Outside Observer

As Google has been joyfully letting the world know this week, it is the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street.  By happy coincidence, one of my cousins sent me pictures from a family Halloween party which suddenly transported me back to my preschool days.  Two of my relatives were dressed as some of my absolute favourite characters from the show...characters which I sadly forgotten.  The Yipyipyip Martians.  With childlike curiosity, they explored the world, and identified new and wonderful things, by consulting the "book".  They didn't always get it right, but they were focused, studious, and analytical.  When they did figure something out, their delight was pure and contagious.  May they bring back the same happy memories for you as they did for me:

Today I decided to tackle Powderface Ridge; one of the front-range mountains of Kananaskis Country.  The day was beautiful...sunny, with just some high thin cloud.  A welcome change after several days of gray rainy-ness.

For whatever reason, I always assumed Powderface Ridge was named for the snow on it in the winter...I had visions of it being some sort of meca for back-country snowboarders.  Ummm, no.  There are a few places up top where I suppose you could board down, but only for a short duration.  The name actually comes from a Stoney Indian named Tom Powderface who lived in the Bragg Creek area.  Sorry Tom.  I stand corrected!  The trail over the ridge is a popular mountain-bike trail, especially coming south, whereas I was going to walk north going up.  So it was with some trepidation that I set out, hoping I wouldn't end up with knobby tire tracks across my forehead by the end of the day.  I needn't have worried.  I had the entire mountain to myself.  I never saw another human the entire day. (Ok, that's not entirely true.  I did see two teeny-tiny figures standing on Nihahi Ridge to the west for a brief moment, but only if I squinted really hard through my binoculars.)

I arrived at the trailhead in the morning, and with some delight noted that it had actually snowed on some of the higher peaks to the west, like Cougar Mountain, Banded Peak, and Glasgow Peak, making them glint in the morning sun.  Mid-summer, August 17, and there was a dusting of snow at the high elevations.  It brought home the advice every guidebook gives about being prepared for any kind of weather when you are in the mountains.  I started up the trail, and climbed, and climbed, and climbed....and wondered does this thing ever end?  And what will give out first, my calf muscles, or my heart?  It was quite the climb.  I can see now why the mountain bikers like to take the trail going the other way, starting from a trailhead at the other end.

I finally reached the first grassy col and the cairn there, and after catching my breath, took a small side detour to get a panoramic shot of the mountains to the west, and Cougar Creek running south.  The pointy peak about 3/4 of the way across that has a horizontal line at the very top is the iconic Banded Peak...instantly recognizable.  I even have a picture of it from when I flew home last year over the mountains from Vancouver. (In the picture from the plane, Mount Glasgow is the first large mountain in the foreground, Banded Peak is the pyramidal one just to the upper left of it.)

After all the rain we've had, it was no surprise that fungi were out in full force.  I saw all variety of mushrooms, especially in the shaded moist forests leading up to the second col and to the ridge itself.  This purple club coral fungus was everywhere.  I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

After passing the second grassy col, the trail emerged into a lovely meadow scattered with a few trees, and flecked with wildflowers everywhere; mountain larkspur, purple fleabane, red Indian paintbrush, yarrow, arnica, locoweed, golden aster, creamy milkvetch.  Gorgeous. 

A bit further on and I suddenly found myself in the midst of a large flock of various warblers, juncos, mountain chickadees, and kinglets.  All checking me out.  Close and perfectly framed for some great pictures.

It was at this point my camera decided to die.

