Failed Kool-Aid Flavors

You know you’re a real fisherman when…

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You have 4 identical lures, but you spend 25$ buying two more, “just in case”.

You’ve tipped a canoe at least once.   (Bonus points if it’s in ice water)

You’re destroyed your fair share of props.

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You’ve learned that “shore lunch” isn’t always as much fun as it sounds.

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You’ll gladly off-r0ad for miles into the bush, at the risk of wrecking your driveshaft,  just to get to a remote lake that’s rumored to “maybe” have some trout in it.

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It could be either too early or too late in the season, but either way,  you’ve fished in snow.

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By trial and painful error, you’ve learned which part of the walleye NOT to grab.

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You’ll burn 3500 calories in order to catch 500 calories worth of food.

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You refuse to use the politically-correct gender-neutral term “fisher”.

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Monday Night Art Class: Attridge Snow Ghosts

Okay….I’m good for ONE MORE winter painting.

That will probably be it for the season.

I promise.

Monday Night Art Class: Vertigo

The snow is gone, the spring peepers are chirping but I’m still not quite ready to let the ski season go.

Hard to believe, that less than a month ago, I was doing THIS:

I know I have a couple of ski paintings left in me this year, so that’s what painted tonight.

This is called “Vertigo” and it’s one of my favorite ski runs at Revelstoke.

It’s just steep enough, and just bumpy enough to be interesting.   But the snow is soft and friendly, and it’s just FUN to go down.

On this trip, Friar’s Mom joined me for a day, and we went up and down Vertigo like yoyo’s.

There was one run where everything clicked into place.   I was turning, carving up the snow.   It felt like floating on a cloud

It felt good, I could do no wrong.

Typically, as a skier, you get maybe a handful of runs like this in a season, where everything is just PERFECT.    Where you’ll remember it for the rest of your life.

And this was one of them.

And when it happens, you’re almost crying tears of joy as you go down.

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As a bonus, on the bottom, a ski instructor has seen us coming down.

He was teaching a student, and he complimented me and Friar’s Mom on our technique.   He said we provided a “good demo” for his pupil.

Wow.  To be complimented like this, from an instructor, on top of that.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

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I think I might keep this painting…hold onto it for a while.

The memories are just too good.

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Big Water, Not Quite Superior.

Last week,  I was at Acadia National Park in Maine, and found the shoreline quite similar to that of the northern Great Lakes.

Same blackened rocks.   Same spruce trees.   Even the cold damp weather was the same.

For all intents and purposes,  this could have been Lake Superior.

I was thinking, maybe I could stare out at the huge expanse of water, and feel that same “Zen like” state of relaxation that I feel when I sit on the North Shore.

And it was beautiful….I admit.   I tried to relax and let my mind go.

But I just couldn’t “feel it”.     It felt claustrophobic.

Probably because of the dozen or so people I was sharing the beach with at the time, even though it was the off-season.

Or knowing that this is only a tiny pocket of wilderness, only a few miles across, right in the middle of the densely populated Atlantic seaboard.

Where every other square inch of shoreline is developed or inhabited by hotels, inns, summer cottages, tea rooms, antque stores and bed and breakfasts.

With big cities like Boston, Montreal,  New York, are all within spitting distance.

Where there is rush hour traffic along the Coastal Highway all summer, as millions of tourists flock to the coast.

Where you only have to go a few miles to find the nearest fast-food joint,  or T-shirt store, or Factory Outlet mall.

Where there are no moose, no wolves,  no pristine trout streams.

No thousands of lakes, many of which never even see a fisherman for years.

No isolated roadless stretches of shoreline,   no huge tracts unpopulated of Crown Land .

No sense of awe you get at being surrounded by a huge expanse of wilderness.

No feeling of being “up there”, away from it all.

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So, yes, I’ll admit the Coast of Maine is beautiful,  sitting on the edge of a big expanse of water.

And I’m glad to visit it.

But it’s just NOT quite the same.

Give me Lake Superior, any day.

A New England Road Trip with The Bear

Not much going on last Easter long weekend.    Too late for skiing, and too early for fishing.   So I decided to take a 2400 km road trip through the Maritimes and New England.

Here’s Junior Bear in St. Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, near the Quebec/New Brunswick border.

Here’s Grand Falls, N.B., where I stayed the first night.    Not much going on in this town, except for these water falls.

Of course, I had to stop at Hartland, N.B., which has longest covered bridge in the world at 1282 feet.

This brought back memories.   We used to go camping in the Maritimes as a kid, and we’d always stop by Hartland to see the bridge.   I think Friar’s Mom even still has a souvenir plate with the bridge, that she uses to serve candies to her screaming grandkids.

I think the last time I saw this bridge was about 1977.     Nothing’s changed much since then.

Crossing into Northern Maine, I found it really empty.  Nothing but a few small towns and lots of forest.   It’s a lot like Northern Ontario.

