Wanderlust and Words

My sister Penny has started a blog:

Wanderlust and Words

As you may have gathered, my family has a fairly serious travel addiction :-)

Climbing Weekend

It all started when Shelley heard that the East Ridge of Edith Cavell was in shape. I climbed this long ago, but Shelley hasn't done it and has been wanting to. We checked the weather forecast and it looked good - sunny for four days! But that made us think maybe we should do something that took a longer spell of good weather - like Assiniboine, one that's been on our list for a long time. It takes a few days since you have to hike in and out about 30 km each way. So we planned to go do Assiniboine.

Unfortunately, the weather forecast started to play games, switching from good to bad and back each time we checked. It ended up looking good for Sat. and Sun. but rainy on Thurs. and Fri. When we checked with Assiniboine Lodge we found out that the rain had come down as snow on the mountain and it likely wasn't in good shape for climbing. We figured Edith Cavell would probably be the same.

At this point we were all packed to go climbing so we went anyway. Sat. there were low dark clouds hanging over Canmore so we headed for Yamnuska and climbed another route that was on our list - Grillmair Chimneys. It was nice and sunny at Yam.

Looking up the route from the base.

Shelley started to lead the second pitch.

Me leading the final pitch.

Shelley emerging from the back of the chimney at the top.

A visitor wanting to share our lunch!

The scrambling trail down.

On Sunday the weather was good in Canmore so we did the trad route on the North East ridge of Ha Ling peak - 12 pitches of 5.6 We weren't quite the first party on the route but the one party ahead of us let us pass after it was obvious on the first few pitches that we were moving faster than them. It was nice to be climbing with no one ahead of us, especially as we looked down and saw numerous parties on the route. We had climbed the route once before but a long time ago. We did the approach in an hour and the climbing in about four hours. We were pretty happy with our speed, especially as we'd been fumbling around a bit on Yam, not having done any long routes since Red Rocks last fall.

On Monday before the drive back we spent the morning at Grassi Lakes doing a little sport climbing. But both of us were tired out from the last two days and we didn't get too ambitious. Despite having to change our plans numerous times, the weekend turned out well.

Climbing Web Site and Blog

I just discovered a web site Canadian Alpinist and blog Alpine Artist by a climbing friend Rob Owens who was originally from Saskatoon (now living in Canmore). Rob was on our Cho Oyu expedition many years ago. That was near the beginning of his climbing career - he's come a long way since then.

If you're looking for a climbing guide I'd highly recommend Rob.

Canadian Orienteering Championships

The 2007 Canadian Orienteering Championships were hosted by the Saskatchewan Orienteering Association. I helped out with the web site, map printing, and at the event.

Considering it was one of the first events of any kind put on by the fledgling SOA, it went amazingly well. Of course, we could not have done it without the help from experienced people in other provinces who worked on the maps and course planning and helped officiate.

It was a bit of an eye opener for me - these folks are extremely good at what they do. I guess I should have expected that since they're some of the top competitors in Canada. I helped plan the night course. (It wasn't a world ranking event so we didn't have to bring in the big guns to plan it.) I would not have believed anyone could get all the points (it was a score competition) in an hour. Even knowing where they all were, I don't think I could visit them all in an hour, even in the daylight!

After the sprint event was finished I ran one of the courses with another volunteer (Tony Nadon). We got the fastest time on the course we ran, but it was the second easiest course (aimed at kids and grannies) and we had the advantage of knowing the university campus where it was located. And I still managed to mis-punch one control so technically I didn't finish :-(

I also helped check some of the courses the morning before the events (just to make sure the flags were still there - they had already been checked by experts for location). The first day I checked the third easiest course (out of 10). I assumed it would be quite "easy" and, overconfident, proceeded to thrash around quite embarrassingly. I took an hour and a half to get through a course that had a winning time of about 30 minutes by a 15 or 16 year old. I thought I did better the next day, only taking an hour to check the two easiest courses. The first was won by a 12 year old girl in 25 minutes, the second by a 13 year old boy in 23 minutes. My ego was only saved by telling myself that I had to check two courses (albeit mostly overlapping) plus a several extra points from harder courses. My last experience out on the courses was picking up a bunch of points after the events were over. This time felt a little better. I was more careful and paid more attention to the map and route selection and managed not to get lost at all :-) But I also didn't set any speed records!

