Liard Hot Springs

I took my time on my 30 hour journey to Edmonton, so the trip didn't seem too bad. The best part of the journey is the stop at Liard Hot Springs in the middle of nowhere between Fort Nelson, BC, and Watson Lake, Yukon. I arrived at the springs under the cover of darkness, in -25 degree cold, with a half-full moon lighting up the snow-covered landscape. I had the whole place to myself, so I spent a good 2 hours floating around, au naturel, admiring the steam and feathery ice crystals surrounding the spring. Balneology at its finest.

Southbound

In a few short hours, I will begin the 2000 km drive from Whitehorse to Edmonton. There should be some good festive cheer going on seeing as how Jenny and I have a wedding sandwiched in between Christmas and New Years. Just in the past week, winter fully arrived up north with enough snow to cross country ski at the lower elevations. I tried a couple of times to get some nice winter-wonderland pictures, but fading light and a dead camera battery have foiled my attempts. But I dug up a picture of Jenny from last year from a mid-winter, -25 degree ski on the Auriol trail in Kluane National Park.

Visual Mathematicians

Jenny completed a personality quiz a while back (can't remember which one), and was typed as a visual mathematician. As you could imagination, a visual mathematician would be adept at spotting patterns (but not necessarily be a math wizard). I like to think that every artist must have some visual mathematician in them somewhere.

Jenny has gone to a few stained-glass workshops organized with friends and has created some beautiful pieces. This tree frog is only her third creation, and is my favourite. It is her own original design and I think it is brilliant -- the frog is sitting on a branch set against the sky with his (her?) fingers extending into the leaves, and the fanning and enlarging of the leaves towards the lower left makes it seem like the image comes out towards you, really giving a sense of depth. Jenny gave it to her sister as a wedding present, so her new project is to make a stained glass piece for our condo.

I also made this as a gift for Sandy and Jeff's wedding while I was on a shift down in Mexico. The sculpture is made from African Kisii stone (bought in Edmonton), and mounted on a slab of barite that I collected from the exploration project in Mexico. Barite is special to Sandy's heart because she earned her PhD by studying barite-precipitating springs. I often worked as her field assistant, so there will likely be a future post about us flying around the Canadian north in helicopters. This also means Jenny and I have no shame in expecting some original artwork from family and friends as wedding gifts.

Realizations...

Jenny has commented that my blog is funny (mostly funny weird, with a little funny haha) because I jump from one topic to another with little chronological continuity. I am completely aware of this. I realize that my photos from Turkey are two years old, and I have yet to explain why I was there in the first place, but I will get to that eventually. I could talk about the endless string of cabs and occasional police visits to the condo across the street from our place, but that would get old quickly (and no, it is not a drug house). Instead, I post about interesting things that I've already done, but never had a chance to share.

She also mentioned that since we'll be getting married in about 2 weeks (!!!), I should give her a more formal introduction on the blog. I will keep with the theme of jumping around by presenting a short photo-essay on one of our early spring day hikes at Sheep Mountain from a year and a half ago. Sheep Mountain is above Kluane Lake, and the starting point for the journey up the Slims River to the Kaskawulsh Glacier (in my November archives). Snow on the aptly named Sheep Mountain's southward facing slope melts sooner than snow on the surrounding mountains, so Dall sheep spend a lot of time frolicking there during the spring migration.

Iron Springs

Just down the road from the very touristy Pamukkale is a smaller spring system depositing iron-rich limestone (the oxidized iron is responsible for the orange colouring).



Local Turkish peasants come to this hot spring to sit and wade in the soothing waters. Their bathing attire is in stark contrast to the Speedo-clad, body-mud-rubbing Europeans at Pamukkale.



Springs have long been thought to have healing properties. This lady was collecting mud from the spring pools to rub on the chest of her sick grandson in hopes of it returning his health.

The spring wasn't completely devoid of tourist attractions. For a small fee, this camel was available for all your riding pleasures.

Cotton Castle

Hot springs the world over attract tourists. It is no wonder why, really. They are nice to soak in, and commonly form beautiful landscapes when minerals precipitate out of the water. One of the most popular hot spring destinations in Turkey is Pamukkale, which literally translates to "Cotton Castle" because of the bright white limestone deposits formed by the springs. I don't feel like geeking out much more than that, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Back Home

I finally made it back home to Whitehorse after nearly 3 weeks of hotel living and downtown office work in Calgary. I learned a lot, but long days, inactivity, restaurant food and beer contributed to an extra 10 pounds on the belly. At least it will help to keep me warm while skiing in -20. Being in an office while it was cold outside also made me long for a hot spring.


But not one quite as crowded and commercial as this one at Pamukkale, Turkey. Partly because any number of these people could be trying to cure one of the following conditions...


And in case anybody was wondering, balneology is the science of the therapeutic use of baths. For whatever reason, many of the Europeans visiting Pamukkale think that balneology includes smearing calcite mud all over your body. The following images may be disturbing to some viewers.

