Islands in the clouds

‎View from whistler peak across the valley, with one of the lower peaks just breaking the cloud base. Skiing lower down in the top of the cloud level there was diamond dust in the air where the ice crystals were catching the sun, and just the very finest layer settling out on skis and hat, so it officially counts as a white xmas...

Merry Christmas!

This last week has been rather busy for me too. As a member of the local choir – The Whistler Singers – we have been in great demand this week. From final rehearsals in preparation for our choir concert – A Whistler Christmas - on Monday, followed by a performance at the Fairmont Chateau (with the children’s choir) to welcome Santa and finally the 31^st Annual Christmas Eve Carol Service in the ballroom at the Westin, in front of about 1,500 people with more at the back in the foyer! I was rather hoarse by the end of it.

In addition, I've been busy in the kitchen too. Making four lots of duck confit, followed by Cassoulet, lots of different soups, baking cakes and biscuits and making nibbles for when the skiers come in as well as normal meals in the evening. Today it’s going to be filet of pork in sour cream pastry (aka boiled baby to some of our friends due to the unappetising look of it before its cooked) so the bottles of bubbles aren't coming out until I've finished with knives! I've learned my lesson in recent years and have the scars to prove it!

Kevin found a Christmas tree on the slopes yesterday and brought it back to the apartment. I did enquire as to whether it was one he had ‘created’ during one of his acrobatic somersault moments, but alas, no. I made a stand for it and decorated it with some mardi gras beads I had brought with me.

As you can see, it fits in quite well with the table décor J

Anyway, time to go and create some mayhem in the kitchen.

Merry Christmas everyone 

Yuletide, eh!

I found this specimen at vancouver airport last night in the rain. He's here until jan 5th, and has already done several cartwheels and head plants in the powder, so has entertainment value..

Horrible drive back up the sea to sky last night - heavy rain and cloud in the dark turned to slush and  snow as we approached whistler‎ - even with the 4wd and winter tyres it was slippery and interesting - maybe if it had actually been colder it would have been a bit stickier.

Shortest day so yuletide greetings to all...

Winter week 2

Its finally started snowing in the village - all we've had this low down for the past 2 weeks has been rain - so its all looking a lot more wintery, and they have been wrapping just about every tree up the village walk in xmas lights so its also more festive. Of course it does mean that there is almost as much light coming through the Venetian blinds at night as there is during the day. Maria has draped her mardi gras beads around the apartment but given the lights outside having our own tree seems a little unnecessary

More of the mountain opened up over the weekend including both peaks, so there is probably about 4x the skiable terrain now available not including the off-piste bowls, and the last dump of snow has stayed in pretty good condition at the higher levels. I've been playing a little on the moguls and piste edges to work on my technique, and i'm definitely improving every day, although its still a lot more tiring than on piste. Weekends have been fairly busy but weekdays are still nice and quiet, although I expect that will change next week as the xmas crowd starts rolling in. I've skied 11 days so far so am well over half way to paying off my season pass compared to the day rate, and i'm skiing a little longer each day, although still doing mornings only and having lunch back at the apartment. Forecast for the next week is some snow every day, so we may get a white xmas at last...

2015 summer plans

We have decided to stay on the west side of the US next summer and do the rockies and west coast loop. The Reynolds are planning to come out to the Grand Canyon and California in August, so it gives us a chance to catch up with them again.

as a basic timeline we are thinking about:

• may - vancouver island, leave canada (by may 10th), maybe alaska round trip cruise from seattle, washington state, seattle, oregon inland, bend, terrebonne, maybe inland to yellowstone
• june - colorado, denver, great sanddunes, mesa verde, canyon of the ancients,
• july - utah, monument valley, bryce canyon, zion, arizona, 
• august - arizona, grand canyon north rim (4th), california, yosemite (7th), sequoia , santa barbara (14th)
• september - california, monterey, san francisco, napa valley
• october - oregon coast, washington, back up to canada for the winter (maybe)

I'm sure there will be lots of other places to visit along this circuit, and we may choose to leave Yellowstone until another spring when we head across the north of the US to the east coast, so nothing is set in stone except the dates specified. Open to suggestions of additional destinations, and if anyone else fancies meeting us anywhere along this timeline let us know.

Its only 5000 miles so quite a short year by recent standards....

