Coyote Rock Climbing Gym

We started the March break off in Ottawa.  One fun thing we did was visit the Coyote Rock Climbing Gym.  John was eager to scamper up the wall and Erin was cool to belay.  It turns out she is of course an excellent person to have holding your safety line.

Erin on belay!

John scampers to the top.

Rock climbing is such a cool activity.  It's one of those sports where there are no losers--just people working together--to explore together.

Erin and John were excellent.

Weight Lifting Competition -- North Bay Norsemen

On Saturday March 5, Sharon and I enjoyed watching John participate in his first weight lifting competition.  This is not a typical adventure I would write about, but it involved the family, it was fun, and it was tool cool on a lot of levels.  I'll touch on some of levels here.

Larry Sheppard runs the Norsemen Weight Lifting Club in North Bay.  Larry helped me with some students about 10 years ago.  I will never forget his contribution and I am forever in his debt.  I was elated when I heard that John had joined the club.  John's coach is Matt Blanchard.

One thing I like about weight lifting is it is 99.5 percent training, .5 percent competition; it's about training and discipline.  There are no losers.  Everyone pushes themselves to their limit and if you go there and fail--everyone celebrates.  Too cool of a metaphor for life.  I could go on--but I'll save my thoughts on that for another forum.

This local competiton was a smooth operation.  Some of the video highlights Larry's unique way of speaking to athletes, and parents.  He has rapport with everyone.

John was understandably nervous about his first competition.  But his training paid off.

He competed in two competitions: the clean and jerk, and the snatch.

 This event was publicized with possible awards ranging from golf-claps to maybe a handshake and hug from Larry Sheppard.  It was nice to see John win a special award.

Weight lifting is a life-long activity;  it helps with all sports and leads to a healthy and active lifestyle.  I'm looking forward to John's next competition.

Lake Tomiko - Snowshoe Hike

I'm behind in my blogging.  That's not a good thing.  Not a bad thing either, but the point of writing a blog is to get it out there.  So I'm writing three posts this morning--before breakfast.

On Feb 27 Chris Beatty called early in the morning--looking for adventure.  "You up for a hike?"  I surveyed the family--everyone was still sleeping--so I was clear to go.

Without a map or much planning we headed up to Lake Tomiko.  This is adventure based on the Nike slogan--"Just do it."

This was a short hike because we both had to be back to spend time with family on a Sunday afternoon.  Point A is the starting point.  We headed roughly west across, what appeared to be a lake, but the topo shows that it is a swampy area.  I broke through the ice into the mud near the shore.  You could smell the decaying muck.  It was -23 on a bright winter day and the smell was out of place.

The snow had a thick crust on the surface and it made walking difficult.  At some point a strap on my left snow shoe snapped.  I think it was due to the repeated breaking through of the snow.

We hiked across the swamp and climbed to the high point in the area, which was the railroad bed.  The climb up was about twenty feet at probably 65 degrees. It was like climbing a ladder,

A nice short hike.  Very enjoyable.

"Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes, in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself."   (anonymous)

Laurentian Ski Club

This has been a fantastic weekend.  The weather was awesome.  Today John and I headed to Laruentian Ski Club for a day of skiiing.  John had written on the refridgerator, "Bernie and John skiing Sunday."  So--there was the pressure--I had to do it.

We had taken lessons last year at Laurentian and thoroughly enjoyed every outing.  Today was my first ski of the year.  I was excited but a little apprehensive.  On the way to the hill I told John that it is just like riding a bike--you never forget.

Once I started down the main hill I realized I had forgotten.  I said to myself, "Am I supposed to be enjoying this?"  Yikes.  We quickly retreated to the bunny hill for a few "runs".  The fundamentals I and learned in my lessons returned and I was confident to head over to the main hill.  Lots of fun.  We ran in to Jarred Reid and he toured with us for awhile.  He showed us a cool route down the hill which included the run named after Steve Omischl.  We managed to take a couple people down when we disembarked from the chair lift.  I blame it on John--we were able to laugh this one off.

The weather was mild when we started at noon and it continued to get warmer as the day went on.  At one point it was snowing quite heavily but eventually the snow subsided and a fog rolled in.

The day was perfect.  John was a great ski companion.

Third Bridge

The Third Bridge refers to the bridge from my Lower Duchesnay Falls post of a few weeks ago.  At that time, John and I were trying to get to the third bridge on the satelite photo after exploring the first two.  However, on that day, we both broke through the ice and had to postpone the attempt.  Today was different.

I got a call from Chris Beatty at about 12:10 pm--he was looking for an adventure.  I suggested a snow shoe hike.

We started with a trip to the local Canadian Tire store to pick up some shoes for Chris.

