Getting there is half the fun

Easter at the Burton Hut

2007-04-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

Greta and I went up to the Burton Hut across Garibaldi Lake over easter for some spring skiing fun! Pics posted HERE!

Stopover in Fiji, take 2

2007-03-05T14:21:00.000-08:00

On my way home from Australia I had a another 2 day stopover in Fiji. Contrary to my first experience there, it turned out quite nice and gave me a chance to get rid of my farmer's tan (no luck though).

This is indeed my hostel, yes HOSTEL!! Right on the beach and comes with hammocks, volleyball and a pool. The only catch is they put these things in the middle of nowhere so you're forced to buy their food, which isn't exactly at backpacker prices.

The beach in front of the hostel - not exactly what you'd consider Fiji to be like, but it was nice enough for 10 minutes from the airport. I went for a walk down the beach for an hour and didn't see any other buildings! The water was so unbelievably warm here too, the warmest I've ever been in. It was almost uncomfortable to swim in cause it gave you no break from the heat. That's why they have the pool though, a cold water pool!!

Relaxing at the hostel!

On my second day I signed up for a day boat cruise to an island. Despite all the older people (see pic) is was actually very fun and a great way to spend the day. I also met this other girl from Vancouver with the same last name as me so at least there was someone else my age to spend the day with!

Here I am trying some Kava, during the Kava ceremony. It's a local drink made from a plant that supposedly has some drug like effects, but everyone drinks it normally.

After 2 hours we reached our destination...

Screw waiting for the shuttle boat, I'm swimming!

Mystery Island was it's name. It was completely deserted except for a few huts they used to cook meals and such. We walked around its sandy beaches in about 30 minutes.

Just relaxing some more.

On the island we got fed an awesome bbq meal of fish, sausage and chicken, plus all the beer and pop we could drink! mmm

The boat crew also played us some island music while we ate!

Kayaking and snorkeling were on the menu for the afternoon.

They were even nice enough to let me drive for a bit, as long as I didn't turn the wheel:p

Mika, the girl from van with the same name. No, we aren't related.

After a few more beers at the hostel I arrived at the airport a bit tipsy and out of money. Luckily I didn't have that extra beer else I would have been stranded as my credit card expired 2 days before without my knowing. So I had a bit of an embarrassment when I went to buy some souvenirs at duty free with an expired card.

Ah there's nothing like home!

Some photos from the final days in Oz

2007-03-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

Dinner with the family at the Indian place in Sunshine. Always good.

Do you think I look Australian?

We went for a bike ride alone the 'river' behind Greta's place to the Lerderderg State Forest. (pronounced lededugh). Nice meandering country roads alongside farms and paddocks.

The river used to be a real river, but the 10 year drought much of Australia is under has changed that. Water hasn't flowed here for years.

There were even "no diving" signs hinting at the wetter past.

Back at home saying goodbye to Ruby and Red.

My flight got delayed by a day and a half, which was really nice as it gave us an extra day!! But the new flight time was 4am, ouch! They served dinner on board at 4:30am, go figure.

My flight took me to Fiji at 9am, thus ending 2 months in Oz:(

The last post from down under.

2007-02-26T01:56:00.000-08:00

Yep, this is it, my plane sadly leaves tomorrow night. These two months went blazingly fast. It's amazing. Two months sounds like heaps of time when you are planning a trip or asking your boss for the time off, but when it comes to pass it's no time at all. Merely a short moment in your life. So here it is, my two months in Australia with Greta is already over. Sure it'll be nice to come back to Vancouver and see you all again, but it many ways I wish I could stay here longer. I even asked my boss for a few extra weeks and he agreed to it! But then I couldn't postpone my flight because they all were full for the month:( Oh well, there'll be another trip sometime in the future I'm sure! See you all very soon, Evan.

Pictures from Hobart

2007-02-26T01:41:00.000-08:00

Ok so I'm waaay behind in my photos, but anyway, here's photos from Hobart after our hike along the South Coast track back at the beginning of February!

Right after coming out of the bush we hit up the Salamanca Market to gorge ourselves on cheap food and Tasmanian fudge while listening to hippie music all afternoon. It was the prefect thing to do after a week of hiking.

The next day we all took a ride on the Lady Nelson - a replica of one of the first boats to come over from England full of convicts.

The crew tying up the sails.

They even let me help by pulling on some of these ropes. I had no idea what I was doing but it was still fun.

We also all went to the botanic gardens. My favourite part was the 'subantartic plant room' seen here. It was 10 degrees and 99% humidity - just like being back at home!

After the weekend Greta, Sam and Alastair had to fly home to "work" so Janie, Tom and I did a day tour of Port Arthur, a very old and famous convict camp/jail where they sent the reoffenders and super bad. Here is our guide surfing on a bronzed dog of the dog fence they had around the jail. What respect for history they have.

We also did a nice little walk around the penninsula where the penitentiary is located. It would be pretty hard to escape with all these cliffs.

Here's the main "lodge" where they kept the bad guys.

And this is the church for the even badder guys who were kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. They would be put into these boxes so they can only see the pastor.

Janie left the next day, leaving just Tom and I, so we went for a tour of the main Cadbury Chocolate factory!!:) It was pretty fun, but they wouldn't let us taste during the tour due to supposed health laws. Due to our pathetic amounts of stubble after not shaving for a week we had to also wear these 'snoob' nets!

Top of Mount Wellington - the mountain that 'towers' above the city. It was cloudy so no nice pano shots.

Hobart's historic harbour.

And lastly, our hostel, the pickled frog - home of the cheapest beer in hobart!

In Brissy

2007-02-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

The picture posting will have to wait for now...after only 1.5 days in Melbourne a split decision landed me in Brisbane. I'm here visiting Kim and touring around Queensland and Byron Bay hopefully. Hold them horses...

South Coast Track, Tasmania

2007-02-08T02:56:00.000-08:00

After 2 weeks in Tasmania there is a lot to write about, but since photos do a better job of portraying what it was like I'll use them instead. We spent 8 days in the bush, of which it rained for 7, sometimes heavily. So sadly not enough pictures were taken, mostly because the beautiful landscape was shrouded in clouds most of the time, and the odd glimses we did get didn't make for nice pictures. Anyway, here's the photo diary of the trip!...

We took an hour long bush plane flight in from Hobart to an airstrip named Melaleuca. It's in the middle of nowhere. Nobody lives within hundreds of miles. But there is a Ranger station and a parrot watching station there. And you can also fill up your fuel bottes there since you're not allowed to take in on the plane. The flight was quite a ride though. It started off fun, but after about 20 minutes we all started to feel sick. At around half an hour Greta and I both had our puke bags open and ready. Only I had to use mine though. Twice. It's the worst feeling just before you puke, but feels sooo much better after! Alastair also puked right after getting off the plane. Lucky for me the pilot saved me the trouble of carrying my puke sachet on the hike!

Besides the puking, the flight in was very scenic.

Our flight followed the coast so we got to see our route. We hiked to this beach the first day and camped on the headland in the middle. It poured rain during the night.

Up a valley and towards the coast from Melaleuca to Cox Bight on the first day.

Whilst cooking dinner a Wombat trotted past our camp on the beach. We followed it for 100 meters before it found a bush it decided to chew on. It didn't mind us coming close at all.

Day 2 started with a beach walk beneath threatening clouds.

The weather changed every 10 minutes. One minute it was raining, the next we'd be sweltering in the sun. Then it would start to hail.

Soon we had our first of many creek crossings. Our boots stayed wet for the rest of the hike.

In addition to the rain and numerous creek crossings there was heaps of mud to contend with. This is by far the muddiest hike I've ever done. Some pits were waist deep. If you were lucky it would only be knee deep.

Greta at yet another creek crossing.

The group scrambles to put on rain gear as the hail pounds us.

Louisa River: This was the largest river crossing. It was thigh deep in parts and flowing swiftly. We were worried about being swept down so we almost camped at the other side to wait for it to drop. Luckily we hadn't as the river rose 8 inches during the night and probably continued to do so with all the rain we got. Don't be fooled by the sunshine in the pic.

The Ironbounds: The highest of the mountains we had to cross at 1000m. It was a wet and slippery slog.

Day 4/5? We finally had one night without rain so could dry stuff a little before it started raining again before lunch.

Greta enjoying yet another creek/swamp crossing.

The author. This was the only day where it was hot enough to bring out the 'muscle shirt'. The sun only lasted 2 hours though:(

Janie rowing across New River Lagoon. There is a rowboat on each side which you use to shuttle yourselves across.

Day 6: This was the worst day. We woke to a storm, packed quickly without eating brekky and hiked in the bonechilling wind and rain. The wind would blow the sand across the dunes and it would sting any exposed skin. We got completely soaked that day. They need to invent better Goretex.

Greta and Evan. Can't remember which day/beach.

Aussie Hottie.

Sunset from the cliffs above New River Lagoon.

We saw many Wallabies and Potteroos on the hike. At first it was a huge novelty and I was so excited. But it was still cool seing them hopping around our camp trying to steal food. They were quite persistent and not scared at all. We also had a small thing called a Quoll one night that managed to steal some garbage. No pics though.

Greta scrambling. See the trail marker above the cliff?!

Me filling water. All the fresh water in this part of Tasmania is dyed tea brown by either tannin from the buttongrass moorlands or from Tea Trees, can't remember which is correct.

Drinking water, no need to treat.

More mud. This was a daily occurance.

Having fun with the camera. Twilight reflection on the brown water of a lagoon.

Alastair was crazy enough to pack a spear and snorkelling gear, complete with flippers. His pack weighted about 35kg! But it was worth it though. He went spear fishing twice in the frigid waters and both times caught a small fish in less than 10 minutes. None of us knew what the fish were though, but they tasted quite good!

Developing a bit of a snoob? Yes, I have passed puberty.

The gang (minus Sam) at the trailhead 8 days later!! L to R: Tom, Evan, Alastair, Janie, Greta.

Back from the South-Wet Coast

2007-02-05T02:32:00.000-08:00

I'm glad to say that we started as a group of 6 and finished as a group of 6, and without using the sat phone! 9 days on the South coast of Tasmania was absolutely amazing: at times a wonderful trip, and at others a very trying. After puking on the bush plane flight in, we had 5 days of rain and storms. Numbers on the trail quickly diminished, and only later did we hear that there had been a Bushwalkers Warning alert and no flights were leaving the ground. The track was muddy, very muddy, with us sinking into our knees lots and occasionally up to the waist for the unlucky ones. I've never hiked in so much mud. There were also lots of river and stream crossings, so we always had wet feet. Putting on wet socks and boots in the morning was particularly fun. But it wasn't all hardship...we had a great time, saw lots of beautiful scenery and coastline, lots of native animals, and some cool people on the trail. We were to be out for 10 days, but completed the hike in 8 and left on the 9th day. The side trip we planned to climb a mountain was deemed impossible after we met 5 very tough men as they returned from 3 days in the bush attemping the summit. 2 days of which were spent wading up a very swollen lagoon as the bush is too think to crash through. So instead we enjoyed a couple easier days on the trail with good weather towards the end. Alastair was successful in catching 2 fish using a spear as he swam around the rocks beneath the surf. Crazy guy. He even carried a snorkel and flippers all week to do that. The fish was worth it though! Also, I'm glad to say the knee held up but complained a bit. 5 of us ended up with achilies pains, 3 of us really badly. So much it was very painful to walk on flat ground or up steep stuff. Janie and I walked the last 7km in thongs because the boots were too painful.

Now we're in the town of Hobart. Spent a day at the famous Salamanca market gorging after our hike. And we even ran into the 5 bushmen again there! The others returned to Melbourne so Janie, Tom and I took a tour of the Port Arthur prison today and will probably laze around tomorrow we we're pretty beat. So until we're back in Melbourne and can post pics, CHEERS as they say!