Ok...I need to rant for a moment and get this off my chest.  When I decided to get a new camera in the winter, I had a list of important features I really wanted.  Most of them I was able to get, although no one camera had them all, unfortunately (so demanding, I know...).  One of the things I had to compromise on was the battery.  My old camera had a squarish lithium-ion battery that you popped out when the camera told you it was getting low, and you popped it into a charger.  I carried two, one always fully charges to swap out.  They were small and convenient, and the camera always gave you plenty of warning when they got low.  Olympus decided to stop using them because, according the camera store sales guy and various websites, people prefer cameras that use AA batteries because they are easy to obtain just about anywhere if you are travelling.  (Huh, except on top of a mountain, you dolts.)  Considering how much I use my camera, I figured I had better invest in rechargeable AA's and a charger.  All well and good, and they even seem to last a good long time.  The problem is, the camera does not seem to "read" rechargeable batteries very well.  For weeks it happily say "full green! full green!"; the batteries are completely full.  Then, in the blink of an eye, suddenly the camera freaking out, flashing red little warning lights everywhere because the batteries are critically low.  There is no in-between, no early warning, or "yellow light".  Settings seem to only be able to indicate "ll" and "panic!panic!empty!".  Yes, I know it is my fault for not carrying back-ups.  But you think they could work out SOMETHING so that you had a little warning, and knew when to slap those annoying AA's back in the charger before heading out.  Olympus...if you are out there, fix this!!!

Anyways, for the rest of the hike, I had to take pictures using my poor little cell phone, so I apologize in advance for the quality.  Alas, you make do with what you have.

Whew.  Ok, end rant.  Back to our regularly scheduled program of Ruth running around in the forest, meadows, and mountain tops.  (If anyone so much as murmurs the name "Heidi" I WILL hunt you down...)

After some lovely, if slightly muddy, hiking through cool, moist spruce forest, the trail starts climbing again and you emerge just below a large rocky ridge that runs a fair distance.  Below the rocky outcrop (on the east side) is a meadow protected from the west winds, and hundreds of wildflowers bloom here with butterflies ecstatically skipping from flower to flower like they had some sort of attention deficit disorder.  "ooo, flower....ooo, another flower...ooo, a purple flower...ooo, flower, flower, flower...!!!"

Up on top of the ridge proper, the views were fantastic.  To the east, beyond Prairie Mountain, the foothills gradually became prairie, and I could just make out Calgary downtown in the very distant haze.  To the northeast was the mammoth Moose Mountain...another hike I hope to do someday.  Sun glinted of the roof of a forest fire lookout at the very tippy-top of the mountain.

The ridge sloped gently to the west, into a valley green with pine and spruce.  At the very distant end of the valley towards the north, I could just barely make out Mount Yamnuska on the other side of the Bow Valley.  Immediately to the west was the long palisade of Nihahi Ridge, for the most part paralleling Powderface Ridge.  Behind it poked up the unique square face of Mount Remus.  And to the southwest was the Highwood Range, with several of the snow dusted peaks I mentioned above, including Banded Peak.  To the south was Forgetmenot Ridge, rising up from the shimmering Cougar Creek.  360 degrees of breathtaking view.

I sat for a while on the ridge, and ate my lunch.  Curious (hungry? and sadly habituated) golden-mantled squirrels came close to check me out, and when they decided I wasn't going to feed them, scurried in and out of the rocks, and snipped off small alpine flowers to munch on, glaring at me disapprovingly.  The sun was warm and the breeze fresh.  I dozed a bit in the rocky meadow, wandered along the ridge, and then decided to head back. 

Hiking down, my right leg seemed to feel extra cool, and I realized I had ripped my pant leg from the butt down the back leg.  For those who know me, they were my favourite colourful lounging around pants...the green-and-yellow, obnoxious, cotton, tie-dye things, completely worn out and mended numerous times.  Well...today marks their final demise.  I think they are beyond mending now.  It was a good thing I was the only one on the mountain!  The ground squirrels and the birds could probably care less what colour my underwear was.
 

I have a new addiction: hiking.  Well, ok, I've always liked hiking.  But now I have the (more-or-less stable) financial means to rent a car and just go to the mountains whenever I feel like it (around my work schedule, of course).  It's like a drug.  I can't get enough, and there really is a surge of happiness like a high I get from it.  It starts as soon as I'm driving west on Hwy 1, the mountains arcing across the horizon, beckoning.  All I can think is "How beautiful is that!  How can anyone ever get tired of this landscape?"

