Louise is among the most beautiful drives in the world, so we were pleased that the clouds, although still present, had lifted somewhat from where they'd been perched the previous few days (ie everywhere) just in time for our runsouthwards on this high highway. The Parkway has its own Park Gate, and its own officious gatekeeper lady. She was an arse.
The scenery wasn't, though, it was spectacular.
So many awesome mountains, of all shapes and sizes, from tall skinny spires (Mt Hilda) to huge agglomerated monstrosities (Cirrus Mountain*) and sharp, tilted ridges (Parker Ridge). Striations were clearly visible where snow still lay, and gave an inkling of the stresses the land here must have been under to twist and tilt such huge slabs of rock in so many different directions. There were several waterfalls, but more channels where water must flow in torrents during the spring melt, and the Weeping Wall, while still impressive, should probably be seen then for maximum effect. Every so often the clouds to one side or the other would part, revealing yet more mountains behind the front ranks, many just as grand and impressive as those which so dominated the valley through which the Parkway runs. Columns of rain marched about the place, and the general atmosphere was of mystery and hiddenness; we felt like very small intruders in a land of giants.
We bypassed the in-Park tourist towns of Lake Louise and Banff, and carried on through the extensive roadworks to Canmore, which was a coal-mining town up until the 1980s, after which it was a dying town, with the mine closed and no other industry operating. Then the Winter Olympics came to Calgary, and Canmore, 100 or so km up the hill, nestled in a spectacular notch between some incredible mountains, and within twenty minutes' drive of the National Park region, was picked to host the Nordic events: cross-country skiing and biathlon variants. Today, the town is thriving as a tourst destination; cheaper than its in-Park neighbor Banff and with more essential (ie non-luxury) services available. Some locals we spoke to bemoaned the tourism influence, others loved the town's revitalisation (and probably its continued existence), and the benefits that come their way from the tourists' disposable wealth. One of the bike shop guys was in the latter group, and offered to take us for a ride in the Nordic Centre's extensive network of XC bike trails, showing us the best ones and how to link them for maximum effect. We were a bit pooped, though, and told him if we weren't there that he shouldn't wait for us.
We weren't there. We were driving around, east of town, trying through sheer force of will to bring into being a campground anywhere near Canmore that didn't have a stupidly high nightly fee and a dearth of services to show for it. Our willpower must have been lowered by the cold of two days before, or maybe the Hoary Marmots stole it from us, because it looked very much like we were going to have to shell out $23 for the dubious privilege of calling a relatively-flat patch of ground home for the night, with bonus access to a vault toilet** (shared with vast numbers of other campers, some of whom were quite fat) and lots of noise from the very-nearby Trans-Canada Highway.
We almost did it too, but it just seemed so wrong that we had a crack at finding an illicit spot, and although the one we eventually settled on (and in) was still rather close to the highway, it had a banked-up off-ramp blocking much of the noise, and no other campers within coo-ee. Sweet.
HT powerlines overhead, but no worries, so long as they don't fall on us, and if they do we probably won't know much about it.
No toilet: no worries, we have a shovel.
4x4 track running right past our little patch of more-or-less flat ground, across a river, and up a near-vertical bank: no worries, no-one's going to be heading in there now, it's getting dark.
Angry squirrel, chittering and grumbling at us whenever we moved, spoke, or otherwise impinged on his existence: no worries, he's little, and if worst comes to worst we can throw fir-cones at him
The powerlines stayed up, and no information about toilets is probably the right information. The 4x4 that came past late at night, drove across the river and up the near-vertical bank was mildly (very) perturbing, but it came back out an hour or so later. Traffic noise wasn't too bad, and all in all we were well-pleased we'd opted for the dirtbag spot, despite the awesomeness of the 1940s pickup truck with matching trailer that would have been our closest camp-neighbor had we stayed at the Bow River campground.
* = We developed a regime where the passenger's task was to identify and point out the peaks we were passing, which made them somehow more substantial; once the thing was named, it seemed to stick in the mind more as an individual entity, rather than just another mountain. This system remained in place right up until the point where it was discovered that someone had been falsifying mental records through wilful misnaming of various peaks. Mt Angry ("Wow, I can see why they called it that - it looks really unimpressed!") was actually Mt Amery, and Circus Mountain ("I guess they called it that because it's such a crazy-looking rock - there's all sorts of different stuff going on, all at the same time") was really Cirrus Mountain. Grrrrrrrr.
** = Longdrop
Mountains. Mountains. Mountains. We camp for free in a place where camping is expensive, and are told off by a squirrel.
Long Version:
We'd been told that the Icefield Parkway between Jasper and Lake Louise is among the most beautiful drives in the world, so we were pleased that the clouds, although still present, had lifted somewhat from where they'd been perched the previous few days (ie everywhere) just in time for our runsouthwards on this high highway. The Parkway has its own Park Gate, and its own officious gatekeeper lady. She was an arse.
The scenery wasn't, though, it was spectacular.
So many awesome mountains, of all shapes and sizes, from tall skinny spires (Mt Hilda) to huge agglomerated monstrosities (Cirrus Mountain*) and sharp, tilted ridges (Parker Ridge). Striations were clearly visible where snow still lay, and gave an inkling of the stresses the land here must have been under to twist and tilt such huge slabs of rock in so many different directions. There were several waterfalls, but more channels where water must flow in torrents during the spring melt, and the Weeping Wall, while still impressive, should probably be seen then for maximum effect. Every so often the clouds to one side or the other would part, revealing yet more mountains behind the front ranks, many just as grand and impressive as those which so dominated the valley through which the Parkway runs. Columns of rain marched about the place, and the general atmosphere was of mystery and hiddenness; we felt like very small intruders in a land of giants.
We bypassed the in-Park tourist towns of Lake Louise and Banff, and carried on through the extensive roadworks to Canmore, which was a coal-mining town up until the 1980s, after which it was a dying town, with the mine closed and no other industry operating. Then the Winter Olympics came to Calgary, and Canmore, 100 or so km up the hill, nestled in a spectacular notch between some incredible mountains, and within twenty minutes' drive of the National Park region, was picked to host the Nordic events: cross-country skiing and biathlon variants. Today, the town is thriving as a tourst destination; cheaper than its in-Park neighbor Banff and with more essential (ie non-luxury) services available. Some locals we spoke to bemoaned the tourism influence, others loved the town's revitalisation (and probably its continued existence), and the benefits that come their way from the tourists' disposable wealth. One of the bike shop guys was in the latter group, and offered to take us for a ride in the Nordic Centre's extensive network of XC bike trails, showing us the best ones and how to link them for maximum effect. We were a bit pooped, though, and told him if we weren't there that he shouldn't wait for us.
We weren't there. We were driving around, east of town, trying through sheer force of will to bring into being a campground anywhere near Canmore that didn't have a stupidly high nightly fee and a dearth of services to show for it. Our willpower must have been lowered by the cold of two days before, or maybe the Hoary Marmots stole it from us, because it looked very much like we were going to have to shell out $23 for the dubious privilege of calling a relatively-flat patch of ground home for the night, with bonus access to a vault toilet** (shared with vast numbers of other campers, some of whom were quite fat) and lots of noise from the very-nearby Trans-Canada Highway.
We almost did it too, but it just seemed so wrong that we had a crack at finding an illicit spot, and although the one we eventually settled on (and in) was still rather close to the highway, it had a banked-up off-ramp blocking much of the noise, and no other campers within coo-ee. Sweet.
HT powerlines overhead, but no worries, so long as they don't fall on us, and if they do we probably won't know much about it.
No toilet: no worries, we have a shovel.
4x4 track running right past our little patch of more-or-less flat ground, across a river, and up a near-vertical bank: no worries, no-one's going to be heading in there now, it's getting dark.
Angry squirrel, chittering and grumbling at us whenever we moved, spoke, or otherwise impinged on his existence: no worries, he's little, and if worst comes to worst we can throw fir-cones at him
The powerlines stayed up, and no information about toilets is probably the right information. The 4x4 that came past late at night, drove across the river and up the near-vertical bank was mildly (very) perturbing, but it came back out an hour or so later. Traffic noise wasn't too bad, and all in all we were well-pleased we'd opted for the dirtbag spot, despite the awesomeness of the 1940s pickup truck with matching trailer that would have been our closest camp-neighbor had we stayed at the Bow River campground.
* = We developed a regime where the passenger's task was to identify and point out the peaks we were passing, which made them somehow more substantial; once the thing was named, it seemed to stick in the mind more as an individual entity, rather than just another mountain. This system remained in place right up until the point where it was discovered that someone had been falsifying mental records through wilful misnaming of various peaks. Mt Angry ("Wow, I can see why they called it that - it looks really unimpressed!") was actually Mt Amery, and Circus Mountain ("I guess they called it that because it's such a crazy-looking rock - there's all sorts of different stuff going on, all at the same time") was really Cirrus Mountain. Grrrrrrrr.
** = Longdrop
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Total Disaster
I have Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush stuck in my head.
It's been there for five days.
Not sure how much more of this I can stand.
It's been there for five days.
Not sure how much more of this I can stand.
Now THERE'S a Big Grin!
Short Version:
Clean clothes, clean us, full bellies, beer. A ride with an accidental walk in the middle and a flying finish.
Long Version:
It's got to the point where it's a bit of a shock to the system to actually pay for a campsite, but the way Jasper town and Park are organised made it pretty much unavoidable. Not cheap at $27.40, but that included showers, flush toilets, and firewood*, and it brought our camping fee total for the BC leg of our journey to... $27.40, which averages out to not very much over the three weeks we've been on the road so far. We charmed the gatekeeper lady (mainly by not being German) into giving us a really nice site, and then abandoned it immediately in favor of laundry, internet, delicious foods, and beer**.
We were up early(ish) next morning to get one last ride in before 11am checkout. Twenty minutes on roadside trails took us to the trailhead near the old bridge, and then we were into the forest, past the woman with the corgi***, and riding pretty fast along a trail which gave us enough rocky, rooty bits to keep us interested, but was open and flowing enough that we had big grins on our faces for most of the hour it took us to get to the top of the drop into the Valley of the Five Lakes. Breaking yet another spoke on the way down dented my grin somewhat, but the lakes**** were beautiful, the sun was peeping out from behind the clouds, and the trail was well-formed, so the smiles were still there when we reached the near end of the last lake fifteen minutes later. They slipped a bit over the next half-hour though, as we hiked our bikes around the far end of the lake on the "Bikes not recommended" section of trail: up and down small cliffs; over too many fallen trees to count; across marshy bits that couldn't decide if they were land or lake. It was a different kind of fun. Apart from the bit where Nene carnaged her shin on her pedal while clambering over a downed tree. That wasn't much fun at all.
Between the hour we lost when we crossed into the Mountain Time Zone and the half-hour that disappeared as we went round the end lake, we were running late, so we put the hammer down once we made it back onto rideable trail. The last 10km was much like the first chunk we'd ridden (it actually used a couple of bits of the same trail), only more fun at the speeds we were hitting. Rocks, roots, marsh, a frog - all passed under our wheels without slowing our progress appreciably, and we arrived back at the trailhead in under an hour, and both feeling fantastic. The ride back to the campground was likewise done at pace, with the only real halt at the point where a dog that looked like a tiny husky with a full-sized attitude decided it didn't like Nene.
We were forty-five minutes late for checkout when we arrived back, so we vacated our site... and went and had more showers before actually leaving.
* = Our camp-neighbor stole it while we were out.
** = The Blueberry-Vanilla Ale was the hit of the evening. Janine's Applewood-Smoked Bacon Cheeseburger was a better pick than my Elk and Bisonburger.
*** = Both of us spoke to the corgi, and both times the woman thought she was the one being addressed. Which is kind of weird, given that Nene said "Hey cutie," and I said "Now THERE'S a big grin!"
**** = Let no Canadian ever dish out grief to NZers about the lack of imagination displayed in the naming of the two main islands. Calling lakes as pretty as these ones 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 is WAY worse.
Clean clothes, clean us, full bellies, beer. A ride with an accidental walk in the middle and a flying finish.
Long Version:
It's got to the point where it's a bit of a shock to the system to actually pay for a campsite, but the way Jasper town and Park are organised made it pretty much unavoidable. Not cheap at $27.40, but that included showers, flush toilets, and firewood*, and it brought our camping fee total for the BC leg of our journey to... $27.40, which averages out to not very much over the three weeks we've been on the road so far. We charmed the gatekeeper lady (mainly by not being German) into giving us a really nice site, and then abandoned it immediately in favor of laundry, internet, delicious foods, and beer**.
We were up early(ish) next morning to get one last ride in before 11am checkout. Twenty minutes on roadside trails took us to the trailhead near the old bridge, and then we were into the forest, past the woman with the corgi***, and riding pretty fast along a trail which gave us enough rocky, rooty bits to keep us interested, but was open and flowing enough that we had big grins on our faces for most of the hour it took us to get to the top of the drop into the Valley of the Five Lakes. Breaking yet another spoke on the way down dented my grin somewhat, but the lakes**** were beautiful, the sun was peeping out from behind the clouds, and the trail was well-formed, so the smiles were still there when we reached the near end of the last lake fifteen minutes later. They slipped a bit over the next half-hour though, as we hiked our bikes around the far end of the lake on the "Bikes not recommended" section of trail: up and down small cliffs; over too many fallen trees to count; across marshy bits that couldn't decide if they were land or lake. It was a different kind of fun. Apart from the bit where Nene carnaged her shin on her pedal while clambering over a downed tree. That wasn't much fun at all.
