november

november has been a fun month.  we didn't have the gorgeous sunshine of october, but our family still had a lot of fun and we hosted a few visitors.

kylie's cousin erin come out for the day while playing at a vancouver squash tournament.

ty hosted his buddy quinton a few times.

ty showed quinton his favourite spots on the river.

crashing through the eroded crusty bits is as fun for me as it is for the boys.

















speaking of crusty bits, i went for a kayak near the same beach a few days ago and the area between the launch and the open river was frozen over.  my kayak has an excellent polycarbonate icebreaking hull.

here's that same frozen over section from another angle, with the open water beckoning.

we've spent a lot of time out here lately.  there are endless entertainments.

including the company.

one day was particularly slick and muddy.  it was a bit chilly as well, but that didn't stop ty from throwing ice chunks and loving it.

oh, and throwing sand chunks and loving it.  the sand ninja in his element.  evildoers wearing clean white shirts beware!

soon after this picture ty stated "i want to come here every day."  not sure if he meant the river, or outside, or that particular patch of sand.  i think he meant this particular set of beaches on the fraser.  which is good, b/c lately we have gone there almost every day.

similar sentiments are raised in myself when biking at ledge view.  the trail system here is amazing and the terrain is varied.  the cultus side of vedder mtn offers fire road up, bombing downhill down.  the duck farm loop (newly renovated) is much more all mountain, but ledge view is up, then down, then more up, then more down, then waaaay up, then up some more, then down, then down and then up again... you get the idea.  cross country riding, but with some serious technical descents and drops and ladder bridges.  what the kids are calling "all mountain riding".

oh, and also its stunningly beautiful.  the trail winds past cliffs and into shallow caves and along steep rock faces.  a bit of exposure here and there but nothing too scary.

my good friend levi filmed a minidoc on this side of the mountain called "a means to an end".  very well done, an interesting story, beautiful shots and a nice overview of our playground.  thanks levi.

A Means to an End from Leftcoast Visuals on Vimeo.

in other news, zeke is now old enough to join ty and i on our breakfast burger/canadian tire/beer runs at triple o's.  mmm... best breakfast burgers around.  clearly zeke agrees.

ty's first mtn

on remembrance day a few families got together to climb elk mtn.  the day was clear and the breeze was cool.  which was nice, b/c its a steep hike.  esp with a kid on your shoulders.

ty made it most of the way up the mtn on his own, taking a few breaks near the top.  reaching the snow line invigorated all the kids.

check out the snowball about to reach my face.

the final ascent to the viewpoint got a bit slippery, but ty employed his stomping tractor tread footsteps and got up no problem.  we also encountered spider boy and his mom.

ty and madeline built a snowman.  ty ate a ham sandwich.  no wind.  a great first peak experience.

and a fun run back down the mtn to the truck with the whole crew.  everyone did really well.  kids and adults were all tired at some point, but ended up having energy to spare.  ty's synopsis: "it's fun to climb a mountain, but its rinny rinny hard!"  you did well for a 3 year old ty.

outdoors bonus pt II

we managed to squeez one more alpine ride out of our gorgeous weather.  it was only a few days after our hike up cheam, where i had witnessed bare alpine trails.  we knew it had snowed since then, but hoped not much.

the first half of the climb was buff single track on nice dirt.  then came a skiff of snow.  the trail stayed like this until we got into the subalpine.

when the trees thinned out, we got into anywhere from 20-40cm of snow.  a lot more than i'd hoped.  both beautiful and fun, but tiring.  

there were a few fantastic snowy downhills.  easy scenic trails made more intense by the added snow, while at the same time, consequences for falling were quite low.

i had hoped that at least half the alpine portion of the ride would be on open trail, but it was solid cover the entire way through.  there were three peaks to climb and descend along a ridge line.  to climb them we had to slog through drifts like this carrying our bikes through snow up to our knees.  it was awesome.

here we are resting at our high point.  where we can clearly see that we still have one more peak to climb.

now we have no more peaks to climb.  gorgeous.

downhill all the way.

the snow quickly receded as we lost altitude.  again a few inches of snow added an interesting twist to a fun but easy trail.

i don't have many pictures of myself biking.  this is a nice one.

soon the snow disappeared altogether and we were left with a smoking fast smooth downhill to the lake, then some fun dippy xc along the lakeshore and back to the car.  just under six hours.  every muscle burning.  beautiful blue sky.  amazing.

halloween

 halloween was seriously fun this year.  from early on ty knew he wanted to be a shark, and our friend jody has possibly permanently lent us a little penguin costume, so it all worked out pretty easy.

   ty was very excited to carve pumpkins and designed his own (i cut it).

 i think these were supposed to be scary faces.

speaking of scary faces, check out ty's sweet shark expression.  and zeke appears appropriately hapless.  kylie made ty's costume by gluing white felt to a grey hoody and adding a dorsal fin.  ty's still wearing it.

we walked up and down our own street, which was about right.  ty was pretty tired coming up the hill at the end of the night.  they were super cute ringing doorbells.  zeke kept advancing right on into people's homes.

that evening and the following day featured a lot of candy sorting, and transportation by truck across the carpet.  watching brought back a lot of memories.  a fun halloween.