Sol Mountain Skiing, Jan 31 – Feb 6

Finally winter! Back from a week of skiing at Sol Mountain Touring in the Monashees with bluebird-powder for the first 4 days. It was cold with overnight lows of -25C but so long as you stayed on the sunny south facing slopes the daytime temps were fine. The snow was good with boot top pow. On Thursday we got 24cm of new snow. A big powder day just like on our first trip in 2006 when 1.70 meter of snow fell during our week at Sol. But on Friday it warmed up to near freezing and blew hard. Up high the snow was wind hammered and down low it developed a melt freeze crust. Somewhere in the middle was good skiing but we didn't do so well at finding it. On Saturday the weather was nice again so we had a longer tour into the alpine. In the end we didn't quite make the target of 10km vertical over the week but were close. Instead we got to explore some of the alpine scenery we didn’t even see during our first trip when it was snowing almost constantly.



This was a last minute trip and none of our ski friends could come along so we were in there with a 4 other small groups. A photographer/athlete team (crazy skier dudes, I would call them), a group of four from Reno, a guided group of three older guys from the Shushwap and some friends of the hut keeper from Clearwater.

It is a small world. One of the guys coming out from a trip before us was an old paddling buddy of several week-long trips. We also knew one of the Clearwater boys - again a kayaker. (text Peter/Claudia)



More pictures here.

Still no skiing, more flying, Jan 22

I’m not certain but I think lack of snow and warm weather and not paragliding-addiction is the cause that this weekend turned into a paragliding weekend again. While snow usually stops us at this time of the year the Woodside logging road was drive-able all the way to launch. Thanks to my much more optimistic and determined flying buddies, after over 2 hours of prime-parawaiting, the fog lifted and we got to surf the front of the clouds and play in wispies in the smooth air for over an hour. Even the sun came out and I finally succeeded in snapping pictures of the ‘Brockengespenst’, also called brocken spectre or glory (hard to believe, a non-German-speaking friend knew this German word I didn’t!). The glory is (usually) ones own shadow projected onto and in a cloud or fog. Pretty cool!

PS: Almost forgot, we already had one ski day this year! But more to come soon, at Sol Mountain Touring!


Clouds streaming up the mountain


Launch is visible just below the paraglider


Paragliding glory

First Flights 2011 - Jan 9

We did our first flight of 2011 on the warm and sunny Big Island! Third time lucky (after two sled ride days in 2009 and 2010) both Pete and I got well above launch (400 meter) and had nice thermic flights. Good to crank a few turns. But despite the thermals I left it a bit too late, didn’t make it to the nice grassy church LZ and put down at the beehives instead (no bee to be seen though!)

For the second flight of the year and first flight back in Canada we had to wait for a break in the clouds. When I was in the air it started snowing lightly – how appropriate for a Canadian winter flight! Not much airtime but a great hike&fly adventure in the snowy Coastmountains.

The picture below is from our third flight from snow-free Woodside. Pete and I lucked out and got to soar for about one hour in pleasant temperatures (no frozen fingers or toes). Pretty good airtime for January so far. Now we just have to catch up on the skiing!

Tiger - Rabbit

Although I don’t believe in Zodiacs and other things astrological, it always irritated me a bit that I missed being a Chinese ‘Tiger’ just by a couple of weeks. Instead I’m born in the year of the ‘Rabbit’. But I guess some of the Tiger-traits must have rubbed off ;-)

Tiger - Unpredictable, rebellious, colorful, powerful, passionate, daring, impulsive, vigorous, stimulating, sincere, affectionate, humanitarian, generous; Rabbit - Gracious, good friend, kind, sensitive, soft-spoken, amiable, elegant, reserved, cautious, artistic, thorough, tender, self-assured, shy, astute, compassionate, lucky, flexible (according to Wiki).

Guess its pick and choose... something for everyone!