Some more piccis of Lake OHara (see below post)

The scenery was so magnificant just have to load up some more piccis. On the way there we travelled through a recently snow ploughed road for about 8 hours! AND THIS IS THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER - AUTUMN BEGINS THE NEXT DAY!
These other piccis are of Lake OHara (top right) notice all the yellow larches on the highine! Left is Opabin Lake (where a grizzly was spotted recently - but eluded us!) and the Yuckness Ledges walk (right) - which followed the 200ft cliff face for 2kms over a very rough scree slope... great view!

Lake OHara - Yoho National Park 22-24 September

Well it's hard to know where to begin with this weekend. We keep going to these places that 'just have to bein our top 3'... and this surely is one of the most pristine, magical places we have been. They only allow a certain number of people in at a time - we booked this in May for the first available 'spot'which wasn't until now!
We took the short 7km walk to Lake MacArthur (right) which is supposed to the the 'jewel in the crown'... and it truly was beautiful but we personally enjoyed the hike the 2nd day better. The kool thing about being at OHara this time is year is that all the Larch trees (a relative to the spruce) have turned yellow - this happens for just a few weeks before they drop off for winter. The 2nd day we followed the Alpine Route which was always going to be interesting given that there was last week a metre of snow dumped on the area - and it is most certainly getting chilly - we awoke to a MINUS 5 degree morning and our tent was frozen - couldn't fold it!!!.... Anyhow, the guide book describes this route as the steepest in the book - and it was!!! but the views were absolutely spectacular.. even though the 'ledge walking'was a little dodgy at times (see top left!). We loved it so much we're going to try and get back there this weekend - or maybe next weekend (it's Thanksgiving long weekend and I have to learn how to cook a bloody turkey!)... that is if the weather holds. But ski season opens in about another 6 weeks so can't complain about the snow!!

September Escapades

Well we were absolutely exhausted after August and had to schedule in some 'quiet' weekends at home, of sorts. We've been meaning to canoe the North Saskatchewan River the 30kms from Devon back to Edmonton for a while now, so amidst a vicious lightening storm we packed up the gear for a 6 hours paddle downstream. As you can see Ian mostly lazed about at the back of the canoe!

The womens World Cup of Rugby was on for 2 weeks and we got along to see the Aussies get hammered - they came in 7th over all.... we also made it to the finals where the Kiwis were playing England. It was absolutely freezing! A max of about 3 degrees. The night before we watched the Calgary footy team play in driving sleet, rain and snow... but they really like their footy here (grid iron that is)... the fans were out in force... shirts off and everything! So the Kiwis won the final but it was pretty close. With 5 mins to go they were only up 20-17 and England were looking like scoring until NZ got a try in the dying minutes. But a good time was had by all!

And after a very short off season,,, guess what,,,,, it's ice hockey time again. The beloved Edmonton Oilers were playing Phoenix in a pre-seaon match. The stadium was sold out. The actual season starts this week so we think it's going to be pretty hard to get tickets (the pre-season ones were $80 each) but will try! .... AND SO THE MADNESS BEGINS ................!

Glacier Nat Park and surrounds 25-27 August

Well where do we start!! Another magnificant weekend in the Eastern Rockies. We took Friday off and took Marg and Joyce into British Columbia to explore Glacier, Revelstoke and Kootenay National Parks. The weather was just beautiful, and just when we thought it couldn't get any more spectacular IT DOES! The drive through Rogers Pass is amazing. We pass through dozens of avalanche tunnels that cover the road - this drive is notorious for avalanches in winter - it gets about 14m of snow a year! The info centre at the Pass is exceptionally well done and they have a really good 'wildlife display'(of wildlife that has primarily been run over by cars - of note and some concern here is 3 cougars who have been run over on this road!! The front pages of the newspaper this week were filled with a story of a cougar attack on a young boy on Vancouver Is - the Dad jumped on its back and scared it away... So I'm thinking the bears are not so bad afterall). We went for a very windy and switchbacky drive at Revelstoke up to the "Meadows in the Sky"trail and a cute firetower lookout (see picci of the 2 old girls under the summit sign). We drove back to Banff through the Kootenay parkway and were surprised at the huge fire damage from a wildfire in the 1960's,, the area hasn't regenerated very much at all.

So it's starting to cool down of a morning now, the walk to work is getting chillier each day and I'm into my medium heavy coats! We're very lucky Alberta has had one of it's driest hottest summers on record to have all these stunningly glorious fine days here. So we're going to squeeze the last out of summer before it gets too cold to go wandering. The trees are starting to turn colour and there are beautiful yellow and orange hues in the forests (but unfortunately we won't see the brilliant red colours that are associated with the maples - they're mainly in the eastern provinces).