More physiotherapy hiking

Last week was winter.

A plant in 28 cm of snow

This week is summer. All that snow is essentially gone except up very high, so we took advantage of the spectacular weather to continue my "hiking for physiotherapy". I picked C Level Cirque, a hike that is similar in distance to the wander I did pre-winter up at Sunshine, but has a bit more height gain (580 m vs the 325 m I did at Sunshine). It's not my favourite hike; there's a long, boring forest walk in the middle, and the trail's rooty & rutted. But it's not far from my house, and there's always pikas -- and I had not seen a pika yet this year.

The first stop is always the Lake Minnewanka overlook, only 45 min up the trail. It's at the old coal mine workings.

A spectacular view on a spectacular day

I even got a panorama from that viewpoint.

My house is in that photo (sort of)

It takes another hour of trudging uphill through a not-terribly-interesting forest to get to the next views.

Looking down the Bow Valley to Canmore and my house

Then 10 minutes after that, you get to the cirque -- which is a mighty impressive big bowl of rocks -- and the end of the official trail.

A very big rubble field

If you blow up that picture and look really closely, you'll see a trail leading up the right side of the basin. Follow this and you will get yelled at by pikas in the boulder field...

My first pika of the year

...but at the top is a small grassy meadow of rocks which is pika heaven and an idea place for a sit and a snack.

Monty & Karen making the crest

In addition to the pikas, there are overly friendly Golden Mantled Ground Squirrels, who have obviously been hand fed once or twice (say, by the Dutch tourists we ran into who were feeding them apples).

Chubby

But mostly there were pikas, at least 5, all industriously collecting grass...

Hard at work 

Quite the mouthful 

The endless searching for green stuff 

Watching me watching him

...filling their middens...

The stash is under that rock 

A winter's supply, or part thereof

Initially, the little dudes don't want to have anything to do with you, and don't like you being around -- so they just hide. But once they figure out you're not going to bother them, they go back to work storing grass for the winter, and stop paying attention to you, allowing some fairly close encounters. One little guy seemed interested in watching me watch him.

He's actually sitting still

Interested & observant... 

...but cautious and ready to run 

The money shot pose

It was a really glorious 26° this afternoon, very summer-like and not at all feeling like fall. Aside from colours turning on aspen, poplar and some avens, there wasn't much in the way of fall colour -- as yet.

But it's coming.

Surprises about how mice come and go

In the last 3 weeks, as a family, we've killed 12 mice in the house. Jello has most certainly done his share.

The hunter, the prey in his mouth 

Playing 

"You can run, but you can't hide" 

"Move and you're dead"

We think the mice started to come in when a few days of rains caused them to hide from the weather. Then it snowed, and they came in again. Now its getting cold, they're coming in for the winter. I'm sure that if we searched, we would find their food cache. A few months ago, we found about a pound of bird seed buried in Karen's sewing stuff. Last fall we found their store of mouse poison in my ski boot. We've been fighting the mice since we moved in (amazing, both the the 2012 and 2013 posts were both called "Smart Mice").

About the time we found the 4th mouse this go-round, we decided to call the exterminator back. There's no exterminator in the Canmore area any more; we have to call one in from Calgary. The one we use in Calgary guarantees no more mice if they can access the entire foundation wall. Two walls of ours are under a deck, which we didn't want to pull up. But with this mousal onslaught, we said (un)screw it, and today pulled up some boards in prep for the exterminator's visit on Wednesday.

We started by pulling a few boards up beside the wall we thought was their access point.

Two removed

It was MUCH harder to get the boards up than I imagined. The brilliant deck builder had overdriven most of the brass screws, and the deck had been painted a number of times since the deck was built. So, more than half of the screws were embedded 1/4" - 1/2" into the boards, and I had to carve the wood away to get them out. Most were stuck, so in order to not strip the screw heads, I had to hand-loosen them. It was slow and painful work (and I have at least 3 blisters to prove it).

Carved out and exposed

We got those first two boards out as we were instructed by the exterminators some months ago. We looked underneath the deck and saw something strange.

See that line in the darkness?

