Club Events 2005

Trip List Calendar

2005-07-28 : COC - Pointy(Kelli McAllister)'s Farewell
I can't say anything about this without getting all smooshy and pathetic and weepy, so I'll just quickly say I'll miss you Pointy. Come visit lots. See you in October.

-- Rhonda


2005-07-31 : COC - Alberta Culture Tour: Vulcan Trek Station
Holy heat-wave today! Definitely a horrendous day for hiking, which is why we were glad we were indulging in an Alberta Culture Tour field trip today to Vulcan and the Carseland Weir (although we still wilted pretty good at the weir).

Honestly, there is not much at Vulcan. It's a do-once. Certainly not a do-more-than-once. There's a tourist info center with lots of kitschy Trek stuff. There's the Starship Enterprise, however, we had one unhappy moment today when Liza informed Ken that it wasn't the REAL Starship Enterprise. All I need to know about life I learned from Star Trek:
- Seek out new life and new civilizations
- Non-interference is the Prime Directive
- Keep your phaser set on stun
- Humans are highly illogical
- There is no such thing as a Vulcan death grip
- Live long and prosper
- Having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting; it is not logical but it is often true
- Infinite diversity in infinite combinations (IDIC)
- Tribbles hate Klingons (and Klingons hate Tribbles)
- Enemies are often invisible - like Klingons, they can be cloaked
- Don't put all your ranking officers in one shuttlecraft
- When your logic fails, trust a hunch
- Insufficient data does not compute
- If it can't be fixed, just ask Scotty
- Even in our own world, sometimes we are aliens
- When going out into the Universe, remember: "Boldly go where no man has gone before!"

More to do at the weir... we "hiked" through a weed-filled bog to a slightly-stinky sand dune where we snacked and frolicked (this is truly a rural Alberta pleasure). Ken took a stroll through the quick-mud. Emily found a leech, and Rhonda O promptly produced an empty bottle to become home to said leech. Some stood around in the water to cool themselves (did I mention it was freakin' hot today?). We saw some pelicans, although none close enough to get a decent photo. Darn it. Rob, Samantha and Rhonda O narrowly escaped death from falling in the weir. Wendy, Denise and Christina narrowly escaped total wiltedness by retreating to the parking lot bench (with the only spot of shade available). Discovering said patch of shade, everyone else decided that the new Angling Regulations (posted on the bulletin board behind the bench) were extremely interesting.

I don't know which we needed more today... our spirits of adventure, or our senses of humor. We're just very glad we brought both.

-- Rhonda


2005-08-01 : COC - Ptarmigan and Black Prince Cirques
We split into two groups at carpool with Michelle's group going to Black Prince Cirque first, and my group going to Ptarmigan Cirque, then trading. It was a beautiful day, and both hikes, although short and easy, were very pleasant and enjoyable. In fact, I was glad we didn't have anything more challenging for the day because I'm still recovering from my cold from last week and was "done" before I was, technically, done, today.

Although neither of these hikes were to feature hoodoos, there was one hoodoo sighting by Glenn on the return from Black Prince.

It seemed to work out very well with the two groups - better than I had actually expected. Thanks, Michelle, for taking the other group!

-- Rhonda

This was my first attempt at co-coordinating anything with the COC and I was pleased that it seemed to go rather well considering. Thank you Rhonda for doing all the real work!

Our first stop was The Black Prince Cirque. It was the shorter of the two cirques at only 4.3km return, but the little green lake was very beautiful. When searching online for some info on this cirque (as it wasn’t listed in any of my books) I found a webpage describing “letterboxing”, which I was later told is very similar to geocaching. The webpage I found described where to find a letterbox on the trail. The directions were very simple; no tricky riddles to solve or complex directions. We found it in the first place we looked. This being the first letterbox I’ve found, I was very curious to see what was in this thing. There were several letters/notes in which the writing had all run due to previous water damage. There was a log book in which one uses the pencil provided along with their personal stamp to “sign in”. I didn’t have a personal stamp but I signed it regardless – my hands never work well when I’m hiking so it was more like chicken scratch than anything. I then took the stamp from inside the box and stamped the pamphlet I picked up from the box at the trailhead to take home with me. One normally carries their own log book in which they collect the stamps from the various letterboxes around the world. I may just have to make myself my own stamp and log book and then find me some more letterboxes. There are a few more in Alberta apparently. Maybe I’ll make up my own letterbox and stash it up somewhere high and beautiful for other people to find and document.

