Trophy Cabin 2011

A week in the mountains with friends, good times, broken skis, fixed skis, couloirs, craters, sunshine, and snow. I'll write something better than that eventually, but for now here are Tom's photos, Chuck's photos, My photos, and Lina's photos.

Me, just moments before eating snow, losing a ski, and sliding down the hill on my ass.
Still... it was fun while it lasted, and I got my ski back.

Up the Duffey

This weekend I had an unexpected experience - I got the chance to stay at McEwan`s Farm in Pemberton, which I now know I`ll have to come back to in the summer to sample excellent U-pick strawberries. I met the horses, cows, calves, and cats... and ate part of a 300lbs Elk, and some apple crisp. We visited the Blackbird Bakery in Pemberton, which produced one of the finest croissants my ongoing search has found in North America. Amongst all this wholesome farmyard activity and gluttony.. we went skiing too. Excellent.

Despite an alarming number of my skiing friends choosing to attach their heels to their skis these days, we had a strong tele-turnout this weekend and were rewarded with fine snow. We climbed to Mt Chief Pascal on Saturday in hot sun and worked our way across to the shady spots to find the good snow before the sun cooked it into a crusty feast. After numerous attempts in the past, I think we found the "right way" down this time through cuts in the forest and a fun run back down to the road. Sunday brought some clouds and flurries, but joined by SJ and Alex we got a couple of great long runs in under Mt Cayoosh.

More photos here. Thank you to Jason, his family, and the farmyard animals for a fantastic weekend!

Climbing Mt Chief Pascal on Saturday

Luisa riding the line between light and darkness

Three Colours Bike

These days I have 3 mountain bikes again. This is a very happy situation for a mountain biker to find themselves in... so much so that I feel I have reached a state of enlightenment in bicycle ownership. I never find myself wishing I had a different kind of bike, and each bike is particularly good at some specific thing which gives it an identity. How many and what kinds of bike someone needs is a perennial topic of discussion, to which I think the only honest answer is: you don't "need" any bikes at all. Ignoring that conclusion... I have 6. I think 5 would be a better number but I always seem to eventually end up with 6. Three mountain bikes, a touring bike, a BMX, and a utilitarian beast of burden.

Whilst moving my mountain bikes around at lunchtime I found they stack quite neatly against each other. I'm sure this is very significant, so I took a photo of it. Now I'd better eat some lunch and get some work done if I'm going to go for a ride later.

From right to left: The Orange Bike, my new bike, and the White Elephant.

Digging for turns

I just got back from a week up at the Durand Glacier Chalet... where Lina is the teacher at the Durrand Glacier School of Higher Education (class size:1, soon expanding to 2). It's an amazing place up there, and lends itself to some unconventional PE lessons.

The deal was that in return for shifting snow from the heli-pad and walkways, plus doing various other useful chores, I could ski with the guests (as long as the shoveling got done). The first 5 days it snowed... a lot. This meant deep powder for skiing, and strenuous mornings and evening of shoveling. Luckily, I got to drive a snow blower to clear some of it, though there was a lot to be done using these types of things. I still managed to get out skiing 3 of these days, and then the weather gave us a break... meaning a couple more days of little snow-removal and fantastic skiing.

Ski-touring step 1 - go up.

Step 2 - go down again.

Step 3 - appreciate your work. 

More photos here.

The bachelor life

Well, not exactly... I'm still married. Phew.

Lina is off at the Durand Glacier Lodge teaching for a couple of months, which is the kind of job offer you can't turn down. Especially if your husband happens to know some things about one of the student's major subjects and can come up there for a week to tutor biology, ski, and shovel snow.

Nice work if you can get it eh? Yes.

Vancouver has been blanketed in the traditional winter layer of foul clouds and rain for the past few days, and frankly... I've had enough of riding my bike in the rain. Fortunately my teeth have healed up well enough that I can eat real food again, or I might have "totally flipped out and killed the whole town". Then today, like a load of sunlight falling from the sky... the sun came out. So we went skiing.

During the wetness, I have been occupying myself with a project. For a few years, Santa Cruz Bicycles made a strange sort of mountain bike... named for one thing (4-cross racing, like BMX on mountain bikes) but much better at something else. This contraption was the Blur 4X and was essentially the back end of a cross-country racing bike, glued onto the front end of something meant for riding down hills very fast. Like David Bowie's "Earthling", no one got it... so it didn't sell very well. However some people love it, and seeing as I like David Bowie... I though I might as well get one. That's not the real reason, but who cares.

What's important is that I bought one which needed some work... but had potential. An unforeseen part of that potential was the need for me to remove the back end of it off with a hacksaw. Still, that was fun. It's coming together now, and once I have one more part and a few more bearings replaced it should look like a bicycle. I should have done a photo-series of its rebirth, but I forgot... so you'll have to imagine me sawing up one of these and hitting several of these with a hammer, in the hope of ending up with something that looks somewhat like this. My hope is that it's going to be fun to ride up hills and then down them again, which is after all what mountain biking is.

They say Englishmen have bad teeth

Well, check out these beauties. I've carried them around for most of my life and never used them for anything. Now they're on my desk. So, no more wisdom for me. 

No news is good news

Hello internet... I am still here.

I haven't done anything that has motivated me to write on here lately... but I have been skiing and biking in the rain, rebuilt my old "heavy bike" with an exciting new (to me) frame, have decided to send my old skis on to a new home (if anyone wants to buy them), finally finished the video/photo medley from our honeymoon that I've been ignoring for months, and made a little video of some very sub-extreme ski jumping. So, I've not been totally idle.