Beautiful Century (5.10a)

Beautiful Century follows the obvious buttress in the centre of the photo

May Long Weekend - Golden Bike Trip

It's bike season again! To kick it off in style, I went out to Golden for the long weekend to camp and ride at Mt. 7 with Nick, Matt, Devin and Mikayla. We joined the traffic snake leaving Calgary on Friday afternoon but were able to get to the Cedar Lake Rec Site just in time to snag ourselves a campsite for the weekend. Matt and I went for a quick Moonraker loop after dinner to check out the trails, then we joined the crew around the campfire to celebrate 3 days of freedom.

Early morning calm at Cedar Lake

Early Season Skaha Climbing

15 hours of driving and 1300 km for a day and a half of climbing? Seems a bit excessive, but Kyle, Liam, John, Jon, Andrew and Brett all were pretty excited to head out to Skaha to trade poor snow conditions and a cool overcast forecast for a warm sunny weekend of climbing! To maximize our weekend, we left Calgary at 1 pm and arrived at the Okanagan Falls Provincial Campground within seconds of the other car, perfect timing! It was wonderfully warm and we had some beers and a campfire before heading off to bed, stoked to get on rock the next morning. We all were up very early so had a leisurely breakfast before we met Liam (who was staying at his mom's place) and his mom at the parking lot. We spent the whole day at Claim It All Wall, which was about a 40 minute hike in from the north parking lot but it was worth it. We were the only group there for most of the day and were able to set up tonnes of ropes and take over the whole crag.

Brett working his way up Stubborn Streak (5.10b)

Thailand - Getting our Tan (and Climb) on in Tonsai

At the end of March, Kyle and I ventured overseas (our first trip abroad together) for two weeks of fun and exploration in Thailand. Neither of us had been to Asia before and we didn't have much time so it was a blur of sight seeing, activities and trying to squeeze in a bit of R&R. Although we wanted to do some climbing in Thailand, that wasn't totally the focus of the trip. It was really nice to spend some time being tourists for once, mixed in with a bit of recreation too. For this blog entry, I have focused mostly on the climbing, since covering the whole trip couldn't possibly do it justice. We met so many amazing people, checked out some fantastic places and only just scratched the surface of what Thailand has to offer. It would be really hard to put all of those experiences into words, but hopefully I can pass on some useful info for anyone interested in heading over to check it out for themselves.

Within hours of arrival, we had determined that Chang was our beer of choice

Valentines Ski Touring - Seven Summits Trail

Family day long weekend gave us a chance to get a bit farther away from Calgary than a regular weekend. We signed up with the Breakey's for their annual ACC Nelson ski touring trip a few months ago with dreams of powder, but sadly this season just hasn't delivered. Despite the unseasonably warm temperatures and miserable snow conditions, we were just excited to get away with friends. A few people had bailed off the trip at the last minute so we were able to take two vehicles. Kyle and I drove Casey and Kyle D out to Cranbrook on Friday night and met the other 5 at the hotel. We got up very early for some reason and left just after 7 am. Some people hadn't had breakfast so we all descended on a small cafe in Creston. The lone server seemed very overwhelmed to have 9 of us in there. The breakfast ended up being very leisurely as we were not in a big rush to get out of there. Matt had a two course breakfast, Kyle and I had second breakfast, and nobody really wanted to get moving.

Breakfast!

Ice Climbing - Rogan's Gully and Junkyards

David and Tyler came to visit me in Calgary! We had a really fun weekend, although we did none of the activities that we had planned for. High avalanche danger and very unseasonably warm temperatures prevented us from getting out backcountry skiing so Kyle and I took them out ice climbing for their first time. We picked Rogan's Gully because Kyle and I had done the route before and the overhead hazard isn't as bad as some of the other climbs in the area. We were pretty cautious though, and turned around when we encountered avalanche debris in the gully about 3/4 of the way up the route.

It felt like spring on the approach

Rogers Pass - Motel Mayhem

After a long ski hiatus I got back on snow this weekend in Rogers Pass with the ACC Motel Mayhem trip. It was a weekend of firsts - first time skiing in the Pass, first ACC ski trip, first time skiing with Phil and Kathrine, and the first time I seriously regretted not bringing my snorkel on a ski touring trip. We met Friday night and drove out to Golden to stay at the Dream Catcher Hostel. The owners were incredibly friendly and the hostel was clean, cozy and comfortable. I highly recommend staying there if you are ever in Golden. We entertained ourselves with the left over beer from the Ice Review, socializing and planning out where to ski on Saturday. 

We left the hostel just after 8 am and drove up to the Discovery Centre to collect our Wilderness Passes before parking at the Loop Brook parking area. There were lots of groups gearing up, it was going to be a busy day!

One-eyed ski ninja