Backpacking Hamill Creek Trail

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Alpine hikes

Since Erin goes back to the city soon,
we've been making an effort to get out
into the wilderness for some big hikes.

We met a lot of pikas on yesterday's Alps Alturas Trail. 

Fiona is amazing. All 70 pounds of her.
Five hundred metres elevation gain?
A thousand? No problem! (Not that she
doesn't sometimes lose heart, or complain of
being tired. But don't we all? And she gets
to the top anyway.)

The best part is the excitement of seeing what's at the end of
the trail. Usually snow, and a basin of some sort. Wonderful
clear water. A stark world that feels near the sky.

Sophie, exploring the edge of an alpine lake, in front of
some watermelon snow.

We could actually smell the watermelon scent this time,
it was so concentrated. Chlamydomonus nivalis is the
name of the algae. 

Even amongst the rocks so near the sky, alpine
flowers flourish.

"Tourist heaven," Fiona pronounced.
The little lake seems to pour over the edge of the
world into the infinity of mountains beyond. 

Food for the summit: an absolute must. Caramel nut
brownie energy bars by Luna. Yup. Best summit food ever.

At this point Fiona thought the summit of the hike
was at that ridge a hundred metres up. How wrong
she was ... but she made it the extra 500 metres.

Truth be told, these girls ate their way to the top.
Huckleberry tongues.

Lyle Creek Basin. The most beautiful place ever.

The pour-over of the basin lake into Lyle Creek. The water
just disappears over the edge into ... nothing.

We got caught in nasty weather during one descent. We had a tarp
and jackets and could have stayed dry. But it was warm, and we were
feeling wild and crazy. We ran through the deluge, jumping smack
into the puddles, ponds and creeks that were forming as we watched.

Wind flower, or western anemone, makes seed heads that look like
aging hippies. Fiona collected seed heads along the trail and
felted this tribble. We brought it home, where it's drying on a ledge.

The Delica in its native environment.
This vehicle was made for this kind of travel,
up high into the subalpine on crazy forestry
roads. Drives that used to be impossible, or
at least hair-raising, now feel like no big deal.

The winter outdoors

The last few weeks have been perfect outdoor recreation weather, and we're taking full advantage of it, especially on skis. Fiona has discovered XC skiing this year, and she's quite a natural at it. She and I have been going out at least a couple of times a week together, exploring various trails in the area. There's a lot of trail-grooming that has begun taking place in recent years, which is nice for me on my whippy narrow track skis. My equipment is 25 years old but holding up fairly well.

It's been fairly cold for our area for much of the past couple of weeks (minus 10 or 12 Celsius) but the sun has peeked out even on the coldest days. That makes all the difference. 

The cross-country trails in Hills afford lovely scenery.

Fiona has joined the Jackrabbits program. Her classmates have been XC skiing for two or three years, but she's keeping up pretty well for a noob.

The snow is so delicious! Here ground hoar has formed at night on sun-warmed hillocks. In the high country, on steep slopes, this will create a serious avalanche risk, but down on the XC flats it's just beautiful.

Homeschoolers are able to join the school ski program. This gives them free skiing and free lessons three Wednesdays in January. There's a nice cluster of homeschooled girls a little younger than Fiona, at a similar skiing level. They get along with the school kids really well too, but have a special chemistry all their own.

Fiona is getting braver and more capable on downhill skis. We don't ski much each year, but this is her third year, and her skills are building. 

I think we're doing really well for physical activity this winter. I'm hardly running at all, I confess: I'd love to be squeezing in three runs every week and it's not quite happening, but that's because I'm doing so much skiing with the kids, Fiona especially. Sophie and Noah are both in the (fairly intense) Fitness program at school, and Sophie has been doing dance and volleyball and PE as well. Noah will be adding Outdoor Education in semester 2, which begins shortly. And Fiona? This week she had gymnastics on Tuesday, downhill skiing all day Wednesday, an hour in the gym on Wednesday evening, PE at school on Thursday, XC skiing for an hour and a half on Friday, plus 90 minutes of swimming at the hot springs the same day, tomorrow she has Jackrabbits, and Sunday she'll likely ski downhill again. It feels wonderful to be getting outside so much in the depths of winter.