Delayed

I started off my blog posting with a bang, then my company (Tyler Resources) phoned me from Calgary wondering if I was available to do some computer work for them for a couple of weeks. I was on a plane to Calgary a day later and have been really busy with them for the past week and a half. Tyler is in the midst of a hostile takeover offer, and needed my help setting up an online dataroom. The dataroom is where other companies can see all of the geological work we've completed on our project in Mexico, and decide whether or not they want to make a competing offer. Tyler has offices on the 5th floor of a small high rise on the edge of downtown Calgary, and I lucked out by getting a corner office overlooking the Bow River. And they put me up in a hotel only 2 blocks away from the office. I don't have my camera here to take pictures of views, so instead I'll post a few shots of the people from the project in Mexico. Tyler was even nice enough to fly me back home to Whitehorse on the weekend for my stag -- it's Monday and I'm still recovering, ouch. I'll post pictures of the dozen can-can girls when I get copies of the high-res pics ;-)

Moab

There are many amazing places in this world where you can ride your mountain bike. For as long as mountain bikes have been around, mountain bikers everywhere have been making the pilgrimage to the mecca that is Moab, Utah. The lure of red slickrock, abundant trails and spectacular geology make it easy to see why. Just remember to buy your beer from the import section at the liquor store -- beer is readily available at any gas station, but has been specially brewed for Utah so as to not contain more than 3.2% alcohol. It isn't good for much other than making you pee a lot.

Full Moon Fever

One of the enjoyable aspects of working in Mexico were the warm nights. During a full moon, that made it really comfortable to go for a late night walk through the hills, find a nice view and set up the camera for some night shots.

Fairmont Hot Springs

The funnest part of writing a geology-based thesis is the field work. The cream-coloured limestone deposit at Fairmont Hot Springs in the Rocky Mountain Trench in southeast British Columbia is the main focus of my work. All of the rocks near the waterfall are part of the deposit and formed from spring water during the past 10,000 years (after the glaciers all melted away). At present, there is not enough water coming out of the springs to have formed the relatively large deposit. Thus, the springs must have been much more active in the past. I am interested in determining why these changes occurred and how they affected deposit formation.

The Fairmont Hot Springs resort is a popular tourist destination because of the hot summers and spring-fed, commercial swimming pool. The pool can have upwards of 3000 visits per day in peak tourist season. At around $10 each, it is easy to see how hot springs can be a lucrative business. The waterfall you see above is anthropogenic -- it is basically a large drain for the commercial swimming pool. But it attracts a lot of tourists because it looks pretty and is free. I've been going to Fairmont since I was a little kid, and was able to turn it into my job. The field work is done, however, so I now I just want to be finished with the writing. Just keep swimming...

The Mighty Kaskawulsh

As I mentioned in the previous day's entry, the St. Elias mountains are home to the largest non-polar icefield on the planet. To see the banded glaciers flowing through the valleys is a truly awe-inspiring site, reminiscent of the Pleistocene (ice age), when these huge rivers of ice carved out the U-shaped valleys that are so common in Banff and Jasper National Parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. As the glaciers slowly flow, they grind up and entrain rock along their margins. When glaciers from two different valleys merge, the rock debris becomes trapped between them, forming the light (ice) and dark (rock debris) bands.

The easiest way to see the glaciers is to use Google Earth, or to take an aerial tour in a small airplane or helicopter. On foot, the closest glacier is the Kaskawulsh, accessible by a 60 km round trip journey along the Slims River and up Observation Mountain. It is recommended as a 3-5 day hike, but with the aid of my mountain bike, I was able to do it as a hard, 10-hour long day trip. For most of the trip, the Kaskawulsh is hidden by the surrounding peaks. To see it, you must scramble straight up the back of Observation Mountain, and then in an instant, the view of the glacier opens up before you. All I could do was sit down and say "Wow!" to myself, over and over. In my mind, these glaciers are one of Canada's top natural wonders and are worth the effort to see.

Windchill

With the windchill, it was nearly -20 this morning and a thick, hard frost covered the windshield. It reminded me of Haines Junction, where I lived for a year or so with Jenny before we moved to Whitehorse this past summer. Haines Junction is a sleepy little town of 800 people in southwest Yukon, an hour and a half drive straight west of Whitehorse on the Alaska highway. It is the gateway to Kluane National Park, home of the St. Elias Mountains and Canada's tallest mountain, Mt. Logan. It is also home to the largest non-polar icefield in the world. Basically, other than the north and south poles, the largest accumulation of glacial ice (and thus, freshwater) on the planet is contained in these mountains.

Mount Logan Trivia:
- elevation of 5959 m
- 2nd highest peak in North American behind Mount McKinley
- volumetrically is the largest mountain in the world
- named after Sir William Edmond Logan, a Canadian geologist and founder of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC)

Ontario

A few years ago, I drove from Edmonton to Hamilton to help my sister move. It was a long drive, but I got to appreciate how most of Ontario is really big and full of nature.

Indigenous Species

One of the pleasures of travel is being able to see the fauna that inhabit other corners of the world. Scorpions and tarantulas are commonplace in the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico, but the humming birds only stick around for a couple of weeks during spring and autumn migration.

1st Rainey Day

Winter is here. So I've decided to start a blog. What better way to start a Rainey Day in Yukon than with a preview of the beauty that is yet to come.




Sundogs (aka parhelion): the winter equivalent of a rainy day when the sun's rays refract through ice particles -- frozen rain -- in the atmosphere. They also provide inspiration for creative minds.