Winter week 1

Its been a mixed first week skiing since we got back to Whistler - 3 days of sub-zero clear skies conditions on the mountain, 1 day of wet snow, 1 OK day once I got above the valley cloud base, another day of wet snow. Decided today was going to be a rest day anyway as the forecast was heavy rain all the way up the mountain, and as it turns out all but 1 low level lift are currently closed, probably due to high winds - there is a series of fairly serious storms and unseasonably warm weather hitting the southern BC coast at the moment and flooding warnings for north vancouver.

The thighs have been holding up OK with the new skis - figure the cycling before we went back to the UK helped a bit with that - but everything else has taken a bit of a battering and is complaining after a couple of hours, so I've just been skiing mornings so far. In my defence as I'm skiing solo i'm basically running laps on the chair lifts and not stopping on the slopes, so keeping up a fair pace. And there are only a few lifts and runs open as its still early season.

11 days until Kevin arrives as our first visitor - hopefully more of the mountain will be open by then, and I can last a bit longer on the slopes.

Another minor project success

‎The apartments we are staying in don't have boot driers in the ski locker room, and I failed to buy one at walmart last time we were in the US as they were all sold out. So, nicked the mains cabinet cooling fan from the old TV bay in Badger that is no longer needed now we have a flat screen, and some waste pipe I had left over from fixing the sink in the slide out, plus some plywood left over from making the room divider and a bit of duct tape and hey presto, one home made boot/glove drier. And if you want warm air, stand it in front of the baseboard heater...

I'm such a cheapskate :-)

And this is what we came back for

‎Just managed to get up for an hour before the lifts closed for a play on the blades. Usual first day aching feet but otherwise not too bad.

Need to wax the new skis and fit the bindings tonight and then can take them up for a spin tomorrow

Bye Bye Blighty, welcome back to Canada (sort of)

our manic month back in the UK has come to an end. It was great catching up with everyone and thanks to everyone who put us up, especially Knees and Clive for feeding me so much curry and lamb and living with the consequences. We got done some of what we wanted to on the house, and caught up with family, friends and neighbours pretty much every day we were back, so time well spent.

They let us back into Canada after a fairly rigorous questioning about why we are spending so much time here and so little time at home, but showed them the apartment rental agreement and the canadain bank balance to prove that we do have a plan to leave and enough funds to last us until that point - kind of expected, but a little wearing at 4:00am by the body clock.

Head up to whistler tomorrow, assuming we can get a jump start for the car, and start the 5 month ski-fest. Living on soup to detox until Kevin arrives just in time for Yule...

Last curry

‎Just enjoyed what may be my last decent curry for a few years. Mango tree with Mr Earle;  onion bhaji, lamb rogon with a bit of extra spice  (learned curry power ordering from Clive) , good naan and aubergine bhaji. All I need now is a couple of rennies....

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.

A few of my favourite things...

‎Onion bhajis, lamb madras, back bacon, white poppy seed bloomer, Melton Mowbray pork pie, steak and kidney pie, bramley apple pie, sausage rolls, greggs steak bake, hard water that rinses the soap off, eccles cakes, friends and neighboirs.

Things I haven't missed : London commuter trains.

Man, that garden has grown

Flew in yesterday and staying with Knees and Clive‎ initially, and made our first visit to the house today to meet the tenants and talk about a replacement boiler, and survey what needs working on. Few patches of the conservatory need a coat of varnish, couple of minor things to look at inside, deck needs cleaning, treating and a couple of planks replacing,  and man does the garden need some work. We had to cut the ivy, bamboo and brambles back from the lower deck and summer house to get safe access to the shed, and it's going to definitely keep me busy for a month trying to get it all pruned back and under control again....oh well, gives me something to do.

Wrapped up for winter

‎Successful day trip down to Washington state to swap cycling stuff for ski and snow coats, and to put a tarp over Badger to keep the worst of the winter weather off the roof seals . Interesting exercise wrestling with a 20x40 foot sail given that the remnants of hurricane Anna were blowing through...thought I might have been getting an early flight home.

Leaving the car at the Holiday Inn at vancouver airport from tonight for 35 days, so I'm sure the battery will be flat again by the time we get back. Now we have 24 hours to kill before getting on the plane tomorrow evening, and then Maria can see how long she can cope with me on a beer and curry diet...

So long Whistler part 2

‎We leave Whistler again tomorrow for 5 weeks. It's been a bit of a weird time for the past 4 weeks, getting used to the flat and town, and Maria has been trying to get used to yet another oven and practising her winter recipes. The downhill mountain biking season finished a couple of weekends ago and skiing officially starts at the end of November, so while there are still quite a few people wandering around the town it has been fairly quiet and not much going on. 

