Christmas in Courtenay

My parents bought a townhouse in Courtenay on Vancouver Island in 2024 and this was our second family Christmas out there. For those of you that have never been to the Island, its a stunning mountainous landscape and in winter there's constantly steam and fog rising out from the forests.

There's only about 45 minutes of daylight where its not raining, but if you can be outside in that window its an excellent opportunity for a hike and some gorgeous landscapes.

Neighbouring Comox as an air force museum and, continuing the theme from our last post, they have an annual contest among the units on the base to see who can decorate the preserved aircraft outside in the best way. There were no wrong answers, but this plane with antlers and a red nose was certainly a strong contender for my vote. Kathryn has also really mastered night photography on her phone and got some incredible flares and streaks to bring some extra energy to this picture.

Of course the real Christmas Miracle was Wesley being the centre of attention and getting all the love he so richly deserves. He remains a pretty nervous traveller so bringing him there takes some effort but once he arrived he took right to it, clearly remembering the layout and the different people from his extended stay last year.

Seasonal Lights

Winter in Vancouver is long, dark, and rainy, so we are very grateful to the artists and creators that bring unexpected light and colour to our soggy grey-blue city every year.

Lumiere is a great example of precisely this sort of effort, with an 11-year track record of lighting events around downtown Vancouver. We have enjoyed them ever year and its been fun seeing it expand from a few lit up animals in our neighbourhood to a festival like we get now. This year they had an experience that included laser beams and lights on the trees also lighting up dry ice smoke being pumped through the air. The raindrops were similarly picked up by the light, making for a very cool experience.

While experiences are all well and good, we were very relieved to find some of our old favourites again this winter after an over-long hiatus. Although we miss having them in our area, we found Davie, Barclay, Luna, and Stanley scattered around downtown as well as this delightful squirrel (that you would be forgiven for mistaking for a fox)

At the top of our list of unexpected surprises was this dragon. Better still, there were enthusiastic people on hand saying "Would you like to ride the dragon and make it breathe fire?" Its design included a tractor seat beside a lever that would open and close the mouth and emit an audible belch of fire.

Other highlights for the evening were fire dancers, opera singers, bubble blowers, and a general sense that the city had come out of hibernation for a few hours. Not so bad for a dark winter night, and at least we don't have to shovel rain...

FWOOSH!!

Frosty Forms

 While we were out enjoying our walk along the riverside dykes in Squamish, I couldn't help but notice the stunning blades/feathers of frost which had formed. I expect it was some combination of wind from the sea picking up moisture from the open river, but if anyone out there has a better explanation I am all ears. Even to the naked eye the ground looked like a little forest of ice.

 Luckily I had both my macro lens and my wife's patience, so I took a few minutes to hunker down and get some close ups of these shapes at the same time. Between the bright light of the sun and the contrasty highlight nature of the frost itself, I was able to shoot handheld with a high aperture and capture some very interesting images that would be invisible to average passerby. One thing I have truly learned to love about macro photography is finding the surreal or beautiful in day-to-day events we take for granted.

 There were lots of twigs and grasses poking above the snowline, and a totally different type of columnar frost had formed on them, radiating out at every angle. These shapes really remind me of the crystal plinths in Superman's "Fortress of Solitude." So for any of our snowbound readers out there, remember that even though you're sick of the snow by now and ready for summer, there are some pretty spectacular aspects to it if you only take a minute to stop and appreciate them.

Recreational Winter

 Over the holiday break, Kathryn and I rented a car (after a bit of a fiasco with a less-than-reputable car rental agency) and drove up the sea-to-sky highway to Squamish for a bit of seasonal winter. I'm sure we'll get a lot of sympathy from our Manitoba readers on this one, but living in Vancouver we have to make an effort to see snow, and thought we should fit in a few hours of winter. Below is a picture of Kathryn walking along the riverside dyke in Squamish with Mount Garabaldi in the distance.

 Truth be told, there was more snow and ice than we were actually expecting, and being delicate West Coast flowers, we forgot to dress appropriately for as much white stuff as there turned out to be. We took a little hike up to the base of Shannon Falls which were in the perpetual shadow of the mountains and as such were incredibly slippery and had no direct sun. The frost and snow across the rocks and trees was very nice though.

 We finished off our day with a walk along the river and I took the photo below which has become one of Kathryn's favorites almost instantly. I stopped down the exposure quite a bit and (happy accidentally) left my colour balance compensating for incandescent, so only a little direct light was let in, and it was tinted even more blue than would be expected. All in all a very nice day out and a chance to enjoy a few hours of snow before hurrying back to clear streets and civilization.

