It’s Blog Time–Prairie Mountain!

Well, this may have happened a few weeks ago, and I may not have blogged about it recently, but that doesn’t mean I can’t blog about it now. Muahahaha, here I go!

GPS data can be found here.

I never even really knew that Prairie Mountain existed. I knew of Prairie Link Trail and Prairie Creek. But deep in Kananaskis, there is a mountain named after a Prairie. Very interesting.

 

Yes, yes, that is me, sitting on the way up. I also may be holding a snowball. That snowball may have been lobbed at someone else.

 

It’s nice living so close to the mountains because they are just so accessible. The weather may have been cloudy at first, but as you will see it got phenomenal towards the top.

 

Lots of snow near the top, and clearing weather too.

 

Yes, another picture of me sitting. But I will give a shout-out to my mukluks. ahem…. HEY!!!

 

Trees covered in frost are just so pretty. Picture worthy

 

See, I know how to stand!

 

We had some fun practicing our flying abilities. I love powdery snow. This is definitely something you cannot do in summer, lol!

 

Post-flight. I still haven’t earned my wings, but trying has never been so much fun!

 

The final trudge towards the summit. It was truly amazing because we came through the clouds to a sea below us.

 

The sea of clouds only broken by the peaks of the Rockies. This is what it’s all about. Peaks such as Banded, Outlaw, Glasgow and Cornwall, along with Nihahi Ridge all became visible. The view truly inspires me to climb and continue to do so forever.

 

The ridge along the summit trek. While it’s not the highest or most difficult summit, it’s views truly say that bigger isn’t always better. Don’t fall to the right. For some strange reason, we wanted to though…

 

One of the views from the top. Moose Mountain to the north and Calgary would be to the east. Luckily, the clouds covered the city and you could see nothing but a sea of clouds to the east and mountains to the west. A winter paradise!

 

Incredible views. A true gem. I had no idea that the views would be so spectacular.

 

Banded (Toblerone), Outlaw and Glasgow/Cornwall (hidden behind). These mountains are visible from home and now I finally have identified them. I hope to summit them someday.

 

Winter beauty. A sight like no other, and being the first people on the mountain pretty much guarantees serenity. This is why I love to climb.

 

Another view from the summit. This would be looking northwest.

 

View from the top. A good place to be with good friends!

 

This is not the summit, but what we thought to be a frozen hibernating bear. A perfect opportunity to be a goof, something at which I excel.

 

On the way back down, I tripped and fell. Good thing there was a camera ready.

 

On the descent, we met a few people making their way to the top and I was reminded that we were lucky to be the first one’s up. As the clouds cleared, we could easily see (and hear) the Elbow River below us.

 

And what better way to end a summit trip with some wildlife. We spotted 3 moose on the highway going home.

 

Prairie Mountain, the oxymoron name of a hill, was a truly surprising experience. We found some amazing views, had perfect conditions, and found out that sliding down a steep slope on your butt is extremely fun (we made it up to 14km/h) and well worth the steep upward slog! The trip took us just over 3 hours, but that included dawdling at the top with ever-so-necessary summit meal. I hope to do this summit again.

 

The Bike Blog

So I run. I run lots. Running makes me happy. I also test products for running. That gets me free stuff. Stuff that I can sell so I can get stuff. I don’t like buying stuff or having lots of stuff unless I use it. So I changed stuff that I wouldn’t use too much to stuff that I plan to use a lot. Do you follow?

After a lot of product testing, I ended up getting a Garmin Oregon 550t. It is a handheld GPS with topo maps, camera, etc… It’s pretty cool. But honestly, I wouldn’t use it much as I don’t geocache and seldom go places where I don’t have a map. It is a cool gizmo, so I thought I would sell it off to buy something more useful. Something I could use daily. Something that is so much more fun.

