Looking Back to Paradise Through the Larches

Life is a strange mix of chance and choice and while I don't often solo hike unfamiliar routes, sometimes a day is gifted to us and we just have to seize our opportunity and take advantage of that momment  On this day, Paradise Valley was not my intended destination - but a mix of cooler than expected and snowy weather and no other cars at my intended trailhead made me choose somewhere where I'd bump into a few more people - thus Lake Louise - and then an opportunity to hike Paradise Valley came up and I was certain that I wouldn't get another fall chance to hike this bucket list hike - so I went for it.

A stand out day of atmospheric, but not unpleasent weather - a few snowflakes and lots of clouds plus lots of larches and just enough people that I didn't feel absolutely alone.  A good day for introspection and photography and just breathing in pure beauty.

Hillsides and mountains dusted with fresh snow, highlighted by fall colours.

I had Lake Annette to myself for a good long lunch break - also the point where I switched back to my old hiking boots from my newer ones.

Sentinal Valley is near the top of my current bucket list - the rock formations are mysterious and intriguing - maybe next summer if I can book the shutttle for early starts and late finishes.

 

This as a place where I felt like I was on top of the world trekking along the upper edge of a deep and beautiful valley.  Windswept screefields and scrubby trees and all my tundra favourites made me miss the north.

I'm starting to plot next summers adventures and add to my bucket list places to challange my legs and fill my soul.  Here is to dreaming until next hiking season!!!

Barriers to Blogging

 I've finally solved one of my barriers to blogging by replacing my 2009 MacBook with a humble, but functional computer - which as a bonus can read my SD card from my real camera - meaning I'm looking at all the pictures I took with a 5 lb camera that I hauled everywhere this summer for the first time today and realizing that I really need to clean my lens.

So, does this mean more consistant writing - hopefully - but sometimes life is busy.  There is something about blogging that I think makes it worthwhile to not quite give up - that it represents a better phase of the interworld or perhaps that I only chose to read positive blogs.  Here is the sky over Consolation Lakes on a suprise trip up to Morraine via Transit - that I didn't expect to be possible during larch season.

Here is why everyone wants to be here in the fall.  I still really really really want to do Paradise Valley again in the fall, but its winter now and I haven't quite started planning the next round of hiking and camping.

Here is a place that I still have a lot of unfinished hiking business - if I can figure out when to go when the temperature is below 30 C, but its not the only one.

And there are a few places I wouldn't mind returning to either, but first I think its time to get a bit of sleep and be glad that I at least blogged once this year. :D

Falling Leaves and Tranquillity

 

Found a few new trails in a few new woods (and a spacious new tent).  It was nice to get away from technology and spend quality time with my small humans (although the cats insist they missed me).  We lucked out in picking a spot that wasn't picked by many others and had a quiet hike.  Maybe not the most stunning mountain vistas, but lovely all the same.  Just enough red in the mix to remind me of home - and the lovely smell of fallen leaves and change.  

So far my blogging has not lived up to expectations - but don't worry - I literally took 1000's of photos - just need time to curate and write about what it all means and why it was so important.  I'm proud of the amount of camping we did in the last 3 months and so glad the small folk love it as much as I do.  We finished a whole novel this trip and saw sheep, and pretended to be sheep and cats and have imaginary friends.  

We took time to appreciate the view and the land and the good things in the world.... and talked about hard things and silly things and kind things.  It would have been easier to work all weekend and get ahead, but you can't get back these days and I'm sure I'll catch up on my sleep eventually.

Where have I been? Collecting photos - so hopefully I'll have lot write about!

Okay - looks like we are 3/4 of the way through the year and I'm only on my 3rd post.  Fair enough - work keeps me busy and in my not working time I was busy playing in the woods and taking lots and lots of pictures - probably the most I've taken since my oldest was a baby or the year we got our cats.  Hopefully, this bounty of nature photos translates into some good posts about my adventures the last few months.  I thought I'd share this bog picture from Cirque Lake as this is still the Bog Blog and I do occasionally make it to the alpine tundra if not the actual tundra.

I knew at the end of last year my soul was starving for trees and brooks and views that made your heart sing - so I dragged my small humans into the woods and up the hills and to as many mountain lakes as we could pack into on summer.  This was our most recent and I think a new favourite.

Cirque Lake was a fun and varied hike, only rarely more muddy than I'd like and the Lake was breath taking.  We randomly met multiple people from back home on route and made it back to the campsite in time for dinner.