Off to Tassie

2007-01-25T03:02:00.000-08:00

Well picture posting is going to have to be postponed for another couple weeks as I'm off to Tasmania for 2 weeks. Greta, Tom and I are hiking the South Coast Track with 3 other mountaineering club members. We're taking a bush plane in, which is cool since I've never been on one! We've got 10 days to do the hike plus a few side trips, so plenty of time. My knee still hasn't healed fully yet so I'm a bit worried about that. But we've got a sat phone just in case! See you on the flip side....

Random Happenings during the first 2 weeks

2007-01-17T01:55:00.000-08:00

Ok so I got lots of catching up to do with this blog thing so here we go....
I've been down under for 2 weeks now and been up to a bunch of stuff!

The first week here Greta, Tom and I went to a cricket match at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds...the must see shrine for all cricket players. It's a humungous 90,000 seat circular stadium dedicated to cricket and Aussie Rules Football (footy). We saw Victoria vs. Queensland in an nighttime 20-20 match. Like most Canadians I know (knew) nothing about cricket so harassed Greta and Tom with endless questions on how the game works. The rules are both straight forward and confusing. I think they're both interesting and silly, cause there are so many little quirks to them. But anyway, enough about that.

Me and Tom above. Greta below. It was "cold" so we had to wear a sweater.

The massive stadium. Victoria whooped the Banana Benenders.

The weekend was spent helping Greta and Laura move the appartment in Brunswick. It's sad for them to see it gone, because it's a really nice place in a very good location, but oh well.

We went over to their Nana's place for dinner one night. Nana loves her Oysters! But she was nice enough to let me try one, which reminded me that I don't like raw Oysters.

The hoon on Nana's electric scooter:

Playing dressup at Nana's place. Greta is ready for a ball. Sadly Nana didn't have many men's clothes though.

Buying dinner at Queen Victoria Market with Laura and Greta's mom Chris. I'm eating an Lamington mmm. The place is really busy and cool so I'll have to go back.

After cleaning out the Brunswick appartment we had to bring the furniture to their holiday house in Apollo Bay. It's a 3 hour drive so a long day trip.

Nev and Greta:

Holy cow there are real trees and hills in Australia!! After hours of flat barren country this was a welcome change!

Driving along the Great Ocean Road to Apollo Bay. It's really pretty. We went boggie boarding in the surf! The ocean is surprisingly COLD though, I think colder than Vancouver and a wetsuit is necessary.

Here we are now touring around Melbourne on another 30+ day.

The Yarra River and downtown Melbourne.

One of the main train stations in Melbourne (Flinder's Street Stn). I like trains, did I say that yet? Rumour has it the plans got switched and this station was destined for Bombay, so this is actually an Indian staion??

Sydney Road in Brunswick where Greta's family had the appartment. It's full of cosy cafe's and funky shops. Greta works in a cafe there so I walk this street often. Road trip to Sydney perhaps?!

One warm evening we went to the beach near Melbourne. It's in a large bay so no surf, but it's still really nice and good for a swim or two! With these hot days the beach was packed

Rosina:

Laura:

Guess who?

Australian Open 2007

2007-01-16T23:34:00.000-08:00

The Aussie Open is going on right now for about 2 weeks. You can't escape the hype, it is all over the city and always on TV and showing in every bar! So Greta, her friend Rosina and I went to day 2 yesterday to get in on some of the action.

Tennis is big over here (well sports are in general). It's not like in Vancouver where stadiums are reused for different events and sports, Melbourne has a stadium for everything. So of course Tennis has it's own....and multiple stadiums! There is a whole park dedicated to tennis, with 2 large stadiums with retractable roofs, 2 smaller but decently sized outdoor courts, and a ton of small courts of various seating capacities, and even more practise courts! They really must like their tennis!

Here's an aerial of the grounds. It even extents off the picture to the left where you can just see the second large stadium. Insane!

Rosina, Greta and me watching a match in the sun. The stadium is empty cause it's too damn hot:

It's a good idea to go during the first few days of play because the big name players can be seen on the outside courts. We got a ground pass, which gets you into every match except for the main court where the tennis gods play.

We still saw some big names play though!...
David Nalbandian vs. Tipsarevic
Tomas Berdych vs. some Lee guy
Martina Hingis vs. Nathalie Dechy
James Blake vs. Carlos Maya
And some others I forget. Sharapova was playing in the center court, so we watched a bit on the big screen.

Nalbandian serving to Tiparevic:

The tempuratures were soaring, with a top of 40 Celcius!! (in Oz that's what you call the Maximum:p) It was painful just sitting watching the games, so I can't imagine how the players felt. They ended up evoking the "Extreme Heat Policy" which means play is cancelled on all outdoor courts. This leaves the two stadiums left, which they close the roofs on and crank up the Aircon. We waited over 3 hours to get into the Vodafone arena to see Hingis and Blake play, but it was worth it!

The 'small' 10,000 seat Vodafone arena: (the main court one is 15,000 seats)

Hingus creaming a french girl:

Maya putting up a good but fruitless fight against Blake:

The Jumbotron where the poor people can watch the big stars:

Waiting for the tram to take us to the train station after a long, hot, awesome day watching 'the tennis' (in Oz you must address every sport with 'the'):

Picture Diary: Stopover in Fiji

2007-01-15T01:17:00.000-08:00

Here's what Instead of writing heaps and heaps of boring passages on what I've been up to over here I'll post some pictures for your viewing/stalkig pleasure.

New Years Eve in the Vancouver Airport. I won't see a Timmy's for a while so got to get my last possible fix!

I arrived in Fiji at 5am January 2nd and was greeted island style by these guys serenating us weary travellers with some island music. It was cool.

I met an Aussie couple on the plane who despite returning from their honeymoon were nice enough to spend some time with me during the 34 hour journey. But it was their suggestion that we stand in the wrong line up for an hour where we got to listen to the guys above, so it was worth it (I guess).

I don't think anyone got any sleep on the 2 flights to Fiji so we were all knackered. The couple decided to get a hotel to sleep the day away. I on the other hand decided to tour Fiji on one hour of sleep! So I took a taxi into the town of Nadi and proceede to walk around and oogle at things.

They speak English in Fiji. Really.

By 7:30am it was alredy WAY TOO HOT and MUGGY out for my Canadianness, so I splurged on a budget half day tour. It was fun and got me out of the sun, but next time I'd rather not spend 4 hours in a van with some old folks (but they were Canadian and pretty cool).

Taken from the minibus. Sugar cane being transported on Fiji's cute miniature railway:

The first stop was a orchid garden and jungle walk where we saw some funky looking jungle plants. Check out this massive fern!

Postcard photo:

Next we went to an "authentic" Fijian village and saw how they live in clans with a chief and everything. All the little kids are cool and run up to you and say "bula" as a greeting then run off scared! Here's our village guide showing us this wooden drum thing they use to call village meetings:

Then we went to a fruit orchard and got to eat some really tasty tropical fruit with a view. To the right we could see the island where they filmed "Castaway".

There was a nice picture of me at a viewpoint looking over the island, but since I spilt Papaya all over my white shirt it's not going to be posted. (FYI papaya juice stains!)

And what's a trip without a good 'ol rip off. Here I got suckered into going into this guys shop where he was super nice and offered me a "gift" as a token for next time when I return. Then he asked me for a small "donation" to help him pay for his "bread 'n butter" cause he is a "poor man". Bastard. Well I felt bad cause he already engraved my name on this supposed "Fijian Boomerang" pos thing so I gave him a few bucks. Another guy tried to get me on the same thing later in the day too, so it's apparently a popular method.

The rest of the day was spent in an internet cafe to escape the extreme heat and then chewing the fat with a guy from Kamloops who also got ripped off in Nadi, and worse than me. He had a good laugh at the sticks crap and took the picture for me just before we chucked them in the trash.

I must admit I know absolutely nothing about Fiji before going there. It is a lot poorer than I thought and people seem to make almost nothing yet the prices are on par with Canada/US/western world. Talking to a few people it seems like the millions of dollars go to only the people lucky enough to own land with a resort, whereas the majority sees to benefit from tourism. Also, the people are extremely friendly there and come up and talk to you lots, especially in the early morning before the tourists are out. The exception is the touts in the tourist parts, and the asshole scammers who try to get you to drink this dopy drink called kava and supposedly rip you off. But that's just my view of the place.

Time to get back on the plane to Melbourne!...

Oz: The beginning

2007-01-15T01:14:00.000-08:00

If you're reading this you're probably aware that I've been down in Australia for almost 2 weeks now! So I guess it's time to get the travel blog rolling again and post some crazy stories. Well unfortunately nothing exceptionally notable has happened yet, but I'm working on it.

So to start the first update I'll start from the beginning!...
I left rainy Vancouver at 6pm on New Years Eve bound for Melbourne. Midnight on the plane was rather disappointing....nobody made any noise! And I even brought a noise maker in anticipation but I couldn't bring myself to blowing it whilst everyone slept. We arrived in Honolulu at 1am, but due to the time change we got a second crack at new years 2006. Thankfully this time as we were re-boarding the plane some of us let a few cheers slip out! And to get the complaints out of the way, I flew Air Pacific and wouldn't recommend it...they don't have movies on demand and only have one screen at the front of the plane:(

Arriving in Fiji at 5am local time I proceeded to waste the day walking around. But by 7:30am it was way too hot for me and the winter westerner mode by body was in so I took a half day driving tour of some sights, which was fun enough. Pics to follow...

Finally after 34 hours of travelling I arrived in Melbourne at 11pm on January 2nd, missing New Years Day altogether. Greta was waiting for me beautifully at the gate, and even brought balloons! It was so nice to see her again after a short break apart!

Day 2 (Jan 3rd), my first real day in Melbourne, was spent lazing around while Greta was at work. I met Laura in the afternoon and she took me for a quick tour around the Brunswick part of town, but the 36C heat was too much so I retreated inside for a movie and a nap.

The rest of the went Greta and I just toured around the city and also saw an evening Cricket match with Tom at the MCG. Victoria creamed Queensland! The weekend was spent helping Greta and her parents move the Brunswick appartment since they are selling it. Then Tuesday we went down to their holliday house for the day. But since I'm out of time at the internet cafe I'll save you all the boring details and get some pictures posted someday soon!....

Off to Aussieland

2006-12-31T11:39:00.000-08:00

So I'm off to the land of Oz in just 4 hours!! I'm super excited! I'm heading down under for 2 months to see Greta and a little bit of the country. Flight is at 6pm tonight, so I'll be celebrating new years on the plane, hopefully with free alcohol:) After a quick stop in Honolulu the flight arrives in Fiji at 5am, where I have a 13 hour stopover in the military controlled country. Hopefully I'll get to see some checkpoints or cool things like tanks! I'll let y'all know how it goes...

Hope everyone has a fun (and safe!) New Years!! I'll be keeping the one man party alive over the Pacific.

Stein Valley, August 23-30, 2006

2006-11-07T19:32:00.000-08:00

Back in August, Peter, Pascal, Christophe and I did an 8 day trek through the Stein Valley, covering around 100km over mountainous terrain. Finally we put a slideshow together, which we'll be presenting tomorrow, Nov 8th, in the VOC clubroom at 7pm. Also, an online slide show is online below!!

Stein Valley Traverse 2006

Skahahaha

2006-11-03T18:04:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was the VOC's annual climbing trip to Skaha. Around 50 VOCers went and all camped together.

Bob was orignally our driver, but unfortunately was called to work down in SJ for the weekend so couldn't come. Seeing that we were in a pickle his boss leant us his old car to drive up instead, nice guy! So after making a quick stop or two in Delta we were finally off at 8pm. With a stop in the 'Wack for dinner we were the last people to arrive at the campsite at 2:30am!

Our intended wake up time was 8am, but with only 5 hours of sleep that wasn't going to happen. Instead we left camp after 10 and high tailed it to Red Tail to climb with the crowds.

