Monday, January 20, 2014

Sulphur Mountain - 1st hike of 2014!

Yesterday was a blast in the mountains. I didn't realize how much I missed playing in the mountains until I got out there again. Being injured and missing most of last summer and now it being winter, it's been quite a while. Usually I kind of hibernate in winter and stick to road running - I realized I have absolutely no idea why I do that! I've always had yak trax which are decent on a little bit of ice but not on anything serious or if you want to hike in the mountains. So I went out and bought myself a pair of Microspikes which are freakin awesome. It feels like you can tackle anything wearing those!

With all the warm weather going on around here, it's been melting like crazy in Calgary and then freezing at nice so crazy slippery. But I wasn't sure what it would be like in Banff with it not getting quite as warm but still warm enough for some melting also. So my friend Tara and I grabbed the microspikes, our dogs and headed for Banff yesterday to hike Sulphur Mountain. We actually found no ice at all but we still wore these as they made the hiking super stable and much easier on the packed snow which can sometimes feel like walking a bit in sand with just trailrunners on. It was a total trip of 12km and about 2300 ft of climbing.

It was just a beautiful beautiful day in Banff and I finished thinking, from now on i'm going to make sure I get to the mountains at least once every weekend. My knee is still a huge bugger right now but it's doing fine while hiking - and lucky for me I can pretty much hike all day. So if that's what i have to do to keep training for now, then so be it. It's so much fun!

Me and Logan at the top - Logan hiked like a superstar and put us to shame.
Hope I'm still doing that when I'm around 75 :)

Oh right, I forgot to mention that Andrew and I are off to Mexico this weekend for a friend's wedding. So I guess all my mountain time will start when I get back :) Definitely looking forward to a little beach time for a week that's for sure!

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