Between the hour we lost when we crossed into the Mountain Time Zone and the half-hour that disappeared as we went round the end lake, we were running late, so we put the hammer down once we made it back onto rideable trail. The last 10km was much like the first chunk we'd ridden (it actually used a couple of bits of the same trail), only more fun at the speeds we were hitting. Rocks, roots, marsh, a frog - all passed under our wheels without slowing our progress appreciably, and we arrived back at the trailhead in under an hour, and both feeling fantastic. The ride back to the campground was likewise done at pace, with the only real halt at the point where a dog that looked like a tiny husky with a full-sized attitude decided it didn't like Nene.
We were forty-five minutes late for checkout when we arrived back, so we vacated our site... and went and had more showers before actually leaving.
* = Our camp-neighbor stole it while we were out.
** = The Blueberry-Vanilla Ale was the hit of the evening. Janine's Applewood-Smoked Bacon Cheeseburger was a better pick than my Elk and Bisonburger.
*** = Both of us spoke to the corgi, and both times the woman thought she was the one being addressed. Which is kind of weird, given that Nene said "Hey cutie," and I said "Now THERE'S a big grin!"
**** = Let no Canadian ever dish out grief to NZers about the lack of imagination displayed in the naming of the two main islands. Calling lakes as pretty as these ones 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 is WAY worse.
Hoary Marmots
Short Version:
Goats and elk, a crack in the ground, oldies galore, we ride up a hill. Hoary marmots. Cold. We ride down a hill, singing. Eggy burritos
Long Version:
On the third day, we paid for a National Park Pass. The gravel-eating goats were at the same spot along the highway, bt three of them had foregone gravel-ingestion in favor of performing gravity-defying acts of grace and agility high on the face of the cliff. Lovely Wife spied a big bull elk in the woods, and then we had to stop to allow a cow elk to cross the road. Nasty old man coming the other way didn't stop and just about ran into her. I shook my fist at him, which made the elk feel much more loved.
We jumped off the highway just short of Jasper town, and went to see what we could see at Maligne* Canyon. What we could see, initially, was a busload of seniors. They were pretty determined to get their money's worth of view from the bridge over the canyon, and weren't shy about pushing even the scruffiest, smelliest, scraggly-beardiest (comparatively) youngster out of their way to get it. Once
they started to pass over (the bridge, that is) and we got a chance to peer over the edge, we could see why: it was pretty impressive. Sheer walls dropped away 15m to the river's surface. The water was churning and boiling its way through the constricting rock walls, which had had some pretty striking curves carved out of them by the current over the course of however many centuries the canyon's been in existence. Ravens were nesting on what looked like vertical faces, and young birds - already huge - were flapping about the place, landing unsteadily on narrow ledges and cawing noisily above the roar of the river. The oldies turned left off the bridge, towards the restaurant. We went right, downstream, to waterfalls and more bridges, and viewpoints which showed us how jagged a crack the canyon must have been before the water started to round off its sharpnesses.
And then it was time to ride. Up, as usual, this time on an old fire road, long since blocked to vehicular traffic. Plants had encroached on the clearway, but the grade was gentle and the surface smooth enough. As we got higher, the track got steeper, but nothing untoward and despite stopping a couple of times to chat with hikers coming the other way**, we were making good time. Not good enough to challenge the record, we later found out - in fact our leisurely 100-minute climb was more than half an hour longer than the fastest known ride-time. Still, we were in good shape at the intersection where the fire road meets the campground spur and the hiking-only Skyline Trail (from whence the hikers had come), and decided to go see what we could see up at the old fire lookout. We weren't expecting much in the way of views, given that the trail had started out misty at the base of the mountain, and grown progressively more clouded as we ascended***. The fire road took us to a peak which looked out over the town, and which - on a clear day - would have afforded fantastic views up the valley to the southeast, and down the valley to the north. As it was, we had a different spectacular view: a huge grey cloud, shaped like an Imperial Battlecruiser, drifting inexorably down the valley from our left, and lining up a collision with the equally grey, less-shapely cloud bearing in from our right. The wind was whipping across the peak, and as the town below disappeared from view we jumped in behind a ridge of rock to have a snack out out of the chill breeze. It was still cold there in the lee of the rock, and we were shaping to depart when what we initially took for a pair of really ugly monkeys appeared, up the slope from our vantage and heading our way in a series of leaps from boulder to boulder. As they got closer, their faces became clearer, and we realised we were staring down the barrel of a pair of Hoary Marmots (I kid you not). Each was predominantly black and dark grey, but had an orange back-end; one just tail, hind legs, and lower back; the other to its midriff. They looked like they'd been held by the head or the forepaws and dunked tail-first into a vat of orange dye****. They moved as a team, with one establishing station where she could see the surrounding area before the other moved past her and into position further ahead. Kind of like a police SWAT team securing a building, only with more fur and less guns. We watched until we started to shiver, then scared the bejeebers out of the poor wee things by standing up well within their secure perimeter and striding away to where we'd left the bikes. Reckon there might've been an acrimonious, recriminatory conversation in the Hoary Marmot household over dinner.
It had been a pretty magical experience, but in a purely physical sense it had left us cold. Really cold. Riding back down the fire road across the exposed face above the tree-line didn't help, and by the time we found an entrance to the singletrack we were not having much fun, with feet and hands like blocks of ice to the point where we couldn't tell if we were clipped in to our pedals and holding handlebars or not. The trail was pretty sweet, and we agreed later that it would have been a lot of fun if we were just a bit warmer.
As it was, though, neither of us trusted ourselves to ride much in the way of technical challenges, which was unfortunate as the trail provided many. Nothing too extreme under normal circumstances, but too much for us in our semi-frozen state. About halfway down we started to warm up, the trail opened out and grew less technical, and we started to ride fast. And sing, so that the bears wouldn't get a nasty surprise and eat us to assuage their fright or anger. It seemed to work, as we didn't have any bear encounters despite hearing large things in the trees nearby and smelling creature on more than one occasion. We did have a near-miss with a fallen tree, and were startled several times by birds exploding out of the undergrowth***** (one raven, a few grouse). At one junction we stopped to look at the trail options, and mused aloud "What manner of creature left THAT pawprint?" The response was immediate, loud, and absolutely frightening. It came from directly overhead ("Heck! Them bears are up in the treetops!") and was, we eventually figured out, the sound made when two trees are rubbed against each other by the wind, kind of like a giant cello. Only louder. When our heart-rates returned to somewhere near normal, we carried on, and were soon back at the van, where we attended to icy-cold feet and had a picnic lunch.
Eggy burrito deliciousness cures any ill.
* = mah-LEEN, apparently. Not mah-LINE as we'd been saying. Stupid French people.
** = Three separate groups, all of whom had set off from Maligne Lake, 40+km away, either three or four days previously. They'd teamed up to go over the Notch, which is a high mountain pass where, when they reached it, the snow was both flying and lying deep on the ground, obscuring trail-sign. One group turned tail at that point, but the others, figuring they'd passed the halfway point of the hike, pushed on, and made it through without major difficulty. Sounded like a great hike, and both of us were envious.
*** = At one point I'd looked up to see Nene disappearing into a cloud-bank, and we'd had some pretty amazing vistas, where rows of tall straight dark green trees marched silently across the slopes and vanished into the cold grey haze far closer than they should. Very atmospheric, very moody, very Twin Peaks.
**** = Or, I guess, held by the tail and dunked into a pool of dark grey or black ink. But then they wouldn't have been able to breathe, and I can't imagine they were undead hoary marmots.
***** = Not literally exploding, just bursting****** out of the bushes.
****** = Not literally bursting, just moving fast from a standing start.
Goats and elk, a crack in the ground, oldies galore, we ride up a hill. Hoary marmots. Cold. We ride down a hill, singing. Eggy burritos
Long Version:
On the third day, we paid for a National Park Pass. The gravel-eating goats were at the same spot along the highway, bt three of them had foregone gravel-ingestion in favor of performing gravity-defying acts of grace and agility high on the face of the cliff. Lovely Wife spied a big bull elk in the woods, and then we had to stop to allow a cow elk to cross the road. Nasty old man coming the other way didn't stop and just about ran into her. I shook my fist at him, which made the elk feel much more loved.
We jumped off the highway just short of Jasper town, and went to see what we could see at Maligne* Canyon. What we could see, initially, was a busload of seniors. They were pretty determined to get their money's worth of view from the bridge over the canyon, and weren't shy about pushing even the scruffiest, smelliest, scraggly-beardiest (comparatively) youngster out of their way to get it. Once
they started to pass over (the bridge, that is) and we got a chance to peer over the edge, we could see why: it was pretty impressive. Sheer walls dropped away 15m to the river's surface. The water was churning and boiling its way through the constricting rock walls, which had had some pretty striking curves carved out of them by the current over the course of however many centuries the canyon's been in existence. Ravens were nesting on what looked like vertical faces, and young birds - already huge - were flapping about the place, landing unsteadily on narrow ledges and cawing noisily above the roar of the river. The oldies turned left off the bridge, towards the restaurant. We went right, downstream, to waterfalls and more bridges, and viewpoints which showed us how jagged a crack the canyon must have been before the water started to round off its sharpnesses.
And then it was time to ride. Up, as usual, this time on an old fire road, long since blocked to vehicular traffic. Plants had encroached on the clearway, but the grade was gentle and the surface smooth enough. As we got higher, the track got steeper, but nothing untoward and despite stopping a couple of times to chat with hikers coming the other way**, we were making good time. Not good enough to challenge the record, we later found out - in fact our leisurely 100-minute climb was more than half an hour longer than the fastest known ride-time. Still, we were in good shape at the intersection where the fire road meets the campground spur and the hiking-only Skyline Trail (from whence the hikers had come), and decided to go see what we could see up at the old fire lookout. We weren't expecting much in the way of views, given that the trail had started out misty at the base of the mountain, and grown progressively more clouded as we ascended***. The fire road took us to a peak which looked out over the town, and which - on a clear day - would have afforded fantastic views up the valley to the southeast, and down the valley to the north. As it was, we had a different spectacular view: a huge grey cloud, shaped like an Imperial Battlecruiser, drifting inexorably down the valley from our left, and lining up a collision with the equally grey, less-shapely cloud bearing in from our right. The wind was whipping across the peak, and as the town below disappeared from view we jumped in behind a ridge of rock to have a snack out out of the chill breeze. It was still cold there in the lee of the rock, and we were shaping to depart when what we initially took for a pair of really ugly monkeys appeared, up the slope from our vantage and heading our way in a series of leaps from boulder to boulder. As they got closer, their faces became clearer, and we realised we were staring down the barrel of a pair of Hoary Marmots (I kid you not). Each was predominantly black and dark grey, but had an orange back-end; one just tail, hind legs, and lower back; the other to its midriff. They looked like they'd been held by the head or the forepaws and dunked tail-first into a vat of orange dye****. They moved as a team, with one establishing station where she could see the surrounding area before the other moved past her and into position further ahead. Kind of like a police SWAT team securing a building, only with more fur and less guns. We watched until we started to shiver, then scared the bejeebers out of the poor wee things by standing up well within their secure perimeter and striding away to where we'd left the bikes. Reckon there might've been an acrimonious, recriminatory conversation in the Hoary Marmot household over dinner.
It had been a pretty magical experience, but in a purely physical sense it had left us cold. Really cold. Riding back down the fire road across the exposed face above the tree-line didn't help, and by the time we found an entrance to the singletrack we were not having much fun, with feet and hands like blocks of ice to the point where we couldn't tell if we were clipped in to our pedals and holding handlebars or not. The trail was pretty sweet, and we agreed later that it would have been a lot of fun if we were just a bit warmer.
As it was, though, neither of us trusted ourselves to ride much in the way of technical challenges, which was unfortunate as the trail provided many. Nothing too extreme under normal circumstances, but too much for us in our semi-frozen state. About halfway down we started to warm up, the trail opened out and grew less technical, and we started to ride fast. And sing, so that the bears wouldn't get a nasty surprise and eat us to assuage their fright or anger. It seemed to work, as we didn't have any bear encounters despite hearing large things in the trees nearby and smelling creature on more than one occasion. We did have a near-miss with a fallen tree, and were startled several times by birds exploding out of the undergrowth***** (one raven, a few grouse). At one junction we stopped to look at the trail options, and mused aloud "What manner of creature left THAT pawprint?" The response was immediate, loud, and absolutely frightening. It came from directly overhead ("Heck! Them bears are up in the treetops!") and was, we eventually figured out, the sound made when two trees are rubbed against each other by the wind, kind of like a giant cello. Only louder. When our heart-rates returned to somewhere near normal, we carried on, and were soon back at the van, where we attended to icy-cold feet and had a picnic lunch.
Eggy burrito deliciousness cures any ill.
* = mah-LEEN, apparently. Not mah-LINE as we'd been saying. Stupid French people.
** = Three separate groups, all of whom had set off from Maligne Lake, 40+km away, either three or four days previously. They'd teamed up to go over the Notch, which is a high mountain pass where, when they reached it, the snow was both flying and lying deep on the ground, obscuring trail-sign. One group turned tail at that point, but the others, figuring they'd passed the halfway point of the hike, pushed on, and made it through without major difficulty. Sounded like a great hike, and both of us were envious.
*** = At one point I'd looked up to see Nene disappearing into a cloud-bank, and we'd had some pretty amazing vistas, where rows of tall straight dark green trees marched silently across the slopes and vanished into the cold grey haze far closer than they should. Very atmospheric, very moody, very Twin Peaks.
**** = Or, I guess, held by the tail and dunked into a pool of dark grey or black ink. But then they wouldn't have been able to breathe, and I can't imagine they were undead hoary marmots.
***** = Not literally exploding, just bursting****** out of the bushes.
****** = Not literally bursting, just moving fast from a standing start.
We're in Hot Water Now
Short Version:
Mountains, some of which are a bit old. Clean! Warm! Mountains. Destroy the French.
