Rainey Day

Cinco de Mayo

2010-05-05T23:40:00.000-07:00

It is amazing what can happen in 1 year (other than not making a single blog post). Exactly 1 year ago today, I was in Edmonton, handing in my thesis. I had a great summer to look forward to. I couldn't book too many definite plans, because I had to keep my time open for a defense date. Because that's what happens when you leave it to the last minute. Not that I wasn't applying for jobs, but I figured that if I had the time available, I might as well enjoy myself. And enjoy myself I did. I mountain biked a lot. It was the best season of mountain biking I'd ever had in my 16 years of mountain biking. A brand new dream bike (thesis pre-completion present to myself), an open schedule, endless singletrack and nearly 24 hours of daylight. How could I go wrong?
Since Cinco de Mayo last year, I completed an olympic distance triathlon (1.5 km swim, 40 km road ride, 10 km run) in under 3 hours (don't need to do that again...), got my picture in a few mountain bike publications when some journalists and a photographer came to check out Yukon mountain biking, became a rock doc, got a full time job with the Yukon Government as a project manager cleaning up abandoned mine sites, and did the requisite work with Jenny to start our family. It will be tough to ever fit that many HUGE life changes into one year ever again. And yes, I (we) am going to have a child. I have had enough time to get excited about all of these changes and to figure out this new life that I've transitioned into over the past year. I am busier, but more satisfied that I have been in quite some time. A lot of what is happening is new and exciting. And that is all good. That does not mean that it is always easy, but I enjoy the challenges that I take on, they are satisfying, and they keep my brain busy. That is important.
And now to tackle one of the bigger challenges that I have been avoiding -- joining Facebook...

I will leave you with one of my favourite photos from a recent trip to the Pacific coast of Mexico.

"Project proposes reclaimed oilsands could be used as cemeteries"

2009-04-18T20:35:00.000-07:00

An interesting idea to allow un-embalmed bodies to be buried in natural cemeteries on reclaimed oilsands tailings. I guess residual chemicals are not going to give dead people cancer...

The story

Ice Bike Race

2009-03-31T23:04:00.000-07:00

Mountains bikers are getting a little antsy for winter to be done, so the local mountain bike club, Contagious, organized a couple of fun faces for the past two weekends. One was a relay race on a short (500 m) course cleared on one of the local lakes, and another on the lower third of the local ski hill. I took a few photos from the lake race, but the club put up a bunch of pretty good shots here (complete with pics of a few of the local Pugsleys). Unfortunately, I don't have any shots of the downhill race.

Rendezvous!

2009-03-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my achronological blogging, I'll post some wintery pictures from Rendezvous weekend back in February -- it is Yukon's long weekend to celebrate its gold rush roots. These pictures aren't too out of place though, because it still looks very wintery up here. The spring melt just started yesterday with slush on the streets, but there is a long way to go until the singletrack is clear.

A lot to do at Rendezvous...

Like carrying 500 pounds of flour on your back. And standing in -20°C with a t-shirt.

The very large Francophone population is always well represented at community events.

I thought that the snow carving was the highlight.

Delayne (and his two team mates) ended up winning the snow carving competition with the Snow Queen, and each pocketed an ounce of Yukon placer gold.

Picnic season 'tis upon us

2009-03-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, the snow in our backyard is still up to the top of the picnic tables, even though spring is only days away. Nothing has melted yet. And it has been the best snow year this decade, but a Caribbean island sure would be nice about now. Last week, Jenny and I went to Juneau, Alaska to go skiing at EagleCrest ski resort. It took a day of travel each direction, partly because of a 5 hour ferry ride from Skagway. Juneau is only about 25,000 people, and the ski hill is on a mountainous island across a narrow (river-sized) inlet from Juneau. It is a small hill with only 2, 2-person chairlifts, but their snow is amazing. They are closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so when we arrived Thursday morning, there was 2 feet of untouched powder over the entire hill. We had white out conditions Thursday and Friday, but I have never snowboarded in so much amazing snow. On Saturday, our last day, we awoke to clear blue skies. That meant it didn't give us another foot of powder like the previous day, but we had amazing scenery and could see surrounding coast mountains. Mid-way through the morning, after avalanche control had been completed, they opened up a couple of powder-filled bowls, so we had spring-like ski conditions with perfect visibility and fresh bowls of powder to explore all day. Unfortunately, the photo-bug never bit me on that trip, so I missed out on a lot of once-in-a-lifetime winter mountain scenery shots. To make up for it, I give you a picnic table...