Weather has been a bit on the wet side - 192mm of rain for the month so far with only 5 days completely dry, but I've managed to get out cycling on most days between the rain, and the legs and lungs are definitely doing better than they were at the start of month .  The peaks and upper runs have had snow for the past couple of weeks, but it hasn't been cold enough for snow yet in the village and valley floor.

Tomorrow we are having a day sightseeing in Vancouver and have opted to stay over so we are closer to the US for Tuesday ‎when we go down to wrap Badger up for the winter and swap bike gear for ski stuff, then fly out on Wednesday.

North America year one

Its a year since we flew into LA and started the North American leg of our trip. It has been a fun year and has mostly gone to plan. We've been very happy in Badger - maybe we could have got a better deal overall if we had bought somewhere other than California with cheaper tax,  registration and admin, but the hassle factor of trying to move around the country looking and the time it takes to work all this stuff out would probably have ended up costing us as much as we might have saved - and the more time we have spent living and driving around in him the happier we have been with our choice. The suzuki toad is a little gutless at high speeds on the freeway, but its a nice drive and so far on wet and dirt roads its been very sure footed. We bought it for the snow so hopefully it will come into its own in the coming months, not that we are expecting to do much driving as we are in the apartment.

Highlights of the trip so far for me are the Arizona desert, grand canyon and Alaskan glaciers calving into the pacific, and we have crossed a lot of stuff off the bucket list: Hoover dam, death valley, Vegas, cajun cooking, mardi gras, sunsets from Key West, the Valkyrie, Niagara falls, sea otters, the aurora and grizzly and black bears. And the Fairbanks earthquake was a bonus. And of course met friends both new and old...

We've actually covered more ground here than in Oz - 15,000 miles in Badger and slightly further as side trips in toad, and given that we spent a month not moving in each of southern California, Waterloo and Edmonton its still not been a rushed trip. And we expect subsequent years will be slower still.

So far we've had no real problems with borders or visas - both the US and Canada have let us back in following our initial arrivals, so hopefully we can continue as planned moving between the two countries every 6 months for the next 3 years.

We're getting settled in Whistler now for the winter, looking forward to our first proper visit back to the UK next week, and then need to decide what we are doing next spring - east coast or west?

Pumpkin time...

... is here. As they are currently in season, now is the time to stock up for the winter.

One down, three more to go. Into the oven to cook slowly then its bag them up for the freezer and the day I want to make soup, scones, roasted with Sunday lunch, etc. The seeds also make a nice snack once they're salted and roasted too. Yummy!

Skwikw - in the land of the hoary marmot...

... which is the native's name for Whistler. Apparently, the place is named after the 'whistle' or call the hoary marmot (a ground squirrel) makes to warn the rest of the clan when danger is nigh. Personally, I quite like the name Skwikw :-)

Anyway, we made it to our new winter home.

The photos don't really do it justice as the living area is much larger than we remembered. The kitchen, on the other hand, doesn't have as much storage space as Badger, so I've had an interesting evening trying to fit everything in! On the plus side, there is a huge fridge and great big stove, so I can make us some lovely roasts. The rest of the unpacking will have to wait for tomorrow as I am absolutely knackered! Time for a nice soak in the bath...

Sods law

‎After thousands of kms behind badger on some of the roughest roads and roadworks we have seen, toad just got a stone chip in the windscreen on a nice smooth piece of tarmac. Bam, right between the eyes, turning into a burger place in squamish....at least it's repairable and doesn't need a new screen

California wormhole?

‎We have been in the southern end of the okanagan valley for the past week hitting the wineries, but were looking for a good photo op. It feels very uncanadian, and reminds me of the coachella valley in southern california around palm springs where we stayed last autumn. They didn't grow vines there, but similar scrubby hills and lots of fruit and market garden agriculture on the valley floor where the irrigation can reach. Ok, the coachella doesn't have the big lakes strung along it, and is much broader, but it really does feel similar.

The canadians claim this is their only desert, while Wikipedia says it's semi-arid steppe ( and of course wiki is always 100% true). And it does have some local ski resorts in the hills to the east, so could be almost perfect....

Winter in Whistler - in comfort

Mark has always wanted to spend a ski season somewhere, and I like to keep warm, so I've been frantically looking for an 'affordable' apartment in Whistler. Today I found one! It's only a one bedroom/1 bathroom (with a tub!) and a sofa bed for guests, but it's in the village centre. We can walk everywhere (or stagger, depending on how much apres is done) so the car will only come out for airport runs.

