Booked for Banff and belated big birthday bears

Well, Canmore actually as we are not allowed to live in Banff due to parks canada restrictions allowing only people employed in the park to live in the park. 

We've agreed a contract on a 2 bed apartment on the outskirts of Canmore, comfortable and spacious and located so Maria can walk into the downtown and to the supermarkets as well as along the bow valley trail. It's about 11km from banff but the ski hills are actually out of town anyway, so wherever we stay it means travelling to the slopes.

And having agreed to be here from November 1st, we've found and booked a day trip from Calgary to Churchill for ‎Nov 5th to go out on a tundra buggy to see polar bears as they congregate waiting for Hudson Bay to freeze over - its supposed to be one of the best places on earth to see the bears in the wild. Maria wanted to take me for my 50th but we changed our itinerary years around so we could meet the reynolds out west last summer so just pushed it back by a year. But it's all worked out in the end :-)

Iceberg

Came down my favourite run on Blackcomb to find someone had parked this in the middle of the piste....

We've finally had some sunshine and good weather in the past couple of weeks after ‎a season of a lot of grey skies and poor visibility. Yesterday turned out to be almost perfect after a little fresh snow on tuesday had been groomed in overnight, so I managed to set a new personal best of 24 lifts and 12km of vertical in a day. ...fun but my legs were jelly by the time I got home

Good times

The last 6 weeks have been great, so much so that I've not had a chance to do a full update.

At the beginning of February I had my first attempt at snowshoeing, thanks to my friend Marianne. We only went across one of the golf courses (in 2 feet of snow) so I could get the hang of how to walk with these contraptions strapped to my feet.

It requires an interesting gait, a cross between marching and walking but I soon got the hang of it. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that the following week I spent an afternoon walking the nature trails at Lost Lake. It was a beautiful, sunny day and I felt like I was the only one walking through the trees as the snow muffled all the sound

Time for a selfie

Knees and Clive joined us for a time and Mark has already blogged about the skiing. I joined them up the mountain one day and saw there was a lot more snow than this time last year

Blair joined us for a few days and gave Mark a run for his money. Well, he's about 15 years younger and way fitter than Mark so they covered many ski runs in 3 days. Mark's got the advantage of being 'gravity enhanced' so can easily keep up,  As Blair left, Kevin arrived and is here for a couple of weeks. The pair of us went snowmobiling yesterday and left Mark to a fast day on the slopes.

We picked a great day for it and had a lot of fun on the frozen lake and blazing the trails on Sprout Mountain

We've spent many a Friday afternoon enjoying apres ski at a bar called Merlins, singing along to a local duo called The Hairfarmers. 

We're seen as locals now and enjoy the atmosphere. Dancing on furniture is also a requirement as it is in many ski bars we've been to in Europe. Well, wouldn't want to let the side down now would we?

Cruising the blues again

I've been skiing with Knees and Clive ‎for almost 20 years - none of us can remember exactly when we started but we do agree it was the first group knees organised and it was in Selva . A lot has changed in that time - we're all older, I'm fatter, Knees has got faster and Clive has lost his distinctive 'tied to a chair' style thanks to a few years at the Ali Ross school of carving...

Conditions were not perfect for their visit - this season has been normal with a lot of cloud and fog - but they did get some nice days to get up to the peak and they even managed to get a day when the whole of the peak to creek was groomed.

It's been great to catch up with them and spend time - they were kind enough to put us up on our visits back to London, so it was good to repay their hospitality - and we met up with them for a few days in western Australia in 2013. Maria cooked us some very nice food, including the mother of all pork pies, and we've added to the empty bottle collection on the balcony - its been a really nice couple of weeks.

I now have a week to dry out and get back to full fitness before Blair comes back for his postponed second visit, then Kevin will be here until easter. It's nice to have friends...

Who ate all the pies?

We currently have our friends Knees and Clive with us from London and as well as enjoying their company (when they're not up the mountain with Mark), I get to try out some new recipes on them.  I made this Gala Pie for us to enjoy after an afternoon at our favourite apres ski bar, Merlins. It was perfect for soaking up the odd pint or two

and as you can see, it was devoured quite quickly.

I seem to recall the others had Australian meat pies for lunch, but didn't mind having two meals consisting of pies :-)

We also introduced them to The Hairfarmers, Whistler's best band, and another fun afternoon was had by all.

Cheers!

2016 US plans

A couple of people have started asking about our 2016 plans, so here they are at high level....

We'll pick badger up from storage in Bellingham on April 30th as that is the day we must leave Canada, then after a couple of days to get everything stocked up and ready to roll, we'll start heading east through the northern states. Specific places we want to see include:

• Grand Coulee dam
• Glacier national park
• Yellowstone national park, inc Jackson Hole
• Devil's Tower national monument
• Mount Rushmore
• Chicago
• Peoria (for the Caterpillar factory)
• Kentucky whisky trail
• BBQ trail
• Nashville
• Memphis
• Atlanta
• Savannah
• Kittyhawk
• Washington DC 
• and finishing with autumn in New England

We will probably take a more inland track on the east coast as it will be the summer season by the time we get there so coastal campgrounds will be busy. We will then backtrack down the coast to leave Badger somewhere like North Carolina where he won't freeze over the winter and head to Banff for the next ski season in the car.

When we collect him again in the spring of 2017 we can visit the coastal areas we miss this summer, and head up into the Canadian Maritime provinces before deciding where to view the August 21st total eclipse, and filling in any parts of the north east US that we have missed.

Fun in the snow

This week, our friend Blair from Ontario came to visit. Unfortunately, Mark only got to ski with him for one day before the flu bug bit and wiped Mark out for the rest of the week. Blair decided to take Wednesday as a rest day, so the pair of us went snowmobiling. And what a fantastic time we had! We did an advanced tour so there were only three of us plus the guide and we covered about 40km of trails in just over 2 hours. I wasn't as fast as the others and was more concerned that I might be holding everyone up, but they only had to wait 15 - 30 seconds for me to catch up. It had snowed the day before and the trails were covered in fresh powder. On some trails, we were the first ones to make tracks. We stopped to play in a fresh powder field and I got a little close to the edge and buried it. I stopped before it got too deep and one of the guides backed it out for me. As I got off the snowmobile, I was up to my thighs in fresh snow which took a bit of work getting out of. Blair said after that the rut made a nice bit to jump over. The views were also fabulous.

As well as having fun in the snow this week, in recognition for all the volunteer stuff I've been doing for the Whistler Arts Council, they've given me a day pass to the Scandinave Spa. My week just keeps getting better :-)