Review: Kodak PlaySport HD Video Camera

KC game me a Kodak Playsport Zx3 camera to take to Maui to shoot underwater pictures and movies.


I don't tend to shoot a lot of movies in the first place; I have had the ability to do movies (including HD ones) on my last 3 digital cameras and basically never used it. So I was mostly interested in something that was good for shooting underwater, and that was good enough that I could take it skiing with me in the winter.

The PlaySport isn't it. I don't recommend the device at all.

First the Pros:
1) The thing is a breeze to use. Point and push the button to record. Push the same button to stop recording. Switching between 5 MP still pictures and various movie qualities is easy.

2) The photo quality is good, usually. For the times when it's not, see #6 in the Cons section below.

3) It's reasonably well designed for right handed people, with the control buttons in logical places.

4) I'm pretty sure you could operate the start/stop button with gloves on.

Now the cons:
1) The screen can't be seen in bright sunshine or underwater. Kodak claims it added "filter" modes to the display to make this better, but they don't make a darn bit of difference. So it's a "point and hope" camera underwater, and not much better on a sunny day above water.

2) It's not waterproof by any means. On my 3rd day snorkling with it, it leaked and died, turning on but refusing to stay on. After a lot of searching on the web (the documentation is miserable; see #12 below), I found that's how it responds when it leaks. To dry it out, you open the two access doors, remove the battery and memory card, and leave it open for 24hrs. I did this and it dried and started working again. Two snorkel days later, it died the same way (power on them immediatly power off), then an hour later just died for good. Now it won't even power on, and it's because the thing isn't actually waterproof. It's rated to only 3 m, which isn't deep, but I never took it more than 2 m down and it still leaked. It was normal to find water in the HDMI/USB connector compartment at the end of the day.

3) The one button on/off thing is great so long as you know if you're currently on or off. But the red "record" light that tells you if you're on or off is in the display that can't be seen. On numerous occasions, I stopped a recording when I thought I was starting it. I missed several recordings because it was already recording for some reason when I pressed the button. It really should have a separate start and a stop button instead of a single button.

4) Underwater audio is poor at best, and water stays in the microphone when you take it briefly out of the water.

5) The movie files are HUGE; figure 1 Mb per second for 720p mode (and it has a 1080p mode that make even bigger movies). This probably isn't the fault of the camera but of the compression mode used. I ended up shooting only in WVGA mode to reduce the download & upload times.

6) It has an "underwater" mode that supposedly colour corrects underwater shots. However, while better than no colour correction, this mode doesn't correct anywhere near enough. Every photo I took needed additional post processing in iPhoto (all aare too green with poor white balance). Photos taken in very shallow water in bright sunlight were best, but lower light or in cloud and the coulour balance was awful even with underwater mode on. Some samples are below.

This first one is bright sunshine, shallow water, underwater mode on, colour uncorrected. Looks pretty decent.


Cloudy day, shallow water, underwater mode on, colour uncorrected. Looks green.


Same photo, "fixed" in iPhoto by dropping the tint and re-adjusting the white balance.

7) The movies need underwater colour correction too; however, when you move them to iMovie, the already big file size basically increases in size by an order of magnitude (your 18 second, 19 Mb file becomes a 190 Mb iMovie). This isn't the camera's fault, but it still sucks.

This movie was shot with underwater mode on, but is otherwise uncorrected. I was just floating, with the camera never more than 6' underwater in bright sunshine; the total water depth is about 30' (this was really clear). The green cast is still there. If I knew how, I would adjust the white balance and drop the green out of the tint.



8) The underwater mode is forgotton when the unit turns off (or turns itself off). So if it automatically turns itself off in a power save mode while you're snorkling, you need to go through an awkward set of push buttons using a menu on the screen you can't see to turn it back on. My way around this was to put it in underwater mode and set it to take still pictures, then shoot one still every minute or so, switching it to movie mode only when I needed to make movies.

9) You can't control how long the time is before it goes to sleep, and the documentation doesn't tell you (after using it 5 days, I think it's between 90 and 120 seconds).