Manitoba Christmas Time Lapses

A little behind schedule here, but hopefully worth the wait, we shot a number of time lapses in Winnipeg and Pinawa around the Christmas season last year. Although the clip itself has been online for awhile now, I've finally found the time to pass it along to everyone in a proper place.

We have a few different types of time lapses here with an experiment in 5 second gaps rather than our usual 1 minute intervals the entire time. We had hopes of doing a few more ambitious outdoors shoots, but with daily temperatures around -40 plus windchill, it was pretty much impossible to go farther than our backyards.
Merry belated Christmas to you all and hopefully spring is right around the corner!

Fanciful Frozen Forms

Both Geordie and myself were intrigued with snow covered trees. Hemlocks in particular look like 'Who Trees'.  Like the ones in 'The Grinch Who Stole Christmas".  Sometimes you can see fanciful shapes.  Geordie had to point out to me the elephant head formed by the snow and tree below.

".

In a meadow up on Hollyburn the ice had created these beautiful feathery formations.  So delicate.  We lacked a decent macro lens for a detailed close up.  Or perhaps it looks like tiny trees.  In such a tiny thing there is so much detail. So amazing.

This is a neat bit of landscape too.  The snow built up along the one side then it looks like the tree blew or pressure from the snow pushed it to one side.  It looks to me like a white hand or maybe a tentacle coming to grasp the tree. Tree type I think may be a hemlock.

Snowshoers

Last Sunday was the first time I had snowshoed since high school.  Geordie and I explored the winter wonderland that was Hollyburn mountain. We went into the back country a wee bit. Maybe a kilometer.  I think that is where the picture below was taken.

The trail was packed really hard. Probably could have done it with shoes but there is nothing a snowshoer hates like deep holes where silly people have gone in up to a hip.  You can break a leg on those. The trails are marked green for easy, blue for moderate and red for difficult. It is similar or same as the diamond system for skiers and boarders.  We started easy, than moderate and than ended up climbing Hollyburn Mountain. 

Last time I wore snowshoes they were wicker bear paw style.  Still saw the odd one wearing something similar.  These are light plastic and have metal claws so you can do vertical slopes.  That is my toe sticking up.  You don't need fancy shoes. Just warm hiking shoes or snow boots.

Cypress Mountain Time-Lapse

When I to do this again next year, I'll let the camera start earlier and run later as you can clearly see I missed the sunrise and sunset, but I still count it as a successful test that returned some fun results.

This is just the raw footage out of the camera as well, without any fancy stabilization, colour correction or other fancy tricks.

Winter Drysuit Training

 Ah, the west coast in winter. As a snowboarder, just looking at that mountain of powder makes me say "I really want to see whats 50feet underwater by that yellow buoy!" So this weekend we got our first taste of wintery open water diving with dry suits. The water averaged 5-7 degrees and for added fun we each wore 40lbs of extra weight.

 Though entirely fashionable for day-to-day wear as you can see, the drysuit also has a bonus feature of locking a pocket of air around your body underwater which not only keeps you dry but helps keep you warm as well. Despite this, Kathryn got very chilled after her first dive and skipped the second one because the shivering would not stop, so its time to get a layer or two of thermal underwear for the next dip.

 Below, our instructor Paul emerges from the deep with George. In both dives we saw lingcod, crabs, anenomes, nudibranches (Kathryn loves these), decorator crabs, perch, sea cucumbers, and a plethora of unknown fishes. In the second wreck, there was an amazing tour through an intentionally sunken ship which is forming an artificial reef and covered in white plumous anenomes.

I know the internet is a fan of "pics or it didn't happen" but we don't yet have a camera which can stand going down to 50+ feet. The several atmospheres of extra pressure would crush anything we have. We're likely to get Kathryn a gopro once they have a proper underwater option and I am on the fence about an expensive housing for my DSRL setup since I really like the control it gives. We are quite taken with this sport and will likely have one or the other in place for more dives by the summer at the latest.