Having the right clothing makes all the difference. Really warm gloves, Smartwool socks, goggles, seam-sealed waterproof breathable insulated jackets and pants, the right footwear, polypro as a base layer of clothing, warm hats and helmets. Our equipment is all borrowed or rented, but the clothing is good stuff we spent money on. Comfortable kids are happy outdoor kids.

Bob

It was the morning before I had to leave for Kelowna to pick up Erin. Noah, Fiona and Sophie had to be got up, the lunches had to be made, everyone had to be fed, coffee had to be made and drunk, suitcases had to be packed for Fiona and me for the overnight, art class supplies and sewing machine had to be readied for the morning's class. In other words, it was the usual chaos plus a bit more. And of course the chicken feed and water had to be topped up before I left. Ten minutes before we all had to depart, I ran out to water the chickens, and saw something leap up towards the fenced roof of the outdoor chicken run.

And there he was: this guy. About twice the size of a house cat, meaty and substantial with strength and claws and attitude to match. He was trapped there, startled by my presence. I couldn't see how he'd gotten in, but getting out wasn't proving to be easy.

I saw no blood or feathers around, and the chickens usually stay inside the coop where it's warmer, so I wondered if he had maybe just arrived. Perhaps the chickens were still alive, cowering inside. Regardless, I wanted to get him out. I cracked the gate to the outdoor chicken run, just wide enough to admit a camera lens, and took this photo. He growled, hissed and growled some more.

I cracked the gate a little wider and then went around to the far side of the coop, prodding him from behind with a long stick in an effort to encourage him to leave through the gap I'd left him in the gate. He was spitting mad and didn't want to move. But finally he made a grand leap and ran for it: straight through the little chicken door and into the coop.

I suppose I wasn't thinking entirely sensibly. I was only thinking of the poor chickens that he might be about to kill. So I ran around to the coop door and quickly opened it, peering into the relative dark, hoping that my appearance would scare him out the little flap-door at the back by which he had come in.

The image was like a split-second landscape revealed by a flash of lightning. I saw, and I slammed the door shut, only really understanding what I had seen after the door was closed. I had seen chicken carcasses: it was already all over for our rooster and four hens who had been faithfully contributing lovely blue-green-shelled eggs to our pantry for a year and a half. But I had also seen the cat, a mere 14 inches from my face, sitting in the nesting box closest to the door, growling his horrid growl, crouched upon his deadly claws.

We now had two minutes until we had to leave for school/art class/Kelowna. Like any reasonable person would, I spent that two minutes uploading the photo to Facebook (thereby alerting Chuck) and then simply drove away, trusting that the cat would eventually leave by the open gate. Which it seems he did.

We dealt with the chicken carcasses another day. I suppose we'll be back to raising new chicks this spring.

Fall bits

Where has October gone? Where has my blogging mojo gone? My additional teaching load, and all the juggling of travel and activities by Noah and Sophie, is taking a toll.

Fall was amazing until the rain finally caught up with us. The leaves were a good two weeks later to start turning, and then when they did it was in a flash of gold glory. Still it was sunny. And (relatively) warm. 

Now it's been raining for a couple of weeks. And cold, and grey, and dark. The wood stove is working all the time and we're inside a lot more. 

Fiona has been doing a lot of neat art and math. The topo map project (previously mentioned) but also a lot of Vi-Hart-inspired doodling, zentangle style art, and circle-geometry stuff. The art classes that were offered last year to homeschoolers are underway again, and this year's focus is mathematics and patterns in art, which is just a perfect fit for Fiona's current enthusiasms. An art class where the vocabulary frequently includes words like radius, concentric, tetrahedron, equilateral, rotation and intersection? Right up her alley! They're currently working on making mandalas, using various paint techniques, geometry with compasses and straight-edges, and carved print blocks. 

A last few tidbits, clockwise as above. 

We've been doing some organized running clinics. Fiona attended the first one and enjoyed it. I'm going to continue doing some regular Sunday clinics in a neighbouring village. I am trying to work up interest in an ongoing local running group, so I've put some time and energy into hiring a clinician, setting up an email loop, and doing publicity.

