Ice-fields Parkway, Bow Summit

Out for another day of cold dry snow. Surprisingly, the skiing was actually really good. Considering that the rest of BC has been ravaged by a Pineapple Express with freezing levels way above mountain top, our expectations were set pretty low.

The Bow Summit is at the headwaters of the Bow River on the Icefields Parkway and gives easy access to great terrain.

Another beautiful day!

Its a powder cyclone!

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Ice-fields Parkway, Observation Peak

Itching to get up high and do some climbing, we headed to the Ice-fields Parkway. This scenic highway runs between Jasper and Lake Louise traversing the rocky mountains parallel to the continental divide. The road is rugged, high-elevation and can get pretty nasty in the winter. We stayed in a wilderness hostel (= no electricity, no showers) up at a place called Mosquito Creek and basically had the entire place to ourselves. We ended up sharing a large cabin with only another couple which we met while skiing in Steep creek - this was not planned at all. They just walked in and we had a "Hey, I know you!" moment.

Since the weather was cold and clear with little new snow, we decided to climb the SW ridge of Observation Peak. Near the Bow Summit (high point of the Icefields Parkway), the Observation summit has a great view of many of the surrounding peaks and is a reasonably safe objective in the winter. We headed out in the morning with our new friends from the hostel for an attempt at the summit - the great thing about climbing in the winter is that we don't have to get up so early sicne its so damn cold! The climb was pretty straightforward with a lot of boot packing near the top - the summit ridge was fairly exposed and we were forced to stop a few100m from the summit since we didn't bring any technical climbing gear with us. Even the ski back down the summit ridge was pretty good - super dry, cold powder snow (but sprinkled with a few rocks here and there).

Top of the ridge was wind scoured from recent 150km/h winds

360 summit panorama

A bit of an exposed ridge to get to the summit

 

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Banff and Healy Pass

What is a trip to the rockies without visiting Banff? Although the town seems to only be comprised of touristy restaurants, outdoor shops, and heliski operations it still definately has some charm. The town is set deep in a valley surrounded by towering mountains with huge relief, making the landscape quite dramatic. Visiting Banff also gave us the chance to meet up with Marie's cousin Stephanie (who lives in Canmore). After a tasty lunch we hit up some of the local sites. It definately is A LOT quieter in the winter (low) season and we had a lot of the tourist sites to ourselves.

Fairmont Banff Springs - that must be expensive. Definitely out of our price range.

Lake Minnewanka

Our second day in Banff we decided to get out into the mountains again, and ski up high on something mellow. Healy Pass is an area about 10km south from Sunshine Ski Resort and normally done on nordic skis - we had our AT gear (a little heavier) but it worked great on the way down! The tour in took about 3 hours through dense trees and we couldn't see a thing, however, at the end as we approached the pass, we were greeted with amazing views of the peaks surrounding Sunshine mountain. Standing in the pass we had a 360 degree panorama of the dramatic Rocky mountains in all directions. One of the notible features of the pass was the larch forest - its a conifer, but looses its needles in the winter.

 

The way up had lots of this - trees, with no views

Me and the Larches

Mandatory couple selfie!

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Elk crossing

Touring further east on our way to the Rocky mountains, we passed through a small town called Field and had the quintessential rockies experience. Field is the last stop on the CP railway before the famous spiral tunnels, but we ran into a bit of a traffic jam crossing the rail line.

Elk blocking the rail track and road into town

Apparently Elk actually wait until later in the season to come up high in the mountains, when the snowpack is >2m in depth. This way they can reach the tasty old man's beard that hangs higher up on the trees here.

 

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Next destination: Revelstoke!

We decided to next head east away from the coast and into the interior of BC to the Columbia mountain ranges. These are made up of the Selkirks, Monashees, Purcells and Caraboo mountains - all of which are much colder than the coastal range and tend to hold much lighter, drier snow = deep powder. We met up with our friend Dave who lives in Revelstoke and who acted as our personal ski guide for a few days showing us around the RMR slack country.

View from the summit of Revelstoke resort

We had a great few days in the resort and touring the surrounding backcountry. Since there was elevated avalanche danger, we stuck mostly to the trees.

View from the summit of Revelstoke resort

Marie and I also headed out to Roger's Pass for a day. This area is right in the middle of Glacier national park, and is a major transportation corridor through the Selkirk mountains. The pass was originally discovered at the turn of the century by none other than Mr. Rogers, while working for the Canadian Pacific Railway trying to find a route through. It is an area with a long history of mountaineers from around the world coming to climb the surrounding peaks. Now it is just filled with ski bums looking for some of the best skiing in the interior.

 

Looking down Grizzly Shoulder

Another great week skiing!

 

 

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Skiing the steeps

First stop on our BC ski road trip: Steep Creek. Just north of Pemberton on the Duffey Lake road, the "Steep Creek" drainage is a large area in the coast mountains surrounded by steep trees, large alpine bowls and gnarly couloirs. We skied into the backcountry near Darkside lake on Friday afternoon, and were joined shortly by Dave, Jenn, Tia and Greg just after midnight. It was a busy weekend, with around 30 people staying in the area for a couple of days. Not surprising - it was the first big dump of snow in a long while. With 30cm of new snow the skiing was great, and we managed to escape the crowds by heading into a hidden hanging valley just north-east of the lake - seems like no one else found it but us. The visibility was great and we managed a couple of laps.

Being unemployed, Marie and I spent a couple of extra days in the area skiing some steep trees in another area south of the lake. We were the only ones around, and had the place entirely to ourselves. An incoming storm provided good lighting for some dramatic pictures. 

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Florida

We spent the first 14 days of 2015 in sunny Florida at the Venneri condo in Hollywood and celebrated New Years in style - Jackie and Nathan were missed!

Happy 2015!

The days were filled with lying on the beach, reading, swimming, eating stone crab and drinking margaritas.

Beach Time!

We spent some time exploring the mangrove eco-system right next to the inter-coastal at the Anne Kolb Nature Centre and rented kayaks to get out on the (swamp) water. We saw many different birds, saw some jumping fish (which Marie was convinced would somehow accidentally hit her in the head!) and saw some swirls in the water that may have been a sign of a manatee tail!

Kayaking

After a few days in Hollywood, we packed up the van and headed down to the Florida Keys where we drove across the famous Seven mile bridge to Key West where we spent 2 nights.

Seven mile bridge

Seven mile bridge

It was a really cute town with houses that reminded us of what traditional southern US plantation houses must look like (with some added palm trees). We cycled around town, went to a fort and did some snorkeling. By the way, did you know that Key West is the southern most point in the US and is only 90 miles from Cuba?!

Tom enjoying the bike ride!

Southern Most Point of US

Marie snorkeling

And we finally saw a Manatee!

And a lot of Iguanas.

Because we still had not seen any alligators we tried an air boat tour through the Everglades. It was a fun experience to just get through the Everglades but the noise definitely scared any alligators away...Luckily, this park conveniently had a gator show performed by the Florida Gator Boys (A reality TV show on Animal Planet).

Air Boats

Gator Show

Until next time Florida!

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