At work, our field program schedule is still up in the air and we've done the bulk of major data entry and reporting in the office, so my boss said to go ahead and take some lieu time off with her blessings.  Goodness knows I've built up quite a bit of it over the past couple months!  So I checked and rechecked the weather schedule, and in the middle of a rainy, dreary week, all the forecasts indicated clear and sunny on Wednesday, with a high temp of 21 degrees in the mountains.  Perfect!  You can't get better than that.  Hmm...as I found out, sometimes things are too good to be true...

I poured over my trail maps and guide books, and decided to tackle Burstall Pass.  This is a trail that starts in the Smith-Dorrien valley of Peter Lougheed Park, and crosses a pass between Mount Birdwood and Mount Sir Douglas at 2,380 m before decending into the Spray River valley in Banff National Park.  15 km return.

The drive out started sunny enough, but just as I was approaching the Burstall trailhead, it started to drizzle, and all the clouds were originating from the pass I was about to hike to!  Oh well, it wouldn't be the sunny glorious day that I hoped, but it should still be good.

One of the perks of a flexible work schedule is being able to hike in the middle of the week when the trails are less busy, and you can escape humanity for a while.  The drawback is you truly are alone if something happens.  There was a handwritten note taped to the trailhead post saying grizzlies had been seen in the area 2 days prior.  So, I thought it better to relinquish a little of my "peace and quiet," and sing as I walked.  (Scaring both bears and humans away, no doubt!)

The first part of the trail was along an old logging road.  On the right side was Burstall Creek valley and wetlands, bounded on the other side by Mount Birdwood, Pig's Tail Peak, and Commonwealth Peak.  Small mountain waterfalls rushed down their sides.

At the head of the marshland, the trail crosses a wide, flat, gravel bed, filled with scrubby willow, elephants head flowers, wintergreen, evergreen saxifrage, and vibrant pink alpine fireweed, all eking out an existence on the constantly changing terrain.  Multiple glacier fed streams criss-crossed across this flat plain, a text-book example of a braided stream. 

The origin of the streams and the gravel flats was the Robertson Glacier.  The top ridge of the glacier marks the Alberta-BC border.  The guidebooks say that in June and early July, the waters run deeper, and some serious fording is involved to get across the flats, but in August, I was fortunate enough to be able to do a running jump across most of the streams, and use temporary log bridges constructed by other people.

At one point a hermit thrush landed in nearby dead spruce, and began scolding me...her reason became clear when I flushed a new fledgling out of one of the willow shrubs.  I kind of like this photo...it breaks the cardinal rule of composition: never have a line bisecting your picture vertically or horizontally.  Yet this seems to still work.

After a steep, heart-pounding hike up the headwall of Whistling Rock Ridge (I am SO out of shape), the trail leveled out over a lovely sub-alpine meadow, full of flowers and whistling Colombian ground-squirrels.  I rested and ate lunch, and then tackled the final switchback trail up to Burstall Pass.  The trees end, and you are in true alpine meadow.

The clouds and drizzle rolled through the pass and between the various peaks.  Occasionally a view would open up through the valley, only to be closed off as the clouds shifted.

I crossed the boundary into Banff Park, intent on seeing the million-dollar view of Leman Lake down in the Spray River valley promised by the guidebooks.  The pass itself was a fantastic landscape of karst and meadow, with several small sinkholes.  No doubt the indication of the beginnings of an underground stream. 

Further was one quite large sinkhole...ancient enough that it was completely grassed in.  Just as I was starting around it and my hoped-for view of Leman Lake, a particularly heavy cloud came through, scrapping its belly over the peaks, and leaving tendrils of itself lingering and drifting like memories.  It was both eerie and beautiful at the same time, like something out of an old book set in the Scottish Highlands.  As cool as it was, I admit I was disappointed that I didn't get a better view of the lake (or the surrounding stunning vista of some of the highest peaks in the Canadian Rockies), but I can always come back.