Rooted Against the Wind

 The wind is a persistent, if unpredictable foe.  Some days strong and steady, some days coming at you from all directions in short blasts, some days altogether missing.  Yet trees manage to resist the wind, digging their roots deep into the ground or clinging tenaciously in places where soil is more of a dream than a reality.  I feel if I have a motto in life - it is to focus on the solution, rather than the problem.  Trees teach us the value of our roots when facing adversity, and I feel lucky to be rooted by my connections to my family, particularly, my mother's unshakable belief in me and her love.  Having roots gives me the confidence to approach my life as a hunt for solutions, rather than get mired in the energy sapping game of seeing myself as the victim of my problems.  This lone pine is rooted in deep, but likely nutrient poor soil, it has been shaped by the wind, but has prevailed - because of its roots, flexibility, and simply focusing on the things it can control, rather than the ones it can.   If this year has taught anything, it is to be a tree.

I realized that I've yet to publish my musings on New Year's eve, and after re-reading them - while mostly a humorous self reflection on the strange things one does in a pandemic, I'm not sure I've the will to edit them to the point of publishing them.... which makes this my official first post of the year.

A few weeks ago while checking the links to other blogs on mine,  I discovered that most of the cohort of blogs that I started with have long ceased to exist.  That left me feeling oddly sad - as there is something more substantial about a blog post than a social media post.  At one point in my life, my blogging community was an important part of my existence - and I miss their musings on life (and beautiful pictures).  So, I'm going to continue to try to make an effort to keep this one going a little longer (its 16 years old after all) and perhaps find some new blogs to build a community with.

Waxwings and their big Holiday Parties

 With the joy and delight of a small child I ran out of my house in -15 C weather in only a sweat-shirt and jeans to marvel in the giant flock of Waxwings  bouncing around the neighbourhood to partake in the mountain ash and rose hips and other berries about.

They flew about and in true 2020 fashion I noticed that they were gathering in large groups and not social distancing.  But, I guess if you are a flock of birds there have to be some perks.  

I am grateful for them sharing their festive colours and spirit on this grey day.

Happy Holidays!

Picklejar Lakes Weather Extravaganza

 So, I started off well, but haven't been back to Blog in a while.  I've been too busy hiking and taking pictures.  I'm still way ahead of the last few years put together.  

Yesterday was a treat as we trekked to the first 3 of 4 or 5 Picklejar lakes.  While the lakes were nice, they weren't exactly Boom Lake or Sherbrooke Lake.  The hike itself though was amazing - vistas, fall colours, a little steep in the odd place, but my 4 year old managed it with no complaints.  She might be an exceptional kid though or I might be biased.

The funnest part (unless you were a mom who was worried about the number of hours of daylight and if the weather would slow us down too much) was the random September Snow Squall that we trekked back through.  It made things slipperier, but it definitely made it memorable.  I'd run out of room on my SD card, so I don't have so many pictures of the snow as I'd like, but then again, probably a good time to tuck the camera away so it didn't get wet. Then there was the moment when I realized I had a plan in place for bear and elk encounters, but I had no idea what to do with a herd of cows.  Fortunately, a  couple of cow knowledgable folks were right behind us and call them off the trail.

All in all an amazing day and I'll try to catch up on sharing some of our other adventures when hiking season is over.

Ptarmigan Cirque de Soleil et beaucoup de vent!

Me and the littlest took a quick late afternoon trek up to see the subalpine forest and alpine tundra.  Other than passing a few souls on their way home, we pretty much had the whole mountain to ourselves.  The temperature when we started out was only 10 C and the wind was hard to keep your hat on insane.  I was glad that I brought rain suits and an extra sweater for the littlest, otherwise, I think we would have been cold.

The flowers were stunning - paintbrush in white, cream, 4 shades of pink and red, purple aster, yellow and white avens, arnica, saxifrage, moss campion, Saussurea densa, fireweed, vetch, alpine forget-me-not, rocky mountain goldenrod, luetkea pectinata or smelowskia calycina (not sure which), shrubby cinquefoil, stonecrop, and I think my hard to identify thick-rooted spring beauty plant found way up in a gravelly, shaded crevice.  If anyone has a different identification, let me know, I struggled with this one.Today, even at a much lower altitude there is fresh snow on the mountain top.  

To think last week we were melting in the heat an today, I'm wishing I had a warmer sweater on, inside...!!!

  

White and Yellow Mountain Avens    

Moss Campion

Thick rooted spring beauty - Claytonia Megarrhiza????

Paintbrush     

      

 

Consolation Prize

 This has been a strange summer, but I've certainly had some luck having various trails to myself.  This was one of the few new hikes I've done this summer.  A pleasant trek up to the Consolation Lakes near dusk, sushi for dinner, and good company (my husband).  Mount Babel creates an impressive backdrop with its interesting towers and spires.  The flowers were pretty and then we pretty much had Morraine Lake to ourselves for the dusk - which is hard to imagine given that its rare to getting a parking spot, let alone, solitude up here.

