Berg Lake
In July, Gabriel and I went to Berg Lake as lucky winners of the incomprehensible BC Parks booking website. I meant to write a nice recap of the trail as it's been reopened for the first time after the massive flooding, but really it's too nice of a trail to have much interesting to say. The hike is nice, the trail is fantastic, and the views are gorgeous throughout.
Views from Berg Lake
Ashlar Ridge
We climbed Roger's Lunch Buffet on Ashlar Ridge in Jasper, which is a beautifully bolted 8 pitch 10b route. However, getting to this climb is a much trickier proposition than the actual climb since there is no discernible trail to the climb. After dropping my phone in the bushes, scrambling up multiple ridge bands, and slipping and sliding through scree slopes, we finally tackled the actual climb. I led a couple of the 5.9 pitches, which were a little scary since I'm not used to limestone at all, but also quite fun and long.
Afterwards we went to Miette hotsprings, which were just up the road. I submit that every alpine adventure should end in a hotspring, soaking up the sunset on the ridge of the rock you climbed.
Paragliding: P2, Fly Ins, the Ongoing Fear of Everything Involved in Paragliding
I got signed off for my P2 which means I'm allowed to launch and land myself. You'd think this would confer endless amounts of freedom, tackling the pathless routes of the sky, soaring into the sunset, etc etc, but really I just follow more experienced pilots and try to copy what they're up to.
In practice this means August has mostly been devoted to going to various flying sites around BC - our teacher does shuttles up in Pemberton so I've flown a couple launches there, and then Gabriel and I went to the island fly-in in Duncan.
Clearwater Fly-In
This past weekend I went to Clearwater for the El Nido fly-in. Fly-ins remind me a lot of ultimate frisbee tournaments -- you fly as much as you can, camp in a field, and then straggle home on Sunday.
I have to say Clearwater offered the best evening entertainment as a local drunk spun out his truck and got it wedged on the bridge, which we heard with clarity as we were all sitting around a campfire about twenty meters away. The local drunk, howling in anguish, then had the unhappy experience of a dozen paragliders sprinting to his rescue, assuming he'd managed to hurt himself instead of just his truck, and an eldery neighbour shuffling onto the scene in his housecoat with a sony handcam ready to capture the gory details. The flying was fun as well.
It was interesting summer for me, because for the past ten years my life has been dictated by the rhythms of competitive club ultimate, and this year I didn't have any of that structure. I was able to progress a lot with some of my other hobbies and explore parts of this province that I've never spent much time in. I'm still quite sad about frisbee and my foot, but I'm equally happy to have this time and to get to spend it outdoors.