10) When the battery is removed, the automatic photo counter is reset to 0001, resulting in files with replicate names. This gives iPhoto grief on uploads, because it sees duplicate file names.

11) The owners manual says the batteries basically stop working at -5 C, so it would have to be kept warm for use as a ski camera.

12) Did I mention the documentation was miserable? The paper stuff supplied with the camera was brief, but hey, you can download the extended info on the web. The extended info is vacuous, but it is twice as long.

So the thing is basically a piece of junk. It's bigger and fatter than most cell phones with the only incremental capability being that it's waterproof, and it's actually not waterproof at all. Splashproof maybe, but it's useless for snorkling.

On the bright side, it only cost $150. Now, if KC could only find the receipt, we could send it in for repairs and try to get it working again.

Or we could throw it out, which at this moment is more appealing.

Save your money and buy one of those cheap disposable underwater cameras, then scan the photos you take with it.

The Ups and Downs of Beach Life

So yesterday our beach was invaded by nasty Portuguese Man-of-War jellyfish. These are not good. Fortunately, they were not big guys; all the ones washed up on the beach were about less than 2" across with tentacles between 6" and 12". But at least 3 people were stung, and even the little ones make red welts like huge bee stings or mosquito bites. Here's a macro shot of one. The bodies are clear, but the tentacles are blue. Fortunately they sparkle in the sun, so were easy to see.


Once folks realized they were there and in the water, the beach pretty much cleared out. These things come into Hawaiian waters on a cycle associated with the moon; box jellies do the same thing. In fact, you can find online calendars that tell you when they're expected. High winds tend to blow them ashore.

Today, when we went back, we checked the high water line and found none before going snorkeling. It was a great snorkel day; we saw 4 turtles, 2 eels and an octopus who was fun to watch because he was being harassed by some fish. The winds were strong this afternoon too; sure enough, more jellies showed up, though not as many as yesterday.

But in with them was a critter I've never seen before. He looked like a jelly but had a shell.


Turns out this is a violet snail, which I think is an exceptionally cool critter. Turns out this little guy eats man-of-war jellyfish, making him my buddy. They are a snail that lives in the ocean and floats on a mass of bubbles, and basically float around at the whims of the wind. Needless to say, if a batch of jellies washes up on shore, these little guys are not usually far behind.

And you thought hanging out on a beach was just about snorkeling and boogie boarding.

Maui Day 1: Sharks & Stuff

I do not intend to post daily while on Maui, but when the first thing I film with my new underwater movie camera is a shark, I just can't help it.

I was snorkeling in a little cove chasing some angelfish when a White Tipped Reef Shark came by. These guys are pretty benign; "docile and approachable" is how my fish guidebook describes them.


I quickly switched to movie mode and followed him swimming along. You can tell I'm new with this camera; he stays too high in the frame (I can't see the display under water) and I didn't stop the thing filming fast enough.


He was about 4' long and about 15' from me at the closest. He didn't seem to care about my presence at all. We were surprised at the lack of fish on the reef; maybe he was why.

Then a huge turtle, who I had seen with his butt parked under a rock, woke up and drifted by.


The last thing I played with was an attempt to shoot a video of a boogie board ride. The waves today were very good for this; not too big and easy to ride. While the "point of view" movies were good, it was far more fun to film KC...

Off to Maui, Again

We're off for the next few weeks to Maui once again. I hope to post occasionally with movies from my new underwater camera while there, so check in occasionally.

Jello will be safe and sound while we are gone; I think he likes our house sitter more than he likes me.

Back on Nov 28...

Lesueur Ridge, Almost

We have planned to go up Lesueur Ridge at the south end of the Ghost for some time, but every time have been foiled by weather. Twice this summer including just a few weeks back, we skipped it because it was overcast & drizzling. Today's forecast was for increasing cloudiness and rain starting late in the afternoon. So we aimed to get the the trailhead early enough to get at least a short loop in before the weather turned.

