Stawamus Chief

We've just returned from our first camping trip of the year. We drove up the Sea to Sky Highway away from Vancouver towards Squamish. We didn't bother hiking in to a remote site this time, and just camped near the comfort of our car. The campsite was nothing to write home about, but we still managed to be comfortable despite the inexplicable fire ban.
On Saturday we left camp and headed up "the Chief", a 700m granite hill (not quite a mountain) to the third summit. We took the relatively easy back route that was equiped with stairs and easy trails up gullies and along the base of cliffs. The difficult route along the face of the Chief is a major rock-climbing destination as it is a massive near vertical cliff right to the top.

This is a view of Howe Sound from part way up the hill.

Continuing up the trail there were many nice trees at the base of the cliffs, barely seen here.

Of course nothing we do is easy, as you can tell from the stairs in this picture.

Maggie always led the way, of course. She wasn't a complete nuissance.

We love the log bridges.
Pushing for the summit.

Our lunch time picnic spot. We stayed for a few hours resting and relaxing

A small tarn, just enough for Maggie to cool down in.

Resting on the way down.
Our stop at Shannon Falls on the way home, during the brief interlude between the seething busloads of tourists.

And that was our little trip away from the smoggy stinky awfulness of Vancouver.

Remi

Raquettes!

Sarah a finallement recommencer ses études (informelles) de français, donc j'essaye un peu aussi de mon côté.
Je reviens tout juste du sommet du Mont Seymour, qui surplombe Vancouver. Dans la photo à droite, Maggie surveille la vallée derrière la montagne, et on discerne un peu la ville à droite.

En arrivant au sommet, j'ai remarqué quelques aigles. Malgré la proximité, c'est la seule photo plus ou moins réussie. Malheuresement, ils n'avaient pas encore leur plumage adulte...


Je suis probablement le seul qui utilise encore les raquettes en bois. Le style moderne en plastique et en aluminium est plus léger et efficase, mais où est le charme?


La semaine dernière je me suis promené autour de la base du Mont Seymour... Moins interessant, mais quand même une bonne promenade. Et c'est tout. J'espère que mon français n'est pas trop nul...



Rémi

BOOURNS!!

So I should be studying, but I thought I would take a moment to share my misery with all of you... FINALS!!! How I dislike them!! I feel so incredibly bogged down right now with attempting to jam an entire semester's worth of drugs in my head (my next final is pharmacology), not to mention the impending doom of thermodynamics on Friday, then ANATOMY next week!! Why me??

Other than that, all is well ;) Starting my new job (hopefully) on the 30th and we'll have a new car by Thursday!

Hope everyone is well at home and elsewhere :)

New Car!

Well, strictly speaking, it's not ours yet. But we have a deposit on it, so it's just a matter of time now. We have a meeting this coming Thursday to seal the deal. It's pretty much our old car, but in red. With four doors. Way less mileage. And it's two years younger. We figure it's a good deal.
Hopefully we don't get hosed.

Remi

P.S. Now that we'll have a car, we'll be able to resume our adventures and we'll get plenty of interesting pictures.

T-Shirt weather!

Other than ICBC accepting that they were completely unreasonable, we don't have a great deal of news. The weather is slowly getting better, so I'm able to bike to work most days, which not only saves me some big bucks, but is also dragging me out of my winter torpor.

We had Sarah's childhood friend Melanie visit us last Sunday, so we bummed around downtown Vancouver showing her the sights and sounds (including our world-famous crackheads... er, pardon, homeless ladies and gentlemen). Sadly I forgot the camera so we don't have any pictures of the stuff we did. A shame, because there is a very nice and relatively quiet Chinese garden downtown complete with koi and turtles and bonzai that is well worth visiting.

Because we don't have a car right now (see previous posts), we are completely incapable of doing anything cool (e.g. hikes on the north shore), so I'll attach a couple of pictures from around here.

These are from today in Falaise Park. Not much really, but at least if you look beyond the Big Smoke you can get the idea that there is some hope left for the mainland. Still, we can't wait to get back to the island.

I've been raving about the macro capabilities of our new camera to just about anyone who will listen, and here is another fine example. Just a boring dandelion, but up close it looks great. go ahead, click on it. Admire the detail.

And that's about it for now. I promise that once we have a new car our posts will become more frequent and more entertaining.

Remi

Update

Remi is a bit of a deadbeat, seeing as it's actually his turn to post, but that's ok. We have a new camera so he's been taking a lot of pictures that he really needs to post on here. It's a great camera, but I'll let him tell you about it.

I'm here to tell you about ICBC and our car. Good news came out of it in the end. We just have to pay what we owe, instead of their ridiculous penalty fee, so we end up getting just over $7000 for the car. It's time to start car shopping! We are now accepting advice on how to pick out a used car. Leave us messages!

This is just a short post. It's a friend of mine's birthday so I'm sticking around on campus to celebrate with him and a bunch of friends. Should be a good time. The semester is almost over which means I'm almost done first year!! Also a good thing to celebrate.

Anyway, I hope you're all well :)

Sarah

Pharmacy skits night!

Hey all! So the last few weeks have been very busy for me between school/midterms, work, and memorizing my lines for our first year pharmacy skit! I actually played one of the lead roles in the skit. Wasn't my idea, but I got volunteered and so I agreed (reluctantly). Anyway, it was a blast!! We only had one glitch in our skit (unfortunately it was my fault), but I was able to right the wrong (after swearing into my microphone ;) and we made it through. It was something of a hit and one of our actors won the best actor award!! Very exciting!
Anyway, here are a few pictures. Sorry about the poor quality, it was dark in there. Oh! They also took a video of it, which they will eventually be posting online, so I'll let you know when you can see it ;)
Sarah
This is Bobby and I with our counterparts, Drs. Price and Riggs




Getting Josh ready... Oh my ;) HILARIOUS!

The cast!
Yes, I'm the blond.




Keith playing Dr. Reid (our grumpiest prof)
Our theme.

Vancouver Aquarium

Evan and Christy's Visit

So FINALLY some of our friends came and saw us last week (the rest of you are deadbeats!!). I've already posted our Chinese New Year pics, but we also went cross country skiing and to the Vancouver aquarium. Here are a few pictures from then :)

We saw the little owl outside a coffee shop in Horseshoe Bay while Evan and Christy were waiting for the ferry. He was so tame (until Evan tried to pet him). We were standing probably two feet from him! Mom, Kat - any ideas on what he is?

Sarah

P.S. More pics to come from the aquarium.

Chinese New Year

Evan and Christy are visiting before they head off to China and we decided to go to the Chinese New Year parade and then some Dim Sum in Chinatown on Sunday. Thought it would be a good warm-up to their trip!

We're not sure about this guy on the left... Does he seriously think he looks Chinese??? Fat white guy with lipstick and a fake beard... Hmm ;)

And this kid balanced himself on his Dad's shoulders for the ENTIRE parade. It was very cool!

That's all for now. I hate using Blogger lately because it's too hard to upload pictures and get your post to look good, but I tried ;)

Hope all is well with everyone!

Sarah