Long Version:
We'd stopped at the Info Centre before we left town to enquire about weather forecasts and campground availability. The woman there explained to us that a Park Pass was needed not just when staying overnight, but for anything over and above stopping for gas, which we'd kind of figured out ourselves, but were pretending we hadn't. She also knew exactly who we meant when we told her a grumpy Frenchwoman had told us the overnight thing*. We had a plan, though, and it didn't involve paying for a Park Pass today, so we decided to take our chances and go to the Hot Springs without one.
The Miette Road leaves the Yellowhead Highway not far inside the Jasper National Park's eastern border, and winds its way up into the mountains past the Punchbowl Falls** and over a pass which affords one some pretty neat views down the Fiddler River and across the valley to the Ashlar Ridge. Huge and dark grey, this ridge is - according to the helpful informative sign - somewhere in the vicinity of 360-million years old. Makes the rest of the rock of the area, at around 150-million years old, seem youthful, and renders laughable any attempt to speak of human activity in the region as being long-standing. The Hot Springs carpark was quarter-full when we pulled in, but once we'd paid our entry fee and made our way through the labyrynthine changing room complex to the pools proper we found them surprisingly full. Must be complete chaos during high season. We settled in to soak for a while in the second-hottest pool, then moved to the hotter one and started playing the cold pool plunge game (apart from Lovely Wife, who stayed put in the hot one).
A lot of the patrons had been speaking French, so I weed in the pool just before I got out. That'll show them.
* = Hope she gets in trouble, would serve her right for being French***.
** = We stopped. They looked like they're probably quite impressive when the stream has more water in it. As it was, not so awesome.
*** = Not sure if it's Rainbow Warrior legacy, or just the inherent sneeriness of the spoken language, but French people should all piss off to somewhere I'm not. Bunch of arseholes.
Mountains, some of which are a bit old. Clean! Warm! Mountains. Destroy the French.
Long Version:
We'd stopped at the Info Centre before we left town to enquire about weather forecasts and campground availability. The woman there explained to us that a Park Pass was needed not just when staying overnight, but for anything over and above stopping for gas, which we'd kind of figured out ourselves, but were pretending we hadn't. She also knew exactly who we meant when we told her a grumpy Frenchwoman had told us the overnight thing*. We had a plan, though, and it didn't involve paying for a Park Pass today, so we decided to take our chances and go to the Hot Springs without one.
The Miette Road leaves the Yellowhead Highway not far inside the Jasper National Park's eastern border, and winds its way up into the mountains past the Punchbowl Falls** and over a pass which affords one some pretty neat views down the Fiddler River and across the valley to the Ashlar Ridge. Huge and dark grey, this ridge is - according to the helpful informative sign - somewhere in the vicinity of 360-million years old. Makes the rest of the rock of the area, at around 150-million years old, seem youthful, and renders laughable any attempt to speak of human activity in the region as being long-standing. The Hot Springs carpark was quarter-full when we pulled in, but once we'd paid our entry fee and made our way through the labyrynthine changing room complex to the pools proper we found them surprisingly full. Must be complete chaos during high season. We settled in to soak for a while in the second-hottest pool, then moved to the hotter one and started playing the cold pool plunge game (apart from Lovely Wife, who stayed put in the hot one).
A lot of the patrons had been speaking French, so I weed in the pool just before I got out. That'll show them.
* = Hope she gets in trouble, would serve her right for being French***.
** = We stopped. They looked like they're probably quite impressive when the stream has more water in it. As it was, not so awesome.
*** = Not sure if it's Rainbow Warrior legacy, or just the inherent sneeriness of the spoken language, but French people should all piss off to somewhere I'm not. Bunch of arseholes.
Saturday Night, on Monday Morning
Short Version:
Mountains. Deer. Coyotes. Lies. Gravel-eating goats. We ride up a steep hill, and then back down again. Dill Pickle.
Long Version:
The overnight chill had seen fresh snow fall on the peaks while we slept, and many of the mountains still had dense cloud shrouding them when we broke camp and set off for Jasper. The deer were out in force on the road and at roadside, including both reds and greys*, of which a number were horned. Also on the road were a pack of coyotes, which scattered at our approach, but not far. They were bigger than the coyotes we'd seen before, and one of them had silvery fur and a strange cast to its face that had us both in mind of wolves, although it was nowhere near big enough to have made the cast footprint we saw at the McBride Railway Station: that was as big as my foot, and had way more claws. We told the Park gatekeeper lady that we were just passing through on the way to Dunster, and after a brief encounter with a herd of goats eating gravel at the side of the highway we rolled into Jasper, secured the Reaper, and set off through the town and up a valley, on the Saturday Night Lake Loop Trail.
The chill overnight had turned into a cold day, but the initial twenty minute haul up the steep hill from the trailhead to Cabin Lake warmed us up to the point where we were both removing layers. The trail then took us along the face of the hill to the east of the lake, climbing and descending often, and rolling over some slippery roots and fallen trees. We hooked right onto a side-trail, which took us straight up a steep gully to Saturday Night Lake, which was really pretty. A quick bite then we blasted back down to the main trail and continued up the valley, which seemed to get wetter, rockier, and rootier with every pedal stroke. We crossed several streams using a variety of methods, including riding over sound bridges; walking across broken ones; and at one point employing a leaping relay, where Nene jumped across and was passed bikes before I joined her on the far bank. Tree roots were everywhere, at all angles, and were saturated and incredibly slippery. By the time we reached the High Lakes campground we were more tired than 2.5 hours of up would normally engender; partly the drain of being cold but mainly a result of the constant battle to make the bikes move forwards, and to stop them moving sideways**.
The first downhill section was rocky and technical, and called for cautious riding, not too fast. That was what I thought, anyway - Lovely Wife not so much. She came flying down the hill, bouncing over rocks and through gaps, and only managed to avoid plowing into me by falling off. That made me very popular. The rest of the 5km to Minnow Lake was less steep but still both demanding and great fun. Apart from the bit where I fell off, although one of us thought that was both amusing and just.
And then the flying downhill started. It was open and flowing, and small shifts in weight distribution had us diving between trees at a huge rate of knots. It reminded me of the Deer Leap Segment of the North Umpqua River Trail, only without the effects of being poisoned. We passed several lakes and swampy areas***, avoided a number of Surprise! rocks and negotiated some switchbacks, then were rolling past the trailhead and back through the town to the van, four hours after we'd departed. The fact that it was still where we'd left it and unticketed despite our lack of displayed National Park Pass was pretty cool, as was the fact that the supermarket directly across the road sold our new favorite potato chip flavor: Dill Pickle.
* = Kind of like my beard
** = Actually, by the time we reached the top we were both factoring the side-slipping into our line choices, and using it if not to our advantage, then at least with intent
*** = We'd heard a radio interview with a wildlife expert the night before, who'd stated his opinion that he most dangerous animal in the Canadian wilderness was the bull moose during rutting season. Which is now. He said that avoiding swampy areas was a really good idea, and on the way up the initial climb from the trailhead we'd commented on how great it was that we were heading up, into the rocky, alpine regions, rather than staying low, near the swamps and grassy places the moose prefer. Oh, how we chortled each time we reached a swampy lake shore. Ha ha ha.
Mountains. Deer. Coyotes. Lies. Gravel-eating goats. We ride up a steep hill, and then back down again. Dill Pickle.
Long Version:
The overnight chill had seen fresh snow fall on the peaks while we slept, and many of the mountains still had dense cloud shrouding them when we broke camp and set off for Jasper. The deer were out in force on the road and at roadside, including both reds and greys*, of which a number were horned. Also on the road were a pack of coyotes, which scattered at our approach, but not far. They were bigger than the coyotes we'd seen before, and one of them had silvery fur and a strange cast to its face that had us both in mind of wolves, although it was nowhere near big enough to have made the cast footprint we saw at the McBride Railway Station: that was as big as my foot, and had way more claws. We told the Park gatekeeper lady that we were just passing through on the way to Dunster, and after a brief encounter with a herd of goats eating gravel at the side of the highway we rolled into Jasper, secured the Reaper, and set off through the town and up a valley, on the Saturday Night Lake Loop Trail.
The chill overnight had turned into a cold day, but the initial twenty minute haul up the steep hill from the trailhead to Cabin Lake warmed us up to the point where we were both removing layers. The trail then took us along the face of the hill to the east of the lake, climbing and descending often, and rolling over some slippery roots and fallen trees. We hooked right onto a side-trail, which took us straight up a steep gully to Saturday Night Lake, which was really pretty. A quick bite then we blasted back down to the main trail and continued up the valley, which seemed to get wetter, rockier, and rootier with every pedal stroke. We crossed several streams using a variety of methods, including riding over sound bridges; walking across broken ones; and at one point employing a leaping relay, where Nene jumped across and was passed bikes before I joined her on the far bank. Tree roots were everywhere, at all angles, and were saturated and incredibly slippery. By the time we reached the High Lakes campground we were more tired than 2.5 hours of up would normally engender; partly the drain of being cold but mainly a result of the constant battle to make the bikes move forwards, and to stop them moving sideways**.
The first downhill section was rocky and technical, and called for cautious riding, not too fast. That was what I thought, anyway - Lovely Wife not so much. She came flying down the hill, bouncing over rocks and through gaps, and only managed to avoid plowing into me by falling off. That made me very popular. The rest of the 5km to Minnow Lake was less steep but still both demanding and great fun. Apart from the bit where I fell off, although one of us thought that was both amusing and just.
And then the flying downhill started. It was open and flowing, and small shifts in weight distribution had us diving between trees at a huge rate of knots. It reminded me of the Deer Leap Segment of the North Umpqua River Trail, only without the effects of being poisoned. We passed several lakes and swampy areas***, avoided a number of Surprise! rocks and negotiated some switchbacks, then were rolling past the trailhead and back through the town to the van, four hours after we'd departed. The fact that it was still where we'd left it and unticketed despite our lack of displayed National Park Pass was pretty cool, as was the fact that the supermarket directly across the road sold our new favorite potato chip flavor: Dill Pickle.
* = Kind of like my beard
** = Actually, by the time we reached the top we were both factoring the side-slipping into our line choices, and using it if not to our advantage, then at least with intent
*** = We'd heard a radio interview with a wildlife expert the night before, who'd stated his opinion that he most dangerous animal in the Canadian wilderness was the bull moose during rutting season. Which is now. He said that avoiding swampy areas was a really good idea, and on the way up the initial climb from the trailhead we'd commented on how great it was that we were heading up, into the rocky, alpine regions, rather than staying low, near the swamps and grassy places the moose prefer. Oh, how we chortled each time we reached a swampy lake shore. Ha ha ha.
Mountains
Short Version:
A stupid, grumpy Frenchwoman fails to ruin our day. Mountains. Jasper is full of mannerless oiks. Mountains. Bike Park. Mountains. Mountains.
Long Version:
We'd planned to ride in the Mt Robson Provincial Park, up to Kinney Lake, but there were 50+ cars in the parking area, so we ate sandwiches and then hauled up the Yellowhead Highway into the Rocky Mountains, where a grouchy Frenchwoman in a toll booth told us we had to pay $19.60 for every night we planned to spend in the National Park for which she was gatekeeper. Clever Wife said we were heading for Hinton, which is out the other side of the park, and we were waved through without warmth by the hag, across the time zone border and into the Jasper National Park. The town of Jasper is inside the National Park, and was absolutely chock-full of RV's, cars and buses and the tourists they'd disgorged on this last long weekend of the Canadian summer*. Many of them were, we discovered, either really rude or really unskilled at sharing a sidewalk with other pedestrians**, and after a quick stop at Freewheel Cycles for trail map and advice (this one and this one, clockwise and counter-clockwise respectively), we left.
We didn't stay long at the Wildhorse Lake campground, either, as it was $22/night, and full apart from one crappy spot near some unattractive people. Not that we'd have stayed if they were prettier. Instead, we carried on out along the gravel road, past a few spots where sizeable pickups with large trailers were parked, and found ourselves a flat spot just off the road, with a great view of snow-capped mountains, some in full sun, others with their heads in clouds. Some had distinct bands of cloud across their lower midriffs, and many had distinct rock striations, clearly visible where snow lay along the ridges. Throughout the evening, the mountains periodically disappeared behind shifting clouds, and by the time darkness fell they were hidden more often than not.
The morning was cold, and we were in dense fog until mid-morning, when the sun and a bunch of mountains appeared, surprising with their closeness and their looming presence. We had a crack at navigating our way out of the backroads area via a different route to the one we'd come in on, and were well and truly befuddled by the time the Park Ranger happened by and set us back on track, with bonus directions to the Hinton Mountain Bike Park, which turned out to be a small area, but big on fun. The few trails each embodied a different style of riding, and each was an extension of part of the skills training area near the carpark. The pump track and dirt jumps fed into the Flow Trail, for example, and the structures in the Skills Area were smaller versions of those found on the Slopestyle and Freeride trails. We had a crack at pretty much everything, riding and re-riding stuff until we could complete without carnage (or with aplomb, depending on the structure). Nene turned out to be a drop-off maestro - certainly she was a lot less wobbly on landings than I, despite the shorter travel bike - and struck up a conversation with a local rider while I was cursing my ineptitude after a particularly heavy landing. Grant is an avalanche forecaster in winter, helicopter-based firefighter in summer, and turned out to know Nick and Jailin, who we'd met at the Dunster Old-Time Family Dance (Hi Grant! Hi Nick and Jailin!). He also knew of a pirate trail in the National Park, and gave us directions and instructions on how to find it, which we would have listened to more attentatively had we not been interrupted by a young chap faceplanting off one of the bigger dirt-jumps. We ran over, made him wiggle fingers and toes before granting his request to get his helmet off, and then poked and prodded his bruises just for fun and to make sure there were no broken bones.
