Tour the new house...

Tom and I have now had our house for a week... we've been there every day painting and starting to put in hardwood floors in the upstairs bedrooms. Apparently we forgot to take pictures of the front of the house and the backyard so I'll post those later. The house is 1080 sq.ft, located near the University and a bunch of really big dog parks. It's a 1960s bungalow and some of the features definitely show it... some we like (like vaulted ceilings) and some have already been ripped out... We'll post more shots of the updates as we get various rooms done.

Entryway complete with little milk door under the window:

Kitchen, in need of a make-over for sure. It's a bit cramped and the cabinets aren't super functional. The appliances are fairly new at least!

Kitchen skylight:

This is the divider between the living room and kitchen, totally wired up for power and provides some much needed extra storage.

The living room and other side of the divider .... with the lovely faux fireplace covered in some yellow-green laminate. We've ripped off the laminate and it looks much better already. Eventually we want to replace it with a real gas fireplace.

Upstairs hallway:

Master bedroom with sliding glass doors that open onto the deck:

The ensuite off the bedroom (or pee closet as Tom has named it since it's really about the size of a closet and very ugly).

The two other bedrooms (and one of the closets... all of the closet doors were removed and just had ugly drapes covering them).

We'd like to redo this main bathroom as well... obviously the people who were here before were quite short since the showerhead is about shoulder-height. Down to the basements... with this lovely painted wood panel and un-insulated walls. Behind that door is a downstairs bedroom: Tom's new workshop is in the basement too: View towards the other end of the basement and laundry room door: Laundry room, furnace room (door to the right) and downstairs bathroom: Basement bathroom:

Wasootch Ridge

Tom, Kali & I got a bit of a late start hiking on Sunday, but still managed to enough time to hike Wasootch Ridge. It was an 11km round-trip with 1010m of elevation gain, although the ridge-top was rolling so it felt like more.

This is Mt. Lorette from near the top of the first steep ascent.

The trail at the first leveling-out point: Kali-roo with Barrier Lake and Hwy 40 in the background (looking north): The snowy trail ahead... this crest is still about 4 hills away from the top of Wasootch, but it looked deceptively close from this spot. View from the first cairn looking back towards the trailhead. Views from the summit cairn towards the very top of Wasootch (a bit of a scramble to get there and we were running out of day-light).

Mt. Lady Macdonald

We climbed Mt. Lady Macdonald on Saturday (recommended as a moderate-level shoulder-season hike in our guidebook). The trailhead is right in Canmore, starting at a paved path along Cougar Creek at an elevation of 1383 m.

The hike to the shoulder of the mountain is 6.6 km roundtrip with a total elevation gain of 917 m, or if you go to the top of the summit it's 7.6 km round-trip with 1117 m of elevation gain (top of the mountain is 2500m). The trail rose steadily but wasn't too challenging. The parks web-site said there was snow on the trail so we came prepared with lots of layers - but the weather was unseasonably warm and instead of layering up we were wishing we had shorts and ended up with pretty stuffed packs! The very top of the peak was a bit cool, but still made for a beautiful day of hiking.

A nice perk to this hike is getting to see some more ruined buildings at the top - not quite as nice or as old as the fire look-out on Mt. Burke, but I'm definitely liking the additional points of interest... I guess at some point someone had the brilliant idea of building a teahouse on Mt. Lady Macdonald and then flying tourists up by helicopter - I have no idea how that would have been economically feasible, but the residents of Canmore vetoed it (not before parts of it were built though!). I'm glad that this one is merely a relict now and not a tourist trap!

View of the teahouse:

View of the helicopter landing platform and the summit of Mt. Lady Macdonald.

A little pagoda near the edge of a cliff below the teahouse. It was the perfect spot for lunch and a nap in the sun. This was the only spot where we saw snow, and that was restricted to the areas shaded by trees - but this hike is steep and south-facing so it tends to be fairly free of snow this time of year...

View of the mountains across the valley - lots of snow on the north-facing peaks!