We discovered that the deck was built over an old, boarded up, basement window. This was news to us. We had a no idea that there was a window under there. We realized very quickly that we had to pull up a couple of more boards in order to access that window.

Another two painful hours of pulling screws and...

The boards are up

...we found the window -- and the way the mice get in. Whoever covered the window boarded the window up, but the window casing doesn't actually meet the hole cut in the foundation wall.

The metal window well, and the window

That lower right corner is the issue

It should surprise me that there's a window in the house we didn't know was there -- but it doesn't. It should surprise me that the way the window was sealed up when it fell into disuse wasn't even marginally done correctly -- but it doesn't. It should surprise me that my house is full of mice -- but it doesn't.

The exterminators are here in two days. Jello's gonna have 48 more hours of fun.  

Hiking! In the mountains!

So after going for a short, 5 km walk in my neighbourhood without difficulty, I decided to join the Sunshine SnowHosts on their annual hike today. We went up to Sunshine and wandered, the day after it snowed (yes, snowed on September 3rd). Okay, the others wandered farther, climbing a mountain. I didn't climb the whole mountain, just one side of it.

The two peaks of Quartz Ridge they planned to climb

Starting in the village, we headed up the trail to the Continental Divide, passing the Divide chair along the way.

Doesn't look like this in the winter

The group left me and my still recovering leg in the dust, and headed down the Citadel Pass trail.

Off they go

My plan was to just to visit Rock Isle Lake...

From the lake viewpoint

...but my leg felt fine after climbing 150 m and going 2 km. So I set off cross country in the basically flat meadow towards Quartz Ridge. The meadow was pretty beautiful.

Wide open spaces

Closer still

It was pretty lonely in the meadow. Most of the Columbian Ground Squirrels have gone underground to hibernate. Very few birds were out. No sheep ot goats were around, nor any real sign of them.

A hawk kept an eye on me 

Amazingly invisible at this time of year

I got to the base of the ridge and still felt fine, so started to climb the northern ridge. I had no intention of climbing to the top, but thought I could make the bench about half way up that's visible in the photo above.

The weather was varied today. It started sunny but went to cloudy, with weird clouds around.

Strange

I made the shoulder without difficulty, wandered around taking photos for a while, then found a place to sit, have lunch, and wait for the group to descend -- and promptly got very cold. It was only about 5°, and the wind was very chilly. Down jacket, multiple layers, hat & gloves were all necessary to stay warm.

The others are climbing the ridge towards the peak on the right 

Looking back towards Sunshine 

The end of the Monarch Ramparts, where I hiked in 2011

Towards Citadel and Fatigue Passes

 After an hour, the others came off the ridge.

Company!

We retraced my steps back to Rock Isle Lake...

Afternoon clouds

... and the Village, where (the best part of hiking at Sunshine) I had a beer to celebrate actually hiking just over 10 km in actual mountains, including 350 m of climbing.

Walking in the woods, finally

The original hope after I broke my leg was to be back walking by July and into the woods again by August. Then there was that setback, when I injured myself doing an exercise my physiotherapist gave me. Initially, it felt like a 3 week setback, but then I had knee problems, and 3 weeks became 6.

Today, I entered the woods for the first time since early April when I was out servicing bear cameras. Okay, it wasn't all that exciting -- just a 4.5 km trip to the Banff Park boundary markers and back. But it was exciting for me.

Since the last time I was on this short trail, someone built a new bench in the middle of nowhere out of plastic and pressure treated wood --  next to an older bench that was in the middle of nowhere.

Not much of a view

It is trying to turn fall here.

We call it the Elk Meadow 

Some plant Karen doesn't know

I made it to the park boundary & back -- 4.5 km round trip -- with only leg muscle fatigue as an issue. Well, that and walking on a really crappy trail. Maybe I'm just out of practice.

Park Boundary marker

Warning signs at the park edge

The meadows inside the park. Mt. Rundle in the background 

More meadows. Peaks of the Fairholme Range

It seemed like a good day to play with HDR photos.

What it sorta looked like 

HDR version 

More of it

Even though we have run across a few bears in our 'hood in the last week or so, we saw only old bear poo to suggest any are around. We saw a few elk tracks, and not much else, except for this female spruce grouse.

