Fullerton Loop

Yesterday we decided to go for an easy hike/puppy walk at Fullerton Loop, just outside Bragg Creek leaving from the Allan Bill Pond parking lot. The loop was about 8 km with only 200 m of elevation gain. The temperature was gorgeous, the trail not too sloppy, and the puppies loved it!

Okay... so note that this was largely a puppy walk - no mountains here, but plenty of puppy pictures. Uma's getting pretty big now (red collar). She's 10 months old and almost the same height as Kali (black collar), but still quite a bit thinner and her head is smaller too. Still abundant energy but Uma's now starting to focus on things for more than a micro-second... even enough to follow the laser pointer in the morning (Kali adores it - obsessed even... Uma followed it for a couple of stomps but then got distracted with a play buddy). We're still working on getting her to focus enough that she stops ramming me in the head with her head, and she's still occasionally chewing inappropriate things if she doesn't get out for her morning walk early enough or meet up with enough play buddies to help wear her out on the walks.

The view from the look-out at the highest point of Fullerton Loop:

Prairie Mountain

Back on Sept. 23 I was lucky enough to get a day off! My friend Heather and I took Kali & Uma for a little hike up Prairie Mountain... since Tom had already done this hike with me I didn't think he'd mind. I didn't have the GPS so no track or stats, but it took us a few of hours, I think it's about a 300 m elevation gain, but not over much distance. This is the 360 from the top with Moose Mountain on the right just past the cairn.

Kali and Uma had a great time, especially once we got to the top. They're standing next to a fairly sheer drop that they were fascinated by...

... Kali loves staring off over the edge into the mountains (just check out some of the other posts...)

Apparently someone decided that Prairie Mountain reminded them of Nepal and hung some prayer flags out... I made the girls pose with them.

Unfortunately the snow's been flying around here already so the girls will have to wait for next year for more hiking... they're not really cold-weather kind of dogs. Kali always looks like she's on a death march when we take her snow-shoeing... thank goodness for dog parks!

Grassi Lakes

I'm helping to run the New Hire Mountain field trip for work this week (I posted about it back at the end of June when I went on it). Unfortunately we weren't able to go to the Grassi Lakes outcrop due to a road closure, but I'm supposed to be presenting it this time so Breanna and I went out last Monday to check it out. It was a gorgeous day in Calgary, but not so lucky in Canmore where we got hit by some horizontal rain and cold wind gusts. Just thought I'd share a few pics of the area...

View of Grassi Lakes looking out towards Canmore:

Since we were on company time we were trying to be safety concious, but noticed this sign on the trail only as we were leaving the area! ... kind of had to get in there anyway to look at the rocks.

Okay... so here's the outcrop from afar (climbers for scale... note to self, must come back to go climbing!). For those inclined to notice rock stuff, try finding the stromatoporoid reefs and parasequence boundaries.

And a slightly distorted view of the lake looking up to Ha Ling Peak and the top of the Spray Lake Road/water tower (where we started from).

I noticed I have no close-ups of the rocks... will remedy this when I revisit the site this week.

West Wind Pass

My parents are in town this weekend so we took them for a hike. I chose West Wind Pass, which is a 5.3 km loop with something like 429 m total elevation gain (~387 m max elevation gain)... so comparable to what we tortured Tom & Jane with when they came out. Once again the topo map is having a funny colour day...

This is Spray Lake from part way up:

From the top looking down West Wind Valley (you can see the LaFarge concrete plant in the valley).

Group shot at the top: This is the panoramic view into West Wind Valley. The 360 pan from the other side of the pass into Spray Lake Valley: One last view of Spray Lake:

After the hike we were supposed to head out to Banff for a quick dip in the hot springs... we were running about an hour late but we passed a convenient and completely random phone booth next to an outhouse on the side of the Spray Lake Road (a dirt road that runs through the mountains). I decided to try to call Breanna from there to see if she could let the dogs out... my attempts on the mountain were thwarted by bad reception on our cell phone (it's an emergency phone but is pretty useless as such because of chronically bad reception). We tried to put coins in the phone but it was jammed... Tom managed to shake out 85 cents but still couldn't get out all the coinage. After a bit of trying I managed to get a dial tone and an operator, informed them about the state of the phone, and they patched me through to Breanna's voicemail at work after I coughed up a credit card number... unfortunately did not have her cell phone OR home number with me (just remembered the office extension because I bug her a bunch at work) so hoped she'd get the message before she left for the day. All was well by the time we got home though - Breanna had come to the rescue of Uma & Kali and both pups had been let out and fed!! You're awesome B!

