Epic Flying: July 24-28... without us

The weather for paragliding was not that great in May and June. Unfortunately when the conditions were ‘epic’ for one week in July with high cloud base and new Canadian records flown (two 200 km triangles by Igor and Alex) we paddled our canoes down the Nahanni in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. Guess you just can’t be everywhere at the same time, especially if the distances are great (23 hours by car ... interesting that we think of distances in driving times, just like 'light-years'!).

End of the Books

I finally shipped out the last of my whitewater guidebooks - to the MEC. When we brought the boxes full of books into our basement over 10 years ago I never expected that the books would out-last our whitewater paddling adventures and that we would move onto doing different things (like paragliding).

Missing this amazing time exploring rivers and creeks with good friends but it has been replaced by different views and adventures...

Whitewater in Southwest British Columbia - March 2007

A Canoe!

Whitewater has been our favored playground for over 10 years (1996-2006) but after taking up paragliding priorities shifted more and more. 2017 was the first year without whitewater paddling and we just got our sea kayaks wet. I thought our boat-buying days were over but our friends invited us on a trip down the Nahanni and its tributary Broken Skull. I found good deal on a Dagger Venture and I drove over to the Olympics and picked it up. We spent some time outfitting the boat for the trip with spraydeck, knee pads, loops and lines. Broken Skull and Nahanni have some class 2 (at normal water levels) which isn't much whitewater compared to what we used to paddle in our kayaks but being in the much more delicate canoe with all our food and equipment for 3 weeks gives it a whole new dimension!

Packed canoe above Virginia Falls

San Juan Foxes

In the 1930 rabbits were introduced to San Juan Island and proliferate wildly. In order to reduce the rabbit numbers foxes were brought in and their population too grew to considerable numbers.

In early May the fox kids come out of their dens. They are not very shy which makes for fantastic photo opportunities. At times we saw more than a dozen little foxes play and chase each other. Extremely cute!