Roadtrip Planning!

Here is the long promised Summer 2011 West USA Roadtrip outline.  Ever since I realised that I would be ending a year in Canada with a car (probably), my long held pipe-dream of a classic USA roadtrip with my mountain-bike in the trunk (or on the back or on the roof - you get the idea) took many steps closer to reality.  My visa here expires mid-May, so the plan is to leave sometime just before that & travel down from the Alberta-Montana border to San Diego (with much time spent in Utah & Colorado) trying to do as much riding as possible.  As I'm also a bit of a sucker for famous sites & sights, plenty of National Parks & other such things will also be included - maybe even some hiking &, dare I say it climbing, could be in order too.  After spending time with good friends again in San Diego it'll be up the west coast to British Columbia & then back across to Canmore to sell the car & leave for London again.

I've done a bit of research on the mtbr.com forums & other useful websites, but I'm keen to hear the ideas of others.  Here is a loose plan (in vague chronological order & which I haven't really looked at for a while) of the places I intend to visit so far.  I fully realise that by the time I get to ride in some places, it will be stinking hot - but that's just the way the visa timing works out; I think I'll be doing quite a lot of early morning riding.  If anyone has any suggestions of great places to visit or ride that I might be able to work in to such a plan - please, please let me know.  Perhaps more importantly, if riding in such places appeals & you're keen & possibly able to join me (for whatever part) - let me know, it'd be fantastic to share some sublime riding with friends.

Now I know why I was putting this off - there's still six months to go & just writing about it makes that seem so far away.  If the taste of riding I had in the South West last year is anything to go by - it's going to be a ripper.

Avalanche!

No, I didn't see a big avalanche, fortunately (or even a small one, unfortunately).  I did however spend all weekend on an Avalanche Skills Training Level One course.  Saturday was a classroom day (nicely a short walk from home) where Felix, our guide/teacher, took us through all the theory.  Not really being at all familiar with avalanche country there was an awful lot to take in.  We had a good class of eight & there was enough discussion & questions to keep things interesting.  I'm sure I soaked in quite a bit of the theory; even so, I'm still confident that I know enough now to know that I really don't know much & picking slopes is going to be tricky.  Still, that's why one goes back-country with more experienced companions.

Felix also had a lot of great avalanche stories & videos to show us why it's not really a good idea to trigger one.  This one from back home has been floating around the interwebs for a while, but it was definitely the most impressive (despite the music).



There were also plenty of human (skier or sled/snowmobile) triggered slides, rescue & failed-rescue stories to sober us up.  Felix was a great tutor & I particularly enjoyed swapping (off-topic) mountain-biking & trekking stories of Nepal - of course, mine weren't nearly as impressive.

The practical day was up at Bow Summit (a little way up the Icefield Parkway towards Jasper); leaving town at about seven o'clock the snow started (finally) just before Lake Louise.  The Parkway is not all that high on the roads-that-must-be-plowed-immediately list, so in a car that doesn't have suspension on steroids it was a little interesting hitting various drifts.  Definitely a little different to driving in NZ.

The day was pretty warm (-5ºC) & it snowed on us all day as we traipsed around locating hidden beacons, learning how to use our probes & shovels the most effective way & listened to as many tips as possible.  Eventually we skinned a bit further up the hill out of the trees to take a look at a few slopes & try to tie in what we had learnt the previous day with real life.  Of course, the wind was blowing in an unusual direction to confuse us a bit - but we were able to make some sense of it all.  Taking our skins off, the descent wasn't much fun as there wasn't really all that much snow & all the little Christmas trees-tops were a little hard for me to avoid.  We finished the day by simulating a couple of rescue scenarios - pretty simple, but a good way to learn a few extra things.

The weekend didn't end all that well as I was often topping the car with oil - & the drive back to Lake Louise wasn't a cakewalk either.  By Monday afternoon I'd put over eight litres of oil in over a few days & most of that didn't last all that long.  Sunday night was relatively sleepless as I thought of all the damage that had probably been done (I'm just glad I had oil in the trunk when I was up the Parkway, which is slightly remote)) & recoiled at the cost of the repairs or replacing the engine or car & the subsequent obliteration of my roadtrip savings.  I got it in the garage after work on Monday & as I was making the forty-five minute walk home, I was pleased to get the call that the leak was from the oil sensor (& not my last oil & filter change).  So that repair turned out a lot cheaper than I expected & now I just have to hope that my topping up on that trip back from Bow Summit was enough to get the  (what is supposed to be a durable & hardy) engine through.

