The Sky Overhead

This video runs 2 minutes 43 seconds (click unhappy William to play).

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You get to Skyline from Continue reading →

The trail was first cut in around 1928 Continue reading →

I found Guy Lemele warming his lunch on the stove at Western.  I noticed his big backpack with its large ski patrol cross on it and asked him to tell me about being a ski patroller.

Here’s what he had to say.

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He explained that there are two types of patrol.

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Although we had 30cm of snow last week, yesterday it was +9°C and pouring rain so all that lovely snow turned into one soggy mess.  Then last night the temperature dropped to -10°C and everything froze up solid as a rock.

Here’s a picture of some ski tracks made when the snow was fresh (over dangerously thin ice I must say) across Fortune Lake.  Then the rain came, the freeze and now the tracks are immovable.

Yet today when I skate-skied up the Fortune Lake hill and  on out to the Champlain Lookout the conditions were marvelous.  Why?  Because the groomers had been out.  Those big lumbering contraptions do an amazing job of grinding all that ice back into snow and making it skiable.

Here’s a lookout from the Lookout with three happy skiers I met there.

I checked out the Ridge Road beyond Champlain Lookout but it was barely skiable with chattery icey conditions that hadn’t been groomed.  Forecast is for 10cm of snow over the next 24 hours, so things can only get better.

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This morning I went for a run with my wife who found the snowy streets a little hard going.  This afternoon I went to Kingsmere where the parking lots were pretty full, but not completely full.  I noticed two virtu-cars.

I was lucky enough to catch a little chat with three skiing women: Joanne McKenzie, Louise Kilns and Kathy Dufort.  The audio is what they had to say.

A picture of my mother (Heather) and my grandmother (Brownie) out on the boards when my mom must have been around 10 years old.  The audio portion of this episode is quite unrelated.  See below.

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The audio here consists of a short conversation between Maureen O’Higgins and Charles Hodgson as they drive up to the Gatineau Park for a ski.  Maureen notes the danger of ski jumping and the context of the upcoming Olympics then talks about skiing at Carlington Hill when she was young (and in her dad’s backpack when she was even younger).

Well, this isn’t exactly a ski story, but it is outside and near Ottawa.

I took my dog for a walk the other day. The temperature was just below freezing, it was snowy. As I walked I noticed dozens of tiny little spiders hanging by their silk.

It’s hard to take a picture of them like that but here’s an image of a couple of little frozen spider corpses.

I wondered what business they had out in weather like that. So I did two things. I went to get my camera and I sent an email to Bob Anderson at the Canadian Museum of Nature asking him why the spiders were out in the snow.

“I’m suspecting some spiders pass the winter in an egg sack stage. What happens is that a female will lay an egg sack filled with eggs at the end of summer or early fall and the spiderlings will hatch out but they will actually stay in that egg sack throughout the winter. They’re clumped together and they are sort of hibernating or in a depressed metabolic state. If they get exposed to sunlight that might be warming, or maybe it’s a warmer day they might become active. And if the egg sack is ruptured they might spill out and that might be where you saw them dangling around.”

I asked Bob if this was a survival strategy of some kind or if the spiders had just made a mistake.

“A lot of insects pass the winter in an adult stage. Morning Cloak butterflies are the first butterflies you see out in the springtime, you sometimes see them out when there’s still snow on the ground. That’s because they pass the winter as an adult and so as soon as the temperature warms up the adults are out right away flying around. This can be a strategy for some so that they can get out and search for mates and search for food as soon as the temperatures are warm enough. But if you mess up then you’re messed up and I think your little spiders might have messed up.”

So I guess the early spider doesn’t always get the worm.

Please have patience with an aging blogger.  I’ve set up a website and that’s a start.

What’s more I recorded some audio with a friend of mine as we drove up to the park for a ski.  Unfortunately the road noise makes it a little hard to listen to.  Maybe I’ll post it if I can clean it up a bit.

I also did my first impromptu trailside interview of a Saturday skier.  Maybe I’ll post that too when I have a moment. [have done, here it is]

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But the main thing is that now at least there is a website.  The plan is to bring my recorder with me when I ski this winter, ask other skiers for their memories of skiing in the Gatineau Park, and post their stories here.

About that audio.  I’m sorry I didn’t get the woman’s name.  She noticed I was an engineer (by my iron ring) and said that she was too.  Mostly I’m posting the little clip because the next clip has such bad audio I want people to know that it really will be better in future.