Mount Babel

Blue Lakes and Rocky Shores

I'm pretty sure that happiness is a trail through the woods that ends in a gem coloured lake!  We explored some old favourites yesterday, traipsing through the woods and along the shore and appreciated the panoramic mountains around us.  We couldn't have asked for better weather.  It was sunny with a nice breeze.  The temperature was pleasant, but not hot.  And not only did we find beauty, but joy in the peace of uncrowded spaces and revelling in nature!  I'm looking forward to ticking a few more hikes off my bucket list this summer.  I remembered to clear off my photo card in preparation for my next adventures! 

It is amazing how ice and plate tectonics have shaped this land here and made it interesting and beautiful.  I feel guilty that I haven't hiked more of it in the last few years, but this is the first year that my small people could handle 10 km, and most of these places are a longer walk away than that.  I'm hoping by the end of the summer we can start taking on some more challenging hikes together.

Fairyland Mushrooms

One the games we play when we hike is to imagine where the fairies live and what they use different parts of the forest for.  This spot was declared a cafe and then a playground for little fairies.  What are your thoughts?

Its funny how we cycle through phases of looking back at different parts of my life.  As a high school teacher, I often found myself comparing my high school experiences to the ones of my students.  This past year, I took on teaching a much younger grade and found myself remembering that part of my school.  It was probably not my favourite year of my childhood.  It was my first year in a new school and the older kids in our class weren't always kind.  My most recalled experience from this part of my education was having our teacher send me and another student into the dusty book room to practice our spelling with banned spellers in the era of the common curriculum and failing a multiplication test that was otherwise perfect, except that my 5's looked a bit like the letter s.  To this day, I find this a draconian outcome.

Now, I find myself trying to puzzle how this pandemic will make my children's childhood's even more different than mine.    I'm trying to prepare them for the reality of school next year by constantly reminding them about not touching their face, washing their hands, and practicing social distancing, but I worry that we'll end up with a generation of kids who feel anxious when they are closer to someone than 6 feet.   Its a weird time in this world.  Some days I want to ignore it, since years living in the north makes some of it less weird, we rarely left our house except for work and groceries.  I feel like there will be lots to examine when all of this is done.  Or hopefully, when it is done.  I hope that it will make us a better world, but some days it seems to be making us worse.  I guess we'll just have to wait and see.  Probably we'll be worse in some ways and better in others.  So, until then, I guess we can only do our own bests and like everyone else, figure out what that actually means.

Tooth Fungas - Don't eat me!

Things most people don't know about me - I was almost a forest engineer - until I realized that I really wanted to play SIM City in real life and switched to Civil - and then I realized I missed teaching, and after all that, I'm almost on my 10th year of teaching.  However, I still find the many relationships between Fungi and Forest fascinating (yes, kids - that was intentional alliteration!)

I love fungi that grow on trees!  These are particular beauties with their bright colours and long teeth.  I was busy hiking so I didn't even think to try and identify the host tree, but the trees here were surprisingly large for the subalpine forest.  I thought it would be easy to classify this striking mushroom, but many hours of searching have come up short.  The best match I could find is Hydnophlebia chrysorhiza or Phanerochaete sp.  However, if any forestry folks can help me out.  The available information online suggested that it attacked plane trees in one article and conifers in the other.  (This log is likely a conifer).  In the meantime, I'm wishing that I could find my fungi identification book, but I have a suspicion that it was for Eastern Canada and also likely still in eastern Canada at my mother's house.

Still a beauty found in the Canadian Rockies!  

To the joy of discovering new places!

Here are two new locations that we discovered - making this one of my new all time favourite hikes.  For very little effort, we were treated with 2 amazing waterfalls and one stunning lake, which regrettably made a small person's hiking boot wet, but she made it to the end with a Canadian Tire boot liner and a luckily stashed dry sock in my backpack!

The birds sang and the forest floor was carpeted with tiny yellow violets!  We are lucky to live in such a beautiful world!

Favourite places

I suppose it is not surprising that we return to our favourite places.  This part of this trail is one of mine.  A gravel outwash delta jutting in to a deep green lake, the vegetation is unique from the surrounding forests, the pines twisted like expressive dancers, and the view in all directions nothing short of magnificent!

I'm sure that I will try to make it back here this summer.  With reduced parking, it may be tricky to get a spot, but there are some new spots to explore that I haven't been.  Here's to rising early, and snagging those parking spots.  Although, the hardest part is herding two kids into the car with enough food, cloths, water and gear for the day - and still getting out the door early enough!

I'm am going to try and post a lot more this summer!  I'll have made 2 posts in 2020 by the time I press publish - which I haven't done since 2014.  The writing will probably still be rambly and purposeless, but one goal at a time!

