Wordless Wednesday

 

Cake for dinner

 One of the birthday coupons the kids got last year was dessert for dinner.  Zoltan used his on something relatively mundane. Alex, on the other hand, came up with this gem.

She and Zoltan each made cakes.  

 She made the chocolate and graham cracker cakes. Zoltan made a plain white cake.  He made chocolate chiffon frosting. She made marshmallow frosting. It consumed 2 containers of Fluff and still the "marshmallow" flavor got lost in "frosting" flavor. Next time it needs less butter and powdered sugar.

She stacked and frosted the layers.  She decorated the top and sides (Zoltan helped made some of the design decisions).

This thing is both amazing and terrifying. Our slices were about 1/16 each and it was too much. I was impressed how it all came together.  The graham cracker cake is the same recipe our chef friend had used when making Alex's birthday cake 3 years ago in Frankfurt and I doubted that Alex could pull off something as moist and flavorful. I was wrong.

* Note: Terry had nothing to do with these photos

Wordless Wednesday

 

Raising children

 This is what it is like to raise children. 

The Scene: just after lunch, at Zoltan's room

Me:  Zoltan, go downstairs and put away the mac and cheese.

Zoltan: I didn't leave it out.

 Me: Then who did? Nobody else had any.

Zoltan: It's not out.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Lusk Pass Trail

May is a challenging time for hiking in Alberta. With the thawing a number of trails are avalanche risks.  Other trails are still closed for the winter season.  Others are newly closed due to awakening bears.  Some are too muddy or still icy.  And yet others are simply too steep for our family to tackle (this one has nothing to do with the season).

 

This weekend was forecasted for spectacular weather. Sunny and 70s (20s for the Celsius crowd). We decided to hit the trail on a hike that I hadn't even heard of before Terry found it and sent it to me to check out.  About 8km of comparatively flat*, dry terrain with mountain views. Sure, sign me up!

It's a loop, so we had first to decide which way to go.  We chose clockwise, although in hindsight I would have done it the other way - when going counterclockwise you run through the destroyed-by-fire part first and have the prettier part to look forward to.  Early on in the hike we saw the first wildflowers of spring.  We are looking forward to the wildflower season in the Rockies. 

 

We think we've realized that the high elevation is part of why the sun feels hotter here. I mean we started dragging at 70 degrees. There were a number of shady spots in the first part of the hike where snow still lay on the ground, so we grabbed handfuls to melt along our necks and arms to cool off. I tried throwing a snowball but it disintegrated before reaching its target.

 

 

   * Terry has requested the disclaimer that the hike had about 300m (1000feet) of elevation so it was far from flat, but that's flat for Alberta and especially compared to what we've been trying to hike lately.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Ha Ling solo adventure

Disclaimer: Terry neither took nor edited these photos.

After last week's aborted attempt to hike Wasootch Ridge, I realized I needed conditioning - more hiking. Everyone else in the family had other plans for the day, so over the weekend I took myself to Ha Ling. First impression: wow it seems like the road to nowhere as you head towards. I worried the potholes would break the car. Second impression: I was surprised and delighted to find a parking spot in the parking lot. Third impression: nobody should hike in the mountains in April without decent ice cleats and yet a full half of my fellow travelers lacked them. As some careened down steep parts I feared I'd be knocked over like a bowling pin.

 This hike completely  kicked my behind - I played a guessing game about which body parts would be sore the next day. (Spoiler: more parts than I expected)  It was steep and challenging. All the scree at the top made me fear falling off the mountainside. During the hike, all the nice firm ice the cleats could dig into warmed up and became slush that provided no traction. The downhill was nearly as treacherous as the uphill was. It was AMAZING.

At the top, I was sitting on the rock ledge you can see on the bottom right of the above photo. The snow you see just above it is a relatively thin icing, the other side is just a massive cliff.

These are the mountains I could see during the entire hike once I got above the tree line.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Lake Louise, Take Two

 In deciding where we will ski all of next winter, we realized that a mountain we'd visited once, on one of the coldest days in a cold place, and where we'd finished on a really sour note - was not the way to make an informed decision.  So mid-March we tried again. As we pulled into the parking lot (the third lot entrance, meaning WAAAY to the back) we realized this would be nothing like what we'd experienced before.

It was so much warmer this time that Zoltan frequently complained of overheating. We discussed getting waterproof rain pants he could wear instead of his snowpants for warmer weather skiing.  Even with a much more crowded park we never waited more than 5 minutes to get on a lift. This could definitely be because most folks come to LL to ski the black diamonds, whereas we emphatically did not. However, we did not notice long lines at the other lifts, so perhaps not.

Even Alex enjoyed herself, and she's been a pill on ski trips since she came out of quarantine. I'm whispering this to avoid her notice in hopes she continues to enjoy skiing. 

I still think I prefer Sunshine, with its much wider range of greens and blues (recognizing the kids will likely move to blacks after a few more lessons) and its super fun powder. At this point, what we do next year is anyone's guess!

Wordless Wednesday

Elbow Trail to Snagmore Loop

 

Between skiing, bad weather, and some foolish promises to the kids, we have not hiked much lately. For this trip we had the constraints of needing to be relatively close to home and some cell service. We left the kids at home and hit Bragg Creek.

Ice cleats were 100% necessary, as the melting/freezing cycle was in full swing and the half of the path that wasn't a muddy mess was sheets of ice.  I started the hike wearing: T shirt, long sleeved T shirt, merino wool sweater, fleece, waterproof shell, hat and mittens.  I ended the hike wearing: Tshirt and shell. definitely tested the boundaries of my new backpack as I stuffed layer after layer in as we, and the world, warmed up.

