'Twas the week after Christmas

"A picture speaks 1000 words". So, prepare yourself for a 14,000 word epic. That's lucky, as I need to go and clean some bikes...

Christmas started for us in Toronto and Ottawa. Here's a majestic looking Ottawa building in the evening light.

Here are some tourists warming their hands.

The Christmas Finale, Augaitis-style.

We returned to BC for some slippery mountain biking on the Island with Marc and Nikki

Sykes' Bridge

Pippa is growing and has matured into an effective sock-thief and work-distractor

Not content with biking, we got on skinny skis for the Lake Loop at Mt Washington

Leaving, on a jet plane.

We managed to scrape the last of the decent skiing on the old snow last weekend, before a fresh batch of rain/snow etc. hit us today. It was last chance saloon for Lina and I as we head over to Ontario tomorrow for Christmas. Once again, we had a great weekend off the Duffey Lake road, this time at Cerise Creek.

Lina and a cool cloud/shadow thing

Paul's great photo of me about to explore the snow with my face.

New skis!

We're off to enjoy a last run/ride in the rain before we head east tomorrow. Paul's stuff from the weekend is here, and my photos here.

What the heck... let's go anyway.

There has been skiing going on. I also managed 3 night-rides on my bike last week, which was great. One of them was quite foul in wet snow and 5 feet visibility, but you've got to get out there just in case... right?

We've been lucky lately with things turning out better than expected because we went... "just in case". A week ago we were skiing with Jacek on Paul Ridge (without Paul) which despite a dubious forecast of rain and general ming turned out to be great skiing, though we couldn't see much.

Lina in the murk at Paul Ridge

This weekend Lina, Kala, and I braved another dubious forecast (cold, no new snow... but sunshine) and headed in to Steep Creek for the weekend. It turned out so much better than expected! The snow was great, the sun shone, and it was only -20 degrees (?). It was pretty freezing. We bumped into the Traslin brothers, who I had heard of through friends due to their excellent exploits in our local mountains. They were a great pair to spend the evening with. I managed to take my hand out of my glove for long enough to get a couple of photos...

Kala and her tele-track

Kala disturbing some powder

My favorite shot of Lina on her Christmas skis

Lina's favorite shot of Lina on her Christmas skis