I've done more serious hiking in the last week than I have since a few years ago!  I got 10 km out of my 4 year old without a single request to be carried, so I'm optimistic with enough motivational treats we are going to have a great summer and walking in the woods.  Even yesterday, we managed to hit that threshold where the natural landscape completely changed my stress level.  The view of green and trees after months of being a this desk (granted I have a decent view out the window that does in fact include trees and mountains, but its not the small as just being.

Me and my small hiking  companions have been revelling in the spring flowers - violets in white, purple and yellow.  Columbine in yellow, pink and purple.  We even saw glacier and blue bead lilies yesterday! 

What I also learned is that after several months of rarely leaving my house, my feet were wondering what these strange prisons called shoes were - although, they've forgiven me today.  Here is to blogging and hiking and lots of pictures!

The Uncertainty of our Path

It wouldn't be a blog entry without first pointing out how long it has been since I last posted.  So welcome to June 2020. We are currently in the middle of a global pandemic (aka COVID-19) and schools were last open Friday, March 13th, 2020.  This coming Monday is our last official day of school.

So here is the good news - I have a lens that works with my DSLR and I can take pictures worthy of sharing again.  It's been awhile since my old K20D camera stopped working on the way back up Baker Lake in January 2017 and shortly after replacing my camera body, my good lens broke.  So, here is hoping that I get back to posting more regularly, now that a lack of photos won't be an excuse.  My other excuse is software based.  Since Picasa ceased to work, I had to think about it more since I could blog directly from my photo management software.  Also, I seem to still struggle to get pictures off my phone which seems to have become my default camera, even if the pictures stink.

As for the future, who knows what it holds.  Hopefully a few more pictures to share on this blog now and again!  Maybe some writing that doesn't sound like I've been interrupted a million times. 

At any rate, enjoy this beautiful shooting star!  We've enjoyed the flowers at the Many Spring Trail, but have had to get up early to miss the crowds.  Here's to hoping that we get back in the habit of spending lots of time outdoors now that its summer.

Greetings from the land of blog neglect.  It has been literally years since my last post, but I still come back to this blog because it is a treasure trove of photos and occasionally thoughts from my life.  I thought I'd share this picture from a recent adventure.  The Kananaskis never disappoints... and its stunning right now.  I was mildly riddled with guilt that I wasn't working or cleaning something, but 3 hours in the lovely fall air filled my cup in ways that nothing else would.  I enjoyed every second of the hike, especially the amazing views once we were above the treeline (filled the ache in my soul for the tundra this time of year).  I'm fighting the urge to take off and hike again today, especially since the sky is  currently blue.  Maybe I can sneak a short one in.  I also reveled in the drive through this amazing corridor through stunning mountains and lakes.  We didn't see as much wildlife as the last time I did this drive with my mom in July, but the land made up for it.  I also found the trail heads of a couple of hikes that are on my wish list. I'm hoping to do at least one of them this fall.  Finding the trail heads definitely will make it easier. 

I will see if I can get back in the habit of posting at least once in a while.  At least now there is one entry for 2019 - we'll see if I can do at least once a month - to get back in the habit.

:D

Blogging From the Tundra

I haven't posted in a very long time, and my most recent posts are actually mostly from the 1 year in the last 7 or 8 that I wasn't living on the tundra.  I'm still here.  The tundra still amazes me with its beauty.  I don't have many winter shots - but maybe that will be my job as we prepare to spend our 2nd Christmas on the tundra.

Life has been full of good changes and I've simply gotten busy (became a mom) and to some extent forgotten that I have a blog.  My blog is actually over 10 years old - and I guess to a certain extent Facebook has replaced blogging - but Facebook doesn't really call me to write anything eloquent - just tell people that I'm doing daily things that everyone does day like waking up and appreciating the smell of coffee.  Blogging lends itself more to thoughtful, edited posts with a purpose - even if the purpose is only to express mortification that its been nearly 2 years since I last posted anything.

I've pulled a stack of tundra pictures from this fall that hopefully I'll post over the next little while - and then add to them a stash of winter tundra pictures.  We'll see how it goes.... but the world should know the beauty of the tundra and I'm not quite ready to let this project die after 10 years.  I just might have to rethink how I use it.

You want me to eat duck and turkey - never

Yes - I love my cat so much that I've been picking out the food she doesn't like in the current mix just for her.  We've given up trying to feed our cats different food - but Molly doesn't like the stuff the vet recomeneded.. thus the picking it out of her dish... funny cat.

Small Tiger

Is she pondering the variety of kibble I've been feeding her - trying to find something that she likes but doesn't bug her tummy.  Or maybe just eating me or the strange object in my hand.  Ah Zoe, you are a funny kitty and I have no idea what you think about.