The second stop was Ptarmigan Cirque. Morley K wasn’t with us for the first hike of the day but he joined us for the second. This was a somewhat more strenuous hike but still quite short. The flowers when we came out of the trees were gorgeous, as was the rock face that surrounded us at the top of the loop. We did do the little bit of climbing up to a pile of rocks in the base of the basin. Yoda relished eating and rolling in the patch of dirty snow that remained up there. I wonder if he’ll see snow in Calgary again. In any case, I’m glad he had the opportunity to enjoy it again… he loves it so. Orlando and Marco were snap happy for most of the trip… collecting photos galore to later reflect upon their time in the Rockies. Orlando returns to Brazil in less than a week I believe. We hope he’ll come back to join us again soon! We were back down in the Highwood parking lot by 1:30pm where then we discussed what to do next. After passing ideas around and assessing the status of our legs, we decided to call it a day and headed back to town for drinks and food at Kilkenny’s.

-- Michelle


2005-08-04 : COC - Movie Night - Charlie & The Chocolate Factory


2005-08-05 : COC - Aylmer Lookout
I don't know, but for some reason I expected this hike to be a lot more challenging. What with the description outlining a 23.5km hike, with pretty much all of the elevation right at the end... and all the whingeing from Glenn when he did this trip before... you'd think it was a real grunt. I found it quite easy. Relaxing even.

Oh... wait a minute... maybe that's because I, along with four others, stopped at the Aylmer Pass Junction at about km 8.0 and lounged around on the rocky beach for three hours while we waited for the others to go up to the lookout and back. Yes, that's right, I'm ashamed to say that I did NOT actually do Aylmer Lookout today. My story is that I'm still getting over the bad cold that knocked me down last week, and also that I have such a strenuous weekend ahead of me that I didn't want to push myself too hard and screw up the rest of my weekend. It's my story.

Lake Minnewanka is very beautiful. Unfortunately the 8km of lakeshore trail to the Aylmer Pass Junction does not afford many views of it... it's mostly a tree-sheltered trail, although there is that one very long rocky hill along the way that felt pretty much like a cruel trick on the way back which did provide open views. I have decided that I probably won't make another attempt at Aylmer anytime soon. What with that 'cruel trick' hill on the way back and the fact that the views from the lookout didn't move Marko to tears (or photography) convinced me that I'm probably better off sticking to something a little less physically challenging with a little bit more reward involved.

In any case, we had a positively lovely time waiting around at the lake. While Sharon, Nicole and Doug snoozed, Cheryl and I played a game of 'throw rocks at Doug and see who can get them to stay on his torso instead of falling off'. Doug and Cheryl skipped some stones into the lake. Doug got himself a mouthful of 'Ensure gone bad', and a couple of very refreshing dips in the lake (I believe the exact words were "*expletive deleted* that's cold!!!".

As we returned to civilization, we were thrilled to discover a small concession serving ice cream. Manna from heaven on a 30 degree Celcius day.

-- Rhonda


2005-08-06 : COC - River Float: Bowness to the Zoo
A couple of lessons learned today with this one: Make sure we have the details nailed down about exactly WHEN and WHERE people are to meet... but everyone forgave me, and I do believe we're close to having all the kinks ironed out of our "big group river rafting" events process. :)

We set out to spectacular weather, and although it was extremely hot in the city today, down on the river it was warm with a delicious cool breeze. We had our pacifistic "Love Boat" captained by STFU-Ian and Hot Shelley, the warrior ship "Inflatable Doll" captained by Niagara and Maritimer Mike, the international "We Love COC" raft captained by "Mushroom" Sibel and Orion, the laid back "Doug and the Slugs" captained by "White Rabbit" Doug, the flag ship "Clothing Optional" captained by "Frou Frou" Cheryl and Aaron, and the rogue pirate ship (not on the official roster) captained by "Safari Phil". Philip had a name for his raft, but I don't remember what it was, and the rest of us decided that it should be called "Size Doesn't Matter", anyway.

Put-in was down at Bowness Park where those of us on raft duty gathered to inflate rafts (and dolls) while waiting for the take-out carpoolers. There was some confusion, as I mentioned, about meeting place, however, everyone eventually turned up and we were off. Floating down the first section, we passed the river-level Bowness houses (pretty snazzy), and the Silver Springs, Varsity and other neighborhoods on the hill across the way. Passing Edworthy Park, we started to see downtown Calgary's pretty skyline followed by some even snazzier condos (and speculated about their prices). Many raft wars raged behind us as we deftly avoided the warships and "Size Doesn't Matter", the crew of which apparently had a case of "little raft syndrome" and thought they had to take on everyone on the river. Past downtown we found our take-out directly underneath St. George's bridge (just past the footbridge at the Zoo), which was kind of overgrown, and partially blocked by a log, but it was still there, much to our relief (next stop, the Weir of Death). Being the first raft out, by a long shot, the "Clothing Optional" crew set up an elaborate water ambush from St. George's bridge, however, due to premature ambush-ulation, only a couple of folks got a bit of a splash.