I think part of my problem is I'm not used to the quality of maps. That sounds funny - shouldn't a higher quality map make it easier? But when you're used to working with out of date, inaccurate 1:50,000 topo maps, you don't get in the habit of relying on the map too much. Just to give you an idea how different the maps are - the 1:50,000 topo has two contour lines in the whole Ebs Trails area, as opposed to literally thousands of contours and other features on the orienteering map, down to the level of individual trees (just distinct ones - not every tree!). Once I learned to a) trust the map more and b) really use the information on the map, then it started to go better.

On the positive side, one of our local people (Jeff Dmytrowich) entered the middle and long events and got the fastest times on his course on both. That was on an easy to moderate course, but still impressive, considering it was his first actual orienteering event (as far as I know), and everyone said it was some of the most technical, challenging orienteering around (due to the nature of the forest and terrain).

It's too bad Jeff was the only local person to enter. This was partly due to most of the keen people volunteering instead of entering and partly due to people being scared of entering a national event with little or no experience. Although, orienteering seems to be one of the few sports where a national competition isn't limited to the elite.

Now that the event is over, I can get back to finishing the planning for this year's Prairie Pitch!

Cayman Lizards

My father always said "man should not live where Bougainvillea will not grow", meaning you should live in tropical climates, i.e. not Saskatchewan! Presumably this sentiment came from my parents' 10 years in East Africa. I do like Bougainvillea and the climates where it grows, but my own version would be "people should not live where lizards cannot". (There are virtually no lizards in Saskatchewan, certainly not common like in tropical climates.)

This guy was a baby, only about an inch long. We saw it and the one following along the Mastic Trail. We first tried the West end of the trail but after slogging through ankle deep water for 1/2 a kilometer or so, we gave up. The East end of the trail turned out to be much drier and quite an interesting walk, although very hot. We even saw a couple of wild parrots.



This one was on the wall beside our hotel room. I think it's a Green Anole.


And this one is a captive endangered Blue Iguana at the Botanical Gardens.


Common Iguanas are much more, well, common, like this one leaving a parking lot.

As usual, click on the pictures to see a larger version.

NCC Saskatchewan Blog

I just ran across this local blog in an NCC email:

NCC Saskatchewan Blog

it probably won't be of much interest unless you're from Saskatchewan :-)

Monumental

I just finished watching Monumental: David Brower's Fight For Wild America - quite a story. Our (human's) drive to destroy the world is so saddening. Why do we need to fight to stop people from destroying it? If anything it should be the other way around. But we do, and David Brower is a fine example.

In addition to the story, there's lots of interesting old film footage, including climbing.

For some reason it made me want to go back and read some Edward Abbey.

Highly recommended.

Tadpoles to Frogs

After a long period of not many changes (apart from growing in size), the tadpoles are again developing rapidly, first growing back legs, then front legs (arms?), their mouths changing completely, and finally emerging from the water. Their tails gradually shrink during this time and they develop the green color and pattern that is recognizably a Northern Leopard Frog (I wasn't sure what kind of eggs I had found, but I suspected this type of frog since it's the most common around here.)



Since they should now be eating insects which I can't easily supply, I've been releasing them as they get to this stage. The tadpoles I previously released have also metamorphosed into frogs, although it's hard to get much of a look at them since they leap into the water and hide when you approach.

Grand Cayman Butterflies

Here are a few of the butterfly photos I took in Grand Cayman, mostly at the Butterfly Farm. (Click on them to enlarge.) They're not as skittish as some animals, but they do have a bad habit of sitting still until just when you're ready to shoot and then flitting off. Or they come to rest in a spot impossible to photograph. At least in the Butterfly Farm there's a higher concentration so you get more opportunities.