I was rewarded in a different way, though.  On my way back through the pass, I met up with a family of ptarmigan!  The highlight of the hike for a bird geek like me.  That was the first time I had ever seen ptarmigan.  All the books are correct...they are exceedingly tame (or stupid, as some people suggest).  I followed the two parents and six kids only a few meters behind, snapping pictures, as they casually walked and striped seeds off the grass.  Their plumage is remarkably pretty, all mottled shades of brown, black, tan, and white.

I left the ptarmigan to their foraging, and continued back down.  At one point I came across a large flock of all sorts of birds...I couldn't identify them all, but definitely chickadees, nuthatches, pine grosbeaks, warblers of all kinds including a Townsend's warbler (another lifer!), pipits, and many other little brown streaky birds that kept flitting around too fast for me to id.

Just as I was descending into the forest zone, the skies cleared, and a patch of sun highlighted both upper Burstall Lake, and Mt. Chester in the background.

The final treat was this mother moose and calf (a female, I think) on the side of the road on the way home.  The calf would bravely wander a slight distance away (3-5 meters), but then quickly trot back to mom's side whenever she reached some magic line of "not-quite-that-independent-yet".  It was wonderful to watch, and they could have cared less that I was there, although I'm sure mom was keeping a laser eye on me as she munched.  Mmm, tasty grass.

An excellent day, despite the weather and the stiff muscles the day after.  I'm already planning my next hit escape.  

You have to like a wine grower who completely understands what their product is REALLY used for.

(A pinot noir from the Okanagan, BC.  I'll let you know how it is.  Saw the label and couldn't resist.)

Last weekend a friend and I took a day and went to the mountains.  We did a hike that I've been wanting to do for years; Ptarmigan Cirque.  All the guidebooks promise high alpine meadows full of flowers.  And they certainly didn't mislead!  What an amazing place!

The hike starts in Highwood Pass, already 2200 m above sea level.  Apparently this is the highest point in Canada accessible by public road.  The first part of the hike climbed steadily through forest and the occasional subalpine meadow, full of white valerian, purple fleabane, sky-blue forget-me-nots, yellow arnica, creamy western anemone, various shades of lousewort, alpine speedwell, violet larkspur, and pink Indian paintbrush, among many others. 

I got an opportunity to finally see glacier lilies, carpeting entire slopes with yellow blooms.


Then the trees opened to reveal the high alpine meadows.  The subalpine flowers gave way to smaller, more fragile flowers.  The ground was carpeted with white dryads, yellow alpine buttercups and mountain meadow cinquefoil, fushia moss campion, blue alpine forgetmenots, anenomes and arctic willow.  Other areas were full of pink and white mountain heather.  Tiny delicate beauties like rock jasmine, alpine smelowskia, and yellow draba clung to the rocks.  Purple apline milk-vetch littered the meadows just below the scree slopes.

A small stream drained the rocky cirque at the end of the valley, and flowed through flowered meadows and cascading over rocky outcrops like a landscape straight out of a fantasy novel.  Any moment, I expected faeries or elves to skip by.

No faeries or elves, but we did see Columbian ground squirrels (which only live up in the alpine area) and rosy finches.

We hiked up into the scree a bit to 2500 m, but considering I only had on light hiking shoes, we decided not to try and clamber up and of the really rough area.  Just to give you an idea of scale, and how small you feel sitting in the middle of the cirque, the arrow is pointing to a person in a red jacket, just below that snow pack.  You could barely see him from where we sat...we only saw him because he was wearing red and was moving.

On our trek back down, we took our time, and soaked in the brisk air and sun.  It was a glorious day, and we enjoyed every minute of it!

 

Earth laughs in flowers.  – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today I decided to stop talking and take action...I finally rented a car and went to the mountains for some quality down-time and some personal me-time.  I’ve been wanting to go all summer, but there just never seemed to be enough time during my brief breaks home from the field.

What an absolutely perfect day, exactly what I needed!!  Don’t get me wrong, I do like the prairie where we have been working, and some of you have seen the pictures of how pretty it is.  But I miss trees, and mountains, and crisp clean mountain air.  No dust!

