Quinzhee

This was fun and easy to build.

Trip Report

Reveille sounds at 6am Saturday morning. Everything is packed in the car and Dan, Brodie and I are ready to head into the Laurentian Mountains to do some telemark skiing and stay on the side of a mountain. I should mention what I mean by Everything being packed in the Volkswagen GTI. Well for this weekend we had a 30 kg bag of gravel, four 20 kg cinderblocks, two bags of cord wood, two bags of kindling, two sets of skis, one set of boots, three large ruck sacks and a few other odds and ends to squeeze in with the three of us. The plan was to set-up the building materials to make ourselves a Barbecue but first we would have to get everything to the campsite.

At this point the careful reader will realize I mentioned we had only packed one set of boots. Luckily we realized this before getting too far out of Ottawa and promptly doubled back. We arrived at the ski hill formerly known as Gray Rocks mid-morning and immediately it began to snow. After unloading the vehicle the reality of hauling the material was becoming apparent. I strapped the four blocks and the bag of gravel to a toboggan and began towing it behind me. This worked pretty well for the first while on flat ground but became impossible as soon as I started uphill. Dan came to help me and after ditching the gravel and one of the blocks he managed to get the heavily-laden toboggan to the camp site. I made a few more trips myself and after about two hours of exhausting effort everything was in place where it needed to be.

We lit up a nice fire, arranged and leveled the blocks and before we knew it we were cooking sausages. With that taken care of and the snow accumulating we set out to hike for some turns. We were happy to find about 10 cm of light fluffy snow on top of the bulletproof crust we were skiing on last weekend. The turns were a lot mellower this weekend and much quieter too. We got in about five runs before darkness forced us back to the camp. I had a bit of trouble with my skins towards the end of the day as they became covered in snow and unwilling to adhere to my skis. I managed to fix this for the next day by getting as much snow off as I could and then sleeping with them in my sleeping bag to dry them out. Back at the campsite we were giddy with prospect of having salmon filets with baked potato and asparagus for dinner. This new grill is giving the campsite a real luxury feel and it is very nice to be able to eat so well. Pretty soon it was skiers midnight and we turned in.

The temperature plummeted throughout the night as the snow stopped and the sky cleared. I slept very warm though with lots of layers on and my sleeping bag cinched up tight. When I woke up the next morning it was -24 outside so I bundled up, put my ski boots by the fire that my campmate had already ignited and made quick work of breaking camp. Soon I was skiing down to the car under about 70 lb of gear which is always a bit terrifying. With the camp cleaned up all that was left was to get in some laps on the fresh snow in the sun. By the time we were close to the summit we spotted Dan's last two lines of worm turns from the previous day that were basking in alpine glow. Even my toes were warming up from the skinning and we were stoked to be the only ones skiing fresh snow that morning. We got in another four runs which included getting a lot of footage. One of the shots we are working on involves scaling the old chairlift towers which is pretty innovative I think.

The system I have been using for skiing in this cold weather is turning out to be very efficient, light, and comfortable. Basically I put on a base layer and put my camelback on over top of this then I put my Gore-Tex outer layers on top of the camelback. This seems to keep the water at a perfect temperature nowhere near freezing. I then use the large chest pockets of my coat for my skins. This keeps me well hydrated and dry throughout the day. When I stop for a break I put on my down jacket and this keeps me from cooling down too much. This weekend was overnight trip #4 for the year and they just keep getting smoother as I continue to figure out the little things like being organized and packing properly (with the exception of not forgetting my boots). Throw in some gourmet grill action and little fresh snow and you have the perfect weekend.

Telemarking in Full Swing

Its January 13th and later today will be my 20th day of tele-skiing for the season. That is just an awesome start and I have gone from a total beginner just getting down the hill without falling to linking tele-turns down some reasonably hard runs in all types of snow from powder to bulletproof. Most of all it has just been a great time just being outside in the winter and enjoying the fresh air, exercise and challenge of learning.