Sam McGee

2009-02-18T22:03:00.001-08:00

The town of Carcross (short for Caribou Crossing) is a 45 minute drive south of Whitehorse and is home to Montana Mountain. In 1905, a mining boom town formed for 2 years while aerial tramways were built and mine shafts were sunk, but the sought after silver was nowhere to be found. The remains of the shafts, tramway towers and a stone cook house line the old mining road that climbs up Montana Mountain from Carcross. Near the tramway towers, a long, fast singletrack descent drops off of the mining road and takes you a long way down to the South Klondike Highway. This trail was built by Sam McGee, and the mountain bikers who reclaimed the 100 year old trail named it after the name made famous by Robert Service. Sam McGee was real, but he was not cremated on the shores of Lake Laberge. He was a road-builder by trade, and Service, a bank employee, saw McGee's name on a slip and obtained permission to use it in a poem, The Cremation of Same McGee. It made Service famous, and McGee a subject of ridicule. McGee lived on a farm near Beiseker, Alberta until his death in 1940, where he was buried in the ground. The trail that he left behind made me a very happy man on a fine autumn day back in September. The colours were at their peak and the weather was stellar the entire time. It took me about 5 hours to mountain bike the whole loop, and I did this ride solo, mainly because everybody I knew was in a team road running event. I'm glad I went biking instead.

Looking north while about 2/3 up the 2 hour climb.

This guy kept crossing my path on the long climb.

Just over the first pass at the end of the main climb is an area where the old mine shafts were sunk.

Left track.

Right track. The scar of road that I followed is in the middle of the pic.
Old mining camp cook house with the aerial tramway behind to the right.

Aerial tramway towers. In about an hour I'll end up at the lake in the distance.

The entry to Sam McGee's Trail...

Happy Belated Birthday, Charlie

2009-02-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

Charles Darwin would have celebrated his 200th birthday this past Thursday, February 12th. Last night to celebrate, Jenny and I went to a talk by Dr. Charles Berger, a veterinarian and musher who has competed many times in the hardest dog sled races on earth -- the Yukon Quest and Iditarod. His talk "Big Bang to Sled Dogs" was an entertaining, funny and informative journey through time showing how evolution and selective breeding culminated in the planet's greatest endurance athlete -- the sled dog. These 50 pound dogs are descendants of gray wolves, can eat 12,000 calories per day, run the equivalent of 3 marathons per day for a week and have a vO2 max three times that of Lance Armstrong. This talk was timed to coincide with the start of the Yukon Quest, which is a 1000 mile race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks. Each city takes turns hosting the start and this year it was in Whitehorse. The record for the winning time is 9 days. Unexpected entries this year included a young Japanese woman and a Jamaican. Paralleling the rise of the Jamaican bobsled team, this fellow trained on the beaches of Jamaica with a team of strays and a sled with wheels. I wish all of the teams the best of luck over the next week or so.

The starting line.

Dog trucks are a familiar site around Whitehorse this time of year.

How to stay warm while watching the Yukon Quest at -25°C...

How to keep babies warm...

Longer Days

2009-01-30T00:21:00.000-08:00

The days are getting noticeably longer. It makes me feel like coming out of my shell more. To make up for my lack of presence online, I offer beautiful pictures of paradise; also known as Baja.

Finally!

2008-12-11T14:45:00.000-08:00

Since last winter, I have tried to get a good picture of the Fox that lives in our neighbourhood and commonly hangs out in the parking area in our condo complex. Today, it actually let me get close enough and stood still long enough for me to get a nice close-up. Then it quickly foxed off.