In a moment of delusion I toyed with the idea of trying to hike Mt. Indefatigable, but then thought better of it, considering the residual congestion in my respiratory system and the fact that I’ve been walking 4-8 km /day for the past nine days.  Instead, I decided to try the intriguingly and somewhat romantically named Black Prince Cirque trail, which the guidebook said was a relatively short, moderately easy, but very rewarding hike.

I set off in my little rented car into a beautiful sunny morning with crystal blue skies, not a cloud in sight.  The mountains looked wonderful on the horizon, with traces of snow still clinging to bits and pieces of the peaks.  I arrived at the trail-head and set out.

The lower part of the trail wound through a cool, welcoming forest.  It followed along the rushing waters of the Smith-Dorrien creek, the sound of the water immediately washing away stress.  Dwarf raspberry bloomed on the forest floor.

After crossing the creek, the trail began to climb.  The songs of numerous birds filled the morning air, most notable among them the quavering, eerie, single notes (always at a different pitch than the last one) of a varied thrush, and the ethereal flute-like piping of a hermit thrush that seemed to simply float over the forest.  Varied thrushes look like robins with a custom paint job and racing stripes on the wings...unfortunately I didn’t see one to try and take a picture.  However, the hermit thrush, quite contrary to its usual secretive nature, posed out in the open for a picture.  I tried to record his song, but it didn’t quite work, so go to this link here to have a listen.  It is not a song easily forgotten!

Flitting in and out of the conifers, I caught the briefest glances of juncos, chickadees, and warblers...there were many more, but all I saw was the occasional hyperactive flutter of a wing, or the shaking of a branch as the afterthought of a rapid takeoff.  At the top of hill the trees closed in, and moss covered the forest floor.  Except for the birds, it was so quiet and peaceful.  A small morel mushroom grew on the edge of the trail, and I wondered how many people had walked by the small brown fungus and not even noticed it.

Further down the trail, I chanced upon one of the biggest treats of the day, a pair of tiny Venus’-slipper orchids, partly hidden in a cool, shaded, mossy alcove behind a fallen log. 

Not only are they delicate and beautiful, but they are extremely interesting.  From my flower book *:  “The Venus-slipper is a good example of ‘pollination by deception.’  The flowers contain no nectar, and their pollen is inaccessible to visiting insects, but their colour and perfume mimic insect food flowers.”  I can vouch for the perfume...they smelled divine!  The book goes on:  “Because Venus’-slippers bloom early in spring, they can fool naive bees on their early foraging flights.  The colour, patterning and scent change with time and also vary greatly from one flower to the next, so a ‘wronged’ bee is less likely to avoid the next Venus’-slipper it encounters.  After a few fruitless visits, the bees learn to avoid these flowers, but by then they have cross-pollinated one or more of these beautiful orchids.”  How cool (and sneaky!) is that?!

The forest gradually opened up on to a decaying boulder field that stood silently guarding the emerald waters of Warspite Lake.  I realize what a cliché it is to say that coming around the bend to see this view was breathtaking, but it really was breathtaking.  I carefully picked my way across the rocks and water, to a good sitting rock in the lake where I sat down to have my lunch.  My own private island, of sorts, if only for an hour.

As I savoured my PBJ and some fresh, sweet, BC cherries I had bought at the farmers’ market yesterday, I simply was.  Being, breathing, and surrounded by all of this.  Part of the world, connected, alive.

After a leisurely lunch, I continued along the path through the boulder field.  The wildflowers here among the rocks were magical.  Their names sound like something from a long lost book of medieval poetry:  moss campion, white dryas (the name always makes me imagine wood nymphs planting them in the moonlight), yellow columbine and tiny delicate white spotted saxifrage, alpine arnica like golden drops of sun in the rocks, small but rugged little yellow and purple violets, creeping penstemon, forget-me-nots and wood anenomes,  bracted honeysuckle...  The earth’s laughter is beautiful to behold.