On another note, I'm in from the yard this week at work & working at a desk.  I never expected to be spending part of my working-holiday working on PMs (Preventative Maintenance) plans - but here I am with another chance to impress people with my Excel & Pivot Table (those ones are thanks to you, Neil) proficiency.

Trying out the new foot appendages

After the eating, working & driving too much of the previous week it has been nice to be at home & a lot more active over the last few days.  Especially as the weekend was free to go skiing finally.  Thursday I got to try out my rock shoes for the first time at the bouldering gym ("gime, what's a gime?").  At least after a couple hours of that I didn't have any really sore muscles over the next few days.

The weather forecast over the weekend was for (relative) warmth & clear skies, so I was keen to finally see if I could remember how to ski.  After a reasonable sleep in Saturday morning (much needed after [perhaps too-] generously babysitting Finn on Friday night so Megan & Alex could go see Harry Potter - Finn screamed most of the three & a half hours) & Megan being unable to join me I headed up to Sunshine alone.  I must never get to Sunshine so late on a weekend - it's not fun having to walk even half the length of the parking lot.

The early season snow wasn't great but it was nice to try out my skis & have a little refresher on what was a stunning day.  There was no wind & I think the mercury sat around -10 to -5ºC, so it wasn't unpleasant on the chairlifts.  I hit the new Strawberry lift first (sucker for little traditions like that) - it's a huge improvement on the old one, much faster & now a quad-chair.  I got quite a few runs in there, off Wawa & down from Jack Rabbit to the mid-gondola station before meeting another Aussie (a friend of Alex & Megan's whom I'd been for one G8 ride with some months ago), Joel, his girlfriend, Kristy & their colleague, Anya/Anja/???? for lunch .

After a leisurely lunch (the poutine was average, as was the service) & getting to know everyone a bit (not to mention many Fort Mac stories - always one of the hazards of sitting with a group of people that all work together) we were off up for quite a few runs down from Standish.  It was nice to be skiing with a group, as although it's nice to ski at your own pace & not have to wait around when you are alone, it gets a bit boring after a while & skiing with others better than you helps improve your own skiing - much like biking & many other things I suspect.   The views from the top of the Angel chair across the meadows to Mt Assiniboine were spectacular & rather a lot whiter than last time I was out this way.

After a rather rocky ski-out, what better way to treat bodies that have forgotten the aches of a day's skiing than a good soak in the Banff hot springs?  We couldn't think of one, so that was where we headed & it was great.  The day finished with a few beers & snacks at the Drake (somehow I've managed to avoid it over the previous seven months) - good yam fries (yams in this country are what we call kumara or sweet potatoes back home, not those tiny little red twisted vegetables).

Sunday dawned an even better day.  James (a workmate from LeFarge) & I were heading up the Spray Valley for an easy ski-tour to Chester Lake to start off the touring season.  The -20ºC at the parking lot didn't really seem that bad & with the skins on & climbing up the trail it wasn't long before the jacket was off.  We climbed for about 75 minutes before I was hungry (surprised I lasted that long) so we had lunch in the sun.  Getting past the annoying flats parts on the way back, the skins were off & we had a pretty cruisy run down to truck passing many others on their way up to enjoy the glorious day.  Thankfully not much of note happened this time - last time I was up here was the second & last of my shoulder dislocations.   There was snow, could do with more, & the views were good.

Damn you Air Canada & referrals

In the end I wasn't successful in convincing Air Canada to shift my return flight back a few months.  So now I'm going back to London for a massive three-day visit, at not inconsiderable expense, at the end of February.  About the only good part of this is that I'll get to see good friends & family - some of whom I probably wouldn't see for some years otherwise.

Now that I actually have the odd visitor, the Stats Tracker (that's what that funny little symbol is down  under the Twitter feed) has some little things of interest.  Apparently someone in Houston is using Netscape 4 - I don't think I've seen Netscape since I was in Bangkok in 1996.  The best one so far is that someone stumbled on this post by googling "piranha fire dept saw".  I'm not sure what I'm more surprised by - that that search term got to my blog or that someone actually searched for that.  But my little blog & its related search terms don't really compare to what this occurrence reminded me of.