The first climb at 11:30am was super tough, even though it was a 5.6, because it was so damn cold and our fingers were frozen. But we warmed up and were at least able to climb some slightly harder stuff.

Greta at the roof of a 5.9 "What's Left?"

For some reason the climb "What's right", a 5.10a, had stumped a few people. So I took a shot at leading it!

Saturday night we had a halloween party at Christine's house(mansion!) high in the hills of Penticton.
Two crazy clowns:

The temperature dropped during the night and we woke up to a little bit of snow! Also, check out our ride! (Jeff and Rob in the pic)

It was too damn cold (6C) for us wusses to climb, so instead 10 of us headed into the caves. A few brave souls did actually do some climbing, and some just headed home after the morning Timmy's run.

Rob, Greta, Jeff, Jowen and Christian at the start of the cave system:

The cave was really cool. It took us 90 minutes and involved some good/nasty down climbing and a few good drops and squeezes. We wore harnesses and brought a rope, one rack and rappel gear, but didn't end up using any of it.

Here is Greta traversing across a 8m deep hole!

One of the neatest parts is this feature called the "Photocopier". You have to climb down into a crack, then squeeze through a horizontal crack into this trench thing that is waist high. Here is Christian entering the Photocopier:

Once at the end of the cave we had a nice view of Penticton:

We tried to take a "quicker" route back to the car in order to bypass a nasty rock gully, but our "easier" route ended up in bluffs. So we had to rappel a 20m cliff with packs and then downclimb a gully. Definitely not the faster route.

Returning to the car at 4pm we made one last stop at Timmy's and then did the 6 hour drive home through snow along Highway 3.

Some people say going climbing at this time of year is crazy and no fun, but they obviously haven't been on the Skaha trip yet!

Boring Week

2006-10-24T15:14:00.000-07:00

There's not much going on with me this week that's interesting. Got a midterm tonight, plus loads of assignments and also a project due on Thursday...FUN! Looking forward to the weekend though, going to Skaha-haha with the VOC!

Last weekend was the MEC gear swap, and it was even better than last year. Matt and I showed up at 5pm on Saturday and were joined by Sandra, Dan, Ben, Tristan and Marko at abour 25th in line. Christian was first in line but he showed up at 3:30! It was a fun filled night of various antics, and surprisingly we managed to get a few hours of sleep this year too! I didn't get all that I wanted, but instead I got some other goodies I needed! I spent $180 and got over $500 woth of gear! Similar deals were had be all, everyone came away with something good! Here's some of the stuff I got...

MSR Denali Snowshoes ($160, $25)

MEC Brio 60L Backpack ($99, $40)

MEC Hybrid -20C down/synthetic sleeping bag ($150, $50)

Thermarest Prolite 4 ($116, $20)

And a thermos for $5 and a water filter for $20, but I think it's broken, oh well.

I wouldn't have thought my name was so popular, but I guess 82 people is not that many.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are:
82
people with my name
in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

The Happenings of Late....

2006-10-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

So school is back in full swing, which normally means this page is kept up to date with all the fun things that happen. But that has not been the case for the past 6 months! To start what is to be a long recap of the past few months I'll post some pictures now because I'd rather do that than start my project report that is due in 2 days!

Going back in time to last weekend we arrive in Squamish. 8 of us drove up early Saturday for a day of climbing before the rain was due. We were knocking off the climbs at 'neat and cool' when Krystil and Nick rocked up to teach us all a lesson or two about how climbing's done. Then shortly after at the top of a climb messing with the anchor a familiar face pops over the top of an adjacent climb - Anja from Mountain Lake (story to follow). Now there were a whopping 15 of us! After a few climbs the original 8 of us headed over to Penny Lane. All our climbs of choice were taken so Piotr decided to try to climb a "5.6, 1 star, relavively unclimbed" climb called "Satan's Slit." These all should have rang some alarm saying not to climb it but we (he) tried anyway. An easy start led to me standing at the bottom for well over half hour with Piotr out of sight and curses emanating from somewhere above. After an eternity I hear "lower me slowly, very slowly" from Piotr, who decided to bail off of one moderately placed cam! With Piotr safely on the ground it was time for inspection: his pants were all covered in blood from his knees due to a "body jam" technique he made up trying to squeeze up the 1.5 foot wide crack! The afternoon was spent hiking up the back and rappelling from 2 ropes through the trees into the nasty crack. I had a hard time just rappelling through the crack, getting a little jammed at times. It definitely would have not been easy to climb! Note to climbers: this climb is not recommended!

Sunday was spend with my Mom and Greta. We drove down to Mt. Baker to so for a hike through the alpine. Unfortunately it turned out really rainy, but we hiked around for a few hours anyway. The colours of the alpine shrubbery were really beautiful, everything is changing colour now in preparation for winter. The blueberry bushes were especially pretty with their bright red colour!

Red Blueberry Bushes:

Where the flowers meet the rock:

mmm Blueberries!

A cool fence made out of skis we came across in Glacier!

Glaciers, Girls and Granite

2006-07-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

Right now, Greta, Ellen, Krystil and Alex are all getting ready for a massive month-long kayaking, mountaineering and biking trip this August. Preparations are underway for their trip of a lifetime. If you're interested in reading about it, check out their site at: http://glaciersgirlsandgranite.blogspot.com/

Bringing the beast back to life....

2006-07-03T21:53:00.000-07:00

Ok sorry for the extended absence from this blog thing, but I will try and post pics from summer activities here as I can and have the time. The past few months have been super busy since school ended, what with working and all, including some trips and cool activities. Watch here for posts as I'll post them on the date they happened, so scroll down.....

Critical Mass

2006-06-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

Critical Mass is a monthly bike ride where hundreds of cyclists take over the streets of Vancouver for an evening ride. This month's ride was a little different. Someone counted that over 1800 bikers turned up for a 2.5 hour long ride that took us over 5 bridges, all through downtown, down Hastings, and finally ending over at Kits beach for the sunset.

I've heard of Critical Mass many times before, but never gone and always wanted to. So finally I got myself organized and showed up with Greta, Mike, Ralph, and British Mike. The event completely exceeded all of my expectations....it was massive and loads of fun! It was so much fun I think I may just go the the July ride too!....

http://vancouvercm.blogspot.com/

The ride started at the Art Gallery downtown at 6:00pm. The entire city block was packed with cyclists:

We then rode through downtown and over the Granville street bridge:

The mass then continued to take over streets and briges. Next was Cambie:

Then we crossed the Georgia Viaduct and completely clogged up Hastings Street for kilometers:

We suffered one flat tire, and after about 10 minutes the group finally passed us. We caught up around Howe street, and then the group split near Denman. Half went to English bay, and the other half went up to Lions Gate bridge. There was no way we were going to miss the bridge!

Cycling through Stanley Park:

The mass then took over the ENTIRE bridge! All 3 lanes were blocked with over 1000 cyclists for over 15 minutes, it was awesome. I'm sure some drivers were pretty pissed off though:p

There's this strange thing that everyone does at at the top of bridges and that is raise your bike above your head, so of course we had to participate!

After riding back through the park and across downtown, the group headed over the 5th bridge, Burrard, and over to Kits beach for the sunset:

2006-04-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

If anyone still actually reads this page sorry for the lack of updates. Lots of cool stuff has happened in the past few weeks, and then with the drudgery of exams posting pictures and such will have to wait. But only 2 more days until the Stat Mech final and then FREEDOM!!

Little Australia

2006-04-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

Went to Whistler this past weekend for a day and a night for some mid-exam fun! It was probably not the best idea since I haven't even started my exams yet, but oh well, it was worth it! Various people left at various times but Matt, Greta and I drove up Friday afternoon to meet the other guys for a night out. We eventually ended up at Tommy Africa's with Julie, Andrew and Kim for some late night drinking and dancing to early 90's tunes. It was one of the most fun times I've had at a club in a looooong time!! But come 1-something-am it was time to head home. We took the bus but got off at the wrong stop, kilometers away from Emerald. So it was in interesting 30 minutes huddling together in the bus stop for the next bus!

Since it snowed all weeek Saturday turned out to be one of the best snow days at Whistler! The snow was light and fluffy! We met up with Mike and Simon and skiied until the very end of the day We had such a fun time we almost stayed the next night to go to a "show", but that would have been a bad idea in retrospect. Instead we stopped at the Brew Pub in Squampton for some good grub before heading back to UBC. A wicked weekend indeed!!

On the ski hill: Julie, Andrew, me, Greta, Simon, Mike, Matt:

Julie, Matt and Greta on the goldola:

Andrew, Kim and me heading up the mountain:

Round the World

2006-04-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

This is just me doing some more procrastination here. This always seems to happen around exam times....that I think about going on a long cycling trip. There are a few adventurous individuals who I follow that are in the progress of round the world trips. It makes for some very entertaining and inspirational reading, and I can't help but dream of one day doing something similar!

There are infinite possibilities when it comes to route planning, and there are a few trips that I have in mind for one day when the school's done and the student loans are paid for. But the two that really tug at my mind are the pan-american route and crossing Asia. But I guess the grand goal is the complete circumnavigation of the globe! But who has the time and/or mettle for that?

So I am thinking that either cycling right out of my front door in Delta and riding all the way South until I hit water or else crossing Asia sound pretty good right about now!

One of the trip ideas I have in mind is the red line below! I figure it would take about 2 years, plus or minus 6 months, going on what other people have done. The blue route across northern Africa would be really cool, but there are a few issues that need to be worked out in some of those countries first. Also the green line would be pretty intense, since not many people go to Oman and Yemen, and for some reason the Northern central Asian countries don't interest me so much.

This is all just day dreaming, so who knows if any of these dreams will happen, but who knows?! Ok back to pretending to study...

Squamish Chief

2006-04-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

After a pretty crazy day at Arts County Fair a short hike Saturday seemed like a good idea for some hangover relief. So at 10am the three Aussies (greta, kim, & greg), the three germans (max, fokko, & martin) and yours truly representing Canada drove up to Squamish for what is usually an easy hike! Well it was only 4 hours long, but damn hard in our sorry state. We managed to "summit" all three peaks and had some fun crawling over the super sticky rock. Despite feeling a little bit groggy all in all it was a pretty nice day!!

First we went over to third peak and had a peak over the edge:

Then over to second peak: Standing at the edge looking down over Squampton:

First peak seen from second peak:

Next came the fun ladders and rocks on our way to first peak:

The gang on top of first peak (so much red!): Kim, Greta, Me, Martin, Greg, Max, Fokko:

Last Day of Classes!

2006-04-08T23:17:00.000-07:00

At last, the day we've all been waiting for! Drinking started at noon and continued till past midnight. Much fun was had and trouble caused.

Tequilla shots at the penthouse roof/bbq around 12:30 getting the day started off right!

Surprisingly this year everyone seemed to manage to make it to the end of the concert at 8pm! Usually quite a few of us drop out early, due to, um, extenuating circumstances. Didn't see as many old friends as other years though, maybe I'm getting old? Also, managed to get pretty rocked in the mosh pit again, walking away with tons of cuts on my legs, many bruises and a sprained big toe and finger! And as an added bonus I lost my cell phone:(

2006-04-02T16:53:00.000-07:00

SIGNS THAT YOU ARE OF THE CANADIAN PERSUASION

You stand in "line-ups" at the movie, not lines.
You're not offended by the term, "Homo Milk"
You understand the phrase, "Could you please pass me a serviette, I just spilled my poutine"
You eat chocolate bars instead of candy bars.
You drink pop, not soda.
You know what it means to be on pogey.
You know that a mickey and 2-4's mean "Party at the camp, eh!!"
You don't hold your hand on your breast when you sing the national anthem.
You can drink legally while still a 'teen.
You know that francophones, Anglophones and allophones are not electronic devices.
You talk about the weather with strangers and friends alike.
You don't know or care about the fuss with Cuba, it's just a cheap place to travel to and has good cigars.
When there is a social problem, you turn to your government to fix it instead of telling them to stay out of it.
You're not sure if the leader of our nation has EVER had sex and don't want to know if he has!
You get milk in bags as well as cartons and plastic jugs.
Pike is a type of fish, not some part of a highway.
You drive on a highway, not a freeway.
You sit on a couch not a chesterfield - that is some small town in Quebec!
You know what a Robertson screwdriver is.
You have Canadian Tire money in your kitchen drawers.
You know that Thrills are something to chew and "taste like soap".
You know that Mounties "don't always look like that"
You read rather than scanned this list.