Based on a detailed road map I obtained from the MD of Bighorn, we opted to get to the trailhead via Richards Road, which runs between the 1A just west of Morley and the Forestry Trunk Road right at the Ghost access road. This was not a good idea. The road is blocked by a very large 50' puddle that is in fact part of a lake that the road skirts. The puddle sits right on the northern boundary of the Stoney Indian Reserve. Here's where the road is blocked, by the lake in the middle of the photo.


And here's a zoomed out shot. Lesueur Ridge is at the top left of the picture, the 1A at the bottom, and Richards Road is marked.


So but for a huge 50' long puddle, we would have been at the trailhead at 2 PM. We tried to go around the lake to the west on something marked as a road on the map and visible in the satellite image, a "road" which skirts the northern boudary of the Stoney Reserve. But this stopped being a road in short order, becoming a deeply rutted truck track. So we had to backtrack down Richard Road to the 1A again, head east on the 1A to the Forestry Trunk Road, then follow it back to the Ghost access road to get to the trailhead. This took almost an hour. The weather was socking in more and more as we drove, and just as we got to the trailhead, it started to rain. Within 5 minutes, it was absolutely pouring, and the temperature had dropped from a tolerable in the rain 14° to a rather less pleasant 5°. So we bailed; the third time was not lucky.

We thought that since we were out here, we would check out Richard Road from the north. Surprisingly, this road is paved (the Forestry Trunk Road here is not). Or at least it's paved to about 2,000' from the lake, where it just stops being a road and starts being a poor truck trail.

So we did no hiking today, disappointing because my friend Marcin from M&M Hikes sent me a GPS track for this route. But we did get to explore the Stoney Reserve, and get barked at by a lot of dogs.

My Park is My Life

We have a plague in our city, attacking the greenspace and grass, and eradicating it. It’s called “interlocking brickweed.”

There are a few great parks in the city, and my park – Rotary Park – ranks top of my favourites list. I used to try and define what it meant to be a “great park.” Included in the list: big trees, nice grass, lots of puppies, a nice playground, pretty to look at, and a place to kick a ball.

But a great park is more than just a list of the stuff in it. A great park has a great ambiance, and a place where simply walking into it, you somehow feel different. I feel that way when I enter the gates in Banff, or drive past the Spray Lakes Dam on Hwy 742, and I have never understood why.

Pearce Estate Park is another of my favourite city parks. Situated on the river, in a remote corner of Inglewood, it just strikes me as being a special place the moment I step out of my car. Interestingly, the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary just a little way away doesn’t have the same effect on me. Pearce has a wonderful riparian habitat, access to the weir, dramatic sweeps and turns in the bike path system, and a peaceful little stream running out of the fish hatchery. How unlike Rotary Park – and yet somehow they share the same feel for me.

Unfortunately, like many green spaces in the city, Rotary Park and Pearce Estate are under pressure from the deadly spreading interlocking brickweed.

Pearce estate was "improved" by the construction of a wetland, and is being further "improved" with a whitewater paddling channel around the weir. It's still a nice place, but the brickweed is invading.

I don’t know why, but our City seems to dislike greenspace – at least, greenspace in a natural setting. I remember when Prince’s Island was on my “favourites” list. Then the City “improved” it. The first improvement was to destroy the riverbank behind what was the Hard Rock Café and some condos, and pave it. This was subsequently “improved” even further with the aforementioned interlocking brickweed. Here was a lovely riparian riverbank in the heart of the city that was cut down. Then the City did the same on the island side, replacing part of what was grass with more brickweed and a big promenade. For a while, they twinned the bike paths on the south side, effectively and safely separating the joggers and bikers from the strollers and walkers. Then after turning some of that space into condos, they added yet more interlocking brickweed, putting everyone back on the same path. Then they tore out the east end of the island (which was ostensibly doing nothing to hurt anyone) and built a demonstration stormwater retention pond (which they freely admit in their signage doesn't handle much of the downtown runoff) and surrounded it with brickweed paths.

So Prince’s Island is choking in a sea of interlocking brickweed. That same deadly brickweed is spreading and can be found covering the greenspace in Olympic Plaza, Barclay Mall, around Lindsay Park, in areas of Riley Park, around the Louise Bridge, and numerous other greenspaces which are under pressure in our poor city.