By the time we left the Park, both of us felt like we'd learned new and improved existing skills, which was pretty cool. The dirt-bike crowd had vacated the wilderness area, so we nabbed a spot which was much better in terms of access and surrounds but worse in terms of view and rubbish: half-burned plastic bottles lay near till receipts and scraps of duct tape***; cans and their lids nestled into long grass alongside a collection of empty propane cylinders. We cleaned up the worst of it, and settled in for cake, tea, popcorn and apples while looking at the yellowing leaves; the towering mountains; and the deer in the woods, which had a bright white and very bushy tail. She looked delicious.
* = Technically, it's actually the first long weekend of Fall, but it's generally seen as the harbinger of the end of Summer, heralding as it does the start of the school and university years, and the end of the golden weather
** = Tempting as it was to see how well they'd share a sidewalk with the Reaper, we figured we might find ourselves violating some "Thou shalt not run over tourists with more money than you" National Park rule
*** = Duct tape. DUCT tape. D-U-C-T. Not duck. Idiots.
A stupid, grumpy Frenchwoman fails to ruin our day. Mountains. Jasper is full of mannerless oiks. Mountains. Bike Park. Mountains. Mountains.
Long Version:
We'd planned to ride in the Mt Robson Provincial Park, up to Kinney Lake, but there were 50+ cars in the parking area, so we ate sandwiches and then hauled up the Yellowhead Highway into the Rocky Mountains, where a grouchy Frenchwoman in a toll booth told us we had to pay $19.60 for every night we planned to spend in the National Park for which she was gatekeeper. Clever Wife said we were heading for Hinton, which is out the other side of the park, and we were waved through without warmth by the hag, across the time zone border and into the Jasper National Park. The town of Jasper is inside the National Park, and was absolutely chock-full of RV's, cars and buses and the tourists they'd disgorged on this last long weekend of the Canadian summer*. Many of them were, we discovered, either really rude or really unskilled at sharing a sidewalk with other pedestrians**, and after a quick stop at Freewheel Cycles for trail map and advice (this one and this one, clockwise and counter-clockwise respectively), we left.
We didn't stay long at the Wildhorse Lake campground, either, as it was $22/night, and full apart from one crappy spot near some unattractive people. Not that we'd have stayed if they were prettier. Instead, we carried on out along the gravel road, past a few spots where sizeable pickups with large trailers were parked, and found ourselves a flat spot just off the road, with a great view of snow-capped mountains, some in full sun, others with their heads in clouds. Some had distinct bands of cloud across their lower midriffs, and many had distinct rock striations, clearly visible where snow lay along the ridges. Throughout the evening, the mountains periodically disappeared behind shifting clouds, and by the time darkness fell they were hidden more often than not.
The morning was cold, and we were in dense fog until mid-morning, when the sun and a bunch of mountains appeared, surprising with their closeness and their looming presence. We had a crack at navigating our way out of the backroads area via a different route to the one we'd come in on, and were well and truly befuddled by the time the Park Ranger happened by and set us back on track, with bonus directions to the Hinton Mountain Bike Park, which turned out to be a small area, but big on fun. The few trails each embodied a different style of riding, and each was an extension of part of the skills training area near the carpark. The pump track and dirt jumps fed into the Flow Trail, for example, and the structures in the Skills Area were smaller versions of those found on the Slopestyle and Freeride trails. We had a crack at pretty much everything, riding and re-riding stuff until we could complete without carnage (or with aplomb, depending on the structure). Nene turned out to be a drop-off maestro - certainly she was a lot less wobbly on landings than I, despite the shorter travel bike - and struck up a conversation with a local rider while I was cursing my ineptitude after a particularly heavy landing. Grant is an avalanche forecaster in winter, helicopter-based firefighter in summer, and turned out to know Nick and Jailin, who we'd met at the Dunster Old-Time Family Dance (Hi Grant! Hi Nick and Jailin!). He also knew of a pirate trail in the National Park, and gave us directions and instructions on how to find it, which we would have listened to more attentatively had we not been interrupted by a young chap faceplanting off one of the bigger dirt-jumps. We ran over, made him wiggle fingers and toes before granting his request to get his helmet off, and then poked and prodded his bruises just for fun and to make sure there were no broken bones.
By the time we left the Park, both of us felt like we'd learned new and improved existing skills, which was pretty cool. The dirt-bike crowd had vacated the wilderness area, so we nabbed a spot which was much better in terms of access and surrounds but worse in terms of view and rubbish: half-burned plastic bottles lay near till receipts and scraps of duct tape***; cans and their lids nestled into long grass alongside a collection of empty propane cylinders. We cleaned up the worst of it, and settled in for cake, tea, popcorn and apples while looking at the yellowing leaves; the towering mountains; and the deer in the woods, which had a bright white and very bushy tail. She looked delicious.
* = Technically, it's actually the first long weekend of Fall, but it's generally seen as the harbinger of the end of Summer, heralding as it does the start of the school and university years, and the end of the golden weather
** = Tempting as it was to see how well they'd share a sidewalk with the Reaper, we figured we might find ourselves violating some "Thou shalt not run over tourists with more money than you" National Park rule
*** = Duct tape. DUCT tape. D-U-C-T. Not duck. Idiots.
People With Big Hands Are Stupid
We have a glove collection.
It consists of a range of mountain-biking gloves we've picked up at various trailheads throughout Canada and Amerika.
They're all different styles and colors, and their condition varies.
All of them are enormous.
This is actually very handy*, as all of the gloves we've bought for ourselves fit properly, which means that it's really difficult to fit polypropylene or woollen gloves underneath them when it's cold. I've worn borrowed gloves with polyprop underneath exclusively since we've been north of Lillooet.
It did start me wondering, though, as I was riding up Williams Lake hills in the rain, in the wake of Barking Spider Scott; Why are people with big hands more forgetful than the rest of us? Are they stupider, or just more forgetful? Either way, why so? Is it because so much of their body's building materials went into making their hands that not enough was left over to form adequate neural pathways? Or is it that there's some communication breakdown between brain and big hands, so the message that should say "Pick up the glove," comes through as "Pick some flowers," instead.
I began to get excited at the possibilities: A life spent riding a wave of research grants, studying the big-handed; Breakthroughs in understanding what's really behind their issues; Tears of gratitude and thankfulness being wiped from eyes by enormous fingers.
And then, disaster. Alternate hypothesis rears its feasible head: The big-handed are no more stupid or forgetful than the rest of us; it's just that most people, upon finding a glove, compare its size to that of their own hands and those of their nearest and dearest, and take only those which will fit them. Enormous gloves, far from being left behind more often, are actually more likely to be left where they lie, as the number of people with hands built to fit them is far less than is the case for sizes S-L, and even XS gloves are probably nabbed by parents seeking to bolster their ever-changing assortment of childrens' items.
Not a damning of the capabilities of the gigantodextrous at all, then; I'll have to find another reason to mislike them.
* = Ha ha ha ha ha handy.
It consists of a range of mountain-biking gloves we've picked up at various trailheads throughout Canada and Amerika.
They're all different styles and colors, and their condition varies.
All of them are enormous.
This is actually very handy*, as all of the gloves we've bought for ourselves fit properly, which means that it's really difficult to fit polypropylene or woollen gloves underneath them when it's cold. I've worn borrowed gloves with polyprop underneath exclusively since we've been north of Lillooet.
It did start me wondering, though, as I was riding up Williams Lake hills in the rain, in the wake of Barking Spider Scott; Why are people with big hands more forgetful than the rest of us? Are they stupider, or just more forgetful? Either way, why so? Is it because so much of their body's building materials went into making their hands that not enough was left over to form adequate neural pathways? Or is it that there's some communication breakdown between brain and big hands, so the message that should say "Pick up the glove," comes through as "Pick some flowers," instead.
I began to get excited at the possibilities: A life spent riding a wave of research grants, studying the big-handed; Breakthroughs in understanding what's really behind their issues; Tears of gratitude and thankfulness being wiped from eyes by enormous fingers.
And then, disaster. Alternate hypothesis rears its feasible head: The big-handed are no more stupid or forgetful than the rest of us; it's just that most people, upon finding a glove, compare its size to that of their own hands and those of their nearest and dearest, and take only those which will fit them. Enormous gloves, far from being left behind more often, are actually more likely to be left where they lie, as the number of people with hands built to fit them is far less than is the case for sizes S-L, and even XS gloves are probably nabbed by parents seeking to bolster their ever-changing assortment of childrens' items.
Not a damning of the capabilities of the gigantodextrous at all, then; I'll have to find another reason to mislike them.
* = Ha ha ha ha ha handy.
Goodbye Dunster!
Short Version:
Yum. Scratch. Goodbye! Goodbye, Goodbye!. Sniff. Eek! Wow... Furry.
Long Version:
We've pretty much unperfected the art of leaving a place we like: we meander about, eating delicious foods and generally luxuriating in a leisurely final few hours. Then we scramble about, hurriedly gathering together most of the stuff we've strewn about the place, and eventually get on the road several hours later than originally planned. This time we had not only delicious home-made bread and apple crisp and coffee to contend with, but also dogs who demanded we play "Fetch" with them and a visit from the enormous black horses from up the valley, who - despite protestations from Stefi and Archie's horses at the intrusion - bellied up to the wooden fence and leaned on it as we fed them apples. Apples gone, they tried again to eat Nene's clothes, then one of the bigger ones decided to use the fence as a butt-scratching device, and shivered the timbers loose. Then it tried to eat our hair as we put the railings back in place. Crazy beast.
Goodbyes were said, with hugs and handshakes, and then we were off up the valley, with a loaf of bread and an oat-and-applesauce cake and a heap of apples and many backwards looks. And without several items of clothing, although we didn't discover them until later. The valley turned on two golden eagles and a bald one* and then in the town of Tete Jeune Cache we saw a scary evil wizard man, who glowered frighteningly at us, which made us feel a little less sad about leaving the Robson Valley and heading up to Rearguard Falls, where we saw an immense volume of water flowing over the rocky drop, something furry at play in the pool below the falls, and a funny-shaped man with his pants pulled up really high.
* = That's a different type of eagle, not a golden eagle with no feathers
Yum. Scratch. Goodbye! Goodbye, Goodbye!. Sniff. Eek! Wow... Furry.
Long Version:
We've pretty much unperfected the art of leaving a place we like: we meander about, eating delicious foods and generally luxuriating in a leisurely final few hours. Then we scramble about, hurriedly gathering together most of the stuff we've strewn about the place, and eventually get on the road several hours later than originally planned. This time we had not only delicious home-made bread and apple crisp and coffee to contend with, but also dogs who demanded we play "Fetch" with them and a visit from the enormous black horses from up the valley, who - despite protestations from Stefi and Archie's horses at the intrusion - bellied up to the wooden fence and leaned on it as we fed them apples. Apples gone, they tried again to eat Nene's clothes, then one of the bigger ones decided to use the fence as a butt-scratching device, and shivered the timbers loose. Then it tried to eat our hair as we put the railings back in place. Crazy beast.
Goodbyes were said, with hugs and handshakes, and then we were off up the valley, with a loaf of bread and an oat-and-applesauce cake and a heap of apples and many backwards looks. And without several items of clothing, although we didn't discover them until later. The valley turned on two golden eagles and a bald one* and then in the town of Tete Jeune Cache we saw a scary evil wizard man, who glowered frighteningly at us, which made us feel a little less sad about leaving the Robson Valley and heading up to Rearguard Falls, where we saw an immense volume of water flowing over the rocky drop, something furry at play in the pool below the falls, and a funny-shaped man with his pants pulled up really high.
* = That's a different type of eagle, not a golden eagle with no feathers
Dance, Dance, Revolution!
Short Version:
We dance the night away, just like Leo Sayer (but with less leotards)
Long Version:
On the way to the dance, we saw a bear on the side of the road. Then we saw a bear running along the road in front of us. He eventually ran into the bushes on the right, and when we looked for him we found instead a Mama Bear and her three cubs running across a field. Very cool. The car coming the other way had stopped too, and we felt a sense of comradeship with the occupants - a kinship based on having shared such a magical wildlife moment. Then we drove past them and realised that from where they were they couldn't actually see the field, let alone the bears, and that they'd been sitting patiently, waiting for us to get out of the way so they could carry on. Tragicomedy in action.
People were already lined up and learning an Irish Reel when we arrived at the dance. Blokes on one side of the hall, facing the women on the other, with the instructor-chap - a short, silvering man I'd have picked as a New York Jew had I been asked at random to categorise him - in the middle. He gave instructions and demonstrated with a counted beat, then had everyone join in with him for a while before turning on the music.
It was complete chaos, and was both wonderfully funny and marvellously fun.
Following the Irish Reel was the Old-Time Waltz, which we learned in our rows and then partnered up to dance as couples, adding a new element to the carnage, and heightening the laughter factor even further. The French Minuet was followed by the Cha-Cha, which provided one of the highlights of the evening for me when I got the move nailed (maybe) and looked to my left along the line-up of blokes. Every single one of them was doing something different. Two or three were going right when everyone else went left, some had reversed the forwards and backs, and one chap near me appeared to be doing the Twist* or the Washing-Machine. It was glorious.
During the snack break we ate biscuits and various other home-made more-or-less deliciousnesses, and met/re-met a bunch of people including woofers Stu and Danielle; Rob the giant-zucchini pirate; mountain-bikers from up in the Rockies Nick and Jailin; and a couple who hailed originally from Monrovia. Others we didn't meet included a boy in traditional Austrian garb (with added knee-length stripey socks); an ancient couple who danced only once or twice, and did so with no reference whatsoever either to what others were doing or to the music then playing**; a late-arriving group of youngsters who danced barefoot and with gay abandon; and a lady so tiny she'd've made the women of Janine's family look like giants***. The evening was completely, marvellously mad, and the post-snack dance was as close to a physical expression of the glorious lunacy as it could possibly have been; a Virginia Reel, of sorts, with people swinging on each others' arms, ducking under arches made of hands, and generally having a whale of a time, in and out of time.
