The mountains - day 1

So I wanted to get away from the city. There was a blue moon coming up and I wanted something special to enjoy the moment.

I called up Ninja Instructor Curtis; who lives in southern BC in the rockies there, I arranged to visit him for a few days of vacation fun.

Made some stops on the way down... did a quick 2 hour visit to the hot springs for a swim and a massage; stopped at this little silver smith store that was in the middle of no where.

Ended up at Curts house around 9pm (after driving since 7am makes for a long day) and we chilled for the night.

"morning" came around (like noon) and we sorts toured around the area, showing me the spots. I had a crazy sushi craving; so we hitup this place called 'chopstics'. I ordered a massive plate of food and a half order of like raw salmon chunks (which I ate with relish - though I can't stand fish... isn't that strange?) We stopped at one of several dams for some sight seeing; they were spilling 2 1/2 gates of water; the froth and foam at the bottom looked like the softest pillow... Though if you put it in perspective; the swells were 14 feet high and could easily swallow a car without a trace.

So we got back to his place, had a little Vegan snack changed our clothes and prepped for a day hike.

Showed up at the bottom of this mountain trail. It was +35 outside (ish... every time I tell this story the temp ranges from +38 to +35 celcius) and the lake beside the trail was still half covered with ice.

Turning to the trail; we were a little dismayed to see about 6-7 feet of snow, all the way up the mountain.

If you notice the almost vertical clean lines in the snow; thats where I jogged up and around, sliding back down. It was sure enough footing to walk on. You just had to keep light thoughts.

Thats the back of curts head on the right hand side of the pic there. He's not overly happy to be climbing in snow, but we figured the worst thing that could happen was we'd get half way and have to stop.

We climbed up the hill... from snow to rocks and back again. A few times we almost twisted things or fell; but were there to catch one another. Funny enough; the snow had melted around the trees and rocks; so if there was a tree limb under the snow from a tree above it, the heat form the sun would pass through and ultra soften the snow around the tree limb; causing us to slip or almost dissapear in the snow several times.

This pic here; its just a hole in the snow. Curt was high centered... aka - his leg was all the way in the snow up to his groin, his other foot was somehow positioned on the rock beside the hole; it was sorta funny, hearing him yelp... and then with amazement say "I'm not even touching the bottom"

Hiked up a ways more, a few hours into the hike at least, walking beside these bamboo poles which had what looked like rope or wire coming out of the top of them and running up the mountain. We sorta followed our own path and ran into this little barrel station and a sign. The sign said something along the lines of "caution avalanches may be triggered at any time, don't be here cause its dangerous". Using a little brain power, we realised that these poles were sticks to place and mark charges below the snow which could remotly be set off causing an avalanch. Who knew?

Um... photo time... This pic here is where we climbed up. See the snow and trees and stuff?

This ridge we're on shooting the picture, its the top ridge in the next picture. This is about half way.

This is... a mountain.

I don't have much more creative things to say, i just wanted to show a few more pics on where things were for perspective's sake.

As mentioned above; this view obscures the actual mountain top, which is another good bit above this.

So we got to the top of the mountain and waited around somewhat for the sun to set and the moon to rise. Of course, you have 2 men with camera's on top of a mountain, they're gonna try doing stupid things and getting photo's of them.

Here's my favorite pic. I'm doing ... something; I think its called a valdez from breakdancing.

Here's a picture of the sun setting over the mountains. It was actually pretty nice.

And here's a pic of the blue moon rising on the opposite side. We actually took like 20 pictures and a few videos, trying to get 1 in focus shot of the moon (as none of us had brought mini tripods or anything).

So after we finished playing on the top of the mountain, we started hiking down... in the dark. Which actually was pretty awesome. The snow, which had softened from the day's heat, got a bunch harder... but was more precarious footing. Until we figued that we could just slide down the whole damn mountain.

Which we did.

There was one or two times where one of us got out of control and couldn't stop (without running into something) and the other grabbed hold of the victum and stopped his downward rush; but other than that, very uneventful.

I do have to say though; sliding down a tree covered mountain in the dark gave me a much greater high than skydiving the few weekends back.

After we got to the bottom and found a 30 foot drop to the highway, we sorta figured that we descended on the wrong side of the mountain. Had to half climb up it again to skirt around to where we were parked.