This is a Marin Hamilton 29er. I sold the GPS and bought this bike. Much more useful. I plan on commuting to work this summer and this is just so much easier to pedal than the heavy mountain bike. Commuters (at least this one) have the bigger tires (29” vs. 26”) and weigh significantly less. This bike is also a fixed speed bike, so no skipping derailleurs while chugging uphill. The rear hub can also be swapped around for a non-freewheeling bike. This means that the pedals will always turn with the back wheel. Kind of interesting and I will definitely try that out.

The Marin now hangs with my Rocky Mountain and my wife's Norco. Look at how much bigger the tires are! I am so looking forward to commuting this summer. It’s also going to be an interesting mix will the marathon training I am doing for the Powderface race in July.

So that’s a more useful investment than a GPS. As much as I like gizmos and GPS’, a bike is just so much cooler! My Rocky Mountain has 1000’s of kilometers on it so once that bike wears out I may use another earned GPS to pay for a new mountain bike. Hehehe, now to wear out bikes. Good fun!

The River is Rising, and so should my bread

Well, here in Cochrane, in early March, the river is rising. Quite frightening too. Ice has jammed up our river causing very high levels of ice. It makes for some great photos.

 

This is down under the bridge. The town has shut down the river pathways until the ice goes down.

 

This road typically goes down to the boat launch, but as you can see, that’s all under water and ice right now.

 

I can’t go on the paths right now as they’re all under water. Probably for the best.

 

There are markers on the bridge that show how high the waters are. I believe it said that it was at 4 meters. Wow, that’s something else. Our river is controlled by Ghost Dam about 15 km upstream, and generally that doesn’t fluctuate the river too much. Usually it’s low in the morning, and higher in the evening, but this is like nothing else. Reminds me of being back in Peace River during our floods there.

 

So in an effort to maintain my New Year’s resolution to bake one artisan loaf of bread per month, I have kept up with that as best as possible. February’s entry was a Ciabatta loaf and March’s was an Enriched White Bread. All recipes were courtesy of Peter Reinhart’s Breadbaker’s Apprentice book. A great read and must for artisan baking.

 

Like most of the Artisan Breads in the book, they start with a starter, which ferments overnight to add flavour. This is a poolosh, quite runny and spongy once done.

 

The next day, you mix all the ingredients and do rising and proofing of the loaf. The ingredients are simple, so I think there’s more to the technique in the bread making.

 

Home-made proofing bowl. To keep the heat in and let it rise.

 

After some time, I ended up with these. Like I said, I think more of the art is in the technique and shaping, but these turned out pretty good. One went to our neighbours for sampling (they were delighted). It still needs a bit of work, but it’s coming along.

 

I’m attempting to make a sourdough (acutally, a Pain a Poilane). Sourdough needs starter, also known as barm. Barm needs seed culture, whatever that is. So this is an attempt at seed culture, which takes about 6 days. It’s rye flour and pineapple juice, fed daily until it ferments. I think it relies on yeast in the air, which may or may not work. Regardless, this should lead to my sourdough loaf in a week or so.

 

The day after the Ciabatta, I went straight into a one-day bread to play with shaping. In the book, there is a recipe for enriched white bread. Enrichement (butter, egg, milk) being the source of flavour in the bread, these breads take only a few hours to make start to finish. A great way to play with shaping. This picture is the dough ready to rise. It says to rise it a room temp, but I cheated and used a warm oven to speed things up.

 

After rising. This is a very sticky dough and it’s best to handle it as little as possible.

 

For shaping, I chose to make 2 Boules (balls, monsieur Francais, oui oui!). Again, one would be going to our neighbours for sampling.

 

The book didn’t call for slash marks or flour dusting, but I wanted to play with it, so I did. X and O shaping.

 

Post baking. These turned out really well and tasted great! Enriched bread can sometimes have a chemical taste (in my opinion), but these were tasty. Quite sweet and delicious. I gave the X slashed dough to my neighbours, who were again delighted! The little man of our house also enjoyed some bread too (Nom nom Yummmmmm).