So pervasive is the spread of the interlocking brickweed that I am no longer aware of greenspace in downtown yet to be affected. Lost in the last few years was that lovely spot of grass behind the courthouse. My favourite pocket park in the city – on 6th Ave in Bow Valley Square – was full of brickweed. Now it's gone, a construction zone.

Brickweed is bad. Having brickweed show up as an “improvement” means that old trees will be cut down to make space for new runty saplings to be planted. Take a look at the spread of brickweed east of Centre Street on the banks of the Bow. Mature trees? Gone! Pathway? "Upgrading" in progress!

Brickweed means your playground will be “upgraded” with less playground equipment, and buried in a sea of pea gravel.

I have played in my park for 20 years. I have written poetry because of swinging on the swings (no, you can’t hear it – and you should be thankful). I have met more puppies, seen more sunsets, watched more traffic, and showed off the view more times than I can remember.

A few years ago, you could tell the spread of brickweed was happening in my park. First, some red shale showed up. This actually seemed a good idea, as they finally created formal pathways where people walked anyway. Then they painted the stairs – a seemingly pointless proposition, since the paint lasted less than 2 years, the grafitti goons got it, and the stairs still need to be replaced. But that same year, the brickweed attacked the curling club area of Prince’s Island, and Crescent Heights West got a set of megasteps. Paint didn’t seem like a bad idea.

The curse of the brickweed then came in force in 1999. My daughter watched horrified as her favourite swings in the whole city were ripped out. Seven big swings were replaced by two little swings and a tire. The concrete sewer pipes, home to numerous hide and seek games, were torn out. Pea gravel replaced grass. Trees went bye-bye, including the big majestic one, biggest in the park, which shaded the pool. Other trees were given haircuts within an inch of their lives, and some suffered the ill effects for it. Trees were replaced by some poor “Charlie Brown Christmas Tree” saplings. Twenty plus years later, the trees are still runty nothings.

At the behest of my daughter, and because of my own indignation, I wrote and complained to the City. They said the swings were removed because they were painted with lead paint (Parents: How many of you let your kids chew on pipe? Those with your hands up, please get your heads examined). They said the sewer pipes were too dangerous. They said they cut the big tree because it was dying (it’s sure dead now, and while I am not a tree expert, it was one of the few trees in the park that really did appear healthy). They said we should be thankful we got the new playground equipment we did. They said pea gravel was safer than hard ground.

Ain’t brickweed grand?

Then more brickweed came to cover up more of my park. They built a fancy city overlook complete with placarded benches and a brickweed promenade. Well, I could see the city just fine right without an overlook. The overlook attracted the dreaded “traffic” to come see the view. It resulted in the eradication of some trees (amazing how those pesky trees get in the way of the view). At the time of the overlook development, we also got a fancy interlocking brickweed pathway to our interlocking brickweed overlook, eradicating even more grass and trees. It was lined with runty trees that are still runty after 10 years, and about of third of them are dead.

And I never understood why we needed an overlook anyway. Maybe it’s me – had anyone noticed there was already an overlook and proper parking on Crescent Road? In fact, there’s less parking at that overlook than there used to be, because residents there complained about 18 years ago that too may people were coming to look at the view.

Last week, they started tearing out the wading pool in my park. You know the one: it used to have the "Wonder Water Word" art installation painted on its bottom. Apparantly, the pool was (gasp!) dangerous. Thirty years ago, when I moved into the neighborhood, they filled and emptied the pool every few days. Then they started emptying the pool and refilling it every day. Then they started draining it at 4 PM. Now the pool is being removed and a water park with no standing water is being installed.

All because the current pool has no water filter. Now don't get me wrong -- pools should be sanitary. But I'm not aware of any kids who got sick from the pool in the last 30 years. The same way the swings were bad because they were painted with lead paint, we have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading the pool because the City desn't want to take on the liability from irresponsible parents. And with the "improved" water park will come more brickweed, I bet.

