Ski trip #2

This post will be very short about my second ski trip – actually I went snowboarding because I have no skis and the board costed the same.
We started at 3PM from the university and drove about 2 1/2 hours to Mount St. Louis, located in the Northwest of Toronto. As we arrived it was becoming dark. I had to rent the board and boots, the employee behind the desk was wondered that I didn’t rent a helmet. Of course it is dangerous but I never had a helmet when I went on the slope and that for more than 20 years. I hope my streak will keep going 😀

My friends Stefan and Matt also had to rent their equipment but Jaya had not to and waited for us 😀
As we headed to the lift it was already dark and the lights were on:

That was the first time in my life I went real night skiing and it was colder than every skitrip I ever did. It was about -25 degrees and terrible windchill. An ice chamber is warmer than that and I had only my sunglasses with me :O
Good that the slopes were really short so I was able to warm up in short periods of time. Also I had to put on the snowboard after every ride with the lift.

I did this picture from the top of the hill, you also can see the buildings down there, that is where the slope ends but there were also a few longer ones on the left side. I was happy that there were not a lot of people therefore I was able to improve my boarding skills over the whole slope 😉

We did one break to grab something to eat and a second to warm up because it kept going colder and colder. In the restaurant the really served „Sauerkraut“, I couldn’t resist to grab one with a hot dog and actually it was quite good 😮

In the meantime I lost Stefan and Matt further I went down the slopes with Jaya who also boarded this night. At our last ride we took, we unexpectedly met them again and I did my fastest ride down the hill. I should mention that I didn’t fell on this ski trip one time, in contrast to my first one if you watched the video 😉

We left Mount St. Louis around 9PM and arrived at midnight in waterloo. There were no busses going anymore but Jaya was so nice and drove me home, thx! A walk would have been about 40 minutes and as you can see, there was a lot of snow 😮
Oh and her car was the only one on the whole parking lot as you can see xD

I hope I have given you an impression about night skiing in Canada – probably I should say Ontario because it should be quite different in British Columbia (Vancouver).
My next post will come soon, don’t miss it. It will be the most exciting one 😉

See you fellows #1

Kelso Caves Hiking Trip

Hey again gyus!

Now I want to talk about the most amazing trip I did in January (ok actually it was on February 1st, but I count it as a January trip 😉 )

We started at 10am in the morning with 3 cars to the Kelso conservation area for a hiking and caving trip. As we arrived after one hour, we realized that all the parking lots were closed due to bad weather conditions, so we had to drive down the mountain to the slopes. That meant that we had to go up the hill, but of course, we went there to hike 😉

By the way the weather was not too bad in the morning, around -15 degrees but unfortunately no sunshine (ok for caving not really necessary). We put on our ice cleats / snowshoes and start walking up.

After we passed by the lift of the slope, we kept walking and reached the top of the plateu, we had a great view there and took a few pictures. As Jonathan (our organizer of this trip and passionated hiker) mentioned, photographs are one of the most important parts of a trip. By the way these pictures are mixed from all people who joined the trip, thanks to all at this point.

Further we passed a nice rock complex where there was one which stood out a few meters, we all tried a picture on it, but Behzad wanted to know it and creeped to the edge to take some more pictures.

We kept going forward for another 15 minutes and passed by a lot of places with a great view but unfortunately the weather got worse and we were’nt able to take more awesome pictures of the landscape. As we reached our final destination – the vertical cave, yes this IS the entrance under the planks – we dropped all our bags and prepared for it. Take off as many clothes as you want, grab helmet, light and camera and go for it 😀

We crawled down the entrance, which was really narrow, I almost got stuck there but fortunately the cave got wider but also deeper. As we went down we always shouted for the others to be sure nobody got hurt or lost. After about 20 minutes and ONLY 10-15 meters vertical climbing we reached the easy part where we only had to „walk“ for a few meters to have a nice spot for a break.

After a few minutes break we started to head back. We already knew the way so we splitted up. As you can see in the next pictures, it was quite narrowed there. Nadia also wanted to try a short climb up without any safety precautions. I am not sure now if it was in this cave or the other one, but does it matter at this point?

By the way I took these pictures with my phone because there was really no space for my DSLR =O
We started to head back and stopped at the ‚Hanging Rocks‘ as Jonathan called them (as I can remember, you know it’s one month ago already 😉 )
It was quite an easy climbing session but we had a great view and an awesome place for a second break. Never forget to take pictures wherever you are 😀

After this amazing trip which lasted about 4 hours hiking and climbing, we took one group picture to remember (unfortunately 2 of us already left at this time). Also as you can see the snowstorm reached us and the weather was becoming worse and worse. We went for dinner about half an our away from Kelso area where we got very good burgers. We splitted up the gas costs, all in all the trip costed about 10$ (excluded the ice cleats I bought).

As we reached Waterloo the blizzard hit the town really hard. It wasn’t possible to drive faster than 60km/h on the highway furthermore it took us two hours to get home, twice as much as the first drive.
Of course I got home safely, Behzad is a good driver 😉
A lot of snow fell down in this night and the day after all schools and universities were closed, except waterloo. As the biggest university in the area it has to be open all day. That was not the most snow I experienced but it was the only blizzard until today.
It was one of the best experiences in Canada since I am here and I really want to have more like this but unfortunately spring is coming, snow is melting and time is running out.

At the end here is the video Jonathan took in the vertical cave. It is quite long so I posted it here.

I hope you enjoyed my post and I have to apologize for a lot of days with no posts. There were a lot of assignments and exams to do but it will get better 😀

See you fellows #1