Pond Hockey

2008-12-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, there was a shinny tournament held on Chadburn Lake at the edge of Whitehorse. This was the first time I had ever played hockey on skates. I had fun, but I won't be joining a league any time soon. Partly because real rinks don't have snow banks that I could use to help me stop.

We started the day with a gorgeous 9:30 AM sunrise.

An hour later the sun began setting... Just kidding. This wasn't until 1:30 PM.

It turned out to be a gorgeous day with a temperature around zero and no wind.

Many of the teams dressed up.

But the Yukon Synchronized Swim Team won the best dressed award.

One team was kind enough to tape shot glasses to a stick and try to get their opponents drunk.

Our team in action. We're the ones without matching jerseys, but we'll be better prepared next year.

Hoar Frost

2008-11-30T19:22:00.000-08:00

Those who have never seen hoar frost are amazed at how surreal the world looks when it clings to everything. Those who have never seen hoar frost spelled out are usually shocked and confused. Big white ice crystals brought about by a recent November cold snap blanketed the trees, and sunny days brought loads of shutterbugs out of their homes to capture the landscape sparkle.

Change is good

2008-11-07T20:38:00.001-08:00

This post isn't just to show that a change in fashion over the decades is welcomed (these are vintage 70's clothes, by the way -- the green outfit was even handmade by my mom), or that we did do something for Halloween (this picture is from the night after Halloween - our actual Halloween involved handing out candy to kids and doing renovations until some friends came over and we all fell asleep watching Ghostbusters. Yes, we had a sleeping party), but that the recent happenings in the US are really eye-opening events that have turned that country on its head.

And a lot of it changed in a month. The US, which used to be a bastion of capitalism and run by the "old white rich guys" as one newspaper put it, now has a largely nationalized banking system and a half-black president. Crazy. This is really exciting politics compared to the Canadian federal election (for a guy who doesn't really like politics that much). If people think that nothing will change now that Obama is president, they are sorely wrong. Without even doing anything as president, many world leaders around the globe (and citizens of their countries) have completely changed their perception of the US for the better. The US and the rest of the world are ready for and welcoming change. Good luck to all.

Does this scare you?

2008-10-26T17:53:00.001-07:00

I went for my last bike ride 4 days ago and my first ski today. There is only a little bit of snow in town, but 20 minutes up into the hills and it is full on winter. Don't worry, it isn't as scary as it looks.

But if you want to be even more frightened, then how about a picture of me in tights?

Downhills are still the most fun.

Jenny and I already have our seasons passes, so we'll be seeing a lot more of this for the next half year.

The end.

Creature Comforts

2008-10-25T00:27:00.000-07:00

Popeye has been home with us in Whitehorse for almost 5 months now, and she seems to have adjusted to her new larger aquarium and heat lamp without any hiccups. She spends so much time in the artificial sun that I feel a little guilty for not setting a heat lamp up for her sooner.

Still looking pretty good for a 12 year-old reptile. Just a couple of wrinkles around the neck.

Lady Luck

2008-10-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, a good friend from geology visited Canada after spending much of the past year exploring for uranium in Africa. Mike and Lindsey came up to Yukon for a week of northern fun, which included going to Dawson City to have an end-of-season celebration with drinking and gambling at Diamond Tooth Gertie's. Dawson City is unlike any other town in the world -- at the peak of the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898, Dawson was the largest city in western Canada at 40,000. Today it is just over 1000 people, and local bylaws stipulate that all buildings (new and old) must be built to look like frontier buildings from the first half of the 20th century. All of the streets are dirt and all of the sidewalks are boardwalks.

Jenny and I stayed at the Downtown Hotel. This is what all of the hallways looked like. I don't know who the women in the paintings are, but I'm going to assume that one of them is Lady Luck. The lowermost painting is of the outside of the Downtown (I forgot to get a picture).

The Downtown Hotel is also home to the Sourtoe Cocktail -- put the toe in a shot of booze, drink it and have the toe touch your lips in order to become a part of this elite club. This is in fact a real human toe that has been dehydrated. Jenny and I didn't do the shot this time around, but became Sourtoers last summer when we did a week long canoe trip on the Yukon River to get to Dawson City for the summer music festival.