As with most of my nature photos, these were taken with the Canon S3 IS at full (12x) zoom (except for the one with Shelley in the background). The zoom allows you to keep a little distance and not spook them but still get closeups. One problem is that you don't have a lot of depth of focus and since the focusing is automatic it's tricky getting the camera to focus on what you want. A lot of the shots were a write-off because they were out of focus. That's where a DSLR might be better but it would be hard to match the zoom range and the image stabilization, let alone the price.

Here's me busy at the Butterfly Farm (photo by Shelley).

Tadpoles Grow Legs

I haven't posted any pictures of the tadpoles for a while. Apart from getting bigger and developing more color and shape, they've been fairly static. But they've finally started to grow legs. They went from egg to tadpole so fast that I thought their whole development would be faster but they've stayed in the tadpole stage longer than I expected. (I released several batches of them as they grew and the aquarium got too crowded.)

These aren't great pictures - between lighting, reflections, focus, and moving targets it's tricky. But they suffice to show what's happening.





You can click on the pictures to get a larger view. As you can see, there's quite a lot of variation in size and stage of development, even though they're all from the same batch of eggs.

It's interesting to compare these pictures to the first batch.

Now I'm waiting for the arms to show up :-)

PS. The next day I see one of the tadpoles has arms! Either they emerged overnight, or else that tadpole had been hiding. I'll try for some pictures once a few more of them develop arms. I'm not sure when they transition to breathing air, but I added a ramp so they can get out of the water when they need to.

PPS. What does this have to do with "adventure"? To me, nature is a big and integral part of adventure. And an appreciation and knowledge of nature enhances our adventures.

Sunblock

Outdoor activities often require sunscreen. Here's an interesting evaluation of products:

http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/special/sunscreens/summary.php

This was especially relevant to me since I just got back from 10 days snorkeling and diving on Grand Cayman where I was applying sunscreen multiple times a day.

Nature Paddle on Pike Lake

There were quite a few muskrats around. This fellow actually sat still long enough for me to get a decent picture.


Catching this guy on the move was a little tricky. Most of my shots were out of focus, but this one came out quite well.


Lots of red-winged blackbirds around too.


The water lilies were just starting to flower.


It was a beautiful calm morning.


These shots were all with the Canon S3. I love the 12x zoom and image stabilization for this kind of nature photography.

Free Canadian Digital Topo Maps

Someone just sent me a link to a source of free Canadian digital topographic maps scanned at 300 dpi. (BTW It seems strange that the government has to scan paper versions of maps they printed in the first place. Couldn't they do a more direct conversion?)

You need to know the map id, but you can get that from an online index.

I use Fugawi and Etopo maps and they're more user-friendly, but they are only 150 dpi and they tend to be out of date (and they cost money) In the past sometimes I have ended up getting the paper maps and scanning them myself but maybe now I won't have to.

You can also use the on-line government Toporama, but compared to Google Maps/Earth it is pretty bad.

What I'd really like is if the government would provide free vector versions of the maps. When they announced that they would discontinue printed paper maps they said they would provide free vector maps on-line. But this seems to have gotten lost when there was so much outcry and they decided to continue with paper maps. Personally, I'd rather have the digital ones!

May long weekend climbing

We had originally planned to go to Skaha, a climbing area near Penticton, but at the last minute the weather forecast changed our minds and we decided to go to the Needles in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Apart from the weather it was a long weekend in Canada, so Skaha would likely be busy, but it wasn't a long weekend in the States.

It's about 1100 km which took us about 12 hours. We left early Wed., but didn't go quite all the way the first day, stopping at Hidden Valley campground just past Deadwood. The campground was open, but we never did find any staff. We ended up slipping our fee under the office door. It was a nice spot. We even had some deer wander by our tent.

The tent, however, was not pretty. When I packed I grabbed the three man tent but the two man poles. Needless to say, that doesn't work too well. That's one of the problems with having collected so much gear!

The next morning we drove the rest of the way to Custer, went for breakfast at the Songbird Cafe, picked up some groceries, and then drove up to Sylvan Lake. The other two times we've been to the Needles we've stayed at the Sylvan Lake campground but we found it closed - it didn't open till the next day. So we ended up staying at Fort WeLikIt Campground just outside Custer. It was nothing special but it was fairly empty and therefore quiet. And the bathrooms and showers were clean with lots of hot water.