And one more:

You know you're from Canada when ...

You only know three spices: salt, pepper and ketchup.
You design your Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.
Canadian Tire on any Saturday is busier than the toy stores at Christmas.
You've taken your kids trick-or-treating in a blizzard.
Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled in with snow.
You think sexy lingerie is tube-socks and a flannel nightie with only 8 buttons.
The local paper covers national and international headlines on 2 pages, but requires 6 pages for hockey.
You know which leaves make good toilet paper.
You find -40c a little chilly.
The trunk of your car doubles as a deep freeze.
You attend a formal event in your best clothes, your finest jewelry and your Sorels.
You understand the Labatt Blue commercials.
You perk up when you hear the theme from "Hockey Night in Canada".

Storm the Wall meets Eurotrash!!

2006-03-31T00:07:00.000-08:00

I'll be blunt, this is ALL copied from Bob's blog because I'm too lazy right now! Thanks Bob!

Last night we found out that we made it to the campus wide men's finals for Storm the Wall. Looking at teams' race times we knew we will be bearing up from the rear. Since we improved our race time significantly last time we were pretty happy. Storming for the 3rd time just means we're getting our money worth. After a short discussion we decided to storm the wall Wue Crew style by dressing up like Eurotrash and have some stupid fun!!!

Let's just say Eurotrash isn't the prettiest sight of it all. The whole time we saw bunch ppl pointing and giggling behind our backs. While waiting for Evan and Pete to get to the wall we thought it would be awesome if we get the DJ to play the Numa Numa song, which was ridiculously popular when we were in Europe. Because the chaos going on we never managed to do that. However, just before Pete came the DJ started playing Numa Numa!!! Colin, Matt, and Evan then did the airplane dance while going to the wall! For mens' final the last team member had to get up the wall without anyone coming around the help him. We've never managed to do that during our wall clinic. Somehow we managed to get Matt over the wall very quickly in style. It was pretty impressive!

We finished the race in 15 mins but unfortunately got disqualified. There is a rule that only two team members can be at the top of the wall at one time. Matt was the last person to climb over and when he was on the top we had three guys on the wall, one too many.

We went down in UBC REC history as quite possible the worst dressed. The pics will tell the story. You've been warned, they're not pretty.

Running toward the wall, Colin doing the airplane dance...Evan going up the wall first Pete going up wearing short shortsBob going up with his ultra small t-shirt and running shorts (not really)Colin hanging down and Matt climbing over him

Matt: "Guys something's wrong, it appears there's major shrinkage! I don't think Kasandra's going to like this..."

Wue Crew Eurotrash Style!!!

Me: "Guys remember to stretch those sore muscles!"

This is going to be an excellent pic to blackmail Matt in 20 years...

Evan is well endowed!!

Storm the Wall 2006

2006-03-29T19:49:00.000-08:00

It's already the end of the year and that means Storm time!! (also many missed classes and much beer consumed) For the third straight year we have a few Fizz teams going strong.

This year we are team Wue Crew, named after our Wu Crew of 2004 from Wuerzburg, Germany where Colin, Peter and I lived together and much fun was had. Bob was up in Hannover during the same time and both he and Matt (all the way from Canada) came to visit, thus they are honorary members!
Team Members: Evan Morris, Matt Harriman, Peter Eugster, Colin Enderud, Bob Lai

Let's steal some stuff from Bob's blog!:
What's Storm the Wall? Storm the Wall is a 5-person relay event. 1 person swims for 225 yards, 1 person sprints for 450 meters, 1 person bikes for 2.8 km, 1 person runs for 1 km. Then finally all 5 members of the team has to climb over a 12-FOOT wall.

left to right: Me, Evan, Matt, Pete, Colin

Matt's teaching us how to stretch.

Here's us climbing the wall yesterday:

Matt going up the wallPete going up

*cough fatass* Evan going upColin on Bob going up

Tuesday Team time: 14:37
Wednesday Team time: 14:16
It's not the fastest time, but considering we're all out of shape and we beat our time from last year we're all pretty damn happy!!

Somehow we made our divisional finals and are racing tomorrow at 11:20 and judging from our competitors' times we'll be bringing up the rear!

Night out at the Kingshead

2006-03-28T00:17:00.000-08:00

Beer + 1AM + Kits Beach + Water + 1 crazy idea = wet in weird places + Embarrassment!
Good times! but 'nuff said for now. (no, it's not as it looks!)

Zoa Peak day trip!

2006-03-26T21:07:00.000-08:00

In trying to keep a good thing going me, Clint, Ellen, Bram and Ben headed out to Zoa peak for my third weekend in a row skiing. We left Saturday night and camped just Falls Lake 'road' by the Coquihalla summit. Two lessons were (re)learned that night: don't forget your skins and don't go camping with a leading thermarest. Here are the consequences:
1. Ellen forgot her skins so in the morning Clint drove her down to Hope at 6:30am. We spent all night thinking of "interesting" things to do in hope, such as reading all the magazines in the 7-11 news rack, getting drunk at 7am, or learning how to chainsaw carve in the chainsaw capital of Canada. In fact we came up with such an exhaustive list that we thought Ellen wouldn't have enough time to do them all so instead she caught a bus back to Vancouver after only an hour in Hope. What a pity.
2. Just because a week went by doesn't mean my thermarest would have headed itself from the previous weekend. Thus due to laziness in not patching it another very cold night was spent sleeping on the wonderful heatsink that is a thin layer of nylon on top of cold snow. Note to self: must fix thermarest this time!

So it was after eating breakfast on the side of the highway we started skiing at 9am. In under 2 hours we reached the peak of Zoa by following a lone skier who headed out minutes before us breaking trail in the fresh 10cm that fell overnight.

Skiing along the ridge to Zoa. This is the only real good picture before the weather ousted my photography skills rendering the other pictures mono-tint grey.

After just 2 runs it was time for lunch. Once again my perpetual laziness prevented me from going shopping so I thought this was a good occasion to break out a package of US army rations I had been holding on to for a long time. But more on this in another post when I will dive deep into the wonders of army issue bread and crackers.

mmmmm so yummy!

The afternoon was spent tracking up the powder in some really nice skiing. Different aspects yielded different results but we soon found the sweet spot where face shots and wipeouts were abundant.

Ben skiing: (wait I lied, one decent pic)

And now the many shades of greys...Bram below our lines down:

Me trying to get some air off a buried tree (it was a pretty big bump!)

...and the aftermath...a big huge crater for the landing!

Clint showing some style and putting me to shame (snowboarding is easier right, right?)

Last run of the day, Clint chose to stay on high ground....here's the rest of us coming back up to the ridge:

Soon we were all knackered and it was time to head home:( The Coquihalla highway below.

Bram, Ben and Clint with Thar behind during a break in the clouds on the way down:

Back at the car we noticed some interesting signs we missed the night before!

The best sign ever!

Packing up and out...

2006-03-22T19:53:00.000-08:00

So I was trying to find my Nuclear Physics prof's website by googling his name....looks like he has a pretty famous name!:
1. Javed Iqbal - A serial killer from Lahore
2. Javed Iqbal - Scholar, Justice and Muhammad Iqbal's son
3. Javed Iqbal - Theoretical Nuclear Physicist, Director of Science Co-op
Can you guess which one he is?

On another note, how do pictures like THIS get out?! Check Matt's page on March 22 for the embarrassment.

Brew Hut - VOC Trail Marking Trip

2006-03-19T23:27:00.000-08:00

Putting the skool work on hold for another week I went with 12 other VOCers to mark the new winter ski route into Brew Hut. Actually we were originally 15, but we couldn't find one girl in Vancouver and had to abandon her after 30 minutes of searching. And another girl turned back 2 hours into the hike to hitch back to Van, which is another story in itself!

Brew Hut was built by the VOC this past summer and the old winter route in is supposedly super dangerous so Scott set up a new route via Roe Creek. After meeting at the trailhead Scott and Tim shuttled people as far as their 4x4s would go up the snowy road. Then we started hiking and skiing up a long logging road used by a Cat skiing operation. A Cat passed us on the way up with the occupants taking photos of us "hardcore backcountry travellers"! Almost 2 hours later we reached the turnoff up a steep abandoned logging road. Scott broke the trail.

Looking back down the small logging road at the others coming up:

Soon we turned off into the forest and started the marking process. We split up into 3 groups of 4, once again with Scott breaking trail out front. Leapfrogging up the trail, each group would mark a section and then pass the next group. It was surprisingly a lot of fun! We put little orange reflectors on trees ever 20 meters or so, cutting branches as needed, which was a lot sometimes. I think we all overestimated the pace at which we could mark, the pace was pretty slow. But we all got a good section of the trail done before most people headed up to the hut at around 3:30pm. Tim, Christian, Reuben and I stayed back and finished marking the rest of the trail up to the lake making it to the hut just as the sun was setting around 6:45. We arrived super tired but it was really nice of Marko and the others to have some hot water for tea all ready for us!

Tim cutting the snow-encrusted branches off a tree in preparation to place a marker:

In the spirit of St. Patrick's day I lugged 2 large cans of Guinness up with me and every drop was worth it. Highly recommended on every trip!

Somehow with all the saws and cutters and tree branches involved in the marking process I popped my thermarest, so it was the second trip in a row spent sleeping pretty much on plywood. Eventually I'll figure this sleeping thing out.

Greta and Reuben in front of Brew Hut Sunday morning. Can you believe 12 people can sleep in the upstairs of this?!

With the trail marking basically done Sunday was spent having some fun! Aiden, Tim and Scott went out skiing super early, which left the rest of us to go climb Mt. Brew, a small summit (1757m) just north of the hut.

Some of us standing in front of our objective:

The route up crossed one scary-ish slope above some cliffs and then climbed for a bit up through snow covered alpine trees. Both the skiers and the snowshoers had to carry their chosen methods of travel up the peak.

Marc climbing up through the trees:

Less than 30 minutes from leaving the hut we "summited"!

Upsidedown on the top: Me and Greta doing a hand stand on top of Mount Brew. One of my favourite pics!:

We took a slightly steeper route down off of the peak wanting to avoid a potential avalanche slope. But Artem and I managed to ski the whole way down! (if you could call it skiing - it was more of a controlled fall with jumps over dropoffs)

Back at the hut it was only 10:30 so Christian, Artem and I went for a ski while the others snowshoed around. Directly from the hut you could ski down a gully about 330meters to a small lake. We followed Tim, Scott and Aiden's lines figuring they wouldn't lead off a cliff. The skiing was stellar - I think THE best run I've ever had! Ski resorts have nothing on untracked backcountry powder!

This is about 1/3 of the slope we came down. My line is middle-left one, Artem's is the one to the right with longer turns, and Christian's is the large sweeping one that looks like an uptrack.

We ate lunch in the bottom of the giant bowl. Christian lost his shovel handle on the way down so we started up the gully to get it but soon heard the screams of Scott from the forest above telling us we were skiing up into our doom, or at least potentially. So instead we followed their nice skin track up through the forest into the alpine. It took us an hour to get back up to the hut.

What goes down must come up! Hard work:

Back at the hut the small battalion of snowshoers was preparing to leave to get a head start on us going down. Here they are marching off into the distance:

With a few hours of daylight left Tim, Scott, Aiden and I went for one more run down the gully! Christian didn't come because he broke his tele binding on his second turn into the bowl, but more on that later.