Our Dawson trip was made even nicer by the fact that it was financed by Lady Luck. The morning of our canoe trip on the Takhini River, Jenny and I walked outside our front door and found four $50 bills blowing across the ground. We found $200 on the ground! This became our Dawson money. There is no need to go into details about where it went, but needless to say an evening of drinking and gambling in a frontier town can easily lay waste to Lady Luck.

Domesticated

2008-10-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

Most of my recent posts have been about being outdoors, but don't think that all is not well on the home front. Jenny and I have joined a cooking co-op comprised of a group of 10 Whitehorse friends. Once a month, everybody gets together and exchanges frozen meals in meat, chicken, veggie, soup, and baked goods categories. So for the next few weeks, we have a bunch of ready made meals in the freezer. Of our new meals, we've only tried a tasty dahl and chickpea curry, and lasagna will be next.

We made enough Indian Jambalaya to feed 40 people.

In order to join the cooking co-op, we needed more freezer space to keep a mound of food. I looked in the newspaper for a used freezer, but my search was unsuccessful and we ended up having to buy a new, small (3.6 cu ft) freezer. What I did find in the paper was a lady selling this gorgeous philodendron. I've liked these plants ever since seeing Marcie's and Dwayne's. They wouldn't be nearly as cool if they lacked the holes (the leaves that is, not Marcie and Dwayne).

Grey Mountain

2008-10-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

Just a few shots from a day-long hike'n bike I did to get to the north peak of Grey Mountain (the peak on the left in the picture below). The south peak can be reached in about an hour with a drive and a hike, and I've previously posted pictures of its view. The north peak sees way fewer visitors and felt like more of an adventure.

If you drove straight into this picture down the South Klondike Highway, you'd see breathtaking mountain views for an hour and a half, then end up at the Alaskan coast in Skagway. Along the way you'd pass by Carcross, where there is amazing biking, Log Cabin, where there is great backcountry skiing/boarding, and the Chilkoot Trail, a popular hike that takes you over Chilkoot Pass, which claimed many prospectors' lives during the Klondike gold rush in the 1890's. That highway holds a lot of fun.

If you drove straight into this picture, you'd pass by the left hand side of Marsh Lake (big lake in the background) and be heading east on the Alaska Highway -- our main supply line to the rest of Canada.

Powderface Ridge

2008-10-01T17:09:00.000-07:00

Quite a few of my friends who I've known for 10+ years have gotten married over the past year or so. That necessitated going through stacks of old photos to find incriminating evidence for wedding slide shows. Although not incriminating, this picture is probably 12 years old, was taken with a really crappy point-and-shoot film camera, and is still one my favourite photos. It epitomizes my summers during the early years of university when whoever was free on a particular weekend would pack camping and biking gear into a vehicle and head out to Jasper or Kananaskis. This particular photo was taken along the Powderface Ridge trail in Kananaskis, and was one of the first times I remember playing photographer and setting up a shot that I thought would look really good. I remember thinking the light was stellar, and had Jasen pose on a knoll just off the trail, with the valley and the Rocky Mountains in the distance. I had only been mountain biking for 3 or 4 years at this point and I learned a lot about photography by looking at photos in mountain bike magazines. Even looking back on it now, I think it is a stellar photo, and wonder how much better it would have looked if I had used a nicer camera. I didn't even have the pleasure of seeing the photo immediately on the screen of a digital camera.

One Bike, Any Trail

2008-09-23T22:44:00.000-07:00

For the past two seasons, I have been riding my resurrected GT frame from 9 years past. It did a valiant job of getting me up and down Yukon singletrack, but eventually a crack developed, forcing me to retire it and move on to a new ride.