The final shakedown was a free-for-all, and saw a heck of a mash-up on the dance floor. Some, like Nene and I, put into practise the dances we'd been learning, with variously-successful modifications intended to make them fit with each piece of music. Others busted out steps they'd learned goodness-knows-where: two couples two-step Amerikan country-style dancing traced pathways around grandparents dancing waltz-derivatives with children, circumnavigated the groups still frolicking their way through Virginia Reel variants, and spun through and around conversational gatherings.
All-too-soon it was time to say farewell to all those we'd met and danced with, regretfully declining the invitations to join people for after-parties. We wandered out to the parking lot, past the Oldsmobile with steer-horns attached to the grill, and hit the road homewards, past our squirrel, past the store, past the old ferry landing, past its bell on the gate. The house was warm and the dogs were pleased to see us. We went to sleep still smiling.
* = I'd overheard him grumbling to no-one in particular when the how-to instructions were being issued: "Which is it: swing hips, or stamp-stamp-stamp? Can't be both." His solution: ignore the footwork, plant feet side by side and swing hips in giant circles
** = Completely deaf, I'm guessing, although possibly completely obstinate
*** = We found out later that she climbs mountains when weather permits and plays the Alpenhorn up on the high places of the world. Apparently her husband - who wasn't present but is also, apparently, tiny - is the world's greatest French Horn maker, and to-flight orchestral French Horn players have bidding wars on each of the few instruments he makes in a year
We dance the night away, just like Leo Sayer (but with less leotards)
Long Version:
On the way to the dance, we saw a bear on the side of the road. Then we saw a bear running along the road in front of us. He eventually ran into the bushes on the right, and when we looked for him we found instead a Mama Bear and her three cubs running across a field. Very cool. The car coming the other way had stopped too, and we felt a sense of comradeship with the occupants - a kinship based on having shared such a magical wildlife moment. Then we drove past them and realised that from where they were they couldn't actually see the field, let alone the bears, and that they'd been sitting patiently, waiting for us to get out of the way so they could carry on. Tragicomedy in action.
People were already lined up and learning an Irish Reel when we arrived at the dance. Blokes on one side of the hall, facing the women on the other, with the instructor-chap - a short, silvering man I'd have picked as a New York Jew had I been asked at random to categorise him - in the middle. He gave instructions and demonstrated with a counted beat, then had everyone join in with him for a while before turning on the music.
It was complete chaos, and was both wonderfully funny and marvellously fun.
Following the Irish Reel was the Old-Time Waltz, which we learned in our rows and then partnered up to dance as couples, adding a new element to the carnage, and heightening the laughter factor even further. The French Minuet was followed by the Cha-Cha, which provided one of the highlights of the evening for me when I got the move nailed (maybe) and looked to my left along the line-up of blokes. Every single one of them was doing something different. Two or three were going right when everyone else went left, some had reversed the forwards and backs, and one chap near me appeared to be doing the Twist* or the Washing-Machine. It was glorious.
During the snack break we ate biscuits and various other home-made more-or-less deliciousnesses, and met/re-met a bunch of people including woofers Stu and Danielle; Rob the giant-zucchini pirate; mountain-bikers from up in the Rockies Nick and Jailin; and a couple who hailed originally from Monrovia. Others we didn't meet included a boy in traditional Austrian garb (with added knee-length stripey socks); an ancient couple who danced only once or twice, and did so with no reference whatsoever either to what others were doing or to the music then playing**; a late-arriving group of youngsters who danced barefoot and with gay abandon; and a lady so tiny she'd've made the women of Janine's family look like giants***. The evening was completely, marvellously mad, and the post-snack dance was as close to a physical expression of the glorious lunacy as it could possibly have been; a Virginia Reel, of sorts, with people swinging on each others' arms, ducking under arches made of hands, and generally having a whale of a time, in and out of time.
The final shakedown was a free-for-all, and saw a heck of a mash-up on the dance floor. Some, like Nene and I, put into practise the dances we'd been learning, with variously-successful modifications intended to make them fit with each piece of music. Others busted out steps they'd learned goodness-knows-where: two couples two-step Amerikan country-style dancing traced pathways around grandparents dancing waltz-derivatives with children, circumnavigated the groups still frolicking their way through Virginia Reel variants, and spun through and around conversational gatherings.
All-too-soon it was time to say farewell to all those we'd met and danced with, regretfully declining the invitations to join people for after-parties. We wandered out to the parking lot, past the Oldsmobile with steer-horns attached to the grill, and hit the road homewards, past our squirrel, past the store, past the old ferry landing, past its bell on the gate. The house was warm and the dogs were pleased to see us. We went to sleep still smiling.
* = I'd overheard him grumbling to no-one in particular when the how-to instructions were being issued: "Which is it: swing hips, or stamp-stamp-stamp? Can't be both." His solution: ignore the footwork, plant feet side by side and swing hips in giant circles
** = Completely deaf, I'm guessing, although possibly completely obstinate
*** = We found out later that she climbs mountains when weather permits and plays the Alpenhorn up on the high places of the world. Apparently her husband - who wasn't present but is also, apparently, tiny - is the world's greatest French Horn maker, and to-flight orchestral French Horn players have bidding wars on each of the few instruments he makes in a year
Monday, September 13, 2010
For Sale: Everything
Short Version:
Market forces at work, with pirates. We check out our harvest and some pot then get molested by some enormities.
Long Version:
The Dunster Market was awesome. Quite apart from the happy-meat cheeseburgers and more Mennonite cinnamon buns, there was locally-grown produce galore, and an assortment of characters selling it, or giving it away, depending on how well they liked the cut of your jib. One particularly piratically-attired local, Rob (Hi Rob!), gave me some apples gratis and told me tales of giant zucchini pranksterism in the far-north town of Terrace, from whence he hails. Nowdays he's a Dunsterite* for seven months of the year, and spends the other five months caring for autistic kids in Vancouver, which is an interesting pair of lives to be leading. I can only imagine what the autistic kids think of the leather hat, big beard, dreadlocks, and artificial leg. Also at the market was Stefi and Archie's cross-river neighbor, Alfie, wearing his latest business advertisement: a beige jacket, with "FOR SALE: EVERYTHING. IF I DON'T HAVE IT, YOU DON'T NEED IT" written across the back in marker pen. He looked like a curmudgeonly grandpa from an Amerikan sitcom, crossed with a widowered horse-racing follower who chain-smokes hand-rolled cigarettes outside the TAB somewhere in the Hutt Valley.
The Market is held in the parking lot of the Dunster Hall, near the "Dunster Mall": a shed full of no-longer needed items too good to throw away. Folks drop by, have a looksee, and help themselves to whatever's there that they want or need. We poked our heads in and saw: ice-skates; books; audio tapes; shoes; hats; clothing; a child's car-seat; assorted kitchen implements; knitting needles; and much, much more.
On the way back to the farm we saw the corpse of the squirrel we'd harvested the previous day, lying in the middle of the road with his little paws curled up under his chin. The fir-cone he'd been carrying in his little mouth when he made his ill-fated dash across the road was nowhere to be seen - carried off, no doubt, by his nearest and dearest, for use as post-service snacks at the funeral. We wouldn't have felt so bad about our first (confirmed) mammalian kill if he weren't so darned cute, but when it comes down to it, if we had to run over a mammal I'd far rather it was a tiny, cute squirrel than a half-ton moose or angry grizzly bear**.
After a tour of the pottery studio, where we met not only clay but also kittens and pack-rats, we helped pick apples from some of the many trees, and then Archie took Nene and I (and the two dogs: Momo and Foxy) for a hike: along the river bank to Beaver Point, then up along a gully to a meadow, where we spooked a herd of horses. They soon regained their equilibrium, and came back to check us out, which went from kind of neat to a wee bit scary as they changed from beautiful majestic animals galloping away on the far side of the paddock to blimmin enormous critters, up close and a little too personal: one tried to eat the jacket Nene had tied around her waist, another was blowing in my ear. All of us humans had an enormous muzzle pressed into the middle of our backs, hurrying us along, and each of the dogs had a pursuer that outweighed them at least several hundred times. They were, Archie told us, log-haulers and their descendants, and they were absolutely huge - near as high at the shoulder as a Clydesdale but far more massive. It was kind of nice to get on the other side of the fence and watch them from comparative safety, although their continued enthusiasm to get close to us had the fence bowing and creaking alarmingly, so we wandered down into the wooded gully into which the original homestead was bulldozed by a previous landowner, up the other side into the sloping paddock above the house which doubles as a ski field in winter, and back to the house just as delicious foods were ready to be snarfed.
And then it was time to get dressed up in our best eveningwear finery and our dancing shoes****, and hit the road to the Dunster Hall, to the Old-Time Family Dance.
* = Dunsterian? Dunsterer?
** = Apparently grizzlies have been known to take a disliking to certain automobiles, and use their enormous, clawed strength to peel their way through the metal skins to the soft parts inside. Also, we're told, they like gin***. Not sure if the two are related.
*** = Actually, we were told they like juniper berries - which is where the flavor of gin comes from - and that at this time of year the big bears are quite high up in the mountains seeking them
**** = Jeans and sneakers and off-road running shoes.
Market forces at work, with pirates. We check out our harvest and some pot then get molested by some enormities.
Long Version:
The Dunster Market was awesome. Quite apart from the happy-meat cheeseburgers and more Mennonite cinnamon buns, there was locally-grown produce galore, and an assortment of characters selling it, or giving it away, depending on how well they liked the cut of your jib. One particularly piratically-attired local, Rob (Hi Rob!), gave me some apples gratis and told me tales of giant zucchini pranksterism in the far-north town of Terrace, from whence he hails. Nowdays he's a Dunsterite* for seven months of the year, and spends the other five months caring for autistic kids in Vancouver, which is an interesting pair of lives to be leading. I can only imagine what the autistic kids think of the leather hat, big beard, dreadlocks, and artificial leg. Also at the market was Stefi and Archie's cross-river neighbor, Alfie, wearing his latest business advertisement: a beige jacket, with "FOR SALE: EVERYTHING. IF I DON'T HAVE IT, YOU DON'T NEED IT" written across the back in marker pen. He looked like a curmudgeonly grandpa from an Amerikan sitcom, crossed with a widowered horse-racing follower who chain-smokes hand-rolled cigarettes outside the TAB somewhere in the Hutt Valley.
The Market is held in the parking lot of the Dunster Hall, near the "Dunster Mall": a shed full of no-longer needed items too good to throw away. Folks drop by, have a looksee, and help themselves to whatever's there that they want or need. We poked our heads in and saw: ice-skates; books; audio tapes; shoes; hats; clothing; a child's car-seat; assorted kitchen implements; knitting needles; and much, much more.
On the way back to the farm we saw the corpse of the squirrel we'd harvested the previous day, lying in the middle of the road with his little paws curled up under his chin. The fir-cone he'd been carrying in his little mouth when he made his ill-fated dash across the road was nowhere to be seen - carried off, no doubt, by his nearest and dearest, for use as post-service snacks at the funeral. We wouldn't have felt so bad about our first (confirmed) mammalian kill if he weren't so darned cute, but when it comes down to it, if we had to run over a mammal I'd far rather it was a tiny, cute squirrel than a half-ton moose or angry grizzly bear**.
After a tour of the pottery studio, where we met not only clay but also kittens and pack-rats, we helped pick apples from some of the many trees, and then Archie took Nene and I (and the two dogs: Momo and Foxy) for a hike: along the river bank to Beaver Point, then up along a gully to a meadow, where we spooked a herd of horses. They soon regained their equilibrium, and came back to check us out, which went from kind of neat to a wee bit scary as they changed from beautiful majestic animals galloping away on the far side of the paddock to blimmin enormous critters, up close and a little too personal: one tried to eat the jacket Nene had tied around her waist, another was blowing in my ear. All of us humans had an enormous muzzle pressed into the middle of our backs, hurrying us along, and each of the dogs had a pursuer that outweighed them at least several hundred times. They were, Archie told us, log-haulers and their descendants, and they were absolutely huge - near as high at the shoulder as a Clydesdale but far more massive. It was kind of nice to get on the other side of the fence and watch them from comparative safety, although their continued enthusiasm to get close to us had the fence bowing and creaking alarmingly, so we wandered down into the wooded gully into which the original homestead was bulldozed by a previous landowner, up the other side into the sloping paddock above the house which doubles as a ski field in winter, and back to the house just as delicious foods were ready to be snarfed.
And then it was time to get dressed up in our best eveningwear finery and our dancing shoes****, and hit the road to the Dunster Hall, to the Old-Time Family Dance.
* = Dunsterian? Dunsterer?
** = Apparently grizzlies have been known to take a disliking to certain automobiles, and use their enormous, clawed strength to peel their way through the metal skins to the soft parts inside. Also, we're told, they like gin***. Not sure if the two are related.
*** = Actually, we were told they like juniper berries - which is where the flavor of gin comes from - and that at this time of year the big bears are quite high up in the mountains seeking them
**** = Jeans and sneakers and off-road running shoes.
An Accidental Hike
Short Version:
Eat, run, meet, kill, ogle, eat, drive, walk, walk, walk, make yellow snow, walk, walk, walk, talk, cook, eat, talk, drink, sleep
Long Version:
Having eaten an incredible amount of delicious Chinese foods the previous evening, starting the day with a run seemed like an appropriate thing to do. Right up to the point where we had to go out of the warm house. Still, we completed 7km without meeting anything that wanted to eat us, and were hungry again when we arrived back at the farm.