On the Interstate, I drove by some big mountains within spitting distance of Baxter State Park.    I’m pretty sure one of these was Mt. Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine at 5268 feet.     Hard to tell which one,  because of the clouds.

Finally, the ocean!   Here’s the Bear at Bar Harbors (or “Bah Hah-Bah”, as the locals pronounce it)

Unlike the northern part, the southern part of Maine is pretty crowded.   Pretty much every foot of shoreline is populated.   It’s pretty hard to find undeveloped areas, but you can see glimpses of some in Acadia National Park.      It’s a teeny-tiny park, only a few miles across, but they have some spectacular scenery.

I drove along the U.S. Route No. 1 following the coast.   It’s actually not a very scenic road at all.

You go through one small town after another, there’s always traffic, and you don’t see much of the ocean.   It’s mostly traffic lights,  auto-body shops,  hotels,  strip malls, antique stores, and fast-food outlets.   (UGH!!  I was NOT impressed).

If you head south on one of the side roads, however, you can get away from the crowds, and find some honest-to-goodness villages with boats and lobster traps, where people still earn their living from the sea.

Port Clyde was one of those unspoiled towns I found.   To me, this is the “real Maine”.

Cape Newagen was another place off the beaten path that I liked.

Being a lighthouse keeper here looks like it would be a very lonely job…

Next, I headed inland to North Conway, N.H.    I got a quick photo of Mount Washington from the highway, the highest peak in New England, that’s notorious for its ferocious weather.  I was surprised to see it wasnt’ snow-covered.

I avoided all the factory outlet stores and fast-food joints of North Conway, and drove along the Kancamagus Highway instead.   This is a little hidden gem:  it’s a long stretch of road that goes through the White Mountains wilderness.   There are no gas stations or trailer parks or motels:  nothing but forest, mountains and hiking trails for 26 miles.

I did manage to see a moose from the side of the road.

That’s pretty cool.   You see them all the time in Ontario, but it’s nice to know these critters are still thriving this far south, in New England.

Finally, one last glimpse of the mountains in Vermont, at sunset, just before crossing the border back into Quebec.

This was around the Jay Peak area, just south of  Sherbrooke.

After that, it got dark, and once I crossed the border, the mountains quickly disappeared into flat boring farmland.

At that point, the best part of the road trip was over, and I motored back to Ontario as quickly as I could, because I still had quite a few more hours to go.

Moose-Spotting on a Tuesday Evening

What did you guys do after work today?

I went straight from the office and got into my car, and did a quick 5 hour road trip to see if  I could find a moose on the side of the road.

And I did.

Three of them, in fact.

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Two of them were together.

In fact, I got a picture of both of them, with a BEAR.

Monday Night Art Class: The North Bowl of Revelstoke

Having just come back from vacation, I’m still in ski mode, and decided to paint one of my favorite photos from my trip:

Here’s what I ended up with tonight:

The first thing I did was the sky.   A wet wash of cadmium yellow, violet (phtalo purple) and cerulean blue.

Then I did the mountains, starting with the dark shadows of snow.   Again, with violet, cerulean blue, and maybe a touch of ultramarine and/or Paynes grey.

Then I started the rocks, starting with the larger ones as frames of reference, and painting the smaller ones around them.   They’re almost all the same dark shade.   I get my “black” from a mix of Van Dyke brown and Payne’s Grey.   I deliberately mixed up the rocks so they have random dark brown/black shades.

Whenever I got bored with the rocks, I worked on the foreground, adding layers of purple/blue and gradually making it darker.

Then I would add the final dark snow shadows on the mountain, and then lift some of the foreground out to lighten the color and add some texture to it.

I did a lot of lifting and re-painting the foreground.  If you want to do this, it’s important to have a rugged strong sheet of watercolor paper that can take kind of treatment.

I recommend the 300-lb Arches.   It’s “bullet-proof”, you can use it and abuse it, and it doesn’t buckle or degrade.   Not like the cheap watercolor paper I see a lot of beginners use.

Of course, it’s 12 bucks a sheet and when I tell this to people they say  ”Oooh, that’s expensive!“.

(Oh, for crying out loud.)    You can cut a sheet into four, and make four paintings like the one I did here.

That’s 3 bucks for an evenings’ worth of entertainment.  I think most people can afford that.

Boggles my mind, why people will invest so much time into a hobby like watercolors, but they’ll scrimp and save a few bucks on sub-par art supplies that will only frustrate them.    But I digress here.

As a final touch to my painting,  I added a hint of cadmium yellow/yellow ochre to the white highlights to warm up the paining.    Using artist licence, I added a skier (a small blob) to the foreground in the middle/right, to give a sense of depth.

The one thing I’m not crazy about is the bottom right hand corner.   In the photo, this section is featureless.   I tried to make it interesting by lifting some of the paint and adding some shadows.  But I’m not sure if I like what I’ve done here.