My knitting bug has hit again, with the stoking of the wood stove. The only local yarn shop (90 minutes away) closed last spring, so I shall have to find a good on-line source for yarn. It's a shame not to be able to see colours and touch hanks in person though. 

My networking with other runners and cyclists has made me keen to get to know even more of the local wilderness. Last weekend I stumbled on a fabulous trail that I had never heard about. A well-kept secret, I suppose. It's low-elevation, easily accessible, rolling in profile, quite and stunningly beautiful ... yet very close by. How could I not have known? I've biked it and run it and loved it both ways. It's made me hungry to truly and thoroughly get to know the backcountry around here. In the last couple of years I've got a good handle on the trails between my area and town. But that's just a wee portion of what's out there. I want to get back into backcountry hiking and camping too.

Fiona dressed up for Hallowe'en as No Face from the Studio Ghibli anime movie Spirited Away. An easy and warm costume for a typically cold and wet Hallowe'en.

The Law and Government classes are drawing to a close. These fun theatrical classes about the evolution and structure of our constitutional monarchical government system have continued sporadically throughout the summer and into the fall. Fiona has continued her role as Head of the Executive branch of government, but she now has a new role as Miss Matter, a witness for the defence in the case of against Mr. and Mrs. Brown, who have refused the installation in their living room of a video surveillance camera according to Section 10 of the Kingdom Security Act designed to protect against the rumoured terrorist plans of Evil Lord Voldesnort. The mock trial is scheduled for the Nelson Courthouse in a couple of weeks.

We Live Here 3D

Recently Fiona has been fascinated by Vi Hart's quirky art-in-math videos. She's made Fibonacci spirals, binary trees, trihexaflexagons and various other doodly-mathy things. Recently she noticed how a particular style of spiral doodle looked a bit like topographic lines on a map. And as she didn't really understand how topographic lines worked, I explained them to her, and printed out a topo map from our area. I also suggested it might be fun to someday cut out and stack layers of cardboard using topographic lines as a guide to create a three dimensional model of the topography of an area, real or imagined.

Well, she wanted to do that right away. So we found a couple of old cardboard boxes, traced over the topographic lines on the map we'd printed out, and started cutting. One topo line at a time we cut out our paper map contours, traced them onto cardboard, and cut each layer. Fiona glued the layers together and was entranced as the topography began to take shape. The creek drainages, and the peaks, the valleys, the ridges.

Today she painted.

A layer at a time, with bright and darker greens and greys. She used acrylic paint for its forgiving nature and opacity. Of course the open corrugated edges weren't really filled: I wondered about smoothing everything out with some polyfilla. But in the end I didn't suggest that because I figured the real point was to notice the way in which topographic lines on a map, which are so beautifully visible on this model, allow one to approximate the three-dimensional shape of the terrain.

After the painting was done, we looked at the model without the map, and tried to identify peaks and locations. Then we got out the map to check and get a bit more precise with our locations. And we decided to repurpose some sewing pins into map pins, and mark a few places with names.

Fiona is very pleased with the finished product. It took us two pleasant afternoons, totalling about 4 hours. We worked together part of the time, and sometimes I read aloud while she worked.

(We have a few of these picture-perfect unschooling days a year, where a thread of interest turns into an interesting project and results in some awesome photos. I always blog about them because .... well, because they're noteworthy. Not because they're typical.)

Mountain bike camp

Finally the cold rainy spell broke. We had rainfall totals for June that were almost twice the previous record. There were two weeks of mountain bike camp and luckily we chose the second one: the first week of July was still suffering from temperatures barely in the teens and torrential downpours. This week, though ... sun and soaring temperatures!

What a great week for Fiona. It was hard work: she was on her bike for most of the five and a half hours each day. There were drills around pylon courses and over small obstacles on the field, time to experiment with gravity and momentum in the concrete of the skatepark, skinnies, teeter-totters and ramps at the bike skills area, and every day included a long trail ride. 

