Life In Canada

Well friends,

Yesterday I finished my first of five "Canadian Rockies" treks, and I must say I throughly enjoy our neigbor of the north. Overall, the national is just absolutely beautiful...when driving through it seems like nearly the entire country is national-park-like scenery. Crusing down each twisty road I'm unsure of what breathtaking scenery I'll encounter next...an emerald-blue lake, a glistening waterfall, a magnificent glacier-capped mountain...now this is adventure!!

Without a doubt this trek has been my most difficult one to lead thus far. The US and Canada are similar in many ways, but subtle differences in road systems, national parks, and campgrounds make things a bit confusing the first time around. Luckily I didn't get lost much and was able to schedule and reserve all the campgrounds and activities in a way that worked out smoothly in the end. Since there was so much planning every night for the next day (1-2hrs per night), I often got to bed later than I wanted to and didn't get to hang out much with the passengers...however they understood that this was my first time here and appreciated that I was spending so much time planning to make the trek the best I could with the resources I had available. (The good news is now that I have pretty much everything figured out, and on the next few treks I have barely any planning to do...I just follow my trip notes from the last trek, make minor adjustments to cater to new group dynamics and to keep things interesting for me, and overall just have more chance to enjoy the places and the people!

Speaking of people...my last trek had some difficult personalities. They were nice people...don't get me wrong, however they all had very strong personalities and at times didn't respect my leadership role...deciding to do things their own way which didn't work out well. The group was comprised of 10 German and 1 Swiss (definitely preferable to have more diversity) with ages ranging from 16 to 50! What made things most difficult was that overall the group had very limited English skills. 1 lady was almost fluent, 2 knew very basic English, and the other 8...well they knew little to nothing! Sometimes I was able to get translation help from the english speakers, but all too often I was speaking without a translator and knew that my pax were hardly understanding anything, a situation that was increasingly frustrating for both sides. Overall, I would say this trip was a big learning experience for me as I adapted to leading a group that I couldn't easily communicate with, didn't really want to be led, and wanted to see and experience all the essential attractions without being held to any sort of schedule. Thankfully I was able to adapt my leadership style to make things work out, and the last half of the trip went much smoother, but never have I had to work so hard to maintain group unity and satisfaction. So any way, I loved the trip, somewhat enjoyed the people, and am happy to be starting over with hopefully an easier group.

So despite the challenges of the group, the trek went awesome. It was a constant pleasure to drive/hike/camp/explore because the scenery around us was so spectacular. Canada has a decent population, but they are concentrated mostly in the border cities, and once you drive north into the mountains in a few hours you are in genuine wilderness!

Some memories from this past trek:
-an overnight canoe trip on Clearwater Lake to a campground only accessible by water
-a three hour hike up Athabasca Glacier
-my "easy" hiking choice in Banff becoming a grueling 6-hour nearly constant-uphill ascent that only 3 pax made it to the end of
-so, so many mosquitoes...worse than any place I've been to in the US...in some places maybe a dozen on my skin trying to bite me at once...even with heavy DEET repellant. (long and heavy clothing is the best way to avoid their nastiness.)
-one of my guys climbing into a strangers very nice convertible car for a picture opportunity at a supermarket parking lot, setting off the alarm and running away before the owner returned
-two excellent bear sightings, one for about 5 minutes on a hillside where we watched the bear from a "just barely" safe distance munching on berries
-trying my hand at the skeleton sled at Calgary's Olympic Park (the olympic sledding event where you ride head first...sure it wasn't the real luge trek that the Jamaican's crashed at, but still quite exciting)
-waking up on the last day of the trek at 8am, peering down from my van-roof-top bed to see some of my passengers already awake and drinking beer and whiskey
-and lastly...not in Canada, but Seattle is pretty cool to...walking down the street to this internet cafe, seeing a guy walking down the sidewalk towards me wearing seaweed....yep, that's right, just seaweed drapped all over his body (and I think nothing underneath) just strolling through Pike's place market without a care in the world. Quite weird to see...and really deserving of an explanation, but despite my curiosity neither I nor any other tourists questioned him...as everyone knows...you're not supposed to talk to strangers, especially those wearing nothing but seawood.

Well, many other cool things happened which I can't recall right now, so I'll be bringing this post to an end. Be sure to check out my latest pictures that I posted today of my Western Sun and Canadian Rockies trek. They came out quite good and I hope you enjoy them!

Until next time,

-Tim