Most of the parts from the GT frame were still in good working order, so I only had to find a nice frame to hang everything on. In came the Turner 5 Spot. This bike is pretty amazing. I can climb better and descend faster than any bike I've ever had before. It is pretty much my dream bike and has been getting a lot of use during the past few weeks of spectacular fall colours. Turner is a boutique brand out of California, and they have been building top-end mountain bike frames for as long as mountain biking has been around. I had a couple of other options in mind (including a Canadian brand, Banshee, but my size was unavailable), but in the end this bike is a great match for the type of riding that I do. Plus, I've never owned a red bike before.

If you are curious to know what the trails are like where I live, then I suggest you download this magazine article to see what I get to ride.

The Takhini River

2008-09-16T18:10:00.000-07:00

(This picture will likely be my desktop image for quite some time)

Our canoe trip on Sunday was to revisit this beautiful river just outside Whitehorse. A few of the pictures below (the ones of Jenny and me -- in the red and yellow life jackets) were taken by our friend Kate.

It was surprising to see just how slick and cool a Ford Focus can look with a canoe.

Much of the river was nice easy paddling.

But there was a small section of rapids affectionately known as the Jaws of Death.

Luckily and skillfully, we all managed to cheat death and show Jaws who's boss.

Autumn Has Fallen

2008-09-14T21:21:00.000-07:00

Wow. Has it really been 4 months since my last post?! The funny thing about blogging is that when you've been doing things worthy of a blog post, you rarely have the time or inclination to actually post about the events. Since my last entry, I have done everything from look for gold near the backwoods town of Trout Lake, BC, to diving into a pool after spinning fire at a friend's wedding, to entering my first ever downhill mountain bike race, to submitting my biggest and most important thesis chapter to a journal. It's been a lot of fun. Now that the weather is cooling and the days are growing shorter, I'm sure I'll start sorting and posting the myriad of pictures that have accumulated from Jenny's and my summer adventures.

If I had to choose 1 picture to sum up the past 4 months, I'd have to choose this one of Jenny and me in front of the Takhini River with the Ibex Valley in the background. We're happy about the summer we experienced and glad to live in such a great place. The colours around Yukon are absolutely amazing right now, so last weekend, we went for a short drive away from Whitehorse and did a bit of 4x4ing to find this secluded spot. It was so beautiful that we rented a canoe and spent today paddling down this same river. Our friend Kate took pictures of us shooting the rapids called "Jaws of Death," so you will soon be able to see how we made out...

Belated Birthday

2008-05-14T08:36:00.000-07:00

During my period of non-posting, Jenny's birthday came and went. To celebrate, we went to the local Indian restaurant with a few friends and spent the evening visiting. Her actual birthday was on a Sunday, so we mostly took it easy. We spent part of the afternoon at the lookout on Grey Mountain and enjoyed the view of the Yukon River valley and surrounding mountains. We can get to the lookout in under a half hour, and once you are there, it does not feel like there is a city anywhere close to you.

And what better way to stay young than by playing with Lego on your birthday?

That night, we made a few plastic pets for the aquarium so that we have something to watch while we wait for Popeye (my turtle) to come up from Edmonton in June.

Our birthday present theme this year was Yukon art, so I bought this mountain scene for Jenny. Stephanie Ryan is another popular Yukon painter known for her stylized landscapes depicting Yukon life. Most of her work is available as prints of water colour paintings, so when I walked into Yukon Artists At Work (YAAW) and saw this original acrylic, I knew that it wouldn't be available for long. And it wasn't, because now it hangs in our living room.

You can see more of Stephanie's work here: SR Paintings
___

Sushi

2008-05-08T23:50:00.000-07:00

Jenny's hand is practiced in the art of sushi.

Winter Farewell

2008-04-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

I have been riding my bike for 2 weeks. I thought winter was done, and then it snowed about 5 cm this past week. To make up for the fact that Jenny and I never did one back-country trip this winter, we went with two other teachers (Stephanie and Anthony) to Log Cabin -- a popular area about 1.5 hours south of Whitehorse on the road to Skagway, Alaska. The scenery and mountains along the highway are pretty spectacular alone, but we lucked out and had a gorgeous spring day with the mountain all to ourselves. I think that most people had given up on skiing because the snow had been crusty the past few weekends, but yesterday was absolutely perfect. We were able to get in 3 runs over the course of the day and have our pick of fresh tracks. It was well worth going and I feel better now about leaving winter on a good note.