Breakfast was both copious and delicious, and we we set off into town pleasantly stuffed. We stopped on the way at the Dunster General Store, where we met some more locals* (Hi Stu and Danielle!) and then harvested a squirrel on the way to Beaverdam Falls, where we saw two golden eagles soaring in circles above the river and a bear on the far bank. By the time we made it to town at noon we were well ready to try the Mennonite cinnamon buns we'd been hearing about all morning. Mennonites are a Christian Anabaptist group, who espouse non-violence and adult baptism**. The women we saw were dressed like they were living in the 19th century, which indicates that they're members of a conservative branch of this proto-Amish sect. Not sure how much any of that contributes to the deliciousness of their cinnamon buns, but they're certainly blimmin good. We ate one each, then headed off to hike to the natural rock arch high on the shoulder of Beaver Mountain.
First, though, there was a stop at the liquor store, where both the woman at the counter and another patron gave us things to add to our travel itinerary, including a quick hike to a worth-seeing waterfall not far from where we were. The directions to the trailhead were comprehensive and accurate, and the only thing missing was an instruction to ignore the "No Trespassing" sign, which was an unfortunate omission as it meant that instead of parking at the bottom of the hill, we drove on up it. Several kilometres. Our suspicions about having missed our trail were confirmed when we reached the Halfway Viewpoint and Cabin, where we made our second Believing Signs error; this time a "Steep, 4x4-only road from this point" sign had us parking the van on the flat and walking the 5.5km of entirely-driveable dirt to the turning bay at the end of the road. From there it was a 45-minute scramble over steep rocky terrain to the summit, with marmot and pika sightings along the way and a stop to eat sour dinosaurs at the old fire lookout. We were well above the snow line by the time we reached the peak, and some locals we met on the way back down said they'd had two dustings of fresh snow in the last couple of weeks.
They also told us that Christchurch had been hit by a significant earthquake, which was ungood to hear, but it was reassuring to be told that no-one had died. A quick stop at the closed Beanery*** for internet access and then we were on the road back to Stefi and Archie's, where we found a fire lit in the woodstove insdoors, and another under the grill outside. Archie had this one pretty much perfectly placed to start cooking Buffy, the recently-deceased cow, and so soon he and I were standing around sizzling chunks of bovine while enjoying a delicious beer or two.
A bout of serious weather rolled in just as we started eating, bending the trees a long way over, shaking the house with thunderous thunder, and lighting up the growing darkness at ever-decreasing intervals. The rain was torrential, but it was wind v trees which ended up knocking the power out**** and forced us to finish eating Buffy by candlelight. We kept Stefi and Archie up well past their bedtime, drank a coupe of drinks too many*****, and then went to bed to the sound of the driving rain. Which was really rather nice when heard from inside a warm, dry house.
Buffy was delicious.
* = Not actually permanent locals; rather, they were woofers, which means that they travel about the place, working on organic farms for 4-6 hours a day in exchange for food and a place to sleep. The Robson Valley, which houses both Dunster and McBride, is a hot-bed of woofing, much like the Nelson region of NZ, only without the Asian-bashing skinheads. In this instance, we'd met a British graphic designer, and a chartered accountant from Calgary. Just before we arrived, Stefi and Archie had farewelled an Australian woman, who'd taken a 19-hour bus to the ferry terminal at Prince Rupert (it's something like a 17-hour ferry trip from there to Vancouver Island), and they'd not long before said Auf Wiedersehn to a pair of German frauleins, who'd apparently had more than a few of the local lads trying unsuccessfully to get past the (occasionally usefully obfuscatory, it seems) language barrier
** = As opposed to the practise of dunking infants, which Anabaptists contend is rendered meaningless by their non-choice in the matter
*** = Closed wifi-enabled cafes are a grand source of free, unlimited, no-purchase-required internet access
**** = We found out the next morning that the storm had knocked out power not only to the whole valley (1100-odd people), but also in a number of sizeable patches all over the province. Several thousand people affected, power still out through to late morning for us, later for others. Mainly trees down on powerlines, apparently, and the response to one local's call to report exactly that indicates why it took so long to rectify: power company said call 911, who said call power company. Eventually a call to the Forest Service got some action, but they were surprised to be hearing from a private individual, rather than from either the power company or 911 folks. Meanwhile, the tree was causing arcing across lines, and was on fire.
***** = May have just been me, as no-one else seemed any the worse for wear the next morning.
Eat, run, meet, kill, ogle, eat, drive, walk, walk, walk, make yellow snow, walk, walk, walk, talk, cook, eat, talk, drink, sleep
Long Version:
Having eaten an incredible amount of delicious Chinese foods the previous evening, starting the day with a run seemed like an appropriate thing to do. Right up to the point where we had to go out of the warm house. Still, we completed 7km without meeting anything that wanted to eat us, and were hungry again when we arrived back at the farm.
Breakfast was both copious and delicious, and we we set off into town pleasantly stuffed. We stopped on the way at the Dunster General Store, where we met some more locals* (Hi Stu and Danielle!) and then harvested a squirrel on the way to Beaverdam Falls, where we saw two golden eagles soaring in circles above the river and a bear on the far bank. By the time we made it to town at noon we were well ready to try the Mennonite cinnamon buns we'd been hearing about all morning. Mennonites are a Christian Anabaptist group, who espouse non-violence and adult baptism**. The women we saw were dressed like they were living in the 19th century, which indicates that they're members of a conservative branch of this proto-Amish sect. Not sure how much any of that contributes to the deliciousness of their cinnamon buns, but they're certainly blimmin good. We ate one each, then headed off to hike to the natural rock arch high on the shoulder of Beaver Mountain.
First, though, there was a stop at the liquor store, where both the woman at the counter and another patron gave us things to add to our travel itinerary, including a quick hike to a worth-seeing waterfall not far from where we were. The directions to the trailhead were comprehensive and accurate, and the only thing missing was an instruction to ignore the "No Trespassing" sign, which was an unfortunate omission as it meant that instead of parking at the bottom of the hill, we drove on up it. Several kilometres. Our suspicions about having missed our trail were confirmed when we reached the Halfway Viewpoint and Cabin, where we made our second Believing Signs error; this time a "Steep, 4x4-only road from this point" sign had us parking the van on the flat and walking the 5.5km of entirely-driveable dirt to the turning bay at the end of the road. From there it was a 45-minute scramble over steep rocky terrain to the summit, with marmot and pika sightings along the way and a stop to eat sour dinosaurs at the old fire lookout. We were well above the snow line by the time we reached the peak, and some locals we met on the way back down said they'd had two dustings of fresh snow in the last couple of weeks.
They also told us that Christchurch had been hit by a significant earthquake, which was ungood to hear, but it was reassuring to be told that no-one had died. A quick stop at the closed Beanery*** for internet access and then we were on the road back to Stefi and Archie's, where we found a fire lit in the woodstove insdoors, and another under the grill outside. Archie had this one pretty much perfectly placed to start cooking Buffy, the recently-deceased cow, and so soon he and I were standing around sizzling chunks of bovine while enjoying a delicious beer or two.
A bout of serious weather rolled in just as we started eating, bending the trees a long way over, shaking the house with thunderous thunder, and lighting up the growing darkness at ever-decreasing intervals. The rain was torrential, but it was wind v trees which ended up knocking the power out**** and forced us to finish eating Buffy by candlelight. We kept Stefi and Archie up well past their bedtime, drank a coupe of drinks too many*****, and then went to bed to the sound of the driving rain. Which was really rather nice when heard from inside a warm, dry house.
Buffy was delicious.
* = Not actually permanent locals; rather, they were woofers, which means that they travel about the place, working on organic farms for 4-6 hours a day in exchange for food and a place to sleep. The Robson Valley, which houses both Dunster and McBride, is a hot-bed of woofing, much like the Nelson region of NZ, only without the Asian-bashing skinheads. In this instance, we'd met a British graphic designer, and a chartered accountant from Calgary. Just before we arrived, Stefi and Archie had farewelled an Australian woman, who'd taken a 19-hour bus to the ferry terminal at Prince Rupert (it's something like a 17-hour ferry trip from there to Vancouver Island), and they'd not long before said Auf Wiedersehn to a pair of German frauleins, who'd apparently had more than a few of the local lads trying unsuccessfully to get past the (occasionally usefully obfuscatory, it seems) language barrier
** = As opposed to the practise of dunking infants, which Anabaptists contend is rendered meaningless by their non-choice in the matter
*** = Closed wifi-enabled cafes are a grand source of free, unlimited, no-purchase-required internet access
**** = We found out the next morning that the storm had knocked out power not only to the whole valley (1100-odd people), but also in a number of sizeable patches all over the province. Several thousand people affected, power still out through to late morning for us, later for others. Mainly trees down on powerlines, apparently, and the response to one local's call to report exactly that indicates why it took so long to rectify: power company said call 911, who said call power company. Eventually a call to the Forest Service got some action, but they were surprised to be hearing from a private individual, rather than from either the power company or 911 folks. Meanwhile, the tree was causing arcing across lines, and was on fire.
***** = May have just been me, as no-one else seemed any the worse for wear the next morning.
Stalker
Short Version:
The best of NZ heralds our arrival in a small town, where we find long-lost new friends, and see some sights, including the passage of Uranus
Long Version:
On the radio as we drove towards McBride we heard the cheesiest radio ad in history - the chap hides the engagement ring in the hole on the golf course for his belle to find when she finishes three-putting for a double-bogey*. The company the ad was for?
[dramatic music]
Michael Hill, Jeweller.
Scary.
Then when we hit McBride and wandered into the wifi-enabled Beanery cafe the Feelers were being played on the radio. It's a wonder anyone deigns to speak with us once they find out where we're from if those are the cultural representations they have of NZ over here.
Still, speak to us they do, even when my conversation-starter is "You seem to know everybody."
Beanery Donna admitted the charge, and when I said we were looking for an old friend of my mother's who lived in the McBride area 25 years ago, whose name is Stefi, she knew instantly who I meant, and phoned her for me, despite my scraggy beard and (probably) malodour. Stefi, in turn, picked who I was as soon as I spoke, and we arranged to meet at the Beanery in a couple of hours, which gave Janine and I time to do some walking around the town:
- To the bird-watching gazebo, on the end of the eastern arm of horseshoe-shaped ex-river segment Horseshoe Lake. There were some birds at the far side, but they were far enough away that we couldn't see what kind, or what they were doing
- To and along the Dominion Creek walkway, where we saw several tiny frogs, ranging in size from Nene's smallest toe to my second-largest. They were wonderfully camouflaged in brown and black, and we only saw them when they moved, which made me wonder how many had NOT moved, and been trampled underfoot
- Along the highway to the start of the River Trail. A trucker on the highway tooted appreciatively at Janine, scaring both of us, then we in turn spooked a deer on the trail.
- Back into town along Main St, past the orbits of Neptune and Uranus, past fire hydrants painted as farmers and dalmatian dogs and eagles and Thomas Edison, the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury and eventually to and past the sun (a streetlamp) and back to the Beanery
Stefi and Archie joined us in the cafe, where coffee and water were drunk, and a Skype call to Ma was cut brutally short by an incredibly long freight train thundering past, containers stacked two-high. The four of us ate delicious foods at the local Chinese restaurant, then we headed out to the farm, 45km or so southeast of town. We drove over a slightly sway-backed wood-surfaced Bailey bridge, past a big black bear on the roadside, and past where the ferry once ferried travellers across the Fraser River. The bell which once sounded arrivals and departures now lives at Stefi and Archie's, on the gate between the machinery zoo and what once was the home paddock and is now an extensive orchard and garden area surrounding house, studio, and various other buildings. Dogs and cats and horses and sheep and chickens mingle (mostly) good-naturedly, and we went to bed wishing we'd arrived earlier so we could have seen more of the place before dark fell. Still, there's always tomorrow...
* = For non-golfers: more than two putts is bad; and a double-bogey is just cause for a tantrum (no foot-stomping on the greens, though). Good time for a proposal? Maybe not so much
The best of NZ heralds our arrival in a small town, where we find long-lost new friends, and see some sights, including the passage of Uranus
Long Version:
On the radio as we drove towards McBride we heard the cheesiest radio ad in history - the chap hides the engagement ring in the hole on the golf course for his belle to find when she finishes three-putting for a double-bogey*. The company the ad was for?
[dramatic music]
Michael Hill, Jeweller.
Scary.
Then when we hit McBride and wandered into the wifi-enabled Beanery cafe the Feelers were being played on the radio. It's a wonder anyone deigns to speak with us once they find out where we're from if those are the cultural representations they have of NZ over here.
Still, speak to us they do, even when my conversation-starter is "You seem to know everybody."
Beanery Donna admitted the charge, and when I said we were looking for an old friend of my mother's who lived in the McBride area 25 years ago, whose name is Stefi, she knew instantly who I meant, and phoned her for me, despite my scraggy beard and (probably) malodour. Stefi, in turn, picked who I was as soon as I spoke, and we arranged to meet at the Beanery in a couple of hours, which gave Janine and I time to do some walking around the town:
- To the bird-watching gazebo, on the end of the eastern arm of horseshoe-shaped ex-river segment Horseshoe Lake. There were some birds at the far side, but they were far enough away that we couldn't see what kind, or what they were doing
- To and along the Dominion Creek walkway, where we saw several tiny frogs, ranging in size from Nene's smallest toe to my second-largest. They were wonderfully camouflaged in brown and black, and we only saw them when they moved, which made me wonder how many had NOT moved, and been trampled underfoot
- Along the highway to the start of the River Trail. A trucker on the highway tooted appreciatively at Janine, scaring both of us, then we in turn spooked a deer on the trail.