Tim matching our lines down!

A 'quick' and 'painless' (cough) 40 minute sprint brought us back up to the hut.

After packing up we undertook the matter of Christian's bindings. A quick fix meant strapping his foot to his ski, which made for a very interesting trip down.

Leaving the hut with Blacktusk and Mt. Garibaldi in the distance:

Half way down the trail the straps broke on Christian's makeshift 'binding' so he ended up walking down through the forest which was actually easier and faster than skiing as the snow was a horrid sun crust that made for difficult skiing.

The steep logging road leading down to the Cat track was impossible to ski and had a huge drop off on the left - extremely scary. Tim was the first to crash with a nice faceplant which left him with goosebumps on his forehead. Not wanting to feel left out I soon faceplanted as well into the ice and got a nice bleeding nose! From there I had enough and carried my skies down to the cat track trailing blood behind. Another super icy and super scary survival ski down the cat track brought us eventually to the cars.

Back in Squamish we continued the 'tradition' of going to the brew pub, fitting, since we were at Brew Hut and climbed Mt. Brew! Good food and good beer as always, concluding another awesome trip! They seem to always be getting better and better!

And here's a shot of the whole crew of 13: Aiden, Marc, Artem, Kirsten, Yuri, me, Reuben, Sebastian, Marko, Scott, Tim, Christian, & Greta.

2006-03-18T00:10:00.000-08:00

Remember the show Cops?! Here's a really well done Star Wars parody. (only funny if you used to watch Cops)

Once again see y'all Monday, heading to Brew Hut for the weeknd!...

2006-03-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

Pictures from last weekend's trip to Marriot Basin are up in the gallery!

2006-03-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

Went out for dinner to the Banana Leaf and then to the Wolf and Hound for some beers, live music, and some pretty bad 'Irish' dancing by us. Puttin' the school work on hold for another night. Loads of fun!

Going clockwise: Kim, Greta, me, Julie, Andrew, Mike, Fokko, Kyttle and Max.

Marrit Basin/Wendy Thompson Hut

2006-03-13T22:50:00.000-08:00

In an effort to practise what we learned in Avy school, and also to get out skiing of course, Bram, Clint, Thomas and I planned a trip up to Marriot Basin for the weekend. Being our first real self-planned trip it went fairly well. The choice of weekend couldn't have been better either: low avalanche danger and some of the best powder I have ever skied!!

Bram, Thomas and Clint drove up thursday night past Pemberton and camped at the side of the Duffey Lake highway so they could get a headstart on the powder Friday. I drove up with Miranda and Liz at a (not so) bright and early 5am Saturday morning. After driving, skinning up and a leisurely ski in we made it to the hut at 1pm to find the guys just returning from a morning trip out.

Miranda on the trail to the hut:

Looking back down the trail at Liz and Miranda with some unnamed peaks lining the valley:

After a quick rest and lunch at the hut the 6 of us headed further up the valley sides for some skiing.

The group eating lunch in front of the Wendy Thompson Hut:

The hut is located at the end of a valley with steep sides that make for great skiing. This is a pic of one of the slopes we skied up then down. Our skin track is the switchbacks on the left and the tracks coming down are Clint, Thomas and Bram's from the morning. Some pretty sweet skiing!

Thomas, Bram and Liz at the top of the valley deskining. Mt Rohr is the mountain in the middle, surrounded by unnamed peaks:

A great afternoon of skiing culminated with some nice dinner followed by schnapps in a very crowded hut. The hut 'holds' 16 people, but is way larger than that. I think there were around 20 people there in all, with me being the youngest! The hut is extremely nice and cosy.

Normally it would have been an extremely nice and cosy night's sleep, but somehow I managed to roll off of my thermarest and spent the whole night freezing on the plywood floor. But in a semi-sleeping state I didn't realize this until 6am and we got up at 6:30! Oh well, 2 nights with less than 4 hours of sleep never hurt anyone.

Sunday we left early in minus 13 temperatures to go climb Mt Rohr, or so we thought. Heading halfway back down the trail we came to the approximate point where you have to start climbing the valley walls up through the forest. We jettisoned our unneeded gear such as sleeping bags and stoves in the middle of the forest and started up through the trees.

Shedding excess gear:

Before long we came to 2 options: either go up the super steep hill or go around it. After an argument we 'decided' to go up the super steep hill following some skin tracks. Well the skin tracks led us first in the wrong direction, then back across the hill and the finally back down to up part of the valley I wanted to go in the first place, wasting an hour. From here on we had to break our own trail in the deep powder. Wanting to avoid an avalanche slope our group 'made' another bad decision of trying to go up an impossibly steep slope through "the forest from hell". This fatal mistake took us three times as long to reach this lake we were aiming for, but finally we made it after much agony and cursing.

Clint and I at the unnamed lake:

Looking up the lake up our objective, Mt Rohr, the white mass to the left. Strangely enough we found this ski track of one lone skier who came down from the slopes above. We never could figure out how he got up there.

At this point it was pretty obvious we weren't going to make the summit another 600 meters above us so we climbed a small hill North of the lake which gave us a good view of the Marriot basin/valley from which we came. The hut is located roughly at the tree line below the pointy peak at the end of the valley. Saturday we skied up the slopes at the top of the photo.

Our day's efforts weren't all in vain as we were at a pretty good elevation and had to drop back into the valley. So after digging a snow pit which yielded reassuring results we hit the slopes with renewed vigour after being defeated. Once again the conditions were bomber, yielding the best powder I've ever skied: light, fluffy and deep! This is one of the slopes we came down. Miranda is the skier, and Liz is the small dot in the middle sitting down.

After tramping around in the forest for a while we found our gear, repacked and headed down the hills though dense forest - not the easiest thing to do with an overnight pack on. Much "turtling" was involved!

Completely beat after skiing for 9.5 hours in -7C we made is back to the car at 5:30 just as the sun was going behind the mountains. Not surprisingly we were the last cars at the trailhead.

Back in Pemberton we went to the only restaurant we could find, which happened to be a fairly swank place that looked like it belonged in Whistler. The food was damn good. Finally after a long drive we arrived back home at a modest 11:30pm completely wasted from the weekend. Depending how you look at it, it was another successful trip completed, and always loads of fun!!

2006-03-10T22:44:00.000-08:00

Have a great weekend y'all! I'm going skiing, self-propelled style!!....

Before I Die...

2006-03-08T00:05:00.000-08:00

As usual I was supposed to be studying but was doing anything but. I was cleaning up my computer in an attempt to postpone thinking about my 3 looming midterms and I came across some old files from the summer, one being this list I made this past summer that I completely forgot about: "Things to do before I die". I know it's lame....a very junior high thing to do in capp class, but here ya go anyway, because posting this is easier than real work....skool. And plus, I recently was able to cross one off!! The others will take a bit more work.
What's on your list?

File: Things To Do Before I Die.doc

Background: List started June 2005 while sitting in the lab at NUS supposedly working. I guess at the time I felt like I was not making the most of my time there, but also simultaneously felt I was indeed “living the life that I wanted to live” and wanted to keep doing so.
Motivation: To make life more interesting. To always be pushing my personal limits. To live the life I want to live.
Goal: Try to complete at least one item a year, and always add more items. Ideally have a wide variety of items and not focus on the easy to think up ‘adventure items’.

1. Be fluent in another language (Spanish?)
2. Cycle all the way across a country (hopefully not a tiny one)
3. Travel around Central/South America
4. Trek in Nepal & Tibet
5. Go to a war torn county to see firsthand (there are reasons)
~~6. Bungy Jump~~ – completed August 2005
7. Sky Dive from a plane
8. Paraglide through some mountains (Alps?)
9. Base Jump off a cliff
10. Hitchhike to some place far away
11. Go on a long bike trip, long enough to question mettle midtrip
12. See Ankor Wat
13. Do a back flip
~~14. Learn how to backcountry ski~~ – completed January 2006
15. Scuba dive
16. See the pyramids (Egypt and Aztec)
17. Fall in love and stay there
18. Relearn or learn a new instrument
19. Take a year off
20. Run a marathon
21. Do another adventure race (multi-day race)
22. Fly a helicopter/plane
23. Live abroad again for more than 6-12 months
24. Have a country count higher than my age just once
25. Always be sincere (lifelong, and yes, lame)

Getting a good start on the week...

2006-03-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

A very fun albeit very unproductive weekend led to me getting a zero head start on this week's mondo workload: 6 assignments and 3 midterms, not to mention getting ready for next weekend's ski trip! The action packed weekend unfolded as follows:

Friday a ton of us (me, Danielle, Nick, Kathryn, Bob, Mike F, Kung, Ralph, Mike K + GF, Alex + GF) went to the Rugby club before going to a Vancouver Giants game. We were all so wiped from the week some of us (bob, mike) even fell asleep at the game!

Saturday I spent with Matt playing with fancy gear at MEC. Saturday night Scott and I went out to the Korn concert at GM place. Somehow we managed to get second row center tickets too! I haven't listened to Korn since high school but it was almost like a high school reunion seeing old friends there.

Slept in Sunday, tried to do work all day to no fruition, went out for sushi with Kim, Greta, Fokko, Juli and her BF. So no work done!

It's going to be a "fun" week...

On another note since I got this email from a few people I'll post it here! Looks like loads of fun, too bad I have a MIDTERM!!:@ at the same time:

Remember in the days of your youth when you would gather a bunch of friends together, divide into two sides and run around the playground trying to catch each other and each other's flags?

Well, now you can do it with a bunch more (new) friends, and about a 100X bigger playground.

You are cordially invited to CAMPUS WIDE CAPTURE THE FLAG. From Agronomy to the Highway, from East Mall to West Mall, this promises to be spectacular. Some of you may remember a similar endeavour a couple of summers ago. Well, we're aiming to make this even bigger, with about 4 times the people.

So mark your calendars, and show up at the corner of Main Mall and Univ. Blvd at 4pm on March 10th, 2006.

All you need to do is SHOW UP, everything else will be taken care of. Bring your friends, bring your classmates, bring your enemies.

If this one goes off without a hitch, be on the lookout for a game in Kits in the near future.

PS: playing in the rain is no fun. this shit is weather permitting. you can't run with an umbrella, and despite what your mom says, you look totally dorky in your gortex.

2006-03-02T18:03:00.000-08:00

This is what happens when you put a pop in your freezer to make it cold but then forget about it and go out. Cool!

2006-02-28T23:43:00.000-08:00

Welcoming the new AMS president! LINK

Instead of Studying...

2006-02-28T23:05:00.000-08:00

Sudan man marrys a goat!! LINK

STOP!

Make sure you tighten them bolts! LINK

Avy School: Day 3

2006-02-26T23:08:00.000-08:00

Day 3 of Avalanche School took us up to Whistler at a bright and early 5:30am! The roads were covered in snow so we were only a small 15 minutes late due to Clint and his Impreza Turbo (the others were an hour late). Another hour long setback later, due to losing someone on the mountain, brought us to the 2 hour late premeeting, where we discussed today's conditions. We then skinned up Flute Bowl into the backcountry to go over route finding and other junk. It wasn't the easiest task with over a foot of fresh powder. The day was spent skiing up, doing more snow tests, and doing a multiple barrial simulation. We got one bomber run in on untracked waist deep powder before heading back in bounds. Going down the runs after the mountain had closed was an eerie feeling. After a long summarizing sessions over at Base 2, followed by a TEST we got our certificates and quickly headed down to Squamish for a round and burgers at the Brew Pub! 17 hours later I am home and still haven't started studying for my nuclear midterm tomorrow!

