Snippets from the Brodies: More fun in the snow!

Well, the snow has stayed around! Every week or so there is a few more inches to top up whatever has melted or gone brown, so a new white coat over everything!

Sunset over the tree farm

Joel leaving for work in the morning...

All covered in snow!! (click to enlarge)

We’re getting used to it, but we’re definitely not getting over it! Minus 5 or so is starting to feel like OK weather, although today at maximum minus 15 was not so much… J

We’ve had a go on a snowmobile here at the Stewarts’ place in Didsbury, and towed a snowboard behind! Lots of fun J Lawrie and one of the young friends, David Manary, took turns driving the snowmobile and on their snowboards, while I gave both a go and wasn’t terribly fantastic, so resorted to taking some photos before trying again another day! The snow is mostly so powdery and soft, and everything is so pretty!

Keen to try out this snowboard

David Manary having a go with no board

Lawrie loving this snowmobile business!

Dragging David in the snow

Lawrie snowboarding - wakeboarding style

Me having a try :)

I think I maybe made it 5 seconds? :)

Lawrie and I also had a go at cross country skiing in Canmore, in the Rocky Mountains. This was hilarious! If you ever want to feel extremely uