Road trip to Jasper

For the first time since we've been in Canada we went on a road trip with friends to Jasper. Mostly for the food actually and less for the skiing, we had booked a table at Andy's Bistro for Saturday night (the best value fixed price menu in the Rockies with amazing food) and were planning on doing a Sunday brunch at the Jasper Park Lodge before going home.


Packed to the absolute limit


The Road Trip Captain


The Road Trip Crew

We were all staying together at our favourite "Approved Accomodation" in Jasper and so had plenty of room for the 6 of us plus all the booze that we bought up with us :-) The coolest thing was that once we got to the hill, each couple was getting down it a different way. Col and I were on telemark skis (still trying to get better for the trip to Campbell Icefields in April); David and Monica were on traditional alpine downhill skis zooming down the slopes with abandon; and Rod and Huey were on snowboards for the first time. Regardless of the different modes of getting down the hill we all had a great time and totally wore ourselves out over the course of the Saturday.





The crew up at Marmot Basin, Jasper National Park

Dinner at Andy's Bistro was another highlight of the trip, we had a table for 9 and everyone got the prix-fixe menu and after a few bottles of wine for the table we were all in fine form. I'm convinced that good food and wine are the glue that holds civilisation together and that without places like Andy's we would all collapse into anarchy and chaos.

Friends

After dinner we kicked on at a nearby bar and then finished up back at the basement suite and by the time we got up the next morning no-one was really feeling like going for even more food at the JPL, we'd probably missed it anyways, so we headed off to the local bakery and got some provisions for the trip home and cruised back to Edmonton. All in all a great fun time was had by all and we're looking forward to doing it again, maybe in the summer.

Bad photographer

Last weekend, Col and I went on an avalanche awareness course in Jasper. The intended goal was to get a little more familiar with our avalanche safety gear and get a better working knowledge of how to judge slopes, what to look for in the snowpack and how to run an efficient beacon search. What we came away with was considerably better and more detailed than that and as an added bonus we got to tour up into the Bald Hills above Maligne Lake again to dig some snow pits and run some rescue simulations. Of course this all provides wonderful photo opportunities, shots of the layers of snow, shots of people up to their heads in a pit in the snow, shots of snow flying from the shovels, shots of solid columns of snow cut out of the snowpack and general nature shots. And how many photos do you think I actually managed to take during the course itself? None. That's why I'm a bad photographer - I get too focussed in on enjoying things and don't really remember that I've brought a camera along with me to capture any of it for posterity.

It was in this frame of mind on the way home that I realised that it wasn't all bad - sure I'd forgotten during the day but how about on the way home? Surely there's some stuff that's interesting there? Well, Jasper National Park is one of the most spectacular natural areas I've ever had the fortune of taking for granted and with a camera at the ready on the way out I got a few of the sights that I have started to just dismiss and mundane, run of the mill and just plain scenery. Looked at through the lense though they take on a new magnificence and I hope I can maintain that new perspective for a little while longer.


Medicine Lake is on the way back from Maligne Lake

And from the Parks Canada website, here's a little something that I never knew before, having driven past this lake dozens of times in the last few years. Talk about new perspectives!

Summer visitors assume that Medicine is a normal mountain lake, but it isn't.
During the summer, glacier melt waters flood the lake, sometimes overflowing it. In fall and winter the lake disappears, becoming a mudflat with scattered pools of water connected by a stream. But there is no visible channel draining the lake – so where then does the water go?

The answer is, "out the bottom", like a bathtub without a plug. The Maligne River pours into the lake from the south and drains out through sinkholes in the bottom. The water then streams through a cave system formed in the slightly soluble limestone rock, surfacing again in the area of Maligne Canyon 16 kilometers downstream. This is one of the largest known sinking rivers in the Western Hemisphere and may be the largest inaccessible cave system anywhere in the world!

Summer melt water coming into the lake exceeds the capacity of the sinkholes to drain it. Decreased melt water in the late summer and fall means that the lake's sinkholes can drain the lake faster then the Maligne River can fill it. This creates the disappearing lake phenomena. Aboriginal peoples called the lake Medicine because of its seemingly magical powers, and the United Nations created the Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site partly because of this unique drainage system.


Bighorn sheep licking the salt off the highway


The road out of the Park - fairly mundane? I think not!


The last significant peak on the way out - catching the setting sun


It took some crazy geology to make this mountain look like this


Sometimes the best images are the ones you're leaving behind


And sometimes you just need to put the camera away before you get too silly

Sorry that there's some blurry stuff in there, but these were all taken from a moving car through a not very clean windshield. And you should see the ones that I didn't put up here!

We are looking forward to a few more trips to Jasper this season so hopefully I'll be able to keep some of the magic of the trip home alive while we're actually there - and become a better photographer and remember to take the camera out and use it.

A baby girl

Yay! Dave and Sarah had a little girl Audrey today after 9 months of vigilant incubating.

Vital statistics:
time - 13:59 (after 18 hrs!)
weight - 5lbs 10oz (~2.5kg)
length - 20.5in (52cm)

They all seem to be taking the new adjustments to living conditions fairly well and are happy to report that things are along the lines of: "indescribable joy", "digusting asphalt shite", "amazing time", "pretty phenomenal place right now" and "relief...incredible"

Resolutions

Getting ready for the Resolution Run of 2007 at the William Lutsky YMCA in Edmonton

My pre-New Year's Resolution was to join a running clinic at the Running Room and run in a 5km fun run on New Year's Day. So I've already acheived my first resolution of the year. Overachieved actually. I was shooting for a 35min finish (average 7min/km) and my happy-outcome goal was 30min for the 5km. This is all based on the average training speeds of between 6 and 7 min/km that we've been doing for the last 10 weeks in the clinic. During the clinic running a 6min/km felt really fast and I had to drop back to 6:30 or 7min to be able to stay within the comfort zone (ie. not gasping/wheezing and being able to chat a bit).


Crossing the line with a smile on my face!
I ended up finishing the 2007 Resolution Run in 28min 20sec so am ecstatic about the whole thing. I'm feeling a lot fitter than I have for a while (which helped a lot in the Bald Hills trip a few weeks ago) and the medium term goal is to get ready for the Campbell Icefields trip in April. I've still got a ways to go and am starting a 10km clinic next week that should improve things even more. Col is joining a clinic as well next week so hopefully we'll be able to go for runs together and both be in tip top condition to take on the mountain in April. Long term it can only be a good thing to be getting out and about 2 or 3 times a week and I'm really looking forward to the spring and summer to see what it's like running without having to layer up in tights, thermals and gloves/tuque.