- Back into town along Main St, past the orbits of Neptune and Uranus, past fire hydrants painted as farmers and dalmatian dogs and eagles and Thomas Edison, the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury and eventually to and past the sun (a streetlamp) and back to the Beanery
Stefi and Archie joined us in the cafe, where coffee and water were drunk, and a Skype call to Ma was cut brutally short by an incredibly long freight train thundering past, containers stacked two-high. The four of us ate delicious foods at the local Chinese restaurant, then we headed out to the farm, 45km or so southeast of town. We drove over a slightly sway-backed wood-surfaced Bailey bridge, past a big black bear on the roadside, and past where the ferry once ferried travellers across the Fraser River. The bell which once sounded arrivals and departures now lives at Stefi and Archie's, on the gate between the machinery zoo and what once was the home paddock and is now an extensive orchard and garden area surrounding house, studio, and various other buildings. Dogs and cats and horses and sheep and chickens mingle (mostly) good-naturedly, and we went to bed wishing we'd arrived earlier so we could have seen more of the place before dark fell. Still, there's always tomorrow...
* = For non-golfers: more than two putts is bad; and a double-bogey is just cause for a tantrum (no foot-stomping on the greens, though). Good time for a proposal? Maybe not so much
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Something's Going On!
Short Version:
A night of luxury with Ted and Trudy, a ride in the forest (on a 57 Chevy), large animal impacts
Long Version:
We'd met Ted and Tracey in Whistler, and invited ourselves to come stay when we passed their way. Arrangements made during a couple of mildly bizarre payphone calls (Telus take note: $2 for a one-minute call to a town 100-odd km away is NOT good value) from Williams Lake, and we arrived at their farm at the same time as Ted, and a thunderstorm. We spent a lovely evening, clean and warm and dry, slept wonderfully, and ate like kings the next morning before heading north through Quesnel* and on to Prince George, which welcomed us with a giant Pinocchio and a parking space right outside Cycle Logic, where we acquired an oldish trail map and hand-drawn diagram of how to get to the riding. A quick stop at the nearby bakery for delicious baked goods and we were on our way, out of town to the Otway Nordic Centre, which is a cross-country ski trail network that, like Lost Lake near Whistler, doubles as a mountain-biking area in summer.
The map was an automatically-plotted GPS output printout, and was missing a few newer trails along with a coherent view of where to access the trail network. We started up a cross-country ski lane initially, but turned back when we saw the bear and her cubs parked mid-trail a hundred metres uphill of us. Soon as we did, we spotted the access point for the bike trails, and we were away laughing - literally, in Janine's case, as she surged up the Curves and Expresso trails and then powered off into the trail network. I was a bit tired, and a bit grouchy, and it took me a good hour or so before I started to really get into the swing of things. Once I did, though, I started carrying a grin nearly as wide as Janine's down trails with nice flowing rhythm and over challenging but rideable obstacles, including a derelict 57 Chevy and a 20-foot-long ribbed 4-inch monorail. Even the uphill trails provided great riding, with the occasional adrenaline burst when we heard noises from the woods. No more large critters though - just a squirrel throwing cones at us.
Three hours later we arrived back at the van, tired and dirty and wet, but grinning. Not sure the fat people who'd chosen the Otway parking area as the location for their in-car serious discussion were entirely pleased to have us back and bustling about the place, but we were gone soon enough, back through town and out to the east towards McBride, 200 or so km away. A quick stop at a rest Area near Dome** Creek yielded some scary statistics from an informational signboard:
- On average, there are 4-8 large animal impacts every hour in Canada
- Most of these occur between 7pm and midnight
- Most of them involve moose.
We've seen a moose. Mooses are HUGE. We don't want to crash into a moose. Bad enough harvesting another bird just after leaving Prince George, let alone something that's going to give as good as it gets on the damage front.
A Mustang stopped, and a fat man emerged, carrying a full bottle of Pepsi. Which he then emptied onto the ground. We left before things got any weirder, and made it to the LaSalle Lake campground with enough time before dark to set up camp, cook and eat dinner, and admire the views of the Cariboo Mountains reflected in the lake's mirror-like surface from a vantage point at the tip of a log-and-earth jetty near our lakeside campsite. Then bed, and a good sleep except for the two pickup trucks which drove round the campground loop and away at random times in the night, and one instance where Janine woke me up to tell me "Something's going on!" before lying back down and recommencing snoring action. Freak.
* = My list of noteworthy items from Quesnel reads: Robin's Donuts; Satan's truck; lots of flowers; pretty town; big mills
** = Always reminds me of the story of the IT guy who was called upon to help a woman having trouble doing something-or-other. He needed her password to complete testing the fix. It was "DOME." Job done, his curiosity got the better of him and he asked her why she'd chosen it. She blushed and refused to divulge the answer. After much cajoling and an eventual threat of perpetual IT issues for her if she didn't spill the beans she eventually caved in and said simply: "It's two words."
A night of luxury with Ted and Trudy, a ride in the forest (on a 57 Chevy), large animal impacts
Long Version:
We'd met Ted and Tracey in Whistler, and invited ourselves to come stay when we passed their way. Arrangements made during a couple of mildly bizarre payphone calls (Telus take note: $2 for a one-minute call to a town 100-odd km away is NOT good value) from Williams Lake, and we arrived at their farm at the same time as Ted, and a thunderstorm. We spent a lovely evening, clean and warm and dry, slept wonderfully, and ate like kings the next morning before heading north through Quesnel* and on to Prince George, which welcomed us with a giant Pinocchio and a parking space right outside Cycle Logic, where we acquired an oldish trail map and hand-drawn diagram of how to get to the riding. A quick stop at the nearby bakery for delicious baked goods and we were on our way, out of town to the Otway Nordic Centre, which is a cross-country ski trail network that, like Lost Lake near Whistler, doubles as a mountain-biking area in summer.
The map was an automatically-plotted GPS output printout, and was missing a few newer trails along with a coherent view of where to access the trail network. We started up a cross-country ski lane initially, but turned back when we saw the bear and her cubs parked mid-trail a hundred metres uphill of us. Soon as we did, we spotted the access point for the bike trails, and we were away laughing - literally, in Janine's case, as she surged up the Curves and Expresso trails and then powered off into the trail network. I was a bit tired, and a bit grouchy, and it took me a good hour or so before I started to really get into the swing of things. Once I did, though, I started carrying a grin nearly as wide as Janine's down trails with nice flowing rhythm and over challenging but rideable obstacles, including a derelict 57 Chevy and a 20-foot-long ribbed 4-inch monorail. Even the uphill trails provided great riding, with the occasional adrenaline burst when we heard noises from the woods. No more large critters though - just a squirrel throwing cones at us.
Three hours later we arrived back at the van, tired and dirty and wet, but grinning. Not sure the fat people who'd chosen the Otway parking area as the location for their in-car serious discussion were entirely pleased to have us back and bustling about the place, but we were gone soon enough, back through town and out to the east towards McBride, 200 or so km away. A quick stop at a rest Area near Dome** Creek yielded some scary statistics from an informational signboard:
- On average, there are 4-8 large animal impacts every hour in Canada
- Most of these occur between 7pm and midnight
- Most of them involve moose.
We've seen a moose. Mooses are HUGE. We don't want to crash into a moose. Bad enough harvesting another bird just after leaving Prince George, let alone something that's going to give as good as it gets on the damage front.
A Mustang stopped, and a fat man emerged, carrying a full bottle of Pepsi. Which he then emptied onto the ground. We left before things got any weirder, and made it to the LaSalle Lake campground with enough time before dark to set up camp, cook and eat dinner, and admire the views of the Cariboo Mountains reflected in the lake's mirror-like surface from a vantage point at the tip of a log-and-earth jetty near our lakeside campsite. Then bed, and a good sleep except for the two pickup trucks which drove round the campground loop and away at random times in the night, and one instance where Janine woke me up to tell me "Something's going on!" before lying back down and recommencing snoring action. Freak.
* = My list of noteworthy items from Quesnel reads: Robin's Donuts; Satan's truck; lots of flowers; pretty town; big mills
** = Always reminds me of the story of the IT guy who was called upon to help a woman having trouble doing something-or-other. He needed her password to complete testing the fix. It was "DOME." Job done, his curiosity got the better of him and he asked her why she'd chosen it. She blushed and refused to divulge the answer. After much cajoling and an eventual threat of perpetual IT issues for her if she didn't spill the beans she eventually caved in and said simply: "It's two words."
Is That a Horse?
Dugan Lake campground was quite full, especially when compared to the isolated spots we'd been enjoying. It also had houses quite nearby, some of which had significant numbers of vehicles in various states of disrepair and/or decrepitude, and a float-plane on the lake. I wasn't expecting the best night's sleep I've ever had.
In the end, though, all was quiet, all night, and the only thing that stopped us sleeping well was me, waking up and checking the watch, sure that it must be almost time to go to the graveyard meeting. At 0330. And then at 0430. Again at 0450. And at 0530. Then someone suggested that I should consider getting the hell out of bed so she could sleep.
On the way in to Williams Lake, we heard an item on the radio about BC's legislative shenanigans around caring for the elderly; apparently in the early 2000's, the province set out to reform laws around guardianship, with specific focus on elder care. It was ground-breaking legislative development work, and the suite of laws they came up with have been widely-copied and implemented in provinces across Canada and in a number of other nations. In BC, though, the passage of the reforms into law stalled in 2007 as a result of the less-than-favorable economic winds then blowing. This means that today in BC - the province that started it all, bore the expense of the research and the difficulty of developing the legislation - the laws governing care for the elderly are still the bad old laws; the laws that are based on 1960's definitions of lunacy, and which have been shown time and time again to benefit the so-called carers at the expense of the best interests of the oldies. Essentially it's really easy to swipe the assets of your elderly relatives. We'd like to invite all those of our parents not yet resident in Canada to come join us in BC as soon as possible.
We met Scott (Hi Scott!) at the graveyard, and set off down the Boy Scout Trail to the valley floor. The trail from there once zig-zagged across the pond on a raised boardwalk, but a few years back the beavers got extra busy and raised the water level higher than the surface of the boardwalk. Now the trail goes around the pond before crossing the river and starting the long but very fun haul up the Spokey Hollow and Crankcase Alley trails. A quick stop to take in the views out over the lake and the town (and catch our breath - Scott wasn't hanging about on those steep uphill sections!), and then we were onto the Ravin trail, which started vehemently and got better and better before dropping us into the Max trails (Middle and Lower; Upper is still largely buried under deadfall from the last big ice-storm that blew through), which provided a fast but technical blast along the face of the hill, across a number of fallen trees with angled chocks tucked into their downhill ends, and then through a wonderful section of forest full of twisting, undulating terrain where we dived and swayed between trees at high speed, all the way back to Spokey Hollow. Which was even better riding downhill than it had been riding up. Even the horse-sized dog we met along the way was in a good mood (I'm assuming this, based on it not eating my leg).
We spent the next hour or two at Barking Spider, getting today's busted spoke replaced and acquiring a fancypants new bag to replace the one that disappeared at Whistler. Then we ignored the best-coffee advice of Scott and Mitch (Hi Mitch!) and went to the Gecko Cafe, which had truly appalling coffee and tasty food, although I'd've preferred a slightly bigger portion. Then we hit the road north to Quesnel, with some fairly mixed impressions of Williams Lake: great riding; grim industrialism; a sizeable underclass; some intelligent, interesting people; poor town planning; shitty coffee; no good beer; lots of wilderness close at hand; lots of wildlife nearby; lots of signs warning about auto theft.
We'll go back, but we're not planning to settle there.
In the end, though, all was quiet, all night, and the only thing that stopped us sleeping well was me, waking up and checking the watch, sure that it must be almost time to go to the graveyard meeting. At 0330. And then at 0430. Again at 0450. And at 0530. Then someone suggested that I should consider getting the hell out of bed so she could sleep.
On the way in to Williams Lake, we heard an item on the radio about BC's legislative shenanigans around caring for the elderly; apparently in the early 2000's, the province set out to reform laws around guardianship, with specific focus on elder care. It was ground-breaking legislative development work, and the suite of laws they came up with have been widely-copied and implemented in provinces across Canada and in a number of other nations. In BC, though, the passage of the reforms into law stalled in 2007 as a result of the less-than-favorable economic winds then blowing. This means that today in BC - the province that started it all, bore the expense of the research and the difficulty of developing the legislation - the laws governing care for the elderly are still the bad old laws; the laws that are based on 1960's definitions of lunacy, and which have been shown time and time again to benefit the so-called carers at the expense of the best interests of the oldies. Essentially it's really easy to swipe the assets of your elderly relatives. We'd like to invite all those of our parents not yet resident in Canada to come join us in BC as soon as possible.
We met Scott (Hi Scott!) at the graveyard, and set off down the Boy Scout Trail to the valley floor. The trail from there once zig-zagged across the pond on a raised boardwalk, but a few years back the beavers got extra busy and raised the water level higher than the surface of the boardwalk. Now the trail goes around the pond before crossing the river and starting the long but very fun haul up the Spokey Hollow and Crankcase Alley trails. A quick stop to take in the views out over the lake and the town (and catch our breath - Scott wasn't hanging about on those steep uphill sections!), and then we were onto the Ravin trail, which started vehemently and got better and better before dropping us into the Max trails (Middle and Lower; Upper is still largely buried under deadfall from the last big ice-storm that blew through), which provided a fast but technical blast along the face of the hill, across a number of fallen trees with angled chocks tucked into their downhill ends, and then through a wonderful section of forest full of twisting, undulating terrain where we dived and swayed between trees at high speed, all the way back to Spokey Hollow. Which was even better riding downhill than it had been riding up. Even the horse-sized dog we met along the way was in a good mood (I'm assuming this, based on it not eating my leg).