A jolly good time, with many moving on to Philip's house after for an apres-float party.

-- "Pudge" Rhonda from "Clothing Optional"


2005-08-07 : COC - Grassi Lakes - Beginner Hike
Even though the "guests of honor" didn't show for this hike, we still had a perfectly lovely day. I'm not sure what happened with Noosha and her friend, but I know I will kick their little Iranian butts next time I talk to them....

Due to the extended line-up at the "facilities", we decided to split immediately into a "leaving now" group, and a "waiting for the potty" group, with Doug taking out the first group and me staying back with the second. Doug's group opted for the "Easy" trail up, and since we didn't know which way they'd gone, we opted for the "Hard" trail (also known as the pretty, scenic trail). A couple of adventurers in Doug's group were not aware of this, though, and stopped to wait for us to catch up. After waiting 15 minutes, they got worried and hiked back down looking for us. An (one of the adventurers) phoned me (ain't technology grand?), and I told her we were on the "hard" trail and we'd meet them at the lake. Since they'd gone back almost all the way to the intersection at that point, they decided to come up via the "Hard" trail (because I told them it was much nicer). So, they essentially did the hike TWICE. Needless to say, we had been waiting for them for a while by the time they finally made it up to the lakes. *har*

Meanwhile, back on the farm, Gen played with Bailey in the lake, Ricky howled his every emotion, and Darla trotted along obediently beside Laura (including doing the hike twice). Several hikers went up above the second lake to check out the pictograms above, while others lounged around and enjoyed the scenery.

A "must do" hike, for beginners, or for anyone. It's just too beautiful to miss.

-- Rhonda


2005-08-14 : COC - Skating to Chestermere for Picnic
What a great day! Oh, deja vu... that's what Doug C said about the biking event. This is the second time we've attempted this combined biking/skating event, and interestingly enough, where last year the bikers were sitting around for an hour waiting for the skaters, this year it was the other way around. Next time, both groups start at the same time (no need to handicap the bikers as long as we have strong skaters).

I started off the day in a very relaxed way, and was on my way to the event WAY early, which is good because when I was ALMOST THERE I realized I had left my skates behind at home! D'oh!! The really funny thing about that is that last year when we did this same event, I forgot my skates in my car which was left at Chestermere for carpooling and Cam had to drive me all the way back to get the skates. It was a LONG time before he let me live that one down.

Anyway, today was excellent. We had 10 skaters to start with and Ian showed up later (with his "tail"). Lada, who has skated no more than 5km before in her life opted to skate the whole round trip (as did several others) and skated 45kms!!! Way to go Lada!! Mike (aka "Nibbly") demonstrated "The Chad", which is a very cool skating technique.

Rumor has it that Doug C promised his bikers a coffee to anyone who knocked a skater down when they met up with us, or if it was ME who was knocked down, the prize would be a beer. The only one brave enough to make an attempt was Mike W. However, he told me what he was doing as he was doing it so I escaped by promising him TWO beers if he would refrain from knocking me down.

We were only about 5km from Chestermere when the bikers finally crossed our paths, so we knew we'd be waiting at the picnic area for them for a while before they got there. My lunch was stashed in Doug C's car, so I got to sit and watch everyone eat their lunch (Doug B tossed me an apple to tide me over) while waiting for the bikers. About half the skaters got tired of waiting and decided, instead, to skate the 25km BACK to Glenmore. They figured they'd be back before us (by the time we waited for the bikers and then they had their picnic lunch). Boy, were they wrong... we had been sitting in the Glenmore Inn lounge enjoying a cold one FOR AN HOUR before they made it back in (although they were, rightfully, very proud of themselves).

-- Rhonda


2005-08-15 : COC - Eiffel Lake/Wenkchemna Pass
The weather forecast today was pretty iffy (as was Pudge's attitude) so we rendezvoused in Lake Louise where Frou-Frou, Crackers and I decided to forego the 20km Eiffel Lake/Wenkchemna Pass hike and go on up to Bow Glacier Falls (a nice 9km "rainy day hike") instead. Everyone else opted to go to Eiffel Lake/Wenkchemna Pass. I think it was because no one else could stomach the thought of spending the whole day with Crackers, but maybe that's just me...

