Weather 2018

The weather was quite changeable in 2018 year: 2017/18 snowfall was average with less in January (less snow but more rain!) and more in February / March.

April was cold and wet, May very warm and dry and June rather cool and rainy (which is normal). July was dry and my garden vegetables suffered (it also didn't help that they didn't get any care and attention while we were away paddling the Nahanni for 4 weeks).

August wasn’t any wetter and there was lots of smoke from numerous forest fires (of note: Telegraph Creek) although no densely inhabited areas where affected like last year (Williams Lake).

October stayed sunny and dry and we enjoyed hiking and fall colors.

Thanks to El Nino we had to wait for snow in December which was dry at first and then rather wet. Local ski areas opened late (my first ski day at Cypress was December 13).

Skiing at Namulten - Valkyr range

Our visits to Blanket Glacier Chalet have come to an end. Al, the owner, retired and has handed over the business to his son Marty. As the interest in back country / powder skiing increases, Marty gets enough guests that are happy to pay for guiding and catering. But this almost doubles the price from what we pay for our self-guided self-catered weeks.

But still we went skiing, with the same group and at the same time, just a different location: in the Valkyr Mountains near Nakusp. Unfortunately this years snow pack was somewhat underwhelming, everywhere. We still got out every day and had lots of turns but the motivation to climb and ski the customary 10,000 meter was not there. In any way, a good trip with good friends and we'll try again next year!

Valle de Bravo

Another fun trip to Valle de Bravo, our 5th. This time we had lower cloud base which made flying home to the lake more tricky and also didn't allow for too many new experiences, except for one flight when I came back from Divis on a long glide and cleared the Spine (Espinazo) by maybe 50 meters. Other flights: 3x Divis, 3x Lake.

We were in a group of 8 and rented again a very nice house, this time only meters away from the lake LZ.Very convenient but a lot less exercise than the last two years!

Flying around clouds to the Three Kings

Finding a hole in the clouds on my way back to the Lake and Valle de Bravo

Our pool and the church St Maria Ahuacatlán

Hunting and Gathering

Every four years a 'dominant' run of sockeye salmon makes their way up the Fraser River and 2018 was one of the big years. Reason enough to get a fishing license and gear and head out with a friend who showed me how its done. I like this sort of fishing! Within 1 hour I landed 2 nice silvery sockeye which is the daily limit for recreational angling. I went back two more times. We had one fish for dinner with friends, got another one smoked and the last 4 were cut up into fillets and steaks for the freezer. In total between 12 and 14 million sockeye entered the Fraser this year, a pretty solid number!

Only two of the fish are mine... two is the daily limit

Despite the dry summer, this year turned out to be a great one for mushrooms too. We found huge King boletes, a few nice bearshead/lions mane and last but not least lots of Pine Mushrooms (Matsutake). I added pines to my list of collectibles 5 years ago but haven't had much luck since then. So I was really hoping for a good year. Ans a good year it was! Even Peter came along for a day of mushroom hunting and we collected over 5 kg (I think Peter found more!)

Fantastic 'catch' of pines

To round out the winter menu there were also many berries to be harvested. Bags of black- and (bought) blueberries went into the freezer. And the wild blueberries were so plentiful that most of our hikes were rather slow. But the berries were so good that we ate them all and didn't bring any home.

And I was excited to see that pines went for  $33/lb at the Granville Island market. Maybe I should try to sell some next year?