Now we have to find somewhere to store Badger for the winter.

And bookings are now being taken for the sofa bed :-)

Committed to Whistler

‎We have made our first financial commitment to wintering in whistler in the form of my lift pass. Early bird deal took about 300 bucks off, so worth doing. Now I just have to keep telling myself that if I ski 2 days out of 3 and manage 100 days on the snow it's less than ten quid a day.

And the only way to get any refund now is a doctor's note or coroners ‎certificate...

Welcome to Whistler

‎The view from the lunch table.

After an interesting journey down the sea to sky highway involving numerous hairpin bends and a 5km 15% downhill gradients that completely fried the brakes in Badger - series clouds of smoke for the following cars to enjoy - we have arrived in whistler.

This campground is about 11 miles south of the resort - its not the one we plan to stay at for the winter which is closer in, but it's cheaper for a few days and doesn't have a bad view....

Done with the north

‎Our last official "northern BC" nights and call hence to have a final look at the aurora from the latest solar storm didn't come to much - high cloud and the remnants of the super moon made the skies too light to see anything, or at least distinguish the lights from the clouds. So we are done with the north now, on the hwy 97 down south.

Of all my half baked ideas, heading north late in the season has worked well. We got to see the aurora, which was the main reason, but coincidentally matched the salmon running and spawning which in turn led to being able to see the bears up close feeding on the salmon. The fall colours were spectacular, and ‎seeing the mountains and forested hillsides and valleys with a first dusting of snow was a bonus. I would love to come back up and drive parts of the Alaska Highway in the winter with snow all around as they have in the tourist brochures, but maybe just in toad. I really don't want to buy and fit snow chains to badger.

So now we are heading to Whistler tomorrow for a couple of days research to check out what the town does and doesn't have, along with nearby places‎. Then we are probably going to head inland for a month or so to check out the Okanagan valley. There are supposed to be about 60 wineries in a 100km stretch - that's only 2 a day on average. And the forecast for the next few days is 27c, so a last blast of summer and shorts...

Glaciers, bears and fish

From Meziadin Lake we had a day trip to Stewart, then across the border into Alaska again to visit the 'ghost' town of Hyder. Along the way we drove past Bear Glacier

saw a couple of large black bears

Then headed up the mountain to see Salmon Glacier

and this is a close up of the crevasses - amazing! 

Then to the Toe of the glacier - where it melts and trickles into a stream

On the way back, we stopped in at the Meziadin Fishway to see the salmon jumping. There were so many, at least one every second!

A fish ladder has been built at the edge of the river to help the salmon navigate their way upstream, as only 1% can actually clear the weir. 

And after all this hard work of swimming upstream to spawn, this is where they end up

Tomorrow we carry on our journey south where the weather is warmer

The view from the breakfast table

Meziadin Lake in central BC, glaciers in the distance, and we've caught back up to late summer as its warmer and the trees are only just starting to colour.

How's your hump day going?

Goodbye Alaska Highway...

... we've completed it from start to finish and back a little way again. It was fun driving back through Watson Lake in the snow and freezing temperatures

Hello British Columbia! You will be our home for the next 8 months. We're heading down Highway 37, aka the Stewart-Cassiar highway. The locals seemed unperturbed by a Badger rolling on by:

From our campsite today we've seen a bald eagle watching a bear feeding:

And a mile own the road, we saw this:

What will we see tomorrow?

Back in Canada

Came through the border this morning with no problems - in fact quicker than either of the Alaskan - registered cars ahead of us. So a few more days kicking around the yukon then head down into BC and sort out what we are going to do for winter....

Too late

‎Winter caught us with a light dusting of snow overnight in Tok. I guess its true what they say about alaska having only 2 seasons - august and winter.

Heading south for the winter

We've seen what we came for, its now cold and wet in Fairbanks and there is snow forecast for cold spot microclimates along the alaska highway that we need to take back, so its time to start heading back down to BC and try to catch up with the autumn again.

Aurora round 2

After being cloudy all day it started to break up over fairbanks late in the afternoon and by dusk was clear overhead, so we grabbed the florida parkas and headed up to cleary summit, a hilltop about 20 miles out of town. Ribbons came out fairly early and a few hints off to the horizon but they never really amounted to anything. cloud cover came back in by about 12:45 so called it a night. 