My map had indicated that there was an unmaintained trail leading further on from the lake up past some waterfalls to some higher elevation lakes.  I decided to bushwhack (rockwhack?) a bit across the crumbling boulders to see if I could find it.

I was carefully picking my way through the jumble of rocks when suddenly something brown and furry went “eep!!!” right by my foot and scurried into a burrow.  I, probably a little bit hypersensitive after watch bear awareness videos too many times, went “aaaahhh!!!”, and promptly lost my footing in the crumbling rock.  I caught myself before twisting an ankle, but scraped my hand.  Boohoo.  Such is life. 

 

I waited around the small den hole for a while to try and catch a identifying glimpse of the small furry brown critter, but the only thing that came out of the hole was the occasional anxious “eep!”, no doubt as the small creature tried to push itself farther down into the darkness and away from the clumsy human.  Ah well, I’ll never know what it was.

After that, I decided to head back the regular trail, and give up trying to find the other trail.  Later, after consulting a better map, I realized that the trail I was looking for went around the OTHER side of the lake.  Oops.  I have since rectified this problem by purchasing the entire set of 1:50:000 topo and trail maps for all of Kananaskis Country.  No more excuses for poor navigation!

On my hike back to the trailhead, I sat down for a while in the middle of the trail on the warm dirt, to watch some elk about many kilometres away on a alpine meadow on the other side of the valley (yeah, binoculars!), and some mountain sheep across from them on a different mountain.  There was a small part of me that gloried in just being able to do that.  Sit in the middle of a trail, and take all the time in the world to do what I wanted.  A passing couple probably thought I was crazy, but that’s ok.  I was happy.

I hiked back down to the car and headed home.  I made a small detour around Wedge Pond, where more wildflowers bloomed, including red paintbrush, pink pussytoes (love that name), and pale coralroot.

 

I decided to take the road less traveled (thanks for the idea, Mr. Frost!), and took the Sibbald Creek road rather than the TransCanada highway.  I came upon this fellow, very engaged with something on the side of the road...so much so that he didn’t seem to care when I approached to take his picture.

First time I’ve ever seen a hoary marmot.  Sort of like a woodchuck from back home in Ontario, but with a bad dye-job.

After that, I headed home.  Tonight, I think I’ll do the dishes, sit in the hammock with a glass of wine, and watch the Canada Day fireworks over downtown from my balcony.

Happy Canada Day everyone!  Go and do something for you.  You won’t regret it.

*Kershaw et al. (1998) Plants of the Rocky Mountains.  Lone Pine Publishing.

 

I took some quality me time today, and went for a walk in one of my favorite haunts, the southwest corner of Nose Hill park.  No doubt familiar to those of you who regularly read this blog.  I love watching the seasons change here...it is as close as I can get to revisiting the large "backyard" I enjoyed as a kid back home (acres and acres of field and forest).

Spring is finally erupting here, after a protracted winter.  The leaves are just beginning to bud out, showing the wonderful, fresh "spring green" colour, one of my favourite greens...

The willows are blooming.

And the ducks and other waterfowl are nesting.  The horned grebes managed to snag this prime nesting spot (although I hope the water level doesn't get any higher!).  They didn't seem to mind the small blue-winged teals nearby, but if the widgeons (almost twice their size) crossed some invisible boundary, the grebes let them know in no uncertain terms who reigned in this small pond.

As I was walking up my favourite little ravine, I noticed the resident herd of deer about 800 m away on a ravine slope, munching on the new growth.  I sat and watched them for a while, and then just on the edge of my field of vision through my binoculars, I noticed a rock move.  Or at least I had assumed it was a rock.  I swung my binoculars over to the right, and was startled to discover an entire family of coyotes had emerged from their den.  There were 4 adults, and at least 8-10 pups. I couldn't believe it!  How fantastic.  The coyotes kept an eye on the deer, and the deer watched the coyotes, but otherwise, each group just went on with their business.  The deer couldn't have been anymore than 70 m away from the den site.  I sat down on the side of the trail and just watched for a good 30 minutes.  This was better than TV!

