Weekend hiking trip - Fay Glacier and back again

On Saturday, Garrett, Ian, Joelle and I started out on a 4-day hike starting at Marble Canyon in Kootenay National Park.This part of the park suffered from a huge wildfire 12 years ago in 1996. Even now there remains large swathes of burnt trees, with new growth slowly reappearing. It's a little creepy to look at, and gives the horizon an unfocussed look to it. The first part of the hike is 10km's along the valley beside the river.Unfortunately, we started our hike around noon and had to walk through the worst of the day's heat. It was really warm out with no wind, and since the trees have no foliage, no shade. We took a break for lunch near the river's side.We continued on, taking pictures of a few of the sights, like this slide region looking up the mountain:As we followed the river, we had to cross a number of small streams using logs as makeshift bridges or hopping along the rocks.After reaching the fork in the trail, we turned to start climbing up the side of the mountain. Our destination hut is way at the top of the ridge in the below picture:We started our hike around 1475m and had to attain 2145m where Fay Hut lay. It was a long hot climb up the hill.We saw lots of nice waterfalls on our hike up.We took a break on the slope before we got to the really steep part of the hill. Ian and Joelle:Here we are!The last bit of the trail before the hut is a little bit steep and has a fair bit of loose rock, so there is a handy rope there to help you climb up. It was actually quite fun. There's Garrett:That's Ian ahead of me:Garrett and I:Garrett and I down below:Once past that part, we were basically at the hut. There was a nice waterfall nearby:This was looking back down towards the valley:Once at the hut, we made some dinner and relaxed in the evening light. It was a nice night out.I don't have all of the pictures that Garrett took, so I'll probably post extra photos later on, separate from this entry. Stay tuned for more details about our trip! The next few days were move exciting!

BAD Blogger!

Man, I can't tell you just how busy I am lately. That's why I haven't posted in thirteen days!! I still have a number of posts waiting to be organized and typed up. Last night I spent some time organizing the photos on one of them, but it's a very inefficient process to put them in order. I feel like blogger could fix their website to make this process faster, but so far no luck. Anyway, I didn't get through it all before I was really tired and had to go to bed. Here is what my weeks consist of:

Weekend - away somewhere usually
Monday - ultimate. Coaching/running Women's League. Last Monday it also consisted of throwing a league-end BBQ, so all the food and equipment had to make it to the field. Good thing I'm good at delegating.
Tuesday - ultimate. This week instead of ultimate, I went to a departmental potluck for a distinguished speaker visiting our department. I had to make food for this too, so that task was squeezed in somewhere.
Wednesday - in general, my only free nigh, which actually means it is full with other stuff, like grocery shopping, catching up on phone calls, cleaning, doing dishes and laundry. Tonight, I went to MEC, Safeway, Bindi's (to pick up my camping gear from last weekend) and organized food/camping gears for the upcoming weekend. I also talked on the phone to Bonnie, Amanda, Garrett and my mom.
Thursday - ultimate.
Friday - off to somewhere usually

So, you see, there is little free time right now in my life. Plus, I'm pretty darn busy at school, what with my summer student tailing me and my research being active. As well, there is that whole 'president of the ultimate league' thing going on too, which keeps me busy and to which I'm not dedicating quite enough time even. All of this leaves me sleepy in the evening, and guess what is the best thing to do when you can't sleep? You got it! Organize photos or type blogs.

I will try to do better, but realistically, I can't promise too much. All the posts will go up eventually, albeit way later than the actual date of the event it describes.

Davis (belated entry)

Here are some final pictures from my trip to Davis. One night, we went out to a local restaurant and had a drink.Amanda got a chocolate martini. It looked pretty yummy:On my last morning in Davis, we went for a walk through downtown and along the river out to the farm. First, we stopped and waited for the bakery to open to get some bread for our picnic lunch.There was this neat public art display right near where we waited.As you moved around the poles, the coloured light changed.Here are some pictures of downtown Davis. It reminded me of a small town, despite the population of 64,000 people. Once through downtown, we wandered onto the river path.This is the field where we had our picnic lunch.There were a ton of ducks in the field, some of which were very interested in our food (although we didn't share at all).Duckies.Curious and hungry duckies.More duckies. Or the same?Momma duck with babies.White duck.After lunch, we continued on through the river valley. Amanda and Ray relaxed on a bench out of the heat while I stalked the egret for a picture.The white bird in the middle is the egret. Too bad I couldn't get closer!I did, however, make a short movie of the egret fishing:Amanda found a big pinecone! It was pretty cool. She left it on the trail though, until a later time.We wandered through the arboretum. It was nice and shady there, a good escape from the hot sun that day.Some more river before we made it to the farm.
At the farm there were....horses! And baby horses:
Amanda with the horse.Momma horse, baby horse.Well, hello little buddy!This is the resident donkey. He was pretty cool, although I wanted him to call out (hee-haw!) while I was there and he didn't.And, lastly, this little dairy cow is part of Amanda's experiment. The cows are trained to step on that 8'x8' square to trigger the shower, in which the cows can stand to cool off on those hot California days. 
"Who you lookin' at?"