The Thingbeard

I spent the winter and unusally cold spring working on vfx for The Thing and as OT wore on and the weather stayed bleak and grey, I decided to try and develop a beard worthy to take on The Thing itself. See file photo below.
And he was bronze- his great red-bronze beard, the heavy hair that matched it. The gnarled, corded hands gripping, relaxing, gripping and relaxing on the table planks were bronze. Even the deep-sunken eyes beneath heavy brows were bronzed. - description of Macready from the original story text.Clearly I had some difficulty with bronzed and heavy-haired bit, but vfx breeds nothing if not 'gnarled' and 'deep-sunken.' Then I read the text a bit further and found the resemblance went just as far for the creature: ...from a face ringed with writhing, loathsome nest of worms, blue, mobile worms that crawled where hair should grow-So today in preparation for a new job and the start of spring, the whole beast was shorn off, leaving only a few photos (the one above will likely be the cover of my acoustic guitar album should vfx fall through financially) and a tale or winter horror.
But in memory of the great facial hair of yesterday, you should check out this link and vote for your favorite :P

Cypress Panorama Run

My friend Mike and I go snowboarding every Wednesday and I shot a complete run of the Panorama run last time I was out. Some of you may be interested to see what its like up there and some of you may be bored senseless, but I figured it was something new I could share regardless.Since the camerawork is not particularly stable or stunning, I included the picture above to give a feeling of geography for the run. Its a simple green run which I enjoy very much as its perfect for my skill and comfort levels and I can now do it quickly and craftily enough to feel like I'm pretty decent on my board.

Nightboarding 2: Electric Boogaloo

Its been awhile since I got up to Cypress Mountain and out snowboarding, but this week my friend Mike and I got back in our weekly groove of fitting in a few evening runs after work. It was particularly foggy and there were a few times I took wrong turns and nearly found myself on unfamiliar runs, but those problems were quickly solved.
And before any parents or in-laws go fussing, I got myself a proper helmet this year along with the padding, goggles, gloves and snow pants I have from previous years, so I am well insulated and warm.
It was so misty at the top that most of my pictures don't really show much and with any luck I'll get better ones in a week or two, so I'm finishing off with a panorama (click it to enlarge) of Vancouver that I shot from a viewpoint part way up the mountain. You can see Lionsgate Bridge in the middle at the bottom with Burnaby on the left and Kitsilano on the right.Everyone that has been making noise about coming out to visit for snowboarding officially has no excuse to not be out in the next few months ;)
SPECIAL UPDATE: The following week Kathryn came up the mountain with us and not only had a great time but greatly improved her skills and seems to have gotten the snowboarding bug in a major way.

The Amusing Paradox of the Vancouver Winter

Most weekends when I call up my parents my father will ask how we're doing in the snow, either having read about weather warnings in BC or likely because its very snowy in Manitoba. Vancouver gets very little snow to be honest and its typically fleeting. The picture below shows the first of two snowfalls we had this year. The second was actually a heavier fall but I didn't get a picture of it in 2 days and by then it was gone. For those of you in Manitoba I'll let that sink in. Gone in 2 days ;)
Most winter weather out here is grey and rainy with the occassional bright day thrown in for good behavior. This photo is from Christmas Day of 2009 and shows a light covering of morning frost out by Stanley Park as we were out feeding chickadess and seeing raccoons.
Not that the entire city is spared mind you, since we live by the sea and have a very low elevation we have it easier than other places. This picture is from our first winter in Burnaby when we were living part way up Burnaby Mountain and had some heavy snow for a few weeks and probably a month of some sort of covering.
The downside to all this mind you is that Vancouver is totally unprepared for actual snow. The bus lines shut down in more than half an inch of snow and nobody has any idea how to drive safely on a good day much less in the snow. Any day even resembling winter is a good one to stay home or take transit if you are truly forced outdoors.

Tubing

Tubing has been on Kathryns list of things to do since we moved here and I feel very silly that it took us this long to get properly fit it in. With her brother Steven in town for the week we finally had the excuse and time to go and took a shuttle up to Cypress Mountain for an afternoon of recreational winter. The snowboard hills are on the mountain further away in the picture below.
The tube park itself was snug but given that its more for kids we still had a thoroughly enjoyable time. The only downside being that there were lots of lines for the lift up (though you can walk up and we often did) and there were lines again at the top to prevent heaps of people from colliding with each other. It was understandable structure but it does somewhat slow down your afternoon to wait in line every minute or so.
All it all it made for a most enjoyable day and got us out in the snow for a fun day of sliding, exercise and enjoying being away from screens and the like. Steven was kind enough to bring up a new waterproof/crushproof/freezeproof camera that I have been coveting for awhile now so it was also fun to get pictures while sliding around and not worrying about breaking anything.

Night Boarding

With winter on the way, I thought I'd share a few pictures I took on the slopes at Cypress last winter. I got an evening pass for one night a week with a co-worker and along with another friend of his we split up the work week with a bit of snowboarding. The top picture was taken from the chair lift and looks over the moutains and sea out to Gibsons'. The bottom picture was taken from the north slope and looks out over the southern runs and the chalet.