Bram doing the shovel shear test on a column of snow:

Me doing the Rutschblock test:

Skiing back into the resort area:

Avy School: Day 2

2006-02-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

After the classroom session Thursday night Avalanche School took us to Mt. Seymour for day 2. We met early (7:30) at a coffee shop at the base of Seymour going over the day's objectives and plan. Gear check revealed that one person (name not mentioned) forgot her skins, and another his trasceiver, oy! After sorting gear out we thankfully took Mystery chair up, saving us a long hike, and then continued to ski up to around First Pump Peak. We spent the day learning about what slopes to avoid in what conditions, safest route finding, trasceiver locations and how to evaluate the snowpack through various tests. After 8 or so hours it was back to the coffee shop for some debriefing.

The group digging a pit to test the snow layers:

2006-02-22T21:44:00.000-08:00

Here's a really cool adaption of google maps. You can zoom in on a location and see what pictures people have uploaded. Interesting, but needs more photos.

2006-02-22T21:35:00.000-08:00

It's a sad day in Canadian hockey...

Word of the Day: Sastruga

2006-02-21T23:12:00.000-08:00

Today's word of the day is Sastruga:
A sastruga or zastruga (collective noun: sastrugi or zastrugi) is a member of a body of sharp irregular grooves or ridges formed on a snow surface by wind erosion and depostion, and found in polar regions. Recent spottings of Sastruga have been on the Garibaldi Neve and surrounding snowpacks, where the phenomema is ubiquitous and can be described as "a bitch to ski".

Breaking News...

2006-02-21T12:14:00.000-08:00

I just got my letter of offer from PBA Engineering confirming my job for this summer, and it will indeed be in Vancouver afterall!! Whoohoo! It's been over 2 years since I've had a summer at home, so it's going to be really nice. And as an added bonus the letter stated that "Should you be required to work in the Victoria office, the cost of accomodation, meals and travelling expenses would be covered"!

2006-02-20T22:59:00.000-08:00

Loads of pictures from the Neve are posted here!

Garibaldi Neve Traverse

2006-02-20T21:31:00.000-08:00

To cap off an unproductive reading break I went with the VOC to ski the Garibaldi Neve for 4 days. The ski traverse is over 45 km long up over high alpine lakes and across massive glaciers in the mountains between Squamish and Whistler. It was definitely one of the best trips I've ever done!

We started Thursday at 6am, but after shuttling cars to the other end of the trail we didn't get started until 10am. Snow on the unplowed road meant that we had to start skiing almost 2km from the trailhead proper, which added almost an hour. To make things worse, most of the trail up to Garibaldi Lake had patchy icy snow, so we had to carry our skis for a few hours up the 36 switchbacks! This part of the trip almost ruined me and I was close to turning back because of my leg. After 3 hours of this we put the skis back on and skied through the trees above the barrier up the to lake. After 6 hours of hard work it was 4pm and a crazy minus 17C when we started the 4.5km lake crossing which took over 90 minutes. We reached the Burton Hut just as the sun finished setting.

Skiing through the trees up Rubble Creek Trail:

On the edge of Garibaldi Lake preparing for the COLD and WINDY crossing:

Skiing across Garibaldi lake:

We were rewarded with a good view of Black Tusk from the lake:

Cooking dinner inside the hut:

The small but cozy Burton hut on the edge of Sphinx Glacier, our home for 2 nights:

Friday was spent eating as much food as we could, burying the hut in snow for insulation, and contemplating whether we were going to attempt the crossing the next day. High winds Friday were giving us second thoughts about our strength and condition of our blistered feet. Friday night we somehow contaminated all of our pots and drinking bottles with kerosene, despite the fact that all our stoves use naphtha. It was a little frustrating melting snow 3 to 4 times to finally get a relatively kerosene free litre of water each.

We also went for a ski for a few ours up Sphinx Glacier. A few people made it all the way up to Deception Col, but Angela, Greta and I opted to turn around with Roland. This is a picture of Angela skiing down from the col:

Despite our best efforts in waking up at 5am Saturday, the cold said otherwise. We finally left the hut closer to 8am and started crossing to one side of the lake in -19C temperatures! We climbed up that massive hill at the end of the lake, a scary combination of kicking steps and traversing on edges:

After a few hours of skiing we crested the col between the Glacier Pikes. Garibaldi lake is now a LONG ways down! Burton hut is around the corner in the top right of the lake:

We then were rewarded by a nice expansive downhill across Warren Glacier. A bit short though. We skied down from the col in the middle back of the picture, a lot farther than it looks:

Then it was back to climbing hard up through crevasses and seracs up onto the neve. As always the slope is a lot steeper than it looks. Those are seracs on the left!:

My nose picked a perfect time to start bleeding as I was standing on a steep slope above a crevasse, probably due to elevation/dryness, leaving a trail behind me. Fun!

At the high point of the traverse we ate lunch directly below the peak of Mount Garibaldi!

After 2 days of uphill it was finally time for some downhill down the glacier! All of the snow in this picture of on top of glacier! Unfortunately it wasn't the best skiing though as it was extremely wind battered and crusty, but fun nonetheless. We also ran into a party of 5 heading in the reverse direction to Burton hut.

A very nice pic of Mike on the glacier with Mt Garibaldi behind!:

The end of the glacier dropped off into Ring Creek, which meant some serious crevasse dodging. The wave looking pieces of snow are burried crevasses. Opal Cone is the giant mound to the left.

Once down in the depths of Ring Creek we found a snow bridge and had to kick steps to get out of the very steep valley sides. It was a little hair raising!:

Above Ring Creek was pretty sketch too. The sides were extremely steep gulleys over cliffs. Oker dropped his thermarest and had to go all the way down to get it. And I fell and almost slid down a gulley, damn scary.

In the trees above Ring Creek....VERY steep!:

But finally after 9 hours of skiing and bonking right before the last 20 minute uphill we made it to Elfin Hut!

Because of its proximity to Squamish and easy trail in (the trail we went down, not the one we came from) the hut was completely packed. The hut has 30 something beds and around 60 people were staying there Saturday night. We all ended up sleeping on the kitchen floor and getting a bad night's rest.

Kim, me and Greta sitting on the floor:

Sunday was a nice leisurely ski down through Red Heather meadows (only after 90 minutes of uphill/traverse) and then a treacherous bobsled run of a trail down to the parking lot, followed by a few hours of car shuttling to end the most awesome of trips!!

Waiting at the side of the road for our shuttler's to arrive:

What a wicked trip! I'm hooked!!

Project Fail Supposed Grad Year:

2006-02-15T22:06:00.000-08:00

To add to an already academically unsuccessful reading week in which next to no reading was done I am taking off on a ski trip early tomorrow morning with 9 or so other members of the VOC. The plan is to cross the Garibaldi Neve in 3 days, with a day to ski around once we are in the mountains! Starting from Rubble Creek we are going to ski up the Barrier trial to Garibaldi lake, and cross it to Sphinx hut. After a day of rest and skiing around this end of the lake we are going to cross the neve to the Elfin hut in one big 20km push, sleep there, and then ski down Sunday!!

The weather looks like it's going to be nice, but COLD! The Whistler Alpine forcast reads:
Thursday:
Mountain Top Winds East 40 To 70 Km/H.
Clearing Early In The Morning.
Alpine Temperature Falling To Minus 19 In The Afternoon.
brrrrr

See y'all bleary eyed and sunburnt in midterms next week...

Weekend Wrap Up

2006-02-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

What a week! The weekend-long culmination of E-week began with True Engineer on Friday afternoon, which involved each club building a bridge out of a limited supply of stirsticks, straws and elastic bands. Of course Fizz won with our ingenuity and force in numbers, and not cheating helped too (MTRL guys). Our bridge held the most amount of water before catastrophic failure.

Then there was Red Knight Friday night at the Cheeze, which broke the normal Cheeze stereotype in that there were actually girls there! The place was completely packed, both inside and out, with a band playing outside. And as a bonus, if you wore a red beer was only 25 cents!! Which ends up working out to free when people buy you beer to borrow your jacket! Way too many beers and boat races later we wound up in a drunk fight in front of the SUB. Well it wasn't really a fight, more like a pushing match of 5 on 5 with a dozen security guards running out of the SUB to break it up. Surprisingly fun since no one was hurt, but I somehow got a few bruises and I don't normally bruise. Eventually we made it downtown to the Yale but balked at the eintritt and got some poutine instead and headed home. Somehow instead of heading home I met some random people at the village and ended up staying out until the wee hours.

Saturday night was EBall, the annual Engineers' Ball. It was absolutely loads of fun! It was great to see so many people out too, and the dinner was delicious. After dinner Fizz was awarded trophies for both the fabulous ball model the 3rd years made and also for winning EWeek thanks to the tremendous effort Fizz put in all week long! Fizz hasn't won EWeek since 2001 so it was nice to see our name on the trophy again! The rest of the night was spent in the EUS hospitality suite thanks to Peter! You needed a pass to get in and each club only gets 4 so we spent a lot of the time trying to shuttle people in. The open bar somehow lasted well into the next day, which made for a really fun night! Met lots of people from all over there, including having a pretty good chat with Spencer Keys and also met some engineers from UVIC, one of which might be a coworker this summer too!

Fizz 5th year guys:

The Fizz ball model team and winners:

5th years with our winning trophy!:

The entire Fizz battalion:

Paul Oakenfold - time of your life:

2006-02-11T15:43:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning with a head full of snow. was it a dream.
Picked up me body for the ride of a lifetime is what it seemed.
Hope got me started. put you to the centre, so it seemed.
Don’t you hurry ’cause you’ll reach your goals, is what it reads.
Got caught in the rain and it washed all my senses down the drain.
Drop me a line when you’re given the time and we’ll talk some more.

This is the time of you life
This is the time of you life now

Photography

2006-02-08T18:57:00.000-08:00

There is beautiful scenery nearly everywhere in the world, and China is no exception. LINK

Okay, get all the jokes about Mexico out of your system. Done? Check out these aerial photographs of Mexico City: Rows and rows of government housing and some pretty interesting architecture and scenes. LINK

Skulk Night

2006-02-08T00:51:00.000-08:00

The annual Engineering Week here at UBC officially started this past Sunday with Skulk Night. Ceremonies get underway at 11pm Sunday, in which the rules are read and then club boat races take place. A 'boat race' is basically 4 guys from each program lined up along a table and the teams compete to see who can drink 4 large beers the fastest! Needless to say, Fizz lost horribly, and I wasn't really any help either. The winning teams were clocked in at around 17 seconds for all 4 beers!! After the reading of the decree and breaking of a beer bottle E Week is officially on and the "lists" are handed out to departments at midnight. Each team has until 7am to get as many of the items completed to earn as many points as possible. The items on the "list" range from easy to the absurd to the very illegal and impossible. The most important thing to remember is to protect the list at all costs, and this involves eating before letting the police get a copy! Heavy consequences befall whoever divulges the list!

Some of the items on the list cannot be mentioned, such as various pranks and stolen items, but the vast majority are harmless tasks that usually involve self imbarassment or nudity! Some pictures of the more tame ones are below.

I ended up staying up all night, from about 9am Sunday to 6pm-ish Monday night when I completely fell asleep despite my radio. After the red-eye breakfast Monday at 8am the rest of the day wasn't too much fun. I only made it to 1 out of 4 classes and had to start and finish a nuclear physics assignment due that afternoon! Also, waking up at 2am Tuesday and watching a movie wasn't much fun either.

Boat races/beer chugging:

Reading of the Decree:

Now the pranks....

4 unnamed naked guys in a fountain:

24 paper boxes:...

"Flashing":
(pic removed at Pete's request!)

Hanging a bike on a street lamp:

Me naked in the middle of the intersection of W. Broadway and Granville!! (for the 3rd try too!!)(not the best pic uploaded, for obvious reasons):

Me in the back of a police car, thankfully not for the previous stunt!:

5 guys in a phone booth:

Unnamed Fizzer jumping off the 10-meter naked!!:

McWedgie courtesy of Jodi:

Human pyramid at Science World:

Mini Cairn hanging from the flag pole:

A little present for Forestry!:

2006-02-05T00:45:00.000-08:00

Some pretty cool artwork! They get better further down the page.