Survived Kamloops - wasn't difficult.

Actually, I had a great week away working in Kamloops.  It's a really nice little city - unfortunately I didn't see a lot of it as was mostly dark when I wasn't at work.  A big bonus of my little escape from the valley was that I missed the cold weather at the start of the week.  Word has it that it was appreciably below -30ºC in Canmore on Tuesday & pretty close to -40ºC at Exshaw (where I usually work).  It was comparatively balmy -20ºC in Kamloops that day.  Unfortunately, quite a few of the conveyors at LaFarge Kamloops are outside - it was pretty tough trying to write on a clipboard in the biting wind.

The plant itself is very small & almost cute (in an industrial way) - they have one kiln & three dinky little mills.  With a staff of only thirty to forty people, it's just like a big family & they were all very welcoming & glad to have some extra help for the week.  There were quite a few out-of-towners working in the plant - which was good as it meant I had company for dinner at the hotel on some of the nights.  I even met a Kazahk who was very chatty - many Borat jokes ensued.  After it started to warm up a bit later in the week, we got some decent dumps of snows - which was OK until I had to walk down about four-thousand feet of conveyor on the side of a hill without falling over. 

Being rather tired from the travelling & working, I gave up on reading the Hunchback of Notre Dame (very tedious start) after a couple of nights & went to the cinema a couple of times.  Somehow I saw Unstoppable - some sort of action-thriller about freight trains (not sure that's much of a selling point) starring Denzel Washington.  It was surprisingly enjoyable - but then I quite like trains & it was neat seeing bits of Pennsylvanian countryside & industry - geek.  I couldn't but help think of the three year old daughter of my friends north of Philly & her love of trains.  A couple of nights later I saw the Deathly Hollows (yes, I know - but that's what my ticket said) - my perception of it suffered from too much anticipation; I think it was probably pretty good, but having read the book recently it was never going to capture the detail, humour, suspense or conflict as well.  On the plus side, the camping trip didn't seem quite as long as my initial reading - & the scenery of said camping trip was great (except under the Severn Bridge, who goes camping there?).

Speaking of names, the few times I could be bothered venturing away from the hotel (their steak was fantastic & I just had to indulge in the NZ lamb chops), I managed to dine in such places as The Noble Pig, Senor Froggy's,  Billy Miners & The Village Idiot.

Even though it was warmer by the end of the week, the first half of the drive home was harder than earlier in the week as on the BC side a lot of the snow & ice had thawed in patches & then frozen again in other patches.  One was never quite sure exactly where those patches were.  But this side of Roger's Pass, it got cold again & the road was much easier.  Except perhaps for this truck - I was first in the queue to watch a bit of the salvage operation. 

 

 

 If anyone from warmer parts of the world (almost everywhere else last week) is wondering how I can say the road was good with so much snow around - these a part of the reason, I saw dozens of them.

This time through Revelstoke I actually managed to find the town itself & not just the Tim Hortons (a Canadian coffee & donut & other assorted fast-food institution) by the highway.  They seemed to have a lot more snow sitting around than both Canmore & Kamloops.  Also, the houses in the town are a lot older than in Canmore & with a lot more character.  The small part I saw was both very white & quite charming.

 

The rest of the drive was quicker & relatively uneventful - beside passing the odd car in a ditch, a not uncommon sight around these parts in the winter.  It was a lot clearer than when I drove through & the mountains were pretty stunning, this slightly wonky sunset picture will have to suffice as back-up for that statement.

Back home, Alex has gone & complicated our Settlers games by buying the expansion pack Cities & Knights.  There's a lot more to the game now & it should keep us interested for quite sometime.  I had a lazy day yesterday after staying up too late reading this great (& insanely popular) trip report of a Belgian couple that drove across the Congo a couple of years ago.  Not sure I would make it - it was frustrating enough just trying to change the taillight (if I ever meet the person who kicked the previous one in I would very much like to kick them) & install a finicky lighter socket (but now I'll be able to charge my iPod on the roadtrip).

Just got my touring-ski bindings adjusted & sent off the rego for an avalanche safety course - looking forward to get out amongst the snow soon.