A Canadian winter adventure

We are enjoying our last winter in Vancouver BC. With only 2 more weeks left we are counting down the days until our grand canyon trip. Since visiting NZ for christmas, we returned to Canada with the intention of savouring the moment. So we have been making the most of getting "out and about" for a last true canadian winter...

British Columbia has a vast amount of back country terrain, there is endless opportunities for backcountry skiing...

Besides the skiing, we have been enjoying hanging out with good friends, eating good food and experiencing the "candian culture" of which includes curling, live music, watching the Canucks (ice hockey) game, film festivals you name it! (not that we have much photo footage of it, but heres something anyway)...

BC is such an incredible place we are going to miss it dearly. Thanks to all the crew up here for all the great adventures, it will all be missed!

Return of Mountaineering in the Cascades

Because of the trip I did last year, I just had to sign up for more. It is a 10 day mountaineering seminar that NOLS offers their instructors. With it only being an hour and a half south I jumped in the van and headed back to the States. We organised gear the next day and took off for the hills.

This time round there were only 6 of us and an all female trip. You could just imagine the shenanagins we got up to. We managed to hit 3 peaks, travel a bunch on glacier, go crevasse diving, abseil of steep passes, have photo shoots and a whole lota a laughter - not to mention the blue bird skies every day!

The views...

The Camping...

The summits...

The people...

The skills...

The Marmots...

Summer Lovin

Summer over here in Canada has been all go. Within 3 days of Jacqui arriving back from Australia we were on the road again, family included. We had Hillary(shauns sis), Helge, Ange (Jacs sis) and Mic visiting so we took them for a tickey tour around the rockies. Although it seemed like it was summer in Vancouver - it was not the case in the rockies, we had more snow than anticipated. But all in all it was an awesome trip and was great to be hanging out with the family....

Shaun Hills and Helge at the top of the chief - Squamish

Ange and Jacs Melinge Lake, Jasper - not quite thawed!

The Crew so excited about sunshine and Mt Robson!

Of Course we had to get them out on some whitewater action. This picture is now the face of Fraser River Rafting! what an action shot!

Within a week or two of saying farewell to the sisters we anticipated the arrival of Jacquis mum and stepdad...round 2.

Continuing on a simlar journey through the rockies we also went to the Calgary stampede. Yehaww what an event that was. We pulled out our western attire and tried to fit in...

Canada Day - Proud!

All dressed up and ready to rodeo

Cuckwagon races

Mandatory jumping shot

We then had a bit of time back at work with a mixture of Vancouver and Vancouver Island Locations. Shaun then got assigned some work in the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) in northern BC for 3 weeks. So we jumped in the company jeep and drove north for 2 days, through the haze of the forest fires and into sandfly / mosquito territory.

A small piece of evidence of bug action...

Jacs planning our route

There's heap's of totem poles on the islands. We hired some sea kayaks for a day and found this one.

Good views all round

Apparently it's crab season up here. We found this (undersized) one while kayaking and didn't keep it. A couple of days later we went out 'crabbing' for real. Evidence of that is below, unsuccessful on the crab front though

Mid-day, mid kayaking rest stop on a secluded beach

Some pretty cool rainforest up here

Jacs got creative and made some bannana bread

It wouldn't be a rugged coastline without a few good shipwreck's I suppose

This lake is just down the road from where Shauns staying / working.

We finished off the trip by going to a local music festival, awesome music, food and people...what more could you ask for?