View of the platform (whitish square to the right), teahouse (whitish blob just above and to the left of the platform) and pagoda (whitish dot to the left of these buildings on the edge of the cliff) from near the top of Mt. Lady Macdonald. This part of the trail was a bit more challenging. There was no real defined trail other than where people had come sliding down the scree on the descent. The scree was pretty loose and for every two steps you took you slid down one.

Kali-roo with Mt. Lady Macdonald summit in the background. We hung out at the bottom of the scree slope for a while, just enjoyinging the sun on our faces...

It was a really pleasant day that I didn't want to end, but eventually we decided we should head back down before it got dark and find some dinner. The sun was sinking behind the crest of the mountains as we wandered into the parking lot...

Hang-gliding!

Tom and I took a beginner hang-gliding class this weekend. We had a few hours of ground school on Thursday to show us the basics of how to do it, then we got to do some practical air-time on Saturday and Sunday morning. Saturday was really windy and chilly, but meant we didn't need to run as hard to get in the air. We got a couple hours of practice with the instructor's assistance before it got too windy and we had to call it a day. Today was colder but the wind was calmer, and we got to stay out for the full four hours. We were on our own today for balancing the glider, which was a fair bit more difficult. The glider we were on was actually a bit too big/heavy for me so I was pretty sore by the end of the day... Both Tom and I managed to get some brief lift, but it was a bit difficult to catch it in the photos. I think we've found ourselves a new hobby... just have to wait until spring for more practice time and the intermediate gliding class!

Mt. Burke

On Thanksgiving Sunday we decided to be thankful for a bout of nice weather... +10 C and seemingly sunny (although a bit chilly to start). We chose a "shoulder season day hike" from our trusty guide book and made the 2+ hour drive down through Turner Valley & Longview and then into Highwood Junction. Mt. Burke is a 16km round trip with 935 m elevation gain. The book says it takes 5-7 hours, we did it in just over 5. Lots of long, pleasant switchbacks made for a relatively moderate ascent.

We got a bit of a late start, not leaving until 9;30, but it was still fairly brisk when we first left the trail-head... as this fringe of snow along the river bed attests.

Hiking in the sun we warmed up fairly quickly though... Even with snow still covering the path in shaded sections...

Part way up the mountain we could see a cold weather front starting to move in... there's a mist over the back mountains and clouds starting to move in. We paused at this sunny patch just under the tree-line to enjoy a snack.

Above the tree-line the path got rockier (but still packed enough for Kali not to have trouble). The clouds began to move in a bit more and the wind really picked up. I had to pull out my toque!

First glimpse of our destination: the old fire-lookout on the very tip of Mt. Burke! We could really hear the winds howling at this point, and the sun started to dip behind the clouds. We decided to push on anyway!

... even once we hit this narrow point. The trail was at most 4 m across, although it followed the right side of the ridge-line with large boulders that provided periodic wind-breaks. The trek made us think of hiking to a remote monastery...

Success! The fire-lookout... still clamped down by 1 or 2 of the cables holding it in place... Tom of course popped into it before I had a chance to get up there and remind him he wasn't supposed to because it's unsafe (being perched on a peak, dilapidated, and not secured to the ground). We both couldn't help thinking of Kerouac meditating and writing away in that isolated fire-lookout he manned decades ago... I guess it was just one of those hikes that inspired poetic thoughts...

Hand-stands on the edge... Jumping shots (even Kali's getting in on the action)...

Tom posing as the clouds envelope the top of the mountain, the odd snowflake mixed in with the mist and gentle rain. We decided to boot it down at this point because all three of us were starting to get cold and wet.

Once we got back into the trees the weather at least seemed a lot more mild, although still a slight mist that left the trail slick... and for some reason there seemed to be more snow than I remembered! We paused at this tree because the shape of it reminded me of the snow gums we saw in Tasmania, although of course lacking the beautiful red tones... maybe it was also because the weather was so similar (we ended up hiking in some Yuletide snow on a hike down there too).