 

I will continue to play with shaping and baking breads. I need to iron out some technique, but this is definitely something I am really enjoying. Lucky I have people to help eat these batches of bread and provide comments and feedback. I am quite sure that everyone who gets a hot loaf of bread at 10pm is happy, but you never know. Maybe I will purposely make a really gross loaf to see if they are good sources of feedback.

Next blog is about my new bike. Oh yeah, did I mention I got a new bike (for dirt cheap too!).

I would like to blog more than once per month…

So yeah, looking at my blog that comes up as my homepage on my internet browser, I realize that I haven’t blogged in a while. Every time I see it, I go “I know I know” I need to write a new one. So here I am, writing a new one. Let’s take a look at what has happened recently.

I did a winter run on Ghost Lake a little while ago. GPS data can be found here. This is the drive out there. Wintery indeed.

Last time I was out at Ghost, it was not frozen. But now it is. Figures… Good thing I didn’t bring a canoe.

I have a picture similar to this one that I took while kayaking this past summer. It can be found here. I love how we have seasons here. It’s so cool (and cold!).

I got out to the little island on Ghost lake and had some fun flying through the air. I am a nerd, that’s for sure!

I managed to get this one. I think it worked well.

Temperatures were close to –30 while I was running, which makes exercise and breathing difficult. It’s great for maximizing lung capacity though. I don’t know how, but after running in the cold, running in normal temperatures seems so much easier. Maybe it’s just in my head. Anyway, the plan with the run was to go circle the island and come back, but I ended up losing my car key somewhere along the run. So I spent a whack of time sifting through the snow and couldn’t find it. Bummer. Luckily, I got back to the car and had left the door unlocked. I got in the car, called for help and waited for 1/2 an hour before rescue came. Ooops. Luckily, friends were in town and able to help, or I would have had to hitch-hike back home.

I have also held true to one of my resolutions to try making an Artisan loaf of bread each month. This month’s (well, January’s) was a French Loaf from Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice book. The book is fantastic. I read almost 100 pages of bread theory. I ended up with this.

A sad attempt at a French Loaf. I think the main problem is that I accidentally shut off the oven during baking.

It sure looked good, and tasted great, but the oven-shutting-off incident caused a thick, chewy and rather hard-to-eat crust. At least the bread tasted really good.

The payoff though? Well my wife got some great photos . I learned that turning off the oven while baking generally produces poor results. But the key thing I learned is that a 2 day pre-ferment makes absolutely deliciously flavoured bread! I will definitely try this again.

Lastly, I have officially signed up for the Powderface42 FULL marathon. Yeah yeah! For the longest time, their website was down, then all of a sudden it was up and the race was 80% sold out! I immediately signed up and made it in! Yeah yeah! So January 31st marked the beginning of my training. It’s basically a 3 day on 1 day off training schedule. I’ve adopted Crossfit Endurance to help out with that. So far, it works great, although I am only in day 2 of it, lol! But one problem I found last year during the Powderface21 was that I ran out of fuel. So I am experimenting with fuelling while running without having to buy energy gels. I found a recipe for Pinole, a roasted corn endurance food. I learned about it in Born to Run (I know, I know…) so I figured I would give it a go.

Basically, you take cornmeal or corn flour, roast it till it browns (parches), mix it with some honey (I used brown rice syrup, about 1tsp per cup of corn), cinnamon (or ginger for flavour) and water to make little cookies. I baked it at 400 till it hardened and voila, instant energy! I made 3 variations, one with corn flour, one with cornmeal and the third with a mix of both.

I ran a 90minute Time Trial this morning at the track and took one of these cookies every 15 minutes with water. I cannot believe how well it worked. I even tried skipping one meal at the 45 minute mark and noticed a decline in performance. So yeah, I just have to tweak the size of these things (big, dry cookies are hard to eat when you’re thirsty) and they should go well. It’s amazing how well fuelling works! I will keep this up as I continue my training!

That’s all from me!