We put in a track going about 2/3 of the way up the mountain, just to the left of the cliff band in the middle of the mountain near the top.

There was fresh, untracked snow everywhere.

It was a bit of work establishing the track.

But well worth it coming down...

More please!

Utila Honeymoon Blog

2008-04-08T22:22:00.001-07:00

I will no longer hide from my blog! I have started making posts from our Utila trip. Just click on the link below.

Luna De Miel

(from Spanish, literally translates into Moon of Honey)

The Great White North

2008-04-03T16:27:00.001-07:00

Jenny and I had a fantastic time on our honeymoon, but the first week back was difficult to adjust to -- no more shorts and sandals every day all day, no more lying in the hammock watching the waves, no more swimming with sea turtles. But long sunny days in the mountains have made me happy again and it is good to be home and see sunsets, coyotes, the fox living in our condo complex, spring skiing and the ushering in of bike season. There has been a lot of Utila photo sorting going on, so blog entries will be up shortly.

Utila Bound!

2008-03-08T00:39:00.000-08:00

Our spring break starts now. Jenny had her last day of teaching today. I finished a draft of my next thesis chapter/paper on Fairmont Hot Springs. And our second room of renovations is 95% done. So to celebrate, we start our honeymoon tomorrow. In about 12 hours, we'll be leaving our home in Whitehorse to head to the Honduran island of Utila for 2 weeks (About Utila). We'll be staying in a 1-room cabin right on the Caribbean. The cabin is about a 10 minute bike ride from the town of East Harbour, population 2500. We'll have about 24 hours of airplanes and airports, then an hour long ferry ride to get there. The island is 11 km long and 4 km wide, but 2/3 of it is mangrove swamp. There is also a narrow canal that goes from one side of the island to the other (where the clouds are in the middle of the GoogleEarth pic below).

Our plan is to have a relaxing time on the beach with some sun, snorkel, scuba, and swim. We may even go for a little hike or kayak, too. And if all goes as planned, we'll get to finish off our trip by attending a full moon beach party 5 minutes down the road from our place.

If my blogging history is any indication, then you will probably see the pictures from the trip some time next winter.

I also got a pet Otter...

2008-03-03T16:28:00.000-08:00

Seeing as how Jenny and I are renovating and personalizing our condo, she wanted to get me some nice art as a b-day gift. On the day of my birth, we checked out the work of the local artisans, and I chose this Natalie Parenteau print, "Sea Otter and Volcano" from the "North End Gallery" in Whitehorse. Natalie is a popular Yukon artist and her works are ubiquitous in these parts. This is piece I had never seen before, and it caught my eye right away -- the layering and reflections of the mountains and water to give it depth, the volcano spewing ash across the sky as the Earth recycles its old skin, and that ash leading your eye to the crescent moon and stars that are just about to be swallowed up by the day coming on the horizon,
and all of this being enjoyed by the sea otter, kicking back in the ocean, just watching the magic of the world. Who wouldn't want to be that otter?

I got crabs for my birthday

2008-03-02T10:37:00.001-08:00

Well, I got 1 crab. And I gave it to myself. But it was a really big Alaskan King Crab! There is a seafood store in Whitehorse called "The Wharf on 4th" and once or twice a year, they get in a shipment of live King Crabs from Juneau, Alaska. The crabs were supposed to arrive last weekend (the weekend of my b-day) but ended up being delayed. That seemed to work out well though, because Jenny and I devoured the entire thing ourselves. And no, we didn't have to kill it. The fine folks at the Wharf killed and cleaned it, then gave us the legs to bring home and boil for 8 to 10 minutes. So tastey!

If I could leap anywhere right now...

2008-02-29T23:01:00.000-08:00

Thur-Tee

2008-02-27T22:27:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, I entered the next 3rd of my life. Yes, I am now 30 years old. Then I promptly got sick. The weather has been beautiful and we got some new snow, but I haven't been able to get out for a ski and enjoy it. But the days are getting longer, and soon enough I'll be out biking on singletrack on mountains blanketed in green. The trail network right out my front door is one of the reasons why I love living in Whitehorse.