Eiffel Lake/Wenkchemna Pass

We met at the Lake Louise Information Centre and decided that we would continue to Eiffel Lake and Wenkchemna Pass. The hike began with an incline for about 2km until we came to the Sentinel Pass fork. There were grey clouds, fog, and the mountains were not too visible. We were hopeful and we had an angel among us because the weather was good. As soon as we emerged from the trees, we saw beautiful mountains, Moraine Lake, and the Eiffel Lake up ahead. We weren't sure how far to go up the pass, but most made it to the ridge of the pass enjoying the views, while some of us stayed sheltered in the rocks and enjoyed a snack and well deserved rest. The sun came out and we saw blue sky make its way over the pass. We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day! Then, the best yet was awaiting a small carpool group of four. Not sure if anyone else was lucky to capture this moment, but on the drive back, my group and I got stuck in traffic on Hwy 1. We were thinking, more deer for the public to take pictures of, perhaps a car accident, but no, there were two grizzly bears walking next to the highway giving us glances as they walked towards the trees. One was smaller then the other, but they were cute! Their big paws moving forward one at a time - I guess they got sick of all the cars that pulled over because they disappeared into the trees soon after they passed our car. I will always carry my camera in the car from now on. But what a rush!! Thanks for everyone that came out, thanks to the Colonel for his help as well today, and see you next time!

Today’s hike was amazing! The weather didn’t look too promising, but only after 30 minutes of hiking, the clouds moved up and the ceiling was above the mountains. It remained pretty much cloudy throughout the day and we never got rained on.

Much of the climbing is at the beginning and at the end. Once you reach the junction between Sentinel Pass and Eiffel Lake trail, it is flat for a few kilometers. Once you pass Eiffel Lake, which isn’t that exciting compared to the view of the valley, you will climb a more technical pass. It is a rocky pass and a little bit a scrambling is required. I personally think that the views are simply amazing, but make sure to make it to the pass… you can see the peak of Assiniboine.

Thanks Sibel for taking over the hike, thanks to Susan and Ken for trying to teach me how to say Assiniboine properly, maybe one day I’ll get it right!

Charles The Colonel

Bow Glacier Falls

This is not a hike I would have ever chosen to do as a day trip from Calgary because, well, it's relative short (9km) and is not billed as anything really spectacular. As our substitute hike today, though, it was perfect, and I thoroughly enjoyed having the opportunity to do a great little hike that I might otherwise never have bothered with. It was overcast and foggy a lot of the time, and rained a little bit, but the views were beautiful (especially the mountains reflected in Bow Lake), the hike was easy, the falls were very impressive, and I was suffering from a serious case of wimpy-ass-itis. As I am still recovering from a nasty virus that knocked me down a couple weeks ago, plus I rollerbladed 25km yesterday, I was not at my most.... energetic today. I think I maybe even complained more than Glenn (if that's possible).

The hike is somewhat reminiscent of a much easier "Plain of Six Glaciers". You start off with a flat and EXTREMELY well-traveled lakeshore trail (a la Lake Louise). Past the lake, you travel along in a dry rocky riverbed (with the small river accompanying you), and then climb a series of "trail stairs", which is about the ONLY elevation gain on this hike. Beyond that is more dry rocky riverbed, and in the distance the glacier-capped mountain with the fantastic falls in the middle.

After, we hit Joe Btfsplk's in Banff for lunch/dinner, where we "enjoyed" some greasy diner food and then hit the Banff fudge store and candy store.

-- Pudge


2005-08-19 : COC - Trail Maintenance for Friends of Kananaskis
Today we added an ~80 foot re-route to the Upper Kananaskis Lakes Trail to replace a section of trail where an enormous tree and a bunch of the trail had fallen over and washed out during the spring floods. When we got there, we saw the damaged trail, and our fearless leader, Andy, showed us a section of thick forest with a few marker ribbons showing where we were putting the new trail segment in. We said "PARDON!!??"

Well, we managed to do it, and a mighty fine job we did, if we do say so ourselves. We pruned trees, Andy felled trees (chain saw), pulaskied our hearts out, hauled dirt out, hauled dirt in, hauled rocks out, hauled rocks in, hauled duff out, hauled gravel in, hauled deadfall out, hauled deadfall in, smoothed the trail, flattened the trail, graveled the trail, and obscured the old/original trail. We worked tirelessly, with Mike laying claim to one end of our re-route and Ken claiming the other end. The rest of us floated in between. Hikers who passed by in the morning used the original trail. Those same hikers, just like magic, returning in the afternoon used the NEW trail. It seemed to work for them.

Erika pointed out that the Acronym for "Friends of Kananaskis Country" is FOKC. People who vounteer with her, therefore, are FOKCers. We, being from COC, are, therefore COC FOKCers. And proud of it, too!

What a satisfying job to see the progress and end results of our efforts. I think this has been my favorite trail maintenace day yet, with Ha Ling running a very close second. Thanks to all who came out and helped - awesome, awesome group. It was really cool having Archy, our Taiwanese visitor come out for the day with us. Ken (The Stalker) may, or may not, have seen a new moon from the car on the way home.

-- Rhonda


‹ First  < 8 9 10 11 12 >  Last ›