My park is dying under a sea of “improvements”, just like Prince’s Island died, and just like they are trying to kill off Pearce Estate. Brickweed is in Kananaskis, it’s in Banff – paradise is being paved. Here come the parking lots.

I like greenspace. It looks like the older I get, the farther I have to go to find it.

Three More Years

AAARGH!

Three more years.

That’s how much more I have to put up with my annoying alderman, Druh Farrell.

All the way though last night’s election results tally, she was in a see-saw battle with Kevin Taylor, rarely more than 300 votes away from each other. When I finally went to bed, she was up by a scant 150 votes with 35 of 44 polls reporting. In the end she beat Mr. Taylor by 1,252 votes, or 11%.

So we get three more years of Druh. Three more years of $25 MM bridges we don’t need. Three more years of pointless projects like the reconstruction of the perfectly fine pathway along the Bow or the lighting of the Langevin Bridge justified by development of the East Village. Three more years of attempts to hold a pointless, directionless Bow River Flow “festival” on closed lanes of Memorial Drive. Three more years of the planning for the redevelopment of the Eau Claire Market that they didn’t develop right in the first place (because they’ll do it much better the second time than they did the first). Three more years of arguing to increase the number of dangerous traffic rule-ignoring cyclists on the roadways. Three more years of pushing HOV lanes that don’t work. These are just some of the projects Druh has championed.

What we won’t get is three years of good ideas as to what to do with Provincial infrastructure money instead of building unnecessary bridges. Three years of projects that actually could help improve the East Village instead of wasting electricity, paving paradise with interlocking brickweed and further contributing to light pollution. Three years of improving support for the existing slate of good city festivals. Three years of actual half-decent ideas about improving river access, instead of selling it off for high priced Condos. Three years of determining productive ways to improve transportation in the City that don't involve traffic calming or closing lanes.

It’s not that Druh hasn’t figured out the problem. It’s that Druh’s not part of the solution. Which in the end makes her part of the problem.

That, she hasn’t figured out.

Sunny & Cold on West Wind Pass

It was another one of those weeks that makes Calgary an interesting place to live. It was 24° and sunny Thursday, 4° and snow on Friday. That put a layer of snow up in the mountains, though admittedly not a very deep layer. Obviously, the snow fell all the way down to the valley floor, and the ACMG reports noted 2 cm in Canmore on Friday morning, with a forecast of a sunny but cold weekend. So our plan for was to sit out Saturday as a hiking day, let the sun do it's magic reducing the snow (at least down low), and hike Sunday.

Our version of "sitting out Saturday" was to go into Canmore for the Festival of Eagles. At this time of year, literally thousands of Golden Eagles migrate over the town (the official tracking station in the Kananaskis Valley has recorded over 2,000 since mid September). There were spotting scopes set up, though we didn't see anything. The town had also arranged for the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation to bring in some birds, so we got to meet (and pet!) a Great Horned Owl, a Golden Eagle, a Burrowing Owl, a Kestrel and other very cool birds. Tragically, I did not bring my camera.

Meaning I also didn't get a photo with Ben Gadd, author of Canadian Rockies Geology Road Tours and other books, and since I didn't know he was going to be there, I also didn't bring my copy of any of his books to get an autograph. But I did get to chat with him for a few minutes. He's a very cool and nice guy.

The weather forecast did indeed hold, and today was brilliantly sunny and cool, -4° in the morning, and 2° by noon. So we headed to West Wind Pass, one of my favourite places to while away an afternoon. We haven't been up there since July 2009.

The trail is mostly on an exposed southern face, so was in general snow free and dry as a board as I expected.


Over the years I have been hiking this trail, there has been a general increase in the braiding of the trail, in most cases to avoid a 100 m section of trail that is on an exposed rockface. I have never found this section to be a problem; the rock is very textured and hard to slip on, and any really exposed bits have trees to grab on to.


Once at the top, the view into the West Wind Valley was great, as usual. West Wind Ridge is snow free, as is Pigeon Mountain, except for a very slight dusting at the top.


KC got me a new toy to take to Maui: A Kodak Playsport video camera that works underwater. So I decided to being it up here and practice with it.


