But… wha? It was so nice last weekend! It’s still August – that’s supposed to be Summer. Isn’t it?
 

 
So, it’s snowing today apparently. Umm, so I guess I’m not going climbing. Maybe I’ll go for a bike ride in the snow? I hear that’s possible.

EDIT. 8.30am, still snowing.
EDIT2. 11.00am, still snowing.

As I’ve been whiling my time away looking at accounts of bike tours, it suddenly occurred to me that my two rear panniers (Deuter Rack Pack I think they are) probably wouldn’t carry enough stuff for cycling round Europe for four months. Even if I lashed things on top of them. There would be water and food and camping gear, and maybe, just maybe, tying everything to the back of my bike would be do-able, but would not necessarily be very rideable. Lots of people seemed to have front panniers. Also, I would really need somewhere to put my camera bag. I could get a basket and tie it to the front of my bike, and put the camera bag in that. This solution wouldn’t be very waterproof though. Or dustproof. Or shakeproof. So I got all consumeriffic and started looking for things online. Then somehow managed to order everything, just like that…

So I’m soon to be the proud new owner of a small Ortlieb rackpack/duffel bag:

Ortlieb Classic Front Roller panniers:

A Tubus Tara Lowrider Front Rack Black to carry them:

And an Ortlieb Ultimate 5 Classic Bar Bag – to be padded with foam to provide a nice solid camera carrying case:

The plan is not to fill these all up, just because I’ll have the space now, but instead to have spare room available for extra things like food and water – so we don’t always have to be reliant on food shops being open, or water being where you need it. So now I have all the bits I need for cycling wherever I want. Hurrah! The most horrifying part of all of this is that my order came to about AUD$340 (with postage free) – but pricing these things at Australian shops comes to around AUD$700.

Lovely Summer day climbing at Heart Creek.

Warm sun, cool creek, gentle breeze, plastic dinosaur. All in monochrome. Not a lot of climbing was done, though we did find the waterfall at the end of the creek – the trail leads all the way to it, but then to actually see the waterfall you have to scramble around some polished rock. From the looks of the bolts, there used to be chains going round, so everyone could get there.

 
I guess most people just have to be satisfied with the noise of the waterfall these days.
 

More peak-bagging. This is me on top of Mount Lady Macdonald, overlooking Canmore. The traverse ridge across to the summit is quite interesting, a small moose like me could have blown away if it were any windier.

Mount Lady Macdonald – with an altitude of 2,606 m (8,550 ft) gives a 1200 metre elevation gain hiking from town. It was named in 1886 after Susan Agnes Macdonald, wife of Sir John A. Macdonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada (this is what wikipedia claims anyway, but there are all sorts of made-up things slipping in there these days, we all know Canada doesn’t even have a Prime Minister).

A typical 9 o’clock start had us leaving the house around 10 (we being Siggs and I, not Alex, who is stuck doing 14+ hour days at work this weekend), and walking towards Lady Mac – along a cunning short cut that actually forced us to walk uphill, and then ended up being tantalisingly close to the path we wanted, without actually reaching it. So we had to walk downhill again.

With the sore legs of people who had spent yesterday doing silly things (a 60km bike ride and hiking up Cascade mountain respectively), we hit auto-pilot on the way up, and told our legs to shut up and just keep walking.

We reached the teahouse and begun some heavy duty snacking. You could probably have even called it lunch, but for the fact we had a second one a few hours later. And the teahouse isn’t so much a teahouse as an unfinished wooden construction with lots of burn marks from where teenagers with no self-preservation have been lighting fires ON the teahouse using wood FROM the teahouse. It does provide a nice viewing and lunching platform though.

Following the teahouse there was a thankfully short slog up a scree slope until we reached the *dramatic chords* KNIFE-EDGE RIDGE. This was where I left Siggs, who has far too much common sense to be ignoring the fact she’s on a very skinny bit of rock with a definite cliff on one side, and a very steep slide on the other. There was only a light breeze, so the scramble across was actually really fun – there’s no technical difficulty to it, just the difficulty of ignoring your brain going ARGH, MY GOD IT’S A CLIFF, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! Thanks to climbing I’m accustomed to my brain’s panicked warnings of impending doom. Although I didn’t stop to get my camera out along the way – I’m coordinated when it comes to not dropping me off a cliff, I have a bad track record when it comes to cameras and cliffs however.

So I hit the summit – finally, that ridge seemed to go forever. Maybe it’s about 150 metres? I had Siggs at the start of it as a reference point, and she was certainly a distant blob. The journey back was quicker and easier, as I spent much less time going “Am I at the summit now? Nope, this isn’t it, maybe it’s that next bit.”

We sat at the top of the scree slope and looked down at the teahouse, helicopter pad, and Canmore while enjoying a second lunch. Followed by interminable plodding back down a path that seemed a lot less steep than it had done on the way up, and gradual removal of layers as we hit the warm valley air.

My current loaner road bike – JD’s Campagnolo beastie. It has just 14 gears and likes to go fast. (Oh, and a giant statue of an eagle)

Another ride up to Whiteman’s Gap, but without the hike up Ha Ling afterwards. It was cold (well, not really cold in the scheme of things for the Rockies, but cold after the nice 20oC temperatures I’ve become accustomed to), and raining as I cycled into the cloud. This left the dirt road lovely and muddy.

This photo was taken at the top, looking away from town across the dam. It takes just under an hour to bike here from home.

And it only takes about 15 minutes to get from Whiteman’s Gap back down to town. I can’t guarantee you’ll be clean afterwards though. Or that your camera will be dry after taking it out in the rain for the earlier photo.

Last weekend was lovely and sunny and warm, so I was out stocking up on Vitamin D for the Winter. And climbing, and jumping into lakes, and scrambling up small mountains.

I’m not the bearded one in the water, this is just to demonstrate the fact that it really was warm. This is Lake Minnewanka, a glacial lake that probably isn’t pronounced how you’re thinking it’s pronounced, and that’s Mt Rundle hanging out in the background.
 

It seems like the sun has cut down on it’s visiting hours considerably over the last fortnight. Suddenly we’re getting up in the dark, and walking to catch the bus along murky streets lit sporadically by street lamps, with silhouettes of mountains hanging in the gloom on either side of the valley. And it’s actually dark when going to bed at 10pm now. It might be warm for a few weeks more, but Summer is on its way out. By the time we get back from our visit to Australia (September 23rd to October 12th), no doubt it will be cold and rainy and snowy and generally a bit unpleasant until it gets cold enough for the snow to start building up properly.