Carrick to Calgary

To those of you who follow this blog avidly, you'll be pleased to hear that I haven't gone away - I just haven't been partaking in any of the interesting activities taken up by Mr White. I can't be doing with feet that are out of control, and hence snowboarding, skating and skiing aren't really my thing. In fact, ice and snow don't feature too highly on my list of favourite things at all....so its just as well that we live in Calgary and not somewhere like Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, which over the past winter, got regular dumps of 50cm or more of snow in one go - wow! As you know, Calgary doesn't get an awful lot of snow, and if it does snow here, we tend to get warm Chinook winds that melt it all within a couple of days. However, as we found out a couple of weeks ago, that doesn't mean that all the white slippy stuff disappears from the mountains...

We had decided to head up to Ribbon Creek at Kananaskis to go for the first walk of the season - now, while the guidebook did suggest that it was better for walking in spring and summer, we naively assumed that mid-April counted as spring. Given that the day time temperature was about 15 degrees C, this seemed like a reasonable assumption...

So all booted up, with knapsacks on - off we went, striding purposefully up a good wide path. The views were pretty stunning, but as we got further up the path, it started to dawn on us that it was a bit wintry up there...



When we rounded the next corner, it became painfully apparent that it was still winter, and that spring hadn't really sprung. The path, which had started off wide and made of gravel, degenerated into a wide path made completely of ice, with running water flowing merrily over the top of the ice...not a great surface for walking on (unless you're Mr White who has taken skating lessons).

Mr White - standing confidently on ice...



Me - not standing confidently on ice...




However, we perservered - reasoning that it could only get better further up the path (now there's a set of 'Irish' logic for you!). Having said that, there were places where the path got a little better (i.e. you could see some path poking up through the ice)




And we were able to get to the bottom of a big mountain, where there was once a logging/mining camp...




However, on the way down, about 15 minutes from the carpark, we came to a bit of downhill path, where the ice was path wide and there was no edge, or no flat bit with trees to edge your way along. This is me contemplating sitting on the ice and skiting my way to the bottom, and then thinking better of it...



So...very much against the spirit of environmental friendliness, which states that you should stick to the paths, and should not damage the ecology of the area, we decided that there was nothing for it but to scramble up the hill on the left hand side of the path (as you look at the photo) and try to see if we could find another way down. Now, again, I'm not one for scrambling up steep hills covered with scree, spiky plants and sheep droppings, but when it comes to that or coping with ice, hill scrambling it is! Luckily, it worked out fine and we found another way down.

So the moral of that story is - April in the mountains is NOT spring, and spring up there happens in early June.


Now, what about spring in the city? In places, it feels springlike, but there's not much in the way of plant life yet to confirm that suspicion. Trees are starting to bud, and in places, there are a few very small flowers poking their way up through the soil. We took ourselves up to Nose Hill Park yesterday to have a look to see what a 'natural environment park' in the middle of suburban Calgary looks like. The weird thing about this park is that it is HUGE - 1127 hectares - and it is untouched prairie. In other words, it is what Calgary is built on, and it turns out to be dry grassland, with a few stands of trembling Aspen trees, more grassland and little valleys that are known as coulees. This is what the original settlers decided would be good for raising cattle, and settling their families in. To those of used raised by the sea, it just seems like an endless stretch of grass, and I think if had been me, that I would have just kept going. Mind you, that's easy to say, but I suppose when you look west and see a very large wall of mountains that stretches as far as the eye can see, reasonably flat land looks a bit more attractive.

Prairie crocuses - poking up through the dry grass




Deer hiding in the trees (honest) - isn't it all rather brown?




It is all rather dry and dusty - evidenced by P's very dirty feet...




Big sky - a few clouds, but no rain to be seen...




Grass, grass and more grass...




Modern city raising up from the prairie grasses...





We haven't had rain in I can't remember how long, and none is forecast for the next week. The grass at the front of the house is trying to grow, but without water, I'm not sure that it can start to get green. We might actually have to invest in a hosepipe and a sprinkler, but we'll hold off for another week or so and see whether any wet stuff falls from the sky. The relative humidity at the moment is about 30% - and it just feels sooooooo dry. When my mum was here, she met a lady who said that when came here to live, she thought she was just going to dry up and blow away.... I think I know how she feels - dry hair, dry skin, and how the first settlers ever coped without piles of moisturiser, I will never know!


So there you go - I'll keep you posted on the moisture situation!! Did I ever think I'd be hoping for rain in April??


P