Dinner AND a show

Went out to Chana hot springs after supper last night, which is about 60 miles out of Fairbanks, and open until midnight. Water was at 102 degrees and car dash was showing 25 while we were driving up there, so a nice contrast of temperatures when you moved in and out of the water. And as we had hoped and planned by coming up to alaska this late in the season the aurora is starting to show a little activity. We saw some bands across the sky while we were in the springs between the clouds of steam - not as bright as these google image photos, but they give the general idea of what we saw. I would describe them as bands or ribbons that appear and fade over a course of a few seconds to a couple of minutes, sometimes like wispy clouds, other times more definite

and then driving back slowly we stopped at a few vantage points and were rewarded with a period of more activity with them sort of dancing vertically - more like sheets of light or fire, as if there were powerful searchlights over the hill. And definitely green. 

Did the earth move for you too?

Just experienced a 5.07 magnitude quake centred about 40 miles NW of Fairbanks at a depth of 10 miles. Sat in the bus at the campsite just before supper and everything started shaking for a few seconds. Our first thought was that someone had hit the back of the bus or the jacks had sunk, but that didn't feel quite right. Checked the earthquake news and found out it was this...

http://www.aeic.alaska.edu/Seis/recent/macsub/quakes/2014243_evid11372783/evid11372783.html

spookily enough I had just been emailing my friend Chris who was in California for the past couple of weeks with his family to see if he had been there for their recent shake.

and no, I wasn't snoring...

Autumn in Denali National Park...

... is definitely here. We're about 240 miles north of Anchorage and the leaves on the trees have a lovely hue. The colours in the park range from dark green through gold to deep reds - beautiful.

You can only drive to Mile 13 in the park without a permit. so we took a shuttle bus to Mile 66 (only took 4 hours each way) and saw caribou

Dall sheep and Grizzly bears. I was surprised at how blonde some of the bears were

Even though it was a cloudy and very chilly day, the scenery was something to behold

Apparently, 70% of visitors to Denali, including us, see this view of the highest mountain in North America, the spectacular Mount McKinley (at 20,320 ft, 6,193m)

and this is what it's supposed to look like

It can be seen from Fairbanks too, and as that's where we dead tomorrow, fingers crossed for clear skies...

A near moose

we don't often drive at night, but it was easier and cheaper to take Toad down to Valdez to do the glacier tour, and by the time we got off the boat and grabbed some supper it was getting on for dusk with 130 miles back to camp. Being paranoid I feared the worst so set the cruise control for about 50 to stop my speed creeping up and started off. And lo and behold about an hour up the road a moose came out of the woods on the right and diagonally across the road at a canter. If I'd been on dipped headlights with oncoming traffic I would not have seen it in time, and if I had been doing the speed limit of 65 I expect we would have hit it. Maria didn't even spot it until I hit the brakes - as it was we stopped in time and put the hazards on for the cars behind us until it moved off the verge. Even if I had hit it, It would never have fit in the freezer....

Top of the World to Anchorage

As the border guards let us in, they told us that the first 9 miles of road was sealed and very good,

then it changed to a goat track with soft shoulders and a 3,000 foot drop – how right they were!

By the time we got to Chicken (named after the creek where gold was found, not the giant chicken sculpture)

both Badger and Max were caked in mud

We carried on down the mountain road to Tok and Glenallen where the scenery was spectacular

We parked up Badger and drove down to Valdez in the car (only a 3 hour drive each way!) – again the views were amazing

  

We went down again the next day and joined a cruise of Prince William Sound to the Columbia Glacier. WOW! Photos don’t do it justice but it was a day we will always remember J

We saw sea otters, sea lions, puffins, a breaching humpback whale and waterfalls:

More spectacularly, we saw the Columbia Glacier. The face is 300ft above the waterline and at least 600ft below (the captains sounding equipment only went to 600ft) and this face was 5 miles wide – it was massive!

To give some perspective, the black speck in the following photo is another boat with a 30ft mast!

We heard the glacier creak and groan and were lucky enough to see it calving – where bits fall off. It has retreated 10 miles since the late 1980’s.

The trip there and back was just as amazing as the boat slowly made its way through the ice

From Glenallen to Anchorage, the views were great again:

(we think the poles are to give the snow-ploughs some perspective of how deep the snow is)

We’re now in Anchorage for a few days for a look around and will probably do a day trip down to the Kenai Peninsula – only a 5 hour drive each way!