Another excellent weekend at Cowley

Another excellent weekend at Cowley Part 1

Arrived with Bob and Kurt on Friday night to meet Susan and Sandy who had prepared gourmet hamburgers for dinner. As usual, great conversation and plans for tomorrow. Relatively early night.

Saturday Sandy, Bob, Kurt and I travelled to Castle Mountain Ski Resort for another great day. Bob's expert instruction had me keeping my weight forward with hands forward too so that my shoulders faced down hill and I let the simple weight transfer take care of my turns. This is actually counter-intuitive as one tends to straighten up if things look stressful. It made for more confident, aggressive and speedier skiing. Kurt and I quickly did five 1000ft green runs, plus a couple of blue sections, without mishap. So after a couple of beers and some pizza for lunch we did one more green and then attacked the first serious run on Castle. Again, little problem making our way down the cat-trail, which is supposed to be green, but clearly is a solid blue at any other ski mountain. So now we were ready to tackle the cat-trail from the very top of the mountain. Still officially green it also was clearly a blue. Problem: The top of the Castle Mountain was very windy and was getting worse. The gale was throwing up oatmeal-sized chunks of ice/snow in stinging waves. And we couldn't see properly at all - a partial white-out with no real depth perception even when we could see. Bob and Sandy quickly abandoned their plans to take a fun blue/black run and decided to escort me and Kurt along the cat-trail.

Interesting Skiing observation #1: Weight forward, hands forward, knees bent - all are important. If you don't do this just so, and you're sliding sideways on steep ice, and you hit a big block of ice as you make a turn then you are apt to fall.

Interesting Skiing observation #2: Compacted snow combined with melted and refrozen ice has a comprression ratio. If you fall and hit it very hard at the correct angle then you bounce.

Fortunately nothing was broken. Later that evening I noticed that I'd pulled and compressed various muscles, tendons and joints, so I won't be attending AiKiDo practice most of this week.

Interesting Skiing observation #3: It is extremely difficult to put your skis back on when you are trying to stand up at all on a very steep section of icy slope. Far better to move to the side where there's some snow or to walk/slide/tumble/fall down a dozen or so metres to where it may be a little flatter.

Well, that wasn't the end of our adventure. Bob was leading us through the snow storm along the cat-trail. Both Kurt and I wandered off the side, but me more than Kurt. Of course I couldn't get back up, but no big problem... by this time we were past the worst of the wind and I could see where we were heading. I just needed to cut across country and get back to the trail further down. I very nearly made it too. About six metres from the trail was little rise and, without enough momentum, I came to a dead stop. In deep powder.

Interesting Skiing observation #4: Skiing over powder snow even at a gentle pace is wonderful - like floating on a soft forgiving cloud. Standing in powder snow is a nuisance. Even with skis on you can sink knee deep, then the snow covers over the skis and anchors them down. You can't move. Well, not easily anyway.

So after falling over twice more just trying to get myself up on top of the snow and with the skis on, finally I was comfortably and happily slipping along the powder between and around the pine trees on the way back to the trail.

I am delighted to report it was all very entertaining for Bob and Kurt and Sandy.

Excellent weekend at Cowley Part 2

Kurt and I cooked. Neither of us gets to cook for others as much as we'd like to so this was more a treat for us than it was for our hosts, Bob & Susan, or Sandy. It was Sandy's birthday during the week so that was an occasion too. We barbequed pork loins and served boiled new potatoes, Kurt's famous barbequed red onions, and asparagus wrapped in prosquito and crisped in the barbeque. An excellent meal once again. More good wine and conversation, but not too late a night because we had more to do on Sunday.

Excellent weekend at Cowley Part 3

Trout fishing! I went into Hanson's Fishing Outfitters, about a block from my place, early Friday afternoon to buy my Wildlife Identification Number (WIN) and a fishing license. This makes it okay for me to hold a rod in proximity to a body of water in Alberta. On Sunday morning Bob and Kurt went in search of some accessible river sites not covered in ice. I tagged along to learn more about why this trout fishing is such a big deal. Clearly it's a great deal different from the salt-water estuary fishing I've been used to. First step was to learn to cast a line with no sinker or any other substantial weight to it. It's more like flicking a light-weight whip than spin-casting.

In Alberta live bait is not allowed and nor is a barbed hook. All trout fishing is done with lures. These are artificial dry or wet flies, or worms or wrigglers (baby flies). Some flies are pretty big but most are small. Some are no bigger than a mosquito, and the hook is just as tiny. I had trouble accepting that a hook that small could actually be used to catch a decent sized trout. But they insist that it's done. Bob got a couple of bites but the fish spat the hook out when his line went slack for a moment. Of course I wasn't expecting to get anything, so I found a spot that was out of the wind to practice casting. I did better than expected.

More importantly, it's a sheer pleasure to just be wetting a line and enjoying the water and the trees.

Excellent weekend at Cowley Part 4

Dinner with Dennis and Robin. Bob and Kurt dropped me off only about a half-hour late for Sunday dinner. Robin had prepared an excellent jambalaya - not too spicy but with a definite kick. We'd all had a full weekend so we were happy with watching a video - Babel. Once again, another really pleasant evening with good wine, good people and just the right mood.