October 26th

 

3pm. Its turned a bit cold & the snow is back, not much but enough toreally underline the advent of winter & the end of the gardening season.



September 21st

8am: Ah yes! My prediction from yesterday was true - a pretty decent snowfall overnight, not too cold though so it probably won't hang around. The joys of scraping, defrosting & warming up the cars beckon!

September 16th

8pm: Back from the warmth of Vancouver to snow in Canmore. Just to compound a miserable, tepid summer we are now getting snow here already. I suspect any remaining plant life in my back garden is on its last legs by now!

September 5th

7pm: Yesterday's rain continued overnight & as the temperature dropped, the snow settled on the mountains opposite us in the valley. Pretty? - undoubtedly. Welcome in the first week of September? - no!

May 29th

8pm: Finally the snow clouds have lifted a little on what was a cold Saturday afternoon. What to do when it's like this, no biking, no gardening, not much really - just an indoors kind of day. Hope it warms up a little for the start of the Bow Valley Soccer League tomorrow.

May 28th

9.30am: Last night's cold, damp football training session heralded the onset of snow. SNOW! It's the end of May for god's sake.....so here I am snapping a bunch of frozen cows in a field just south of Cochrane, the snow clouds still looming in the background. When will this late winter ever end......

May 4th

6.15pm: First Minor Soccer session & Tabby is playing yet again for the Squirrels - they hammered the poor old Marmots 4-0 in the opening game. Tabby definitely stronger & with more technique this season, although the attention span of a goldfish & like the rest of the kids suffering in the sub-zero temperatures. We had our first official training session later that evening, I think I have contracted frostbite - it was appalling weather - not very enjoyable to be honest but we had an incredible turnout of players - nationalities included Chilean, Brazilian, Japanese, Czech, German, Polish, Dutch, Jamaican, Scottish, English & the odd Canadian.

April 28th

8.30pm: I stopped in the swirling snowstorm at the PetroCanada service station near Cochrane, the weather has been appalling all day - heavy snow, 90mph winds, generally miserable. I don't want to turn this into a weather blog, but we get such extremes here. Just a week before I was playing football in balmy conditions & now this. I had been for dinner in Calgary with a colleague over from Toronto - he was lucky (in a sense) to get to Calgary given the hurricane force winds that all but closed down the airport.

April 25th

10.45pm: I have clocked up a decent amount of guitar practise today, thanks to the cold weather & my new Marshall amp. Earlier got out on the bike for an hour, really need to ramp up the intensity now with exactly 2 months until the big ride. A nice family day though all in all, lots of cooking, messing around with the kids & generally just pottering!

April 24th

8pm: Well it snowed all day today, not that cold but enough to curtail serious outdoor activity. Plenty of quality time with the kids, Tabby in particular is taking a real interest in music. She loves taking a CD from my shelves & copying the cover - like her grandfather, she is a seriously talented artist. I played her The Stone Roses - one day I will tell her about my adventures in Manchester in the late 80s, I thought at the time The Roses were the greatest band to have ever walked this planet. This poster on my office wall is of one gig I never made it too, much to my eternal regret.

April 23rd

8.30am : I could have kicked myself this morning, it was an incredible scene in Canmore with fresh overnight snow & stormy clouds hanging in the valley -- I took some great pictures but i had inadvertently screwed up the settings on my camera. They came out the size of postage stamps :(  Oh well, at least I got a nice shot of the Elk's grazing on Three Sister's Drive. By the time I got home at around 6pm the snow was gone..........

April 12th

5pm: One of those cold, blowy days that occasionally blight us here in the Bow Valley, hard to take photos when visibility is so low & the worlds seems to be harshly desaturated. Here is a shot of one such snow cloud shrouding the tip of Ha Ling Peak on a cold Monday afternoon. Even the world's greatest photographer may struggle with this flat light & poor viso.

April 11th

8pm: Thoughts are turning to the garden, it's still a month at least before you can plant safely outside without snow/frost destroying the seedlings - this is how our garden looks in early April this year, a lot less snow than is normal.

April 10th

2pm: So I went and splashed out on my new Taylor guitar, a neat looking instrument & super excited I headed down Main Street on my way home, I wondered why the town seemed to be at a standstill with people looking up in the sky with cameras & binoculars. Soon it became apparent, helicopters were bombing the peak of Mount Rundle, loaded with the previous 48 hours of snow. The steep slopes overhang the thin ribbon of road that takes you up to Spray Lakes & I guess the avalanche risk was high. Pretty spectacular stuff & as I have my camera with me at all times I got a decent shot of the last avalanche coming down - albeit with the pharmacy in the frame!

April 9th

3pm: All the snow from Thursday translated into a good days snowboarding at Lake Louise - in terms of snow, the best of the year - with soccer & cycling taking over, this was probably the last day I'll spend there this season - spent more days on teh slopes this year than any of the previous 4 we have been out here.....

April 8th

7pm: A day out in Calgary, we left snowy Canmore & headed into warm, sunny Calgary for some shopping & stuff. Highlight of the day was an amazing Mexican lunch at the Tu Tierra Taqueria in SE Calgary. It's a genunine Mexican restaurant, serving regional cuisine from around that sunny nation - beautiful food and a nice, simple decor. Top lunch experience! Later we hit the dreaded Ikea, it was sunny when we went in, but about an hour later we came out into a raging, angry blizzard. The snow was flying horizontally & the temperature had plummeted. Thinking we were in for a hellish journey home, we got through unscathed - although horror stories of pile-ups & crashes dominated the news. We did though end up at the doctor's office, with an unwell tabby - hence the picture of a snowy Safeway as we headed over to their pharmacy!

March 31st

4pm: The stormy snow clouds that have been hanging over the mountains are very evident in this shot that I took on my way home from a day's work in Calgary. Calgary was warmish & clear, Chinook conditions even but as I got closer to Canmore the temperature dropped. Love these views you get on the Trans Canada, something different in the sky or on the ground every time you make that journey. One sure sign of spring is the melting lakes & the arrival of lots of waterfowl migrating north - the freshly arrived black beaked Trumpeter Swans in particular mean that summer is not too horribly far away.

March 29th

11pm: A little blast of late winter today, cold & snowy all day.............

March 9th

6pm: So finally, finally we got some snow & the valley once again looked a bit wintery. Today was the first day of bootcamp & as I dragged my weary body home after an hour of torture I took a wee moment to snap the snowy scene from the far end of our street. So the ski season might just be extended by a few weeks, but with more warm weather forecast - who knows?

February 21st

3pm: My kids love Uncle Pete, he spent the weekend with us in Canmore & they hardly left his side - he is going to make a great daddy one day!! Today we spent several hours at the Canmore Nordic Centre, Pete went Cross Country skiing for the first time & did very well indeed. I finally got the hang of the skate style of skiing & had a great afternoon with my instructor, the incredibly patient Tricia. The weather was just phenomenal, hot & sunny - Tabby & Charlie wrestled each other & Pete after we had done skiing, a perfect afternoon rounded off with chocolate milk & a homemade curry....