J - Tri-ice-a-thon

It's another monday night, tired from the weekends climbing we have been fighting to keep our eyes open at work all day. This week it was the Tri-Ice-A-Thon at Nordegg, a group of hostels have banded together to create a very strange ice event involving many odd props, semi-naked ice climbing, hot tubs and lots of shouting.


Here's Merewyn doing a speed climb, complete with party hat, and white chocolate dog strapped to her back.











Swimsuit climbing event, (not Merewyn). Which wasn't a speed event but was done with a fair amount of speed even so :) Wasn't too cold that day, -5 maybe.
















More 'swimsuits'. Notice the rock shoes and chalkbag.












Me top roped on a mixed climb on the second day. (not a movie)







After the weekend was over we had done well, Merewyn won a rope in a rope coiling competition and I won a day with a mountain guide. So we drove home in a snow storm and paid the now customary visit to Tim Hortons coffee and donut fast food joint. The only fast food restaraunt with an employee health plan. It is bit of a mixed bag and it gets better the more you go. It has terrible coffee of course but they will serve it to you in your own cup which is nice. Good sandwiches and other food and a huge array of donuts. They also sell donut centres, these are known as Tim Bits.

Buy 6 or more donuts exempts you from paying GST, it's the law. Strange but true. I bet it makes their taxes really complicated.

Josh

M - Anything to avoid study

It all started when I asked friend Jess if she would like the accumulated Atlas jars we have from a partiular brand of pasta sauce. She said she would like to have them, so Josh dug around in the cupboards, found them, and matched them up to lids. There are quite a few of them... tick, tick, tick, goes my mind - chutney! We had little sausages for breakfast this morning, (I am still pining for Vekerks Cheese Kranskis) and were commenting on how nice a bit of chutney would have been.

I am doing a university paper by correspondence from New Zealand. You see, I had this idea that I would have all these hours of spare time over the long dark Canadian winter. The exam is this Friday, so I am in full study mode - or as full as I ever get. I'm not too stressed about it as I did very well in the two assignments, so only need to get 40% to pass the course (C's get degrees!) There is an inverse relationship here, meaning I am managing to do some study rather than being paralised by fear.

So the perfect study avoidance was born, and we now have 2 years supply of vege chutney on the stove, with only a couple of months to eat it! Maybe Jess will still take the jars if they are full?

M - Rockies Adventure

Big Sister Megan came to visit for a week, so we took a couple of days off work,hopped into the Korean Ferari and went for a grand tour of the Canadian Rockies. Early in the trip Megan bought a T-shirt which listed 6 national parks, this set a goal, though we only had 4 days to see them all.

Thankfully there are some roads to asist, and we were able to get to Banff, Yoho, Glacier, Revelstoke, Kootenay and Jasper National Parks. To qualify we had to actually get out of the car and look at something. Activities were limited as almost all the facilities were closed.

Highlights include snow day in Banff (Meg Skied, I "boarded", Josh ran down the hill in front to catch me) and hot pools in Radium Hot Springs - the most radioactive hot pools in North America (with a name like that I would never have guessed!)

Sexy in our ski clothes, Merewyn and Meg in front of Castle Mountain, now our favorite 'Rocky'



We made it out of the car and into the wilderness in Mt Revelstoke NP. Here we are doing the Ceder Grove Boardwalk in over 1m of snow. The boardwalk had snow up to above the handrails, and we walked along on top of that!

Rogers Pass in Glacier NP has a nice museum. They were showing a very interesting film about climbing in the Grand Teton NP (Wyoming, USA)







On our last day we visited Lake Louise with the almightly hotel. The lake is frozen and there is a skating rink and cross country ski track around the edge. The hotel has built this ice castle out on the lake, and there are also ice sculptures in the grounds infront of the hotel. It was a little grey weather wise, but beautiful none the less.