Icey ice

With the christmas work schedule being so tight, its nice to take advantage of mornings off to head off into the hills close to home and sample their offerings. This morning I had the pleasure of climbing with my good friend Jonson from Edmonton. The stoke factor is always super high when we are out and we hooted and hollered up Rogans gulley and a bit of Cascade waterfall before heading to canmore for breakfast and emormous talk, all before work at 1pm.

Back for more

So this past Thursday once again saw the Floose and I head off to the fabled hallows of Emerald lake. After conversing on the nuances of skiing terminoligy for about an hour, we were at the base of a beutiful 1000 foot chute.

Jay billing and the "powder posse" had "shreded" the slopes of Emerald the day before but there was still a little left over in the form of a great rolling run through the trees knee deep in the good stuff.

Being the shortest day of the year, we made a single run before heading back to the car. Soon after, the truffle pigs in field blew our minds with the pastries and coffee, no surprise.

The Norse noggan

Ah the holidays. These past few weeks have been filled with good food, christmas parties, working at the shop and trying to squeeze a little climbing and skiing in when possible. This past weekend we dove east towards Edmonton and Viking to see the folks for the holidays where we ate delectables, snowmobiled and hung low. good times

Gorillas in the mist

On thursday Greg Tos and I shot down the ol' trans canada highway towards that ice climbing mecca, Field to do the route "Superbok". At Field, all the climbs are named after beers and Its usually a good omen to have the route of choice's beer the night before the climb. According to my bro Jonsonite, Superbok was a really good summer ale that was brewed until a few years ago. A discontinued beer? Blaspheme! It appeared we were the first on the route this year as we postholed from pitch to pitch on a perfect warm and windless day, swinging the tools on a great waterfall. I must say that the day got the ice bug going again.......

The word

Last week saw Marc and I head up to the convenient slopes of the bow summit area. We were both feeling a bit sick from the cold that seems to have everyone in the gallows so our pace was relaxing and mellow for most of the day. Half way through the day the stoke tank was running on low for me as we have been so used to skiing amazing powder for the last few weeks and the wind blown slopes of the day it seemed, had me in a funk. The floose reminded me that this IS infact the rockies, not the columbias and that it is ALL infact, good. With vigor renued we shot up to a promising sheltered area and found pretty good turns all the way down to the car, complete with a powder eating smile or two.

Upslope compatable

With the snow being the way it has been here in the rockies, the decision to go skiing was easy to make when M-A and I had a day off this past Friday. Off we drove down the austere looking icefields parkway and into the land of high snowbanks and cold, still white.
The forecast on the CAA rated the area as considerable yesterday due to a number of reasons so we decided to take a liesurely path up through the trees and out of harms way, here marc can be seen wearing tan pants and a green jacket, hiking up the rock hard wind crust.
Digging a snow profile is always good fun, especially when the skiing isnt great. Here, the floose can be seen with a 125cm colum of snow which came off with a hard shear right at the ground which still seems to be radiating heat. If I was buried under the snowpack for 2 months I probably would'nt be radiating much heat.
At about this time some nice folks slowed down and asked us if everything was OK, Yes I replied, thank you though for stopping. Even though all of us have been spoiled by the epic early season we have been having, its still a great day to be touring around in the mountains with your friends and enjoying the surroundings. The alpine is good for the soul.