Bowlin'

2006-02-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

Went bowling last night with Peter, Jodi, Natalie, Ian, Stacy, Bob and Mike!

Jodi and Stacy:

Peter the professional bowler:

2006-02-04T10:16:00.000-08:00

Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crow broke off their 5 month engagement! LINK...it's nothing but bad relationship luck for this guy.

Rainfest, aka Pool Pandemonium

2006-02-03T20:38:00.000-08:00

Rainfest 2006 was last night and it was without a doubt the best yet!!
Way too many blurry pics are posted HERE!
Team Fizzification: Ralph, Natalie, Cheryl, Martina, Bob, Jill, Me and Edward:

Cannonball in the hottub!

More pics from Red Heather!!

2006-02-03T19:05:00.000-08:00

I just got some more/better pictures of last weekend from Kim and Simon!! Some of these are pretty cool, particularly of the inside of our gigantic underground snow cave mansion, and also the ones of us freezing! Um, Yeah, so here it goes....

The "van gang" at the trail head: Juli, Andrew, Simon, Max, Kim, Moi, Greata & Fokko.

The view from camp, Mt Garibaldi:

Me and Simon taking a break INSIDE the snowcave about 2 meters underground during construction!:

Here's it's night time and we're all freezing trying to cool:

Juli and I trying ever so hard to keep warm:

Dinner time!!:

Now we're inside our snow mansion, all 7 of us plus gear!! Too bad it wasn't large enough to get a whole group shot:

Deer in headlights: Me, Kim and Andrew looking a little disoriented:

Tim makes a house call:

2006-02-03T00:31:00.000-08:00

You're a Three-Toed Sloth!

Reputed as being lazy and even shiftless, you take a very relaxed
approach to life. It's not that you don't want to do anything, it's just that it's so
fascinating to hang out in the clouds and while away the hours grabbing a light snack.
It's hard for you to understand why the rest of the world doesn't just chill out a
little. You love roller coasters that take you upside-down.

Take the Animal Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

2006-02-03T00:26:00.000-08:00

You're Emory University!

You've been an intrepid explorer at times, sometimes going
it alone in places that seemed remote. But there is method in your madness,
and really method in almost everything you do. You're very thin, and some
have even called you skeletal. While you make claims about being
undefeatable in games, people like to point out that it's just because you
refuse to play. People have come to you looking for Stonehenge, but this is
a mere semantic mistake.

Take the University Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

(test originally taken by Steph)

VOC Winter Longhike!!!

2006-01-29T20:18:00.000-08:00

Had an awesome time with the VOC this weekend on the annual "Winter Longhike" trip to Read Heather Meadows near Squamish! In all, 20 something people went but I didn't see them all much. We sort of broke off into groups but had a sort of pow-wow Saturday night in the "snow kitchen!".

Seven of us: me, Andrew, Kim, Greta, Simon, Juli and Max all left from UBC early Saturday morning and drove up the Ring Creek logging road until the van could go no further. From there it was a 1.5km hike up to the parking lot proper, and the start of the actual trail. 5km and a lot of sweat later we made it to Red Heather Hut and continued on a little more up into the Meadows. The rest of the afternoon was spent building our mansion of a snow cave. It took us over 4 hours to build 2 caves, but one ended up having a boulder right in the middle so all 7 of us CRAMMED into the big cave for a very cozy night! Night time was spent cooking dinner in our snow kitchen with the rest of the VOC, socializing and trading war stories of the grind up. There was not to be much merry making as we were all dead tired and starting to freeze so the 7 of us squeezed back into the cave for a warm night's sleep! It was nice to be able to sleep in for once without an alarm blaring! We woke up to a beautifully clear day with a good view of Mount Garibaldi right out of the cave entrance! A very lazy breakfast was made even more fun telling the others of our warm night in the mansion as they woke up wet and cold in their tiny 3 man caves (mean, i know). After, we all did a little practice using a transceiver by burying one and then others would try to find it - a lot harder than it sound when your only feedback is little faint beeps. Around noon we finally packed up our things, jumped on our snowcaves, and slowly left. The snowshoers were the first to ditch camp, followed by me and Greta on skis, and then the more experienced skiers behind us. The trip down was definitely the highlight of the trip. It's amazing how a 4 hour uphill turns into a quick hour long downhill! Back at the parking lot we were greeted with a semi-plowed road, which meant a very long hike carrying our skis back down to the van. Greta and I walked about a km before some very nice snowshoers put us in the back of their truck the rest of the way!!

(The only downsides of the trip are the 4 blisters per foot my new AT boots gave me as a welcome gift, and a pulled hip flexor that is both incredibly painful and impossible to walk up stairs without picking up my leg!)

Some pictures of the weekend are posted here. There will be alot more as my camera wasn't working the first day so the other's have a ton more pics!

Most of the gang: Max, Greta, Me, Simon, Julia, & Andrew.

Tim just walking around camp casually:

A bunch of people doing transceiver practise with the Squamish valley in the background:

Packing up outside the cave:

Kim vs the cave roof!:

Greta skiing down, and then....:

Greta falling down!:

Me skiing on the trail down:

Hiking down the (sadly) plowed logging road back to the van:

Skiing/Camping/Partying!

2006-01-27T23:12:00.000-08:00

Going away with the VOC at 6am tomorrow up near Squampton. We're skiing in about 5km and then digging snow caves to sleep in (sans tents). Hopefully there's enough snow to get a good shelter! Catch y'all later!

(pic stolen from VOC web site)

2006-01-25T00:35:00.000-08:00

Jack Bauer Facts!

2006-01-23T23:39:00.000-08:00

Without getting overly political and pissing people off I just want to say that if we have to have a Conservative government I am just so glad it's a minority and not a majority lest we become the 51st state. Who out there voted conservative anyway? I only know of one (1) person total!

My home riding was yet another super close "swing" riding with the three big parties all within 1500 votes. I wanted to vote in it since it was conservative last time, but the powers that be didn't send my ballot in time and consequently put me in the position of commiting a federal offence!

Here's a cool results interface.

Celebrity Hissy Fit

2006-01-20T00:05:00.000-08:00

A funny article on Sean Penn's troubles to obtain an email address with his name in it. Looks like someone thinks he is the center of the universe. And apparently this is not the first time!....

"This was not the first time Penn has expressed anger over the difficulty of obtaining a Sean Penn-specific e-mail address. He made headlines last year when he refused to appear on the set of Columbia Pictures' All The King's Men for two days after he learned that SPenn@sonypictures.com had been taken by video assist operator Steve Penn."

Penn admitted that the painful experience of not being able to communicate freely through e-mail had its upside.

"Oh, certainly, I identify more strongly with the poor, war-battered youth of the Middle East."

Penn invited the perpetrator to accompany him to Iraq, to "learn a hard, real-life lesson about the devastation wreaked by false pretense, gross injustice, and misapplication of power."

24: Things Jack Bauer Won't Say....

2006-01-19T23:58:00.000-08:00

If you are a 24 addict you'll probably find these damn funny. And if not, start watching this show! As you know Jack is a bit of a badass and so far there's nothing he won't do or say, until now...
(and to give due credit, stolen from here)

"Everybody Calm Down...I Brought Enough Snackwells for Everybody"

" If You Put a Gun to My Head, I'd Have to say Cloris Leechman was my Favorite Actor in Spanglish"

"More Mayonnaise!"

"Who Read My Journal? Seriously, That's Private."

(Aftering Injurying Himself) "Samson's Cat...That Smarts!"

"I Can't Believe Edgar has More MySpace Buddies than Me."

"I'm so Bummed, I forgot to TIVO Skating with the Stars Last Night?"

"Anyone See My Troll Pen?"

"Happy Birthday, I Knitted This For You"

"Who's Djing at Liquid Tonight?"

"My First Puppy was named Snuggles and My 2nd puppy is Name Sparkles"

"I want to be in Charge of Secret Santa This Year"

"Guys I just took this Internet Quiz that says the OC Character I'm Most similiar too is Caleb, Ugh"

"These Ugg Boots aren't as comfortable as My Last Pair"

"I Put some of My Famous Risotto in Fridge, Help Yourself"

and Finally

"Mr. President, Can We Just Hug?"

2006-01-19T00:09:00.000-08:00

2006-01-16T17:48:00.000-08:00

Another one!! This time the credit goes to Peter for the nice shot!

2006-01-15T11:04:00.000-08:00

Pictures Keddie and Bobo took of Broomball are posted here!

2006-01-14T14:37:00.000-08:00

I am never drinking again!

Broomball was sweet!!

2006-01-12T22:29:00.000-08:00

2006-01-12T00:55:00.000-08:00

I like beer, I like beer,
but drinking too much can make you act a tad bit queer;
and if this is a problem, so I hear,
that you must to Montreal steer;
but be sure not to leer,
lest all your beer be turned into kefir;
and it will become yet another inhere,
a fragmented reminder of your once glorious beer.

Very Amusing (and immature!!)

2006-01-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

Pornolize your website today!! Here's mine translated into filth. I particularly like how it adds middle names to my links of the left! (Disclaimer: This link is definitely not for the easily offended)

2006-01-10T23:37:00.000-08:00

"In the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes." - Andy Warhol

This isn't fame but it's kinda cool, check this out!
This site posts a new picture or quote everyday that is reader submitted and inspires one to travel.

Mt Baker Trip/Debauchery

2006-01-10T22:59:00.000-08:00

So a bunch of us (moi, Peter, Jodi, Ruth, Ian, Rory, Bob, Mike, Aviv & Mark) rented a 'luxurious' cabin at Glacier, Washington this past weekend so we could hit the mountain hard for 2 wicked days of skiing and boozing before the semester got into full swing (and also to take our minds off the looming 479 project deadline).

So Friday afternoon we skipped class and drove South to be hassled by the border guards who thoroughly searched our van and confiscated our dinner: oven-ready pizzas!! Man were we ticked, especially when we bought the exact same ones in a store 100 meters from the border! I thought they lifted that ridiculous ban on our Alberta beef.

On a more positive note I never realized how wonderfully cheap beer down there is, less than $10 CDN for a case of domestic beer!! Sweet Jesus I'm moving to the states! Well just joking on that one, I'd (implied loosely) never do that, but I do appreciate a good deal on beer.

Friday night consisted of us eating out oven-ready pizzas with copious amounts of beer while we bitched about the border guards. We then all tried to simultaneously fit into the hot tub and emptied about half of its water in the process, what fun! Fast forward through a mediocre day of skiing, followed by repeating Friday nights activities with possibly a little more alcohol and good cheer we get to Sunday, the day our powder prayers were answered, to the tune of 7 fresh inches!! Sunday was one of the best days I've had skiing in the loooong time. It was so good that Mark and I even skipped on a lunch break to stay out to play a little longer. All of the runs were steep and deep, much to our liking. I think we even managed to do every black and double black (there are only 2) on the mountain over the weekend. We skied hard and took numerous falls to prove it, especially on the steep double blacks where the snow cover was too slim to cover everything and left us in some pretty tricks situations. A truly awesome day of skiing had to come to an end though and we all packed up to make the trip back to Sumas to stock up on cheap, cheap alcohol! This time the (Canadian) border guards were super nice and pretty much waved us through, but we were good little kids and only brought back out limit in beer!!

Check out more pics of the weekend HERE!!

Some of the gang getting ready to go skiing early Saturday morning. From left to right: Aviv (aka the smuggler), Ian (with his eyes open surprisingly!), Ruth, Mike, Rory, Bob und ich.

Ready to rip but not ready for a photo.

Fresh Power everywhere Sunday!!!

Taking a lunch break in the lodge Saturday:

Me and Bob in front of our gloriously growing 'Tower of Power':

Some Ali-G Goodness!

