First Ski Day of the Year

I (finally) got my first ski day in of the year ... I blew off work yesterday (tuesday) and headed up to spend the day skiing at Blackcomb.

It was a great day - 8" of fresh, cold powder, blue sky and about -8. Very unusual weather for this time of year (really, for November, it should have been misty and raining or snowing!).

I found a nice knoll just below the top of the Crystal Chair to climb up and have lunch in the sun.

Very few people on the hill, at times, I had entire runs to myself. A great day, and great start to the ski year.

Bye Bye Skis

I sold my old skis (and boots and bindings and skins and ski crampons) tonight! Bionka drove down from Golden with her boyfriend Steve to pick 'em up. Bionka is just getting into backcountry skiing, so it looks like my skis are off to a good home!

Yup, It Was Asbestos

Killaine & I met with our realtor tonight - we found out that, yes indeed, the house that we had inspected did indeed have 1% asbestos in the vermiculite insulation.

I have no idea if 1% is good or bad - but the key consideration is that there is, indeed, asbestos in there. Man, we were lucky we had a good inspector.

A World of Plastic

For a particularly disturbing view of the vast amount of plastic circulating in the world's oceans, and the impact that all of this plastic is having on us, read this article:

Best Life Magazine: Travel & Leisure: Our oceans are turning into plastic...are we?

Mike n' Ellen Get Hitched!

My good friend from Canmore, Mike got married to his beau, Ellen, on November 10th!


They got married down in Texas, where Ellen's family resides. There were a few challenges making the wedding happen - a few "getting into the United States" issues for Mike, but all were happily resolved!

Mike & Ellen are now living back in Canmore - Ellen is going to attending nursing at

Yikes! That was close ...

Killaine & I are looking for a house. We looked at this house on 8th street in the lower lonsdale area of North Vancouver.
It's a nice house, very quaint, and quite well kept-up inside. It's on a quiet street in Lower Lonsdale, in an area of heritage homes, and close to the old Ridgeway school. The garden at the back is very large. All in all, this house had a lot going for it.

We made an offer on it, contingent on inspection - good thing 'cause the deeper we got into it, the worse it started to look.

Before we did the inspection, we read an old report that indicated the house has an old style of wiring called "Knob and Tube". Read the Wikipedia entry for details, but the short story is that it's an old form of wiring that many insurance companies will no longer insure. This set of the first of the alarm bells. We had electricians check it out - the wiring appeared to be technically safe, and we found that there are insurance companies that will cover houses like this - it meant that we now had "some concern" about the house.

We continued to have it inspected today. We had a great fellow do the inspection. During the inspection he found that:

• there was some rot on the house near the foundation on the north & east aspects;
• that the hot water heating system was using steel pipes (which have a history of eventually corroding through), and that some of the newer copper piping already was showing some very small leaks;
• that there was dampness on the basement floor, indicating the possibility of perimeter drainage issues;
• and a bunch of other smaller issues.
  

But, that's not the end of it. As we moved into the upper part of the house, the home inspector gained access into the roof of the house, and was able to inspect the insulation. After prodding around, he told us that there was fibreglass insulation, but underneath, there was an old vermiculite form of insulation. After we looked at him blankly, he told us that this type of insulation is very old, probably original with the house, and often contains asbestos. Although he could not be certain (it needs to be tested in a lab to know for sure), he did say that 90% of the samples submitted for testing do have asbestos in them.

Well, at that point we'd heard enough. The inspection was concluded, we received the report and we'll very shortly be telling the real estate agents that the deal is off - very, very off.

The hunt continues ...

2006 / 2007 Ski Season Summary

Well, I must have a little spare time at the moment ... so I've decided to summarize my ski stats from last season (winter 2006 / 2007).

A bit of background, for some unknown reason, I started tracking all of my exercise - I guess ostensibly so that I can compare progress (or, lack of) from year to year. Anyway, my ski data from last winter is some interesting data I've been able to pull out.

First ... some summary statistics:

• Total ski days: 44
  
• Total backcountry days: 30
  
• Total downhill days: 14
  
• Total vertical:
• ascended (i.e. backcountry vertical): 22,505m
  
• descended (backcountry & downhill): 100,498m
  
• Total amount of time spent skiing: 239 hours

Of course, some caveats to these numbers ... for a "ski day", I counted any day where I had skis on my feet and skiiing for more than an hour. So, a "ski day" includes the short trips I did up Mt. Seymour in the morning, getting a couple of backcountry runs in before work. It also includes evening skis at Cypress or Seymour.

Charts galore:

Month-by month breakdown of vertical, downhill (blue) and backcountry (green).

Season breakdown of days spent skiing by month, broken down by backcountry and downhill. Note that in January I spent a week (with Killaine) at Sorcerer Lodge, and then in April spent a week doing a backcountry ski trip in the Spearhead/McBride area. Also note the drop off in skiing in February and March (when it seemed like every weekend had horrid conditions).

Finally, a breakdown of hours of backcountry versus downhill. No surprises here!