This is the view from the top of Grey Mountain, where I do most of my mountain biking. An access road can be seen on the very right hand side of the photo which leads to our community of Riverdale. The grey-brown bluffs above the road are where downtown starts. In the valley are the Hidden Lakes, Chadburn Lake, and the Yukon River. At the very left hand side of the photo, you can see the ski runs on Mount Sima. The brown patches just left and right of center are the gravel pits and the old copper mine.

This is a shot further to the right from the above photo and shows almost all of Whitehorse (the population is only 24,000). The Yukon River flows left to right through the city, and downtown is set right on the river. The airport is on the terrace at the top of the bluffs at the left hand side of the picture. Jenny and I live in Riverdale -- the area in the lower left hand corner. The access road from the first photo can be seen starting at the brown bluff near the bottom of the photo.

And this is my impersonation of an Inukshuk on top of Grey Mountain. Temperatures hovered around zero for much of last week, and I even saw a guy walking around town in shorts. I am not quite that hardcore, and will wait until it is at least 7 or 8 degrees before I wear my shorts outside.

Gung Haggis Fat Choy!

2008-02-19T17:58:00.000-08:00

Some of our Whitehorse friends who moved from Vancouver told us about the celebration of Gung Haggis Fat Choy (GHFC) -- a way to combine Robbie Burns Day and Chinese New Year. Snowy Owl rented the Brownie Cabin (think Girl Guides) for said weekend, where we were going to ski a loppet (10 or 20 km fun race), then celebrate GHFC. It got this cold...

Actually, it got to -45, but I don't have a picture. Skiing was cancelled. We still went to the cabin. Good thing we had the wood burning stove and space boots.

Evan made a great Chinese meal. Bernice supplied the haggis. Matt supplied the Scotch. Evan stabbed the haggis and sprayed haggis juice all over Bernice. Matt drank the Scotch.

Then we acted like it was warm out and had some Cuban cigars.

Snowy Owl says, "They're only little cigars!"

Nice one, Jenny!

And that was how we celebrated GHFC in the dead of a Yukon winter in a cabin in the woods. The End.

Iwuana Iguana and Fish Lady

2008-02-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

This sexy lady is Iwuana the Iguana. She lives at the back of Jenny's science class. She enjoys long stretches under the heat lamp and gets excited about a good spring greens mix, but won't hesitate to whip you with her tail if you even think to break her heart.

I think that Iwuana would get along well with Bob, a rather huge iguana that lives at the pet store by our condo. Nobody seems to know what the store is called -- they just call it by the owner's name, "Fish Lady." The store is rather unassuming. We passed by it almost daily for 6 months before realizing that the brick building with the metal covered doors had a pet store between the two daycares. Walk inside and a tropical paradise awaits, complete with a myriad of lizards, snakes and turtles and a plethora of fresh and saltwater fish.

Jenny and I were there on Saturday, so I asked Fish Lady some advice about transporting my turtle, Popeye, from Edmonton to Whitehorse. She said that as long as I fly Air North, I would have no problems bringing Popeye as a carry-on. Air Canada, however, is not so welcoming. Fish Lady then proceeded to tell us how she smuggled a bearded dragon on board an AC flight by putting it down her pants. When we walked around the front counter and saw a couple of bearded dragons in a terrarium, Jenny exclaimed, "You put THAT down your PANTS?!"

I laughed, but Fish Lady didn't seem quite as impressed.

Shine!

2008-02-02T10:52:00.001-08:00

Deflated

2008-02-01T10:10:00.000-08:00

From my years of bike commuting and mountain biking, I have found that flat tires usually come in threes. Yesterday, I had my third (and final?) flat tire of the week as my rear tire slowly deflated while riding to the library.