So far I have done three ski camping trips and only 4 of my 20 days of skiing have been with a lift ticket. I put together a video of my longest camping trip this year with a bit of other footage I had kicking around to round it out. The video is mostly some monologues about ski camping in general to give people a taste for what I am doing with myself on the weekends.

Pre-Season Lines and Bouldering Problems

We got an early gift from the snow gods this year in the form of a Halloween snow storm. We ended up getting about 10cm that stayed on the ground for about a day. I managed to get a really good cross country session on Halloween then woke up the next morning at O'Dark Hundred to hike for turns at Fortune. Here is some video evidence:



I have also been working hard in the climbing gym and am about to do a leading course in preparation for next summers outdoor season. Here is a couple lines a filmed at a session the other day:



Hopefully next video will be documenting a winter camping and skiing trip I have planned for over the holidays. Cheers.

Training for Tele-Season

The weather is getting cooler and I am getting stoked for the winter and skiing. I have been doing a lot of biking, rock climbing and running some hills to make sure I am ready to hike for some turns in a couple months.

In the next few weeks I hope to get an outdoor rock climbing video put together. I just started climbing this month but I am really enjoying it and spending lots of time trying to improve and doing some cool lines inside and out.

Kiteboarding in Kincardine

I woke up this morning hopeful for the 25 km/h wind in the forecast but was dissappointed to tree tops standing still and water calm. Slowly the wind picked up and by early afternoon it was looking really good for a kite session on Bruce Beach. I met up with a couple other kiters and quickly pumped up my kite. The wind was blowing about 15 knots from the Northwest and I had lots of power on my 16m Ocean Rodeo Rise.

I launched the kite and got out to the sand bar to do some water starts. The surf was pretty big and it tossed me around quite a bit trying to get positioned properly. I did a couple big power strokes and pulled myself out of the water but had a hard time building enough momentum to really get going. A power stroke is basically starting the kite from high in the air and diving it low in the direction you want to travel. This movement exposes the full surface area of the kite to the wind which then generates power to pull you out of the water.

I had a blast getting pulled out of the water and riding the board but had lots of spills. This can present a problem for a couple of reasons. The first is you need to be thinking about where the kite is and what it is about to do as soon as you recover from the fall. A kite can pull you fast, hard and unexpectedly. The important thing is to make sure you stay facing the kite and are able to de power when necessary. Now remember while your worrying about the kite and what it is about to do your board is probably upwind of you and very hard to spot in choppy water. The next task is tack upwind using your body as a rudder to retrieve your board. Now you can try for another water start.

Starting a kiteboard is similar to getting up on waterskis, The difference is the bar now drives the boat and there is no letting go of the rope and coming to a stop. It is very easy to focus on your riding, forget about the kite and become underpowered and sink back in the water or get overpowered and fly over the board. The fun part is once you find the right balance of power the harness around your core takes the pressure off your arms and allows for long periods of riding without becoming tired or sore. The other cool aspect is the kite takes quite a bit of weight off the board so you feel a lot lighter than you would being towed by a boat.

I had about a five hour session and there is only one part that I would not consider fun. I was walking the kite out from the beach after a break and without warning my harness became unhooked . Now the kite is uncontrollable and quickly loops and crashes on the beach. The only option is to try and chase after it but it is hard to catch and the lines will become tangled. Eventually I caught up to it and spent a good half hour untangling the lines. Learning to kiteboard has been a lot of fun and a great challenge. I would recommend it to anyone that loves to board and is not afraid of a little excitement and a lot of power.

Mathematics takes us still further from what is human into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual world, but every possible world must conform.

-Bertrand Russell

I have not had a lot of spare time recently but I can summarize what I have been doing fairly succinctly with a handy algorithm I came across that generalizes beyond mathematics.

1. Write down the problem
2. Think very hard
3. Write down the solution