It was, as usual, windy as all get out and only about 3° at the pass. In some ways, it looks pretty wintery up there.


Interestingly, at least a couple of folks appeared to have tackled the Windtower, based on footprints on the access trail.


We would have lingered longer up top, but even with toques, mits, 3 layers and bright sunshine, sticking around wasn't warm. Also, aside from the view (which is always worth gawking at), there wasn't much else up there. There were very few tracks in the snow (the odd rabbit and mouse sized footprints), but our total wildlife sightings today consisted of a squirrel, 3 robins and a crow. At least I saw a nuthatch and some chickadees in Dead Man's before we left.

Red Ridge: Yet another missing trail

I have always held high hopes for the Red Ridge trail, as it's an area of the Spray Valley I love. We drooled over the idea of getting up on the ridge when we saw it from below on the Sparrowhawk Tarns hike.

We were sadly disappointed, for the most part.

The biggest problem is there really is no trail, virtually right from the start. A very weak trail leaves the Spray Lakes day use area and is glued to the cliff edge on the left bank of the creek for it's length. Here's an example of how weak the trail is. It's on the left.


The trail is so awful and hugs cliff edges so much that in many cases it's actually easier to bush bash in the forest parallel to the trail and creek.

Gillean's guidebook says

"At the point where the creek bends right and the ground rises up ahead leave the trail and strike up the hillside"

The creek is never straight, and the ground is continually rising, so this isn't very helpful. The GemTrek map has the route marked, and so when we got to the grid reference where the trail was supposed to "strike off" (for a change my GPS was actually giving me good data), we started the first of our 4 "uphill" forays trying to find something that would lead us up the hill. Gillean says

"high up, interstect a game trail that gains the ridge at GR194429. Too far to the right and you hit a boulder slope"

We wasted 90 minutes rooting around for game trails, achieving nothing. We did a bunch of bush bashing, contouring the hillside at the 1850 m level (where the GemTrek map had the trail starting), and 1950 m hoping to run across something, to no avail. We were on the verge of giving up when we found the edge of the boulder field, and near it, a very weak trail-like thing that had obvious human presence (hiking pole holes and the odd boot print) and actually led uphill (note: As I have mentioned in the past, game trails tend to lead across slopes, not up them).

This trail lasted about 300 m and gained 200 vertical metres before dying out. My GPS said we were 200 m below and less than 500 m from the target grid reference, so we just started bush bashing up. We found the odd trail, but nothing lasted for more than 50-100 m till we were on our own again in dense bush (I have scars on my face, arms and legs to prove how dense it was, too) and a steep slope.

Here's a snapshot from Google Earth of our tracks, both up and down. The two deviations to the left into the trees are real and are our attempts at crosscutting the hill to look for trails. The wandering around on the left side of the creek before the final push uphill are also real, also time wasted looking for trails. All the junk on the right side of the creek is not real, just artifacts from my GPS.


Anyway, finally the grade leveled, the forest thinned and we popped out at the base of one whole lot of scree. Note the larches on the right. They were an important landmark, it turned out.


Gillean says:

Start up easily angled dinner plates covered in black lichen

I'm not sure I would use the phrase "easily angled". The were tough to clamber on, and hiking poles were essential for balance. Here's KC struggling up.


The first minor pitch of 30 vertical meters gets to a tree patch, then there's still 100 vertical meters of this stuff to cross. The larches in the centre right are where we popped out of the forest.


According to Gillean,

Next comes a grass and spruce section.

This section is steep but manageable, and offers some pretty stellar views towards Mt. Buller & down Spray Lakes, of Mt. Assiniboine & Mt Sparrowhawk and Read's Tower.




At this point, a bit of a trail actually forms. This is because you're naturally drifting to the left as the slope to the right is steeper. The trick is there's a cliff on the left. So people appear to get trapped against the cliff edge and follow it. And when I say cliff, I'm talking easily a 300 m drop, and in many places, you can look 1,000' straight down the gullies.



After this "spruce and grass" section which as some spruce but very little grass, offers a

steeper pull with optional scrambling.

according to Gillian. This is what you're supposed to climb:


and this is where you're supposed to climb it.