I like this hike because it is so conveniently close.  It is just of Main St. West within the city limits.  Within 20 metres of putting on your shoes--you're in beautiful wilderness.

Our trip started at point A on the map.  We crossed the beaver dam at point B.  The third bridge is point C and also the point where we both slid down the embankment.   D is the pump house we found on the bank of the river.  Point E is the easy access up out of the valley to the high ground.  Point F is the entrance to the factory, and Point G is the point where we descended back down to the creek and ended at A--where we started.

The snow was deep and there was a light snow fall at the beginning of the trip.  It was a mild day--about -3.

This is a beautiful area.  The terrain is rugged and the early part of the hike is steep and tricky.  We selected a beaver dam as the safest place to cross the water.

There was evidence throught the hike of an very active beaver.

After crossing the beaver dam we gradually climbed higher and eventually had do slide down to the creek bed to discover the Third Bridge.

The bridge has been unused for at least 25 - 30 years.  The fibre board factory which used the rail line has been closed since the mid 80's.

This line pole appears to have been installed in 1959--they don't put them up like this anymore--with the steps still on them.

As we crossed the bottom of the creek, we passed a pump house that probably fed the factory.

We climbed a gentle slope out of the valley and saw the factory from a distance.

As we walked towards the factory there was evidence of steel drums and old transformers on the ground.  Hard to believe that this has not been cleaned-up.  The photos speak for themselves.

I'm not sure what this machine (below) is, or what it did--but it had a warning sign I couldn't resist reading and recording.

The final leg of the hike took us back near the road, and we descended back down to water level and under the original two bridges near Lake Nipissing.

The hike took us about 2 hours.  Just long enough to need a coffee and a debrief at Twiggs.

Canadian Ecology Centre

This past weekent John and I joined my Nipissing University students at the Canadian Ecology Centre.  The weekend was the last over night field trip for the class which had started in September.  We are used to camping but the accommodations at the CEC are luxurious--so we enjoyed the outdoors and the indoors.

Our cabin #23 was nestled in the forest and the trees were heavy with snow.   We arrived in the afternoon and had time to settle in and unwind before joining the students for dinner.

The evening program centered around the campfire.  John was able to see how university students have fun.  There were a lot of games and songs around the fire.

On Saturday we started off on a snow shoe hike across the bridge spanning the Amable du Fond River.  The snow was deep and the scenery was beautiful.

After lunch two guest speakers joined our group.  The first was Dr. Mark Swain who spoke about balance in life and the importance of recognizing the the most important environment to care for is our own body, mind, and spirt.

Later that afternoon, Cliff Moulder, a retired science teacher demonstrated the ancient techniques for starting a fire.  John joined one of the student groups and together they practised starting fire from scratch.  Later John and I came third in the fire starting competition.

The evening program involved a late night snow shoe hike using night vision goggles.  Too cool.  We hiked down to the boad launch and howled for wolves.  The stars were out.  It was beautiful.

This was a very busy weekend and we were both tired by Sunday afternoon.  An awesome time with the fantastic Nip U students.

Stormy Lake Lookout

Today was a bright sunny day and -23.  We had nothing on the agenda, so a snowshoe hike was planned to Restoule Provincial Park to check-out the Stormy Lake Lookout.  We had been here before Christmas without snow shoe and promised ourselves we would return.  So John and I packed a lunch and headed out around 1 pm.  We used mapper.acme.com to plot some gps points and print out a topo map--one large and one close-up of the area.

There was some ice on the back roads so I had to drive with care.  But we soon arrived at our destination.  You can see the cluster of markers on the map in Restoule Provincial Park.

We parked the van at the entrance to the park (marker F) and walked about 400 m down a road to the trail head (marker G).  There was a very sleight wind and my face started to freeze in the 10 mintute walk to the trail.  Once on the trail and in the trees we had only to contend with the -23 temperature.  I didn't know the direction of the trail--only that it eventually led to the fire tower (marker J)

The walk was beautiful.  The sun shone bright through the snow covered trees.  After about an hour we checked our location with the gps and our topo map.  We still were only about half way.  At this temperature I didn't want to take any chances getting lost or extending our hike beyond day light.  So we stopped for hot choc and a snack and John looked out over a cliff.

While hiking back to the van John heard the faint sound of a woodpecker.  He spotted it and we moved in closer to get some video and pictures.

Internet Photo of Pileated Woodpecker

We were able to get quite close and see that it was a Pileated woodpecker.  You can hear the sound he makes as he bores into the tree.

It is always cool to observe wildlife and not interfere with what they are doing.

Good spotting John!

The Restoule area is very scenic and beautiful.  We will be going back for sure.