A couple of the adult coyotes left the area.  One went up the slope and over the hill, and later, another went down into the ravine.  All the while they watched the deer and the deer watched them, but obviously without alarm: three of the deer continued to eat, and one even laid down in the warm grass.  The pups frolicked, nursed, frolicked, ran in and out of the tall grass, watched me watching them for a while, and then went back to frolicking.  Spring is good for frolicking.

At the top of the hill, the prairie crocuses were still blooming.  I have dozens of pictures from years past, but couldn't resist just one more shot.  They are so pretty.  The sun glimmered off the snow of the mountains along the western horizon.  What a gorgeous day.

 

Went for a walk at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary today.  It was sunny, and temperatures are finally starting to creep above freezing.  Hopefully that will convince the birds that it is Spring, and time to return.

Not a lot of action yet, but some ducks were hanging out by the river.  The highlight was a pair of Harlequin ducks.  The picture does not do them justice (they were just too far away to get a decent shot).  The male looks like someone threw some white, red, and slate grey paint at him - just beautiful.

The Golden-eyes were pretty active as well.

In an impulsive and spontaneous decision (which for any of you who know me, is highly unusual), I went skiing at Lake Louise yesterday.  I had one pass left over from my Ladies Day ticket, and wanted to use it up.

What a fantastic day!  Conditions were some of the best they've been all year...fresh snow from several days of snow flurries during the previous week, warm and sunny weather (in fact, almost too warm...I was certainly overdressed!), good friends (even if they do ride snowboards...I won't hold it against you, guys), and I just felt great and in control.  I was doing all my favourite runs, and even a couple black diamonds, fast, with confidence and without falling once.  Ok, that's not quite true.  I fell once, but not when I was skiing... 

I had stopped near the bottom of a hill to wait for my friends, and was overheating in the sun.  So I pulled off my helmet so I could remove my liner.  I put the helmet on the ground between my legs, forgetting that: 1) I was still standing on a moderately steep incline, 2) ski helmets are essentially round, and 3) gravity works.  As my helmet began rolling down the rest of the hill, picking up speed, I didn't know how far it would eventually go, so I took off after it on my skis.  After what I'm sure was quite a funny spectacle to any bystander (including "kicking" the helmet faster down the hill with the tip of my ski), I managed to essentially throw myself infrount of it, in a nice big tangle of skis, legs, and arms.  Not particularly graceful, but at least I got it!  And it was quite refreshing to put a helmet covered in wet snow back on top of my head in that warm sun.  It was probably safer up there, as I was relatively sure wouldn't roll away again.  Other than the embarrassment, the worst part was having to side-step all the way back up to my poles, where I had left them before my mad pursuit.

I imagine that will be the last of downhill skiing for me for the season.  I'm happy it ended with such a fantastic day.

Got my brand new fancy-schmancy camera with an ultra-zoon lens.

Got my new crystal-clear binoculars (I had to replace my old pair after the nice repair people told me that "sorry, you've dropped them one to many times, and we just can't fix 'em anymore"...I'm not the most co-ordinated of people).

I am primed and ready for spring migration....bring it on!!

Any time now...

Helloooooo, Spring?

It would be nice if the weather would co-operate.  *sigh*.  We are expecting yet another snow-storm tonight, after one of the snowiest Marches in recent history.  I like winter, but this can end, ANY TIME NOW....

Oh well.  I'm consoling myself with some lovely winter birds. 

This was the first time I got a good enough look to positively identify Bohemian Waxwings (they were always Cedar Waxwings back in Ontario).  A flock of them were munching down on teeny-tiny moths that had emerged from some rocks on a scree-slope in the mountains.  As I watched, I suddenly heard a soft "woosh" sound, not unlike a overhead jet, but short in duration, and close.  I looked up just in time to see a small Accipiter of some sort (maybe a Sharp-Shinned?) wheel by and the flock of Waxwings take off down into the valley.  She had aerially buzzed me!!  It was very exciting, just wish I had gotten a better look at her (and a picture!).