We spent the next hour or two at Barking Spider, getting today's busted spoke replaced and acquiring a fancypants new bag to replace the one that disappeared at Whistler. Then we ignored the best-coffee advice of Scott and Mitch (Hi Mitch!) and went to the Gecko Cafe, which had truly appalling coffee and tasty food, although I'd've preferred a slightly bigger portion. Then we hit the road north to Quesnel, with some fairly mixed impressions of Williams Lake: great riding; grim industrialism; a sizeable underclass; some intelligent, interesting people; poor town planning; shitty coffee; no good beer; lots of wilderness close at hand; lots of wildlife nearby; lots of signs warning about auto theft.
We'll go back, but we're not planning to settle there.
Accidental Afro
Short Version:
Bull onions, mining with water, a wrong turn up a long hill, then another down a sweet trail. We set up an ominous early morning meeting.
Long Version:
We stopped at the "World Famous! Bullion Pit!" just outside Likely. Lovely Wife asked for clarification of "bullion" and received a family history lesson instead - my mother's mother's maiden name was Bullions*. The Bullion Pit is a bloody big hole in the ground, dug using water cannons, which were enormous. The engineering involved in getting the requisite quantities of water to the site was pretty extreme, and after an initial burst of productivity the mine failed to come through with enough of the shiny stuff to warrant further capital outlay. The mine fell into disuse, its equipment was sold off by enterprising staff, and little remains today of what was a significant mining exercise except for the bloody big hole in the ground. Which, as we discovered, you can't even see from the signposted touristy site; the bloody big hole in the ground you CAN see is the Bullion Pit's little brother, the Drop Pit, which is less than a quarter of the size of its neighbour and has a far less illustrious history. The modern-day success story from the Bullion Pit is the removal to Likely and subsequent restoration - for use as Town Hall - of the mine's Mess Hall and Kitchen building**.
Just after we left the Bullion Pit non-viewing area we saw a bloody big, bloody shiny-coated black bear charge out of the bushes on the side of the road and run bloody quickly to the other side, where he disappeared into the trees. Soon afterwards we saw an eagle, cruising the thermal currents of the cliffs to the south of Williams Lake.
All of which made us feel very much like it was time we got on our bikes, and ride up a hill.
For longer than we were supposed to.
Turns out that the bloke who said: "At the top of the Fox Climb, head across the road, and ride up the gravel gas pipeline access road until you hit the Hillbilly Deluxe trail," actually meant: "At the top of the Fox Climb, head across the road, and ride up the gas pipeline access road until you reach a sealed road. Turn left onto this road. At the second intersection, turn right. Turn left at the first road and ride to the end of the road, where you will find a map, and the trailhead for the Hillbilly Deluxe and Shuttlebunny trails." We rode a LONG way up the gravel gas pipeline access road, and explored several side trails, before giving up and riding back down to where we'd left the inner Fox Mountain trail network, and back onto the well-signposted Fox loop.
We followed our noses for a while, and then someone decided to take a random side-trail, which brought us - eventually - to the start of the Afro trail. Turned out to have been an inspired choice, because once we got past being slightly worried about how tough going a black/advanced-rated trail was going to be in this place, we found ourselves bombing down an absolutely wonderful trail, with some of the best flowing lines, fun obstacles, and sweet carving cornering that we've struck so far, and if it weren't for yet another broken spoke on my rear wheel, we'd probably have gone back up for another crack at it.
As it was, though, we needed a repair, and the bike shop we'd been frequenting is closed Mondays. Luckily, there's another bike shop in town, so we toddled on in to Barking Spider Mountain Biking, and found a mighty friendly chap who fixed my spoke, and drew us a map of the Westside trail network. And then offered to play ride guide for us, which was an offer we certainly weren't about to turn down.
It wasn't until we were halfway to our chosen camping spot for the night, at Dugan Lake, that we realised that we'd just arranged to meet a bloke whose name we didn't know, really early in the morning, at a graveyard.
* = Apparently other kids called them Bullonions in an attempt to provoke them. Given how many of them were redheads, I suspect they probably got their response, and then some.
** = I reckon this is where the townsfolk will gather for a crisis meeting during the lottery win civil disturbance
Bull onions, mining with water, a wrong turn up a long hill, then another down a sweet trail. We set up an ominous early morning meeting.
Long Version:
We stopped at the "World Famous! Bullion Pit!" just outside Likely. Lovely Wife asked for clarification of "bullion" and received a family history lesson instead - my mother's mother's maiden name was Bullions*. The Bullion Pit is a bloody big hole in the ground, dug using water cannons, which were enormous. The engineering involved in getting the requisite quantities of water to the site was pretty extreme, and after an initial burst of productivity the mine failed to come through with enough of the shiny stuff to warrant further capital outlay. The mine fell into disuse, its equipment was sold off by enterprising staff, and little remains today of what was a significant mining exercise except for the bloody big hole in the ground. Which, as we discovered, you can't even see from the signposted touristy site; the bloody big hole in the ground you CAN see is the Bullion Pit's little brother, the Drop Pit, which is less than a quarter of the size of its neighbour and has a far less illustrious history. The modern-day success story from the Bullion Pit is the removal to Likely and subsequent restoration - for use as Town Hall - of the mine's Mess Hall and Kitchen building**.
Just after we left the Bullion Pit non-viewing area we saw a bloody big, bloody shiny-coated black bear charge out of the bushes on the side of the road and run bloody quickly to the other side, where he disappeared into the trees. Soon afterwards we saw an eagle, cruising the thermal currents of the cliffs to the south of Williams Lake.
All of which made us feel very much like it was time we got on our bikes, and ride up a hill.
For longer than we were supposed to.
Turns out that the bloke who said: "At the top of the Fox Climb, head across the road, and ride up the gravel gas pipeline access road until you hit the Hillbilly Deluxe trail," actually meant: "At the top of the Fox Climb, head across the road, and ride up the gas pipeline access road until you reach a sealed road. Turn left onto this road. At the second intersection, turn right. Turn left at the first road and ride to the end of the road, where you will find a map, and the trailhead for the Hillbilly Deluxe and Shuttlebunny trails." We rode a LONG way up the gravel gas pipeline access road, and explored several side trails, before giving up and riding back down to where we'd left the inner Fox Mountain trail network, and back onto the well-signposted Fox loop.
We followed our noses for a while, and then someone decided to take a random side-trail, which brought us - eventually - to the start of the Afro trail. Turned out to have been an inspired choice, because once we got past being slightly worried about how tough going a black/advanced-rated trail was going to be in this place, we found ourselves bombing down an absolutely wonderful trail, with some of the best flowing lines, fun obstacles, and sweet carving cornering that we've struck so far, and if it weren't for yet another broken spoke on my rear wheel, we'd probably have gone back up for another crack at it.
As it was, though, we needed a repair, and the bike shop we'd been frequenting is closed Mondays. Luckily, there's another bike shop in town, so we toddled on in to Barking Spider Mountain Biking, and found a mighty friendly chap who fixed my spoke, and drew us a map of the Westside trail network. And then offered to play ride guide for us, which was an offer we certainly weren't about to turn down.
It wasn't until we were halfway to our chosen camping spot for the night, at Dugan Lake, that we realised that we'd just arranged to meet a bloke whose name we didn't know, really early in the morning, at a graveyard.
* = Apparently other kids called them Bullonions in an attempt to provoke them. Given how many of them were redheads, I suspect they probably got their response, and then some.
** = I reckon this is where the townsfolk will gather for a crisis meeting during the lottery win civil disturbance
Hello Horsefly!
Short Version:
Clean clothes, grimy town. We leave Williams Lake in search of somewhere prettier to drink delicious Chocolate Porter
Long Version:
We went to Williams Lake town, to a laundromat. There were pieces of kids' art on the walls, one of which caught my eye: a pretty flower in a field, with rain. Not a bad summation of Williams Lake. Apart from, maybe, the pretty flower.
There was a bunch more riding to be done around Williams Lake, but we were starting to feel depressed by the grimness of the industrialism, and so decided to head for somewhere with a more enticing name: Horsefly. In truth, we'd been told the area around Horsefly was lovely, and it was close enough to hand that we could easily come back through if the desire to ride more began to outweigh the desire not to be in Williams Lake. More likely, though, was the road through Likely and onwards north from there.
The balance of power in the forests shifted markedly even in the short eastward distance we covered, from predominantly-conifer to mainly birch. The varying shades of green from the larger, deciduous leaves lent an autumnal feel to the woods, as did the red dead leaves on the dead bushes beneath the roadside powerlines. A number of quality free campsites meant this area featured heavily in our dirtbag camping guidebook*, and the two we eyeballed before settling in at Rafter Creek were certainly among the nicer ones we've encountered. Rafter Creek was just as good, and had the added advantage of campsite seclusion, provided by thick stands of trees between campsites. Oh, and there was only one other couple within cooee. Sweet.
We strolled on the stony beach, and drank the secret Chocolate Porter** I'd had stashed in my luggage since Vancouver, and pretty soon we were feeling right as rain again. The only real negative was the lack of wildlife compared to Forest Lake, but then we turned away from where we'd been watching columns of rain marching across the northern arm of Quesnel Lake in front of the last of the day's light, and saw a young bear walking away from us along the beach. He was no more than ten metres from us at that point, and we wondered how close he'd gotten, and how long he'd been there before we'd turned around.
It was significantly warmer at Rafter Creek than it had been at Forest Lake, but the mist on the lake and clouds draping the hills on the far side of the water were a now-familiar sight. As was the fact that it had rained heavily overnight, and was still raining when we hauled ourselves out of the Reaper, bleary-eyed and yawning. The squirrels were busy hoarding pinecones, which was a striking contrast to their cousins at Lake Tyax, who we'd watched eating half berries and discarding the other half in order to pluck new ones from the heavily-laden bushes. Maybe pinecones keep better than berries do.
Our good moods from the previous evening had not faded overnight, so we made our way across a river with a STOP sign planted mid-current and into Likely, where we bought a lottery ticket. I like buying lottery tickets in small towns we pass through - I like to imagine that we'll win, and that the town will be thrown into disarray as the assumedly-local big winner continues to delay claiming the prize. I imagine suspicion and conflict rife throughout the district; cousin-spouses searching each other's possessions; neighbours breaking in to others' houses to rifle drawers in search of the winning slip. And then we claim the prize, five hundred miles away. And buy a lot of Chocolate Porter.
* = "Camp Free (Or Really Cheap) in B.C.," in case anyone's seeking a copy with less stains and rips than ours
** = Chocolate Porters are the most delicious beers in the world.
Clean clothes, grimy town. We leave Williams Lake in search of somewhere prettier to drink delicious Chocolate Porter
Long Version:
We went to Williams Lake town, to a laundromat. There were pieces of kids' art on the walls, one of which caught my eye: a pretty flower in a field, with rain. Not a bad summation of Williams Lake. Apart from, maybe, the pretty flower.
There was a bunch more riding to be done around Williams Lake, but we were starting to feel depressed by the grimness of the industrialism, and so decided to head for somewhere with a more enticing name: Horsefly. In truth, we'd been told the area around Horsefly was lovely, and it was close enough to hand that we could easily come back through if the desire to ride more began to outweigh the desire not to be in Williams Lake. More likely, though, was the road through Likely and onwards north from there.
The balance of power in the forests shifted markedly even in the short eastward distance we covered, from predominantly-conifer to mainly birch. The varying shades of green from the larger, deciduous leaves lent an autumnal feel to the woods, as did the red dead leaves on the dead bushes beneath the roadside powerlines. A number of quality free campsites meant this area featured heavily in our dirtbag camping guidebook*, and the two we eyeballed before settling in at Rafter Creek were certainly among the nicer ones we've encountered. Rafter Creek was just as good, and had the added advantage of campsite seclusion, provided by thick stands of trees between campsites. Oh, and there was only one other couple within cooee. Sweet.
We strolled on the stony beach, and drank the secret Chocolate Porter** I'd had stashed in my luggage since Vancouver, and pretty soon we were feeling right as rain again. The only real negative was the lack of wildlife compared to Forest Lake, but then we turned away from where we'd been watching columns of rain marching across the northern arm of Quesnel Lake in front of the last of the day's light, and saw a young bear walking away from us along the beach. He was no more than ten metres from us at that point, and we wondered how close he'd gotten, and how long he'd been there before we'd turned around.
It was significantly warmer at Rafter Creek than it had been at Forest Lake, but the mist on the lake and clouds draping the hills on the far side of the water were a now-familiar sight. As was the fact that it had rained heavily overnight, and was still raining when we hauled ourselves out of the Reaper, bleary-eyed and yawning. The squirrels were busy hoarding pinecones, which was a striking contrast to their cousins at Lake Tyax, who we'd watched eating half berries and discarding the other half in order to pluck new ones from the heavily-laden bushes. Maybe pinecones keep better than berries do.
Our good moods from the previous evening had not faded overnight, so we made our way across a river with a STOP sign planted mid-current and into Likely, where we bought a lottery ticket. I like buying lottery tickets in small towns we pass through - I like to imagine that we'll win, and that the town will be thrown into disarray as the assumedly-local big winner continues to delay claiming the prize. I imagine suspicion and conflict rife throughout the district; cousin-spouses searching each other's possessions; neighbours breaking in to others' houses to rifle drawers in search of the winning slip. And then we claim the prize, five hundred miles away. And buy a lot of Chocolate Porter.
* = "Camp Free (Or Really Cheap) in B.C.," in case anyone's seeking a copy with less stains and rips than ours
** = Chocolate Porters are the most delicious beers in the world.
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