Ice Bike Race

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!

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

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...