Trip Report: Tiara Peak

We celebrated the arrival of summer with a trek up Tiara Peak in the Powderface area of Kananaskis. It was supposed to be an easy and short day, but turned out to be rather trying. From the unexpected heat and humidity, to the long ass approach through a never ending creek bed, to a steep slog up a scree face to gain the ridge, this turned out to be a real 'marriage tester'. Anita was not feeling it, right from the get go, and the longer the day wore on (and it wore on for a LONG time), the more grumpy she got.

At one point, a mere 50 vertical metres shy of the summit, she pleaded with me to quit. But my stubbornness to finish overpowered her will to settle, and so she resigned herself to a final push up the final few metres of elevation gain. Sometimes marriage isn't about compromise, it's about motivating (shaming?) your other half into bagging goals they don't think they can do. When applying this tactic, just remember to stay well back of cliff edges, lest an unfortunate 'oops, I accidentally pushed my husband off a mountain on purpose' moment plays out. Happy to report she has not been charged with husbandicide. #marriagegoals




A hot and humid approach along a creek bed to start the day.






This is the international sign for 'Your wife is getting really tired of this shit'


And this here is the look of resigned defeat.


Mere meters from the summit.


Finally, a few minutes to relax before the long descent.


Summit Beer: Suiyoubi No Neko Belgian Style White Ale.

Father's Day 2018 - Barrier Lake Lookout

For Father's Day, we took my photo averse father-in-law on a hike up to the Barrier Lake Lookout, with a total elevation gain of about 515m or so. Considering his age, he kicked ass up this minor peak. He didn't want to be in any of the summit photos, so all I got was a surreptitiously taken shot of him with Anita as they rounded past the first viewpoint with Mt. Baldy in the background.

Quick quirky story about dad-in-law: he has this inexplicable love for a terrible Chinese buffet not far from our place. Of all the delicious restaurants we could have taken him that night, he wanted this buffet. Imagine if someone asked you for your favourite sushi joint, and you said you like it fresh from the gas station. Queue the instant furrowed brows, and looks of judgement from your friends.

Anyways, I don't know where I'm going with this... so enjoy the couple quick photos from the hike, and a wolverine pelt we saw on display.










A wolverine pelt! Yes, wolverines are real. They're also occasionally known as Hugh Jackmans. True story.


Father's day Gin Saison. I wish I could claim to have bought this for the father-in-law, but he doesn't drink. So I'll drink it on his behalf.

The Asian Weirdo (me)

Funny bus story for you. Anita and I ride the same bus route every day, and there's this asian dude that often catches the same bus as us. He sort of reminds us of John Cho (Harold from the Harold and Kumar movies), so we've always assumed he was Korean. Well today, after work, I was standing next to him on the bus home, and he had his tunes turned up so that I could almost hear the music from his earbuds. I thought I recognized the opening bars from the theme song to this obscure Chinese fantasy soap opera series from the 80's that absolutely NO ONE other than Anita and I remember from our youth. I LOVED the show, and the theme song. So naturally, I needed to confirm if in fact he was listening to this song, when I started leaning my head in a bit closer... and then even a bit closer, just to be really sure. At some point, I must have crossed the threshold of social acceptability, and he backed off with that "WTF ARE YOU DOING, WEIRDO" look on his face as I invaded his personal space. :)

Of course, I figured it would be more acceptable to just come across as a weirdo than try to explain, "Hey random guy on bus, is that song that's playing just loud enough for me to maybe recognize, the theme some from super obscure 80's Hong Kong fantasy soap opera?" So now I'm always going to be weird awkward man in his books forever more. I'm fine with that. At least I confirmed that he WAS in fact listening to that Chinese theme song, and when I texted Anita to let her know, her response was, "I thought he was Korean?!"

Anyways, we didn't get out to the mountains this weekend, so instead of summit photos, I thought I'd share some photos from our visit to China a couple years ago where we thru hiked a couple sections of the Great Wall. We started at Gubeikou, a largely unrestored section of the wall, and hiked for about 4 hours connecting up to the Jinshanling section that is restored to look like the imposing castle rampart style you immediately imagine when someone says 'Great Wall of China.'

These sections of the wall were a bit further away from Beijing than some of the more tourist visited spots, so we had miles of the wall to ourselves.

Trip Report - Grizzly Peak

We saw an invisible couch yesterday. True story. On our way to the mountains, we were passed by a truck that was carrying a couch in its truck bed, that was camo printed. Because you know, Alberta. That couch probably confuses the crap out of his roomba.

Anyways... fourteen years ago, I was introduced to the activity of scrambling, when a friend took me up Grizzly Peak. I loved it so much that I've been chasing summits ever since. Back on that first scramble, we had the entire mountain to ourselves. Fast forward to yesterday, and you can see the immense growth in popularity of hiking/ scrambling, as we hit up Grizzly Peak to discover it was an ant hill of hikers.

I would never discourage anyone from taking up hiking, just don't be like the large group of morons we saw that were needlessly scrambling off route up a loose rock face, kicking rockfall down onto others trying to access the regular route. They clearly had no idea what they were doing, and were completely inconsiderate of the dangers they were posing to others. Be a badass, not a dumbass. <--Life Motto for you. Now go out and enjoy the beauty of our backcountry!



Summit Grizzly Peak.




















Summit Beer: Collective Arts Brewing Liquid Arts Fest Milkshake IPA with passion fruit, mango, and vanilla.