I would suggest to anybody who gets a flat tire on their bike to find out what caused the flat. Otherwise, you may replace the tube without noticing the staple stuck in the tire, waiting to puncture the nice, new fresh tube. Or in my case, the thorns stuck in my tire from riding in the mountains of Mexico 2 years ago. The irony of Mexican thorns grown in +40°C deflating my tires at -40°C was not lost on me. Nor was it lost on me when the same thorns deflated my front tire on my Kaskawulsh glacier trip. Stupid thorns.

Most of my riding is done alone, so I have very few pictures of me on my bike. And there are certain limitations to taking action-shot self portraits. The above shot is one that worked out quite well, considering that I had 10 seconds to get on my bike and look like I was flying down the trail before the timer went off. It was taken on the Balojaqui Trail, the origin of the tire thorns.

This trail is thousands of years old and was already established when the Tarahumara natives arrived a few hundred years ago. The trail is so well built that it looks like it was carved out of the dirt and rock by tiny bulldozers. The upper section is so smooth and flowy that I would giggle to myself while riding it. The lower section was steep, loose and heinous, requiring much more concentration and energy, but still fun regardless.

And I was the very first person to ever ride their bike down this trail. To access it, I had to strap my bike to my backpack, hike up a ridge for an hour until it levelled off a little, then rode another hour and a half while traversing and gradually climbing up the mountain. After 2.5 hours, it was time to turn the bike around and ride one of the funnest 45 minutes downhilll singletrack trails that I have ever been on.

It is strange to think that so much hard work and fun could literally be so deflating a couple of years down the road.

FreezeRide

2008-01-30T23:19:00.001-08:00

With the wind chill, it has been pushing -46°C in Whitehorse. I am still riding my bike 15 minutes to go to the public library and work on my thesis. There are a few problems that pop up when riding in such cold weather:

1) My studded winter tire on the front kept rotating on my rim and ripped the valve stem off the tube -- instant flat tire. Twice.
2) The pawls (teeth) in the rear hub freeze and do not catch, so I spin the pedals but no power is transferred to the rear wheel. The only way to get it to work is to push the bike backwards for a meter or so until the pawls catch, then pedal continuously once I get going. This means...
3) ...that as soon as I stop pedaling, the pawls disengage and I will no longer be able to propel the bike forward, even if I start pedaling again. So I must do all of my shoulder checking without stopping. This is problematic because...
4) ...to shoulder check while the hood of my down-filled parka is up, I must let go of the handlebar with one hand and turn around to look back and see if any cars are coming.

All is not bad though. I still get to ride my bike, and there are even other cyclists out and about!

Scattered

2008-01-25T15:20:00.000-08:00

Today's random assortment of photos is a reflection of my current mindset -- a lot of different, great ideas and places that I'm trying to create, organize and accomplish all at once. The following article uses examples of IPods and cars to show how Americans and Japanese suck at making some things, while being great at making others. Sometimes I feel like I attack projects with reckless abandon (American-style), but then have a long way to go to satisfy my perfectionist tendencies and produce Japanese-like quality.

Made in USA

I found this website while trying to find out which materials and metals are used in the manufacture of IPods. Last week, I gave a geology talk to a couple of grade 10 science classes and wanted to make them more aware of where our day-to-day resources come from, and figured that relating rocks to mp3 players would be helpful. It was.

And now some photos that were scattered about my hard drive...

Edmonton, Alberta -- night shot of the waterfall off of the High Level Bridge

Virden, Manitoba -- old tractor sitting in the field behind where my Dad grew up

Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta

Hitched!

2008-01-15T20:18:00.000-08:00

My big news from the holiday season is that Jenny and I got married! A lot of friends, family, food, booze, music, dancing, laughing and visiting made for an awesome party. We'd like to thank everybody who made it out and had a good time. We are enjoying being newlyweds, but it seems like it will take us some time to get used to calling each other husband and wife.

Liard Hot Springs

2007-12-21T16:51:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-18T08:13:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-14T08:31:00.000-08:00

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...

2007-12-12T09:03:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-10T10:09:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-07T09:35:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-06T16:43:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-26T17:16:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-14T09:42:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-10T11:40:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-08T08:15:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-07T08:07:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-06T09:23:00.000-08:00

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.