Pretending she isn't there 

Trying to be invisible

There were other cool things, like fireweed in serious bloom...

Very red

...and a mushroom growing out of a tree.

Strange, that

It was nice to get back into the woods. I'm headed up to Sunshine Meadows on Thursday to explore with my fellow SnowHosts. Here's hoping the weather holds.

The Ice Bucket Challenge

So I was nominated by my friend Edwin -- who [a] lives in Holland, and who [b] I've never actually met -- to take the Ice Bucket Challenge. He's been reading my blog for years. That automatically earns him a challenge response.

I've been watching the progress of this internet phenom for the last few weeks, seeing it move from cool and funny to populous to mainstream to... backlash. It's the latter stage I find most interesting.

People have complained that it's a waste of water. It is, in a way, but that's pretty misleading. First, it's raised a whack of money for ALS, which isn't really a waste; that water has gone to good use. Second, I (like most people) learned in Grade 4 about the water cycle. Pouring water onto the ground doesn't waste it. It either gets absorbed into the ground or evaporates. If it evaporates, it eventually falls as rain. Groundwater is used by plants to grow, and they transpire that water back into the air, where it again returns as rain.

But there are other ways to "manage" that waste. Matt Damon poured grey water from his toilet over his head. Watch my video for how I managed it.

People have expressed concern over the impact of the campaign on other charities. Being the Chair of a charitable organization, I can tell you "charitable competition" is real. If my organization could come up with an internet phenom that would raise us 70 MM$ in 2 months, we would do it. In a heartbeat. But it's a real issue that people sending $100 to ALS means they might not send it to the United Way or the Crohn's Foundation or whatever their other favourite charity is.

What's interesting is that this campaign didn't start as a challenge for ALS. It started in New Zealand as a challenge to donate to ANY charity. ALS just picked it up and ran with it (and good for them, I say).

So I'd like to get the campaign back to it's roots. I believe that we "haves" (and that's ANYBODY who can read this -- those of you who can afford internet access and a computer are a HAVE relative to countries where the median annual household income is $2,000) have an obligation to give back.

It is with honour that I present to you my response to the Ice Bucket Challenge.

I wasn't the only one with the idea that day. Here's another guy:

He drove out from Calgary to do it

In truth, I have glaciers much closer to my house than the Athabasca Glacier (which is about two and a half hours drive away). I wrote about one here, and another one here. The trailheads to access each are 30 min or 60 min from my house, respectively. I would have gone to one of those, but the "hiking to the glacier" part isn't in the cards right now with my still-healing leg. You can drive to within 600 m of the toe of the Athabasca Glacier. You can take a snow coach ride up onto the glacier, and go for a walk on it if that turns your crank. So I went there instead.

I haven't been to the Athabasca Glacier in about 15 years. I was impressed how far it has receded since the last time I was there. Parks has erected little markers at the terminal moraines, one of which (the 1992 marker) is visible in the video. I remember way back when in the 1980's you could go right to the toe of the glacier, where there were ice caves. Can't do that now; the toe is sitting in a giant meltwater lake.

The movie's proof positive that I don't run iMovie that well. It was supposed to be in glorious HD so that my friend Edwin would see how fabulous the Athabasca Glacier is. I even wanted to figure out how to include this picture of a bear I saw on my way up there.

A shaggy brown coloured black bear

iMovie kept crashing while I was trying to record the audio, and I finally gave up. Ah, well.

The idea behind this thing is to challenge people. I'm going to challenge a bit differently:

• I challenge my friend Edwin to come see my glaciers for himself. He already dumped water on his head and donated to ALS. Good for him!
• I challenge my friend Gary Paukert to come up with something creative. He's a good sport, generous to a fault, and understands the impact that giving to a charity can have.
• I challenge my daughter. She's in Oz right now, up near Cairns. I challenge her to stand on a sandy beach and dump a bucket of warm sea water on her head. She ought to like that.
• And then, like this news anchor in Australia, I challenge everyone else everywhere to do their bit for charity. Still, he was a bit pompous about it, so I think he really should have a bucket of ice water dumped on his head. Don't be like that.