My friend who organizes the camp does a great job with the logistics, selecting the coaches, organizing the shuttle service, keeping the kids engaged. There were thirty kids enrolled in each of the two weeks. The camp was held in the village 30 minutes to the east of us. I drove over and stayed most days rather than making two trips, which meant I was available to be the sweeper at the tail end of the trail rides. Beside putting chains back on kids' bikes, wiping up occasional bloody noses and helping the laggards out occasionally by pushing their bikes up the steepest and hottest of hills, it wasn't much work for me and I got the chance to get to know some of the trails better. 

Fiona has grown so much more confident on her bike. We bought her a snappy little aluminum Specialized hardtail this spring. She rode hard, generally at the front of the pack. She got very skilled at technical downhills, balancing her weight well and using her brakes properly to avoid going head-over-handlebars. She pushed herself to try new things and showed incredible tenacity on the most challenging "skinny." She made it all the way across the 10-metre-long 2x4 several times after scores of tries. 

Physics

What we do at the rocky beach on a warm spring day when no one has much energy due to colds but we have to get out of the house. The left-hand cairn has more stones, but I think the one in the right-hand photo is more impressive due to the challenging roundness of its base stones.

Hello, trees

Fiona and I have been visiting the trees in the forest that surrounds our home recently, appreciating them anew as they emerge from the snow and prepare for a new season of growth.

Yesterday we checked out the red cedar bark, which we will use for basket weaving. Years ago the kids did a workshop with this lovely local lady, and while they're a lot of work, the tiny baskets we have since made have been very striking and rewarding. It's still too early in the season for it to come away easily in long strips, but we're looking forward to harvesting some in May. We then dug up some red cedar roots, to decide how useful they'd be for embellishing our baskets. I had read that they make great sewing material, but had never taken the suggestion seriously. They really are amazing. The slenderest ones are strong, pliable and lovely to look at, and they dry and increase in strength very quickly once harvested.

We collected armloads of white pine cones to use a fire-starter next winter.

And then we made our acquaintance again with the birch trees. We tapped a couple of birch trees years ago, but our sap collection set-up wasn't ideal and we didn't get enough sap to make a proper syrup. Because birch sap is about five times less sugary than maple sap, you need a heck of a lot of it!

Sometime in the intervening years I managed to purchase four spiles and today we picked up some clear 1/2" tubing at the local hardware store. All it took was a quick bit of work with the portable drill and a couple of taps with the mallet the trees began spilling their sap out for us with eagerness. We plugged a couple of tubes into each of two glass carboys and within an hour or two had a couple of gallons of sap.

I imagine it will be incredibly time- and energy-consuming to boil the stuff down, but I'm happy to do it just once, to experience the process and the taste of the syrup.

Birch sap is sterile and contains trace amounts of minerals, xylitol and various other good things. It's actually a great source of safe drinking water. Not that we don't already have safe drinking water, but hey, when civilization crumbles, this might be a useful piece of knowledge.

Check your boots

When you hike a couple of hundred metres through the nasty snow and frozen slush of your laneway to reach the road for a barefoot run, it's sometimes nice to wear your boots, especially if you know you'll be doing your longest barefoot run to date and coming home with tired feet that have been pushed to the limits of their comfort. So you wear your boots and leave them at the top of the laneway to await your return 90 minutes later.

It might be good to return while it's still light out, with your powers of observation still keenly functional. Because as you near your boots you might notice the small furry presence of a field mouse considering moving into a new home. And therefore as you move closer you'll notice that, startled by your approach, he has now scurried into the safety of the dark neoprene-insulated recesses of your right winter Muck boot.

And so you thankfully you take the time to invert your right boot (and the left, I might add, just as a precaution!) and give it three good shakes to dislodge any would-be tenants.

Ice

The lake at the summit north of us has frozen clear, without snow. It's not quite glassy, but quite skate-able. We've opted not to flood our backyard rink this year, so there's even more reason for the trip to the lake to be worth doing.

Fiona and I skated all the way across, and all the way back, and then spent some time "doing doodly-do's" around the near shore. She found her skating legs quickly and despite the wind we both managed to generate enough body heat to stay toasty warm for an hour.

While we were holed up in a "cave" beneath a rock, out of the wind on the far side of the lake, a coyote trotted directly in front of us, oblivious to our presence.