It was a lovely little walk in the woods. There are some great mountain views along the ridge (which we encountered first, having gone the counterclockwise route) and the rest of the trail is foresty. We watched a couple of squirrels have their lunch - I'd never actually seen them eat before. The trail is very, very well marked, which is always a huge gold star in my book.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Being Jewish in Calgary

 There is not a large, thriving Jewish population in Calgary. That became abundantly clear last year during the frustrating Hunt for Hanukkah Candles, where when I finally found some (thank you Michaels) I went ahead about bought enough for all three years. Last year I also made my own matzah, having given up on even searching for it.

This year i decided to do better research. After all, there are three different synagogues in the city, AND a JCC - although they are all within about three miles of each other in a part of the city far, far from mine.  The research turned up solid gold: there is one Safeway grocery store, down in the neighborhood of other Jewishy things, that not only carries Matzah but actually has a Kosher food section!  

caveat: Terry did not take this picture and does not sanction its presence on the blog

Our pilgrimage took place this weekend. Upon entering the store we were met with this Wall O' Matzah,  and it only got better, with matzah meal for the matzah ball soup, or soup kits, or pre-made balls in broth in glass jars. Three kinds of horseradish.  Gefilte fish. They even had a full range of Passover candy.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

The Buy Nothing Group

 One major silver lining of COVID is the development of local Buy Nothing groups. Through ours, I have rid our house of outgrown kids' clothes, snowshoes, cookware, toys and games. We have acquired other cookware, food items, a white board just when ours died, and - most importantly - school supplies the night they became necessary.

When Alex mentioned in the late afternoon that she needed two balloons for science class the next day, I took a deep breath. We're trying to limit our trips to stores, and we don't have any balloons. In comes the Buy Nothing group. I asked if anyone had balloons. A few people did. One of whom said she was running out to the wine store and would drop off the balloons while she was out. Jokingly, I asked her to drop off some wine as well. 

Later in the evening she writes back that she had dropped them off in a bag at our doorstep. I go out to pick it up. In the bag, in addition to the balloons, is a bottle of wine. My heart is so overfull.

Sunshine

To finish the trifecta of "SkiBig3" we headed to Sunshine Village on Sunday.  The weather was nearly the exact same as the day before, so perfectly cold, although the sun never came out and the wind howled (although the wind may have only seemed stronger due to nothing blocking it).

We'd noted the warnings about getting there early for parking, and pulled into a spot at right about the middle of the lot at 8:00am. Upon the sage guidance of the gentleman directing traffic, the first folks ready with their gear (Terry and Zoltan) went to (1) buy the kids' tickets as the adults had ours from Costco and (2) get into line for the gondola up to the lifts. 

I'll just say it took 1.5 hours from getting into line to getting off the gondola at the top and leave it there.  Although, needless to say, we were pretty grumpy.  Later in the day we rationalized that waiting for 1.5 hours, then basically not at all, is actually a better deal than waiting between 10-30 minutes for every run. 

In the wake of Norquay's surprises we had done quite a bit of research on Sunshine and had a solid game plan. We started with a recommended green run that was this big bowl and the snow was beautiful powder and it was so much fun!  The lift was short and the runs shorter but the longest we waited in line was 5 minutes.  And the trails are barely trails - there is so much open expanse it's pretty close to "well, everything over that way will be green, everything over that way is blue. Just get down to the bottom however you feel." The guides Sunshine puts out are spot on - we read one that tracked what it called "light blues" and for the runs we did it ran perfectly true.  We got up and down each run so quickly that our legs were on fire by 2pm and we decided to call it a day.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Mt. Norquay

We have a mission to try the main ski mountains in the area this year, to choose the contenders for next year's season pass (only one will win this contest!) To that end, we booked an airbnb in Canmore and had plans/reservations at Norquay and Sunshine.

Saturday was Norquay. From the trail maps things looked beautifully simply laid out - one lift appeared to have trails that were mostly black; one had mostly blue, one mostly green, etc.  We generally start off on green. The lift had five different lines that converge right at the end. We waiting in line 15-30 minutes for each run. After a few runs we decided to try the blue. We followed the route marked "easiest run" - so presumably the easiest blue route down. It was pretty challenging.  It was even more of a surprise because we had tried all the green runs on the "green" lift and none of them were what I'd call a "dark green" - so it was a significant jump.

One thing I found fascinating is the dedication to moguls that seemed to dominate the majority of runs - there was even a green run of moguls - something I had never seen before.  Zoltan enjoyed trying them out and getting a feel for what it's like, and I am sure he'll enjoy moguls even more as he progresses.

All in all, the skiing wasn't very fun and we cut the day short.

Chester Lake

 The fog was so thick I am pretty sure there should have been additional mountains in view.  The hike was a bit of a slog - the "snowshoe" path had significantly more elevation gain than the "cross country ski" track (which is also the summertime normal path). Terry didn't even bother to take photos with the nice camera.

The good news was the day was icky enough to keep folks at home, so even though we didn't arrive until around 11am there was plenty of parking.  It's a really popular snowshoe trail but the snowshoes were not needed as long as we stayed on the trail. It might have been icy but we had our ice cleats on from the beginning so we wouldn't know. There was one steep part that we "sledded" down on our behinds.

Guess we'll have to go back with better weather!

Wordless Wednesday