2006-01-09T23:27:00.000-08:00

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2005/ali-g-drugs-p1.php

2006-01-06T00:58:00.000-08:00

A small battalion of us are off to Mt Baker tomorrow for one last weekend of fun before the grind starts. So we're skipping class tomorrow afternoon and breaking out the alki first thing we're state side...catch y'all later!

Random Misplaced Whistler Pics

2006-01-05T23:56:00.000-08:00

Got a few more random pics from Alli from Whistler and I'm bored so ya...

Matt, Me, Taylor, Mike at Tommy Africa's:

Amber, Tyler, Alli and one of Alli's friends:

Awwww: Alli & Taylor

Happy New Years!

2006-01-05T01:00:00.000-08:00

A little late but here are some pics from New Years 2006!! Since I'm too lazy to post much check out Bob's page for more pics and smart-ass comments! It was actually a super fun night that started with me and Matt realizing we had nothing to do, but then we realized there were indeed a lot of people with nothing to do. Put two and two together and you have a PARTY! (considerable mention goes out to Taylor who beer bonged a few too many times and also to Matt, who was the guest nobody wants but he was in his own house) (no considerable mention goes out to Allison who came all the way down from Whistler but was too good to party with us but still crashed here; jk though)

"The Guys" - Happy New Year:

Taylor hitting the bong for the 35th time before visiting the back lawn:

Me and Matt after some more beer bong action. Matt always seems to be taking off clothes and putting random ones back on:

And here's 1 for Peter, the more astute drunk (anyone else think Peter should move to Montreal to improve his openmindedness? and I don't mean that in a 100% queer way folks; and this is just a horrible inside joke that only the people at the Wolf and Hound last night are going to get, but anyway):

that's all you're gettin folks, check out Bob's page for the more embarrassing pics

and one last HOHOHO and a glass of Egg-nog until next year!...

2006-01-03T23:41:00.000-08:00

Well Christmas Holidays are already over!:(...Lots to say that will be left unsaid. Now it's back to school again (yay?). Hope you all had a wonderful break and are well rested and ready to begin the grind yet again. Also, stay tuned for embarrassing New Years photos!

As a side note: went to the Wolf and Hound tonight with Peter, Jody, Ruth, Bob, Stacy and Aviv and his roommates. Had a nice night in one of the best pubs around (gotta love Celtic ale). mmmmm I love beer.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

2005-12-25T13:48:00.000-08:00

Wicked Weekend in Whistler!

2005-12-22T23:52:00.000-08:00

After a few good days of partying after exams Matt, Mike (my brother) and I drove up to Whistler for a few days. Alli just moved to Whistler with her friend Amber and they were gracious enough to let us 3 slobs sleep on their floor, eat their food, mess up their place and hit on their friends. We only got 1 day of skiing in and what a good day it was. Whistler is suffering super poor conditions right now - everything black and up is basically a rock field, and there's lots of ice, but that didn't stop us from having an awesome time. We met my roommate Taylor at the lifts early and went hard all day until closing. Spent quite a few runs in the terrain park and tried rails for the first time, but that only ended in many crashed and ripped pants. I think I may be addicted to the half pipe now though!

Either Mike or Taylor walking through the flats at the end of Blackcomb Glacier:

It was Amber's brother's bday so at night a whole bunch of people went out for dinner then out partying. The only problem was my brother is not quite 19 so it took some careful ID switching and bouncer distracting to get him in clubs, but getting him drunk was worth it. Plus, he out drank Matt!! The camera didn't come out until later when most people had left and after alcohol showed up, so the pics aren't too good:(

Whistler apparently has a highly enforced fine for drinking in the village. So we did the next logical thing and ended up drinking in an underground carpark!

Tyler, me, Mike & Taylor sometime around when we should have gone home:

Alli and Mike on the dance floor (my mom's gonna love this):

Monday night there was a ton of freezing rain, everything was covered in a centimeter of solid ice, just check out the van:

The roads were so slippery we couldn't even walk to the car without holding on to something! Driving was super tough, and unfortunately it got the best of Alli. Just down the hill from her place she slid the wago into a ditch!:

And finally, a trip isn't a trip without Matt embarrassing himself! WTF Matt??!!:

Whistler Bound!

2005-12-17T17:46:00.000-08:00

Well, exams are finally over!! hell-yeah!...Had a few nights of (too many) drinks after to celebrate not failing. Tomorrow Matt and I leave for Whistler for a few days to go stay at Alli's and hit on all of her hot friends. Also Taylor should be lurking around town so it should be a fun few days. Catch y'all later...

2005-12-13T18:05:00.000-08:00

Need help learning calculus? Need a refresher on why the derivative of a constant is zero? Need to have your intelligence insulted? Well probably not, but just in case check this out: the How-to-Do Girls Guide to Calculus. I'm pretty sure these girls don't actually know what an integral is, but if you throw enough sexual innuendos in there I guess it doesn't really matter. A for effort, D for everything else.

Oh, and they also have some desktop wallpaper that's both sexy and informative: the Chain Rule background:

The Ultimate Most Loved/Hated Prof Wallpaper!:

2005-12-11T17:25:00.000-08:00

2005-12-07T19:14:00.000-08:00

So I guess the Calgary Flames made a "music video" in the 80s titled: "you can't touch a flame when it's red hot". It's about as good as the title suggests!!

2005-12-06T17:27:00.000-08:00

Heisenberg is out driving on the interstate, and he's really cruising. Sure enough, he gets pulled over by a state trooper. "Do you know how fast you were going, sir?" asks the state trooper.
"No," Heisenberg says, "but I can tell you exactly where I am!"

A neutron walks into a bar and orders a beer, and asks the bartender what he owes. "Hey," says the bartender, "for you, no charge!"

Two atoms end up in a car crash. They get out to assess the damage, and the first atom asks the second of he's OK. "Oh man," says the second atom, "I think I lost an electron!"
"Are you sure?" asks the first.
"Yeah," says the second, "I'm positive!"

Charlie was a chemist
But Chalie is no more
What Charlie thought was H2O was H2S04

What is the difference between a physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician?

If an engineer walks into a room and sees a fire in the middle and a bucket of water in the corner, he takes the bucket of water and pours it on the fire and puts it out.

If a physicist walks into a room and sees a fire in the middle and a bucket of water in the corner, he takes the bucket of water and pours it eloquently around the fire and lets the fire put itself out.

If a mathematician walks into a room and sees a fire in the middle and a bucket of water in the corner, he convinces himself there is a solution and leaves.

living with pigs, err roommates

2005-12-05T20:19:00.000-08:00

I'll cut right to the chase...my place is absolutely disgusting. I know everyone always says "no one cleans the place but me" about their roommates but at least this time it is true. I don't think we have cleaned the bathroom upstairs since we have moved in and now the toilet and tub are almost black! I at least cleaned all other parts of the house at least once but refuse to clean up there before someone else cleans something. At least one other roommate has vacuumed the living room once!

Also no one seems to take out the garbage or the recycling except me or the said other roommate. I took it out last week and now it's a heaping pile of processed food packaging, and we only have one roommate who eats so much crap. It's getting a little annoyed with this filth!!

2005-12-04T21:12:00.000-08:00

...
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.
...

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.
...

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.
...

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

- Bob Dylan - It's alright ma

Banff Film Festival

2005-12-04T00:59:00.000-08:00

Went to the Banff Film Festival (world tour) with Matt and Keddie tonight and man was it great. I won't bore you with poor exclamations and praise though. Info on the festival can be found here. I know I'll be there next year!

Having fun with names:

2005-12-01T02:15:00.000-08:00

From Wiki:

In Etruscan mythology, Evan was the god of personal immortality. He was one of the Lasas.

Evan is also in contemporary use as a male name, pronouced either "E'vaun" derived from "Iefan", the Welsh form of "John" and is closely related to "Ivan," "Ian," and "Juan."; or " Evan" a celtic name meaning "young warrior"; It can also be derived from the Hebrew word for 'rock'. Nicknames include Ev, Evo, Evvy (sounds like ev-vee), and/or van(vaughn).

I love the snow!

2005-11-30T00:17:00.000-08:00

Yup, that's pretty much all there is to this post. Snow is awesome. It makes everything look so nice and peaceful. At least until it turns into slush by the afternoon, which is when I took these pics:

Where I live:

Fairview alleyway:

The 'view' out of my window:

wanna be a burner

2005-11-25T00:26:00.000-08:00

Burning Man: simply beautiful, a few THOUSAND people on bicycles!!

The other day, whoever (I forgot) said that the 'original' burning man was in/from Egypt is lying. I looked it up and found nothing. The is still the original.

One day my friends, one day...

As Colin would say: Capers!

2005-11-23T23:15:00.000-08:00

What better to do on a Tuesday night after you have finished your really long and hard assignment and it's 2am and you have to get up for a class in 5 hours that you have been skipping for the past week?? Well the answer is easy, BUILD A SNOWMAN!!! Under the cover of darkness and week's worth of fog Ralph, Colin and I snuck across campus and back in the freezing cold and risked being caught by (oh no) campus security or (double oh no) plant ops to bring joy to the faces of weary students trudging to class at 8am Wednesday. We spent over an hour and a half building the thing and managed to snap a few pics before some mysterious plant ops (?) guy came at 2am. So directly in front of the SUB main doors you might have seen this:

Ecochallenge UBC Trial #2

2005-11-20T13:49:00.000-08:00

Today team Frank n' Beans braved the elements and thick fog completing a successful second attempt at circumnavigating UBC via Wreck Beach. At the start, Frank went out hard while beans trailed behind but they soon regrouped and formed their tried and tested 'Cincinnati bowtie' formation, destroying the competition of a few half naked bums. Today's toughest course yet started at Fairview and headed North through the forest to Jericho Beach, the first checkpoint. From here the course skirted Wreck Beach along slippery rocks and logs, past the bunkers to "the sticks". The homestretch went up trail 7 to the Botanical Gardens and finally returning the tired racers to Fairview. Frank n' Beans was the first (and only) team through all checkpoints today, blowing the non-existent competition out of the stinky sea water.

Stay tuned for Eco Challenge UBC part 3 in the coming weeks: the complete curcumnavigation of the UBC peninsula!

Team Eco Challenge UBC aka Frank n' Beans

2005-11-20T13:17:00.000-08:00

Matt Harriman (aka Frank)
Duties: Team Physician, PR and sponsorship director, wardrobe coordinator, environmental conditions specialist
Testimonial: The hardest part of this sport is how it extends into my social life. I'm a mentor to many of my competitors, but it gets pretty awkward when their girlfriends are always flirting with me.
Favorite Quote: "My kind of three way: swim, bike, run" - some guy

Evan Morris (aka Beans)
Duties: Technical Operations, Communications and Navigation, lead climber, beer manager, female liaison
Testimonial: Some people think that racing is about having fun or that it's about winning. For me, racing is all about destroying the competition, and to be frank, that's what usually happens.
Favorite Quote: "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat." - Lily Tomlin

Attention Cereal Lovers....

2005-11-14T00:19:00.000-08:00

Do you love cereal, but find it too inconvenient to eat during your morning fury as you get ready for school or work? Well there's no need need to fret any longer, there is still hope for us time challenged! It looks like some people have been very busy at the local thinktank and have come up with this (not so) ingenious solution:

Here's what BevNET Reviews had to say:
Apple & Cinnamon Liquid Cereal definitely lives up to its name as the product truly does taste like apple & cinnamon flavored cereal. With a slight thickness to its body, this product also feels somewhat like cereal in your mouth. The greenish color is probably our biggest issue with this product as green colored milk is typically a sign of some sort of problem. Regardless, this product is fun, innovative, and good tasting so we will cut some slack in terms of the color. Overall, a good product that breakfast cereal fans will definitely enjoy.

And for peanut butter lovers, the first peanut flavoured drink!

PS. No this is NOT a joke, someone is actually crazy enough to think this is marketable!