Well, by this time we had climbed 680 m and still had over 300 m to go, and it was already 2 PM, late not due to our start time but due to wasting an hour or more attempting to find the trail up. So we stopped here. Not a bad place to stop, but not quite the objective. How "not quite"? Well, here's Red Ridge on the left (with Mt. Bogart in the background on the right) taken from the Spray Lakes dam. See the bright V shaped notch in the middle? That's as far as we got.


Still, not a bad spot and reminiscent of the notch below Read's Tower. Certainly pretty views, including the basin behind Read's Tower and below Mt Sparrowhawk where we were about this time last year...


... and up Spray Lakes to the back of the Big Sister...


...into the Sparrowhawk Tarns basin (note: when we hiking into the basin a few weeks ago, we had lunch in the prominent rock in the left centre)...


...and the toe of the rock glacier under the flank of Mt. Buller.



We also saw 3 hikers down hiking the Sparrowhawk Tarns. Sadly, it looks to me like they only made it to the rockfall and didn't make it into the basin itself, which is tragic. The three hikers in the second photo are actually in the first picture, in the lower centre.



My camera really has a cool lens.

On the way down, we decided to look for a cairn or something where the scree slope met the forest that might indicate an actual trail back into the forest. From the GPS track above, you can see that we continued down on the edge of the scree a fair ways, occasionally seeing bootprints, but finding no kind of trail at all. We finally just started down into the bush, occasionally intersecting our track up, taking whatever short lived game trails we could find, and eventually made our way back to the creek, scratched and cut once again.

Several times on the way up and down we found bear poop, all of it bright red and full of berries. This pile was just off the trail right back at the road.


We talked to some folks who had gone for a walk into the closed Spray Lakes picnic area. They reported seeing numerous piles of fresh bear poop, too.

I won't be in a hurry to do Red Ridge again. The bush bashing sucks. The "trail" sucks. Clambering the scree up top sucks. If you want these views, do the Read's Tower circuit; while difficult, it's way more rewarding than this.

Disappointing, that.

Missed it by One Day

This hiking season has been pretty miserable, with countless days washed out with rain. Saturday was a beautiful fall exception -- but Karen had to work the morning open house at the station, so by the time she got home, it was 3 PM before we could get out. Being worried about the conditions courtesy of the snow last week, I was able to drive down Hwy 742 a way to check out the snow level, which was at the 2600 m mark on Mt. Sparrowhawk.


The Spray Valley looked in beautiful condition, but alas, I could not linger.


Given the time, about the only thing we could do was walk around the hamlet trails. It was might pretty, and at 22°, nice and warm, though windy as all get out.




We saw no critters but we saw lots of elk, deer and beaver tracks.

The forecast for today started off being just as good for Sunday as Saturday. However, it changed all the way though the day on Saturday, and when we woke this morning, it was overcast and the new forecast was a 30% chance of showers. The radar showed a large patch of rain covering most of the Kananaskis, and sure enough, by 9:30 it was raining. But the forecast, the radar and the satellite image all suggested it would clear this afternoon, and do so starting in the northwest. So we decided to head to Boom Lake on Hwy 93 near the Vermillion Pass.

Mistake.

For starters, the hike is a 5 km walk on a fire road equivalent through a disenchanted forest with no views. It ends at the lake, and there nowhere to go, since the trail just stops. So even if the weather had been good, this is not a hike I would recommend to people.

But the weather wasn't good. We were poured on for over 90 minutes. The trail was a slippery, muddy, puddle-filled mess. And at the lake you couldn't see much.




About the only redeeming quality of this trail is that you cross about 20 little creeklets, each of which is a verdant path of green.



The GemTrek maps I have show this to be the only trail in the valley. Imagine my surprise to find Parks Canada signage saying you can get to Taylor Lake from here. Here's the trail intersection.


Imagine my further surprise at this sign, just 20 m up the Taylor Lake trail:


Yes, the sign says "No well defined trail past this point."

So they say there's a trail, then post a sign saying there isn't?