If you notice, the painting is a lot more “warmer” (i.e. purple/yellow) than the original.    Part of the reason for this, is that I did the painting based on a print-out from a laser printer on plain Xerox paper.   The true winter white/bluish colors weren’t accurately reproduced, and this is all I had to go by.

Next time, I’ll print this out on photo paper instead.

Overall, I give myself a B-Plus on this one.

I’m not displeased, but I know I can do better.

Call this one a “study”.

I want to re-do it in the near future.

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Squeezing in One More Ski Trip

Earlier this week, I did another quick trip out West on my air miles to ski at Revelstoke.

I was there for one day last year, and it blew my mind away.  I knew I had to come back.  So I did.

Last year, it was foggy and I didn’t get to see the Rocky Mountains very much.

This time, I had a blue-bird sky on the first day and finally got to see what the place looked like.

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Vertigo is one of my favorite runs.   It’s a small bowl on the upper half of the mountain.  It represents only a tiny fraction of the whole ski hill, but it’s still 2-3 times bigger than most ski resorts down East.

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The best part about skiing out West are the back-bowls.    It’s just all open snow, and you can pick your own line down the hill, and gradually make your way down into the trees again.

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This, to me, is like dying and going to heaven.

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The other great thing about big mountains is that you can make it as hard as you want.

Down East, you’re limited to the most difficult double-black diamond run on the trail map.

Here, the most difficult run is limited to your own stupidity (i.e. how much you’re willing to put yourself at risk).

And if you wipe out, it’s not just a matter of falling and spraining your ankle.

There are cliffs, and risks of avalanches.   If you take the wrong turn or do something stupid, you could DIE.

Here’s one of the steeper runs I took, and I was reasonably proud of myself for doing it.

But that was nothing compared to these guys…

Check it out:   the two black dots on top of the peak are skiers, and the other black dot to their bottom left is another skier going down.

ne thing to  this type of extreme skiing on video…it’s another to see it in real time, where ther’s a real risk of someone dying.

There were about 30 of us watching these lunatics.   You’re kind of speechless, because you can’t believe at how stupid/brave they are.   This is how skiers kill themselves.

You’d feel bad if they got hurt, but on the other hand, they’re skiing out of bounds and nobody’s putting a gun to their head making them do this.

If you look closely here, you can see the tracks where the first skier went down.

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You don’t know whether you want to congratulate him and buy him a beer, or smack  him upside the head, and call him “shit-for-brains”.

I know if my Dad (Mr. Official Ski Instructor) were still alive, he’d do the latter.

Either way, that’s some damned impressive skiing.

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On the 2nd day, Friar’s Mom was on the road at 6:00 AM and drove 2 hours to meet me.  We had a great ski day together.

On one run, Friar’s Mom wanted to “explore”.   We ended up bushwhacking through a snow-board trail between the trees, dodging branches and trying not to get poked in the face.

I’ve bragged about this before, but I’m going to say it again:  I don’t know too many 71-year-old Grandmas who can ski like this.

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While I was there, they also had rescue dogs,who were being trained to find avalanche victims.

The would get on the chairlift with their handlers and ski down the hill right beside them.

The dogs just LOVED this, as they’d run down the hill at full ballistic speed.

I mean.. look:  how happy do you think this critter is?

On a scale of ten, I’d say ELEVEN.

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Now, of course, the weather was not always great.    And it changed by the minute.

Day three started off like this:

The top (and best part) of the mountain was closed because of high wind, and things didnt’ look great.   But within 30 minutes, it cleared up and everything opened up again.

I hiked the traverse on top to get to the back bowls, and suffice to say it was pretty windy.

I could barely see the skiers ahead of me,  and their tracks were almost filled with fresh snow again by the time I caught up to where they were.

I felt somewhat safe, though, because there was a steady stream of skiers doing the same thing.   I wouldn’t dare do this alone, under these conditions.

I like this photo of a random snow-boarder who was coming up behind me.   I find the angle of the hill interesting.

Things calmed down considerably once I got to the other side.    And I skied in half-tracked fluffy powder until the lifts closed.

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That was it.  Three days of intense skiing.   But I certainly got my money’s worth.

Junior Bear did too, as he made some friends in downtown Revelstoke.

The Last Good Snow

This last Sunday was incredibly warm for March…plus 11 C (or about 52F).

I had a great day skiing, but it was a bittersweet moment.

Because I knew it was the beginning of the end.

While the trails appeared to be intact…

 

..and the lakes were still frozen…

…gone was the fluffy powdery snow from early winter.   Now replaced with sloppy mashed potatoes.

The snow was melting fast, and deteriorating by the hour.

Already, most of it had disappeared from the valley below.

 

Yup.  With record high temperatures, this was probably the last good weekend for cross country skiing.

If we’re lucky we might squeeze another week or so,  but best part of the winter has gone.

And I”m not quite ready to see it go, dammit.

So I sadly said goodbye to my beloved trails, until probably next year.

The one consolation, though, is that trout season opens in 6 weeks.