Saturday, June 26, 2010

The Waterton Trip

I woke up on Tuesday the 22nd of June, realizing it was the day of my last (and also only) exam. But it was also the day where Kim, Bryn and I were going to Waterton! So after Bryn and I had written our social exams Kim picked us up at school. We went back to Bragg Creek to get our stuff packed before we headed out towards southern Alberta. After a couple of hours of driving and some naps later we arrived to a beautiful ranch placed right besides the mountains. The house we were staying at belonged to some friends of Kim and they had let us stay there for a couple of days. It was around 5 pm and we had started getting ready for dinner when some guy came up to the house. It was a guy working for the family who owned the ranch and before I knew of it I was sitting in the guy’s truck, on my way to see some of the bison that belonged to the ranch. We drove for a little while before we got out of the car and started walking. After about an hour of walking we finally found the herd of bison. We kept our distance as we walked around them trying to make them go through the gate we had opened so that they could continue to the next field. The big 500-1000 kilo bison were not the animal to get in a fight with… Soon out of nothing they started running towards the opening and I managed to get my camera out fast enough to take some shots of the 100 bison running down the hill continuing into the field on the other side. Another amazing experience that came from nowhere…

Next morning we woke up, got some breakfast and headed out from the house ready for a good day of hiking. We drove into Waterton, a beautiful little town invaded by incredibly tame deer and with a nice big lake right beside it, parked the car and headed up the trail. After a bit of walking we reached a waterfall and took a break before we continued up the mountain. Finally we reached our destination, the lake, and we started eating our lunch. We had been told that there were bears around the lake and after a while we spotted a huge black bear walking along with her cub on the other side of the lake. We watched them for a while until we were done with our lunches. The bears had moved pretty fast along the side of the lake and we decided that there was no reason to wait for them to arrive at our spot, so we turned around and started the trip down the mountain. We made it to the bottom without getting eaten by bears and after an ice-cream and a bit of looking around in Waterton, we found the car and started driving back towards the ranch where we were staying.
On our way back we found a golf course and since we had been talking about going golfing we decided to stop and check it out. After finding out that there was a free tee-time right away we got ready, rented some equipment and headed out. Since it was Bryn’s first time golfing and Kim only had tried a few times before, it took a while to complete the holes but we went forward and after a while we reached hole number 6. Bryn was about to tee out when she suddenly stopped her practice swing and told Kim and I too look up. I looked up and at first I only noticed a deer crossing the course a couple of hundred meters ahead. Then my eyes suddenly fell on something else moving a few of hundred meters ahead of us. It was a Grizzly Bear that had decided to come look at some golf and without really caring about us he was walking across the fairway of hole 6. Now I always freak out if only I see a chipmunk or a squirrel, so you can imagine how excited I was to see this Grizzly interrupting our game. After a bit of dancing around on my behalf and after Kim had taken some pictures the Grizzly had disappeared into the bushes and we continued golfing around on this beautiful course that was surrounded by mountains growing out of nowhere. It had been a magical day and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow at the end of the day…

Next day we woke up to another beautiful day with sunshine and high temperatures. We got some breakfast, packed some lunch and headed out on our way to the starting point of the days hike. Soon we arrived to a parking lot and off we went. After some hours of walking up the mountain, running into some ground squirrels, seeing some amazing waterfalls, we found a lake and ate our lunch sitting on a rock. We returned to the car and started heading back to the ranch. After getting a shower after the dusty hike we started the car and headed towards Pincher Creek, another little town out there, where we were planning on eating dinner. We arrived to Pincher Creek and found another golf course that looked interesting. We went into the clubhouse and got a tee-time for the next morning. It seemed like Kim and Bryn had started to like this relaxed hobby of mine… We found a nice little place and got some good dinner before we left Pincher Creek and drove back to the ranch.

Next morning it was time to get packed up and stuff the car because we were going back to Bragg Creek. We headed out around 9.30 am and managed to reach Pincher Creek in time for our tee-time. After four hours of golfing on a course that didn’t seem to like me, left Pincher Creek golf course and stopped my Subway to get lunch before we continued our journey back to Bragg Creek. After a couple of hours of driving we reached Calgary where we stopped to get some groceries. From Sunday the 27th till Wednesday the 30th the little house in Bragg Creek would be hosting a training camp for the ski team, so the car was full of food when we left Calgary to drive the last little bit back to Bragg Creek.


That is the story about my last trip away from Bragg Creek before my departure on the 1st of July. There is no doubt that time has flown away like the wind the last two months, but I can still not really believe that I am going back to Denmark in less than a week… What a great year I have had!

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

My Weekend In Pincher Creek, Alberta

So it’s about time I make a blog entry eh.? Lots of stuff have happened in my life here in Canada since Nationals. I have raced my last ski race of this year where I did quite well together with my relay partner Vincent. Training continues even though the snow is disappearing and school is coming along pretty well too.


As I said training continues with running and strength workouts and this weekend, 28-30th of May, was spend in Pincher Creek, Alberta. It was supposed to be a biking camp but because of quite weird weather that resulted in about two feet of snow, only a few of us had courage to go out biking. Friday Bryn and I came home from school and got ready to leave. Ken was going with us and soon we left Bragg Creek. Ahead of us was a drive of approximately two and a half hour, which I of course ended up sleeping away…

I woke up and soon we arrived at the cabin where we were staying. Later more people arrived and soon there was a whole bunch of us. Vince arrived with his friend Alex that I had already learned to know. The three of us soon crawled into our room that we were sleeping in and which we soon after renamed as the Man Cave. The evening quickly went past and around one o’clock the guys in the Man Cave decided to stop playing games on the computer and instead trying to get some sleep.

We woke up at eight the next morning by our dear coach Chris sticking his head into our room. Since Chris had decided to stop coaching for Foothills Nordic Ski Club, this was his last weekend we had with him as a coach. He managed to get us out of our sleeping bags and around nine, after a nice breakfast, we were ready to go for a two hour run. Outside the snow was deep and while trying not to get too wet we started running down the road. Everybody soon decided that it was impossible not to get wet and so we ran through the slushy water as if it was nothing. After some relaxed running for a couple of hours we were ready to return to the cabin and get some lunch. Everybody got changed into some nice dry clothes and then we had the choice to go biking or go to the local pool. Obviously I decided that the pool wouldn’t be too bad right now, so soon we arrived to the pool and got a bit wetter than we were before. The day ended with a nice dinner and some sauna combined with a cold lake. A perfect way of ending a quite intense day of training!


Next morning it was up at eight again. After breakfast Chris presented the days exercise for us. It was time for a modified scavenger hunt! We had about six different exercises to do and for each one we had to take a good photo. Since the exercises consisted of kayaking, climbing mountains covered in snow, doing pushups etc. we ended up with some quite awesome photographs that are already up on Facebook. After about three and a half hours of running around, Team Man Cave finally returned to the cabin with some amazing photos and a smile on their lips. After a well timed lunch and some dry clothes it was already time to get packed up. The weekend had flown away as good spend time often do. Soon Bryn, Ken and I were sitting in the car on our way home and of course I fell asleep once again on the trip back to Bragg Creek…


Another amazing weekend of my stay in Canada has passed by and all that is left now is the memories and some sweet photos. With Chris, the guy that have taught me to ski without hurting myself, stopping as coach for Foothills it is getting more clear to me that my time in Canada is running out. Only one month is left of my exchange and even though I am starting to realize that I’m not going to say goodbye to everybody but rather ‘see you’, it still seems really weird that departure is getting closer…