Old Goat Glacier, revisited

Okay... so I'm slowly catching up on blogging. A couple of weekends ago I revisited Old Goat Glacier with Tom & Breanna since neither of them had seen it before. The track accidentally got deleted but it's was 10.5km round-trip with a 620m elevation gain. We got a bit of a late start to the day... partly planned, partly just little things that crop up... but mostly because we got to the trailhead and I realized that I had forgotten my socks so we had to drive back to Canmore and buy some. It was still a nice hike, but we were losing light fast in Old Goat valley and the light wasn't particularly good for the group shot at the end.

Looking to Spray Lakes Reservoir from the edge of the hanging valley: Tom & Breanna on the moraine hiking up to the glacier:

Old Goat Glacier, the panoramic version:

Heading back out:

Puppies

I thought I should post a bit of a puppy update. Uma is just about 9 months now and is close to Kali's height and length, but defintely a lot scrawnier... and has a smaller head. She's a mostly well-behaved puppy but has gotten into a bit of mischief lately when she's bored... for example she's chewed a few pens on the carpet, destroyed Tom's hat, and very recently dug out and eaten carrots from my garden (who taught her carrots were yummy?!). We're doing our best to exercise the mischief out of her and Tom has even taken the girls to work on occasion (he's building mountain bike trails so they get to play in the forest). She's a super snuggly puppy and I love her a ton, but Kali definitely had us spoiled for what to expect from a Ridgeback puppy! Kali is doing quite well and enjoys tackling Uma in the long grass at the park. Her elbow doesn't seem to be bothering her too much.

House renos

Just thought I'd share a few before and after shots of our yard. As you can see we painted the house blue instead of the peach, ripped out the deck and replaced it...

cut down some trees, added a garden...

...and Tom certainly seems happier =o)!

Hiking in Yoho: Day 3 (Heading home)

On Sunday we woke up to a third chilly morning. We were still cold after breakfast, even with multiple layers of clothes on (the sun was taking it's sweet time to creep over the rim of the valley and the clouds weren't helping either), so we decided to hike up to Twin Falls again to warm up and catch the light hitting the Falls better.

To be fair I had to let Tom take a funny pic of me too... A couple shots of Twin Falls... not as twin looking in the morning since the cold kind of put a damper on the amount of melting:

On our way out from the little lookout trail we passed the Twin Falls Chalet. Apparently you can have lunch and tea here, and if you book ahead of time stay in this comfy lodge instead of in a tent on the ground.

After we got back to camp, all toasty at that point, we broke down the tent and packed up our stuff for the hike out. We paused again at Laughing Falls...

Tom had to clamber along this slippery log to get to and back from the rock in the above shot... that's my monkey man!

... more trail shots on the way out

This was the lookout at Lace Falls - Tom is strategically placed to block other people viewing the falls.

From there we stopped off at the Angel's Staircase Falls, although they weren't looking too impressive this early on a chilly day.

There was a brief glimpse of sun so we sat down on the river's edge for lunch. The sun soon disappeared though and the spot became a bit too cold to hang around long so we cut it short and hit the trail again...

Still no sun as we got back to Takkakaw Falls... but the car was warm!

The sun came out again and it warmed up on the drive back to Hwy 1... we stopped off at this lookout to see the Spiral Tunnel and finish our lunch in the sun.

It was impossible to see where the track and tunnel was at first but we were lucky enough to be there long enough for a train to come by so we could see it on two levels.

From here we just headed back to Calgary, got in around dinner time and picked up our pups from their fun weekend hanging out with our friends and their pup. Needless to say, excellent weekend! (especially since we did find the GPS at the end!)