The first day we sport climbed (bolted routes) in the "outlets" at the end of Sylvan Lake, starting with a few routes on Youbet Jourasses and then moving over to the west end of Inner Outlet and the north face of Lakeview. Nothing too hard, but it was a good warm up. (For me anyway, since I haven't been climbing since our fall trip to Red Rocks. Shelley has been climbing in the gym.)

The next day we decided to do Diagonal Traverse, a classic three pitch trad route on Outer Outlet. It's rated 5.6 but it seems a lot harder. We've done it before - it's a fun climb. It follows a crack/flake that cuts diagonally across a steep, sometimes overhanging wall, making for good exposure! I took the first pitch. It's the longest and you have to be careful with your gear placements or the rope drag can get pretty bad.

I have a bad tendency, especially when leading, to want to jam my body into cracks and chimneys because it feels more secure. But it makes it really hard to move! Several times on this route you have the choice of keeping one leg in the crack, or else keeping both hands on the edge and hanging over. You can guess which I tend towards!

The first belay is bolted, just after a tricky step across a gap, protected by two old pitons. Shelley led the next pitch which is a short traverse under a roof. According to the guidebook this is the crux. It is a little scary under the roof with sparse footholds, but there are good holds for your hands. You have to build your own belay at the end of this pitch but there are good cracks.

I led the last pitch which goes through a break in the roof and up into a chimney. It's another awkward few moves but then the chimney is easy and soon you can break out right and up onto the summit. The bolts are set up for rapping down the other side so it's not the best belay, but it works.

Unfortunately, although it was only noon, the afternoon thunderstorms were rolling in. We didn't fancy being on the top of the needle in lightning so we descended right away. It's a long rappel (you need two ropes), much of it free hanging. The last part is down a narrow chimney - one last piece of awkwardness!

Our standard rack is plenty on this route - a set of wired nuts, Camalots from .4 to 3, and some hexes (Wild Country Rockcentric Hexnuts). You don't see many people using hexes these days but they're a lot cheaper than cams, lighter, and there are lots of times when a passive hex is more secure than a cam.

Saturday we climbed Spire Two in the Cathedrals, another three pitch trad route. It's rated 5.7 but I'd say it's easier than the Diagonal Traverse. It even has a summit register you can sign :-) Again, an early start was a good idea since we got chased off the top by the imminent arrival of thunderclouds.

Our old guide book was Paul Piana's Touch the Sky from 1983. It covers a lot of ground, but not in much detail. The descriptions tend toward being cryptic. Luckily a new guidebook had just been released: The Needles by Zach Orenczak and Rachael Lynn. Despite a lot of goofy pictures it has much better descriptions and diagrams. Unfortunately it doesn't cover the Sylvan Lake area.

Our last day we climbed at Moonlight Ridge - a small group of needles with a large number and variety of routes. We ran into a group of climbers from Regina there. We'd known they were coming out but with our last minute change of plans we hadn't had a chance to let them know we'd be there. The group included some beginners so it was fun to see them tackle real rock and even trad routes, after only having experienced the gym.

Rain Drops

Yesterday, when I was walking to work, I noticed some beautiful purple flowers with rain drops on them. Then I remembered that I had left my camera at home.

This morning, it was dry and the flowers just didn't have the look I had liked so much. But it rained a bit in the afternoon and I was able to take some pictures with the rain drops. It doesn't hurt that purple is one of my favorite colors.

Bike Ride

I finally got out for a little longer bike ride (Google map). Only about 30 km, but that was the longest I'd done since last summer. Long enough for unaccustomed hands and butt to start going numb. I ride all winter but just commuting around town. I won't be keeping up with Larry's workouts - I only managed to average about 20 km/hr despite good road and not too much wind (but on a mountain bike). Wind is the Saskatchewan equivalent of hills for cycling - a 50 km headwind across the bald prairie can make for a tough workout!

River Paddling Sights

Obviously, the baby Canada Geese have hatched.


And the pelicans are busy fishing.

Spring Flowers