Cessna over the Slocan

Chuck and Noah were invited by a friend to take a trip in his Cessna. Can you imagine a more amazing place to tour the local scenery? They've both decided we need a plane of our own. That would certainly make it easier to get to Calgary! What an amazing experience for both of them.

Up Idaho

The dog seems better from her bear injuries. The house is a mess but who cares. We're working on winterizing the little cabin. Last week I spent a couple of days permachinking the interior. Chuck is hard at work adding and insulated roof this weekend. The younger girls had just had their biggest market day yet. The SVI is over and the rest of my family won't arrive for another week for our reunion.

Into this hazy week of summer the kids dropped plans for a hike up Idaho Peak. We hadn't been in a few summers. The drive can be a little crazy and I don't relish it, 11 km up a bumpy and narrow, very exposed gravel forest service road. The biggest stress for me is meeting vehicles coming the other direction. Someone often has to back up along a precipitous switchback to a pullout area where the road has enough width to allow two vehicles to pass.

But we went in the early evening, by which time we hoped most of the tourists had come down. And we were lucky on the drive; I only had to back up once, and not too far at that.

The wildflowers were pretty much at their peak. This is more of a late-July thing in typical years, but spring and summer were so late this year that we timed it right by going in mid-August. The sunlight was stark and slanting and the views were delicious.

Beware of small bears

We had these two in our yard at least once today. Probably twice. A mama and a cub. A tiny, cute little cub. Standing up and peering around, curious about everything.

We think our dog tangled with them this morning, though. Probably got between mama and her cub, a very dangerous place to be. The dog has a few slashes on her flank. They appeared pretty superficial after they first happened, but as the day wore on she has hunkered down and isn't eating or moving around much. She tends to do this when she's in pain, so hopefully it's just a reaction to being sore, and not any more sinister internal injuries.

Noah took these photos. He's the camera hog lately.  Click to enlarge: the expressions on the bears' faces are brilliant. The little guy just needs a hat, a suitcase and a tag that reads "please look after this bear."

Nestlings

Ever kid should have a nest of baby birds to watch every year.

Long run

Two years ago I discovered that the distance between my driveway and the next village to the east was a few hundred metres over official marathon distance. This weekend it finally worked out for me to run it: I had built enough of a running "base," logged enough long challenging runs, was feeling pretty good, had a day off, and Chuck was available to come and get me at the end. Unfortunately in order to time the pick-up properly I had to leave later than I'd hoped and ran through a pretty hot part of the day. I think it was around 23ºC in full sun, though with a nice breeze. Far hotter than I prefer to run, definitely slowing me down, but not completely horrid.

I didn't see any bears or large wildlife. The highway is relatively busy on this July 1st long weekend with  maybe an average of a vehicle every minute. Mostly Albertan motorcyclists, and lots of motorhomes and American tourists. I did get attacked by a grouse. I must have startled it, running close to its nest in the roadside ditch. It flapped towards me in full display, hissing and vibrating and making for my ankles. I laughed out loud and it gave up after about 3 metres.

I ran the first quarter barefoot. Not wanting to blister my feet I put my shoes on at that point. As it turned it this might have been the wrong choice: I ended up getting a shoe blister from my toes rubbing against each other despite the large-ish toebox in the Minimuses. But I didn't really notice it much until I was done. My Achilles tendons and ankles were feeling things by the last 10 miles, and I'll probably pay the price for a couple of days, but all things considered I felt pretty good. Didn't hit the legendary wall, and my pace (light green line, punctuated by spikes for putting on shoes, refilling my water or peeing) stayed reasonably consistent throughout, taking into account the elevation profile:

My aim was to enjoy myself, so I didn't push hard. I finished in 4:40. Chuck and Fiona arrived about ten minutes later and took me out for a milkshake. It feels nice to know that I can log the miles equivalent to a marathon. Maybe I'll actually run an official one someday. 

Bear stories

Last week it was beautiful and sunny and I decided to sneak in a quick afternoon run. I took the highway out towards the junction to the east of us. Typically this highway has only very light traffic, and it's beautifully scenic. I did my 20-minute jogging warmup and then started up my heart-rate monitor and my Garmin GPS watch for what was supposed to be an easy endurance run.

A red minivan with out-of-province plates passed me, going fairly slowly, then immediately slowed to a crawl. It was travelling in front of me at about 10 km/h, matching my speed. It was creepy. I was by myself on foot, 20 minutes from home on a remote, little-travelled secondary highway and now this van was behaving very strangely. I tried to look confident and nonchalant, and I avoided looking at the van, not wanting to make eye contact.

On the Garmin tracing above you can see the red arrow which is the point where the van pulled in front of me. My pace (bars at the bottom) slowed down a little, so that I could stay well back from the van. But my heart rate (red line) blipped up a bit despite the slower pace, because I was, well, a little freaked out about the creepy tourists I guess.

The van continued in front of me at a crawl for a good minute or more. Focused on avoiding eye contact with the psychopathic out-of-towners, it took me a long time to look anywhere but at the road three metres in front of me. Finally I glanced to the left.

There was a bear. Right there. I had almost run past it by that point. It was just on the shoulder of the road about 10 metres from me. At most. It was looking at me curiously, without any fear. Kind of a weird-looking bear, like it was having a bad hair day or something. Small to medium sized, maybe 2 or 3 years old. But yikes, it was so close. I veered to the other side of the road and though I tried to avoid doing anything to startle it, it seems from my Garmin tracing (blue arrow) that I picked up my pace a lot, and my heart rate took another big jump. Bear stayed put, I carried on around the next curve. The driver of the minivan, seeing that I was now safely past the bear he had clearly spotted, sped away.

Now, I see bears with some regularity when running. I usually wave and shout and they run off and I don't think again about it. This incident became story-worthy because of my tourist-paranoia and my obliviousness that let me get that close without noticing, not because it seemed a particularly dangerous situation. But for some reason, for a few days after that, I kept mentioning to friends and family members how I was feeling kind of spooked about risks from wildlife while running. I'd never felt that way before. It was weird.

It took about five days, and a wildlife report from a neighbour, for the penny to drop. That was a grizzly. That was not one of the shiny cute black bears (that actually come in various shades of cinnamony brown as well) that I've become so nonchalant about over my 20 years in the Kootenays. In my memory I realized I had a clear picture of the scooped face, the jowly tufts of grizzled fur backlit by the sunshine. And yes, our neighbours had had a grizzly in their garden, and seen it up close through their window a few times, and had it bluff-charged a friend's truck when he stopped and rolled down his window to take some photos. And my description of the roadside bear was a perfect match.

I'd never seen a grizzly before in the wild. We know they live around here, usually up in the subalpine zone though. So it's very unusual to see one close to town. This guy is probably a 2-year-old, off trying to fend for itself for its first spring without mama. I hope it makes a U-turn and heads back up the pass soon.

I'm still running the road and trails out that direction, but with more awareness, and more often with other people. Thinking of carrying bear spray.

So then a couple of evenings ago I did a quick barefoot run along the same highway. Our driveway is rough and gravelly, so I wore my Minimus shoes while walking the 400 metres up to the road. When I got to the top of the driveway I shucked my shoes and left them, as usual, near our highway-number-sign. I had a nice, uneventful 30-minute run. Got back on the dark side of dusk and peered in the weeds for my shoes.

Only one shoe was there. Had I kicked the other off and let it fly? No, I was pretty sure I'd set both down together side by side. I wondered if maybe my family was playing a joke on me, but that didn't make sense: the driveway is a long way to walk from the house, and anyway they wouldn't have known I was leaving my shoes. I looked all through the weeds and grass. No shoe. Finally, about 20 metres down the driveway in the dim light beneath the overhanging trees I spotted a dark lump that looked like it might be shoe-sized. I walked over and picked the item up. It was a slobbery wet Minimus with two neat puncture marks in the sole.

I hadn't heard anything, but then I was busily looking for my shoe in the brush, thinking some human (me or my kids) had done something silly. Likely a bear (a black bear, I assume, optimistically!) was curiously mouthing my shoe as I arrived back from my run, dropping it and running off when I startled it.

I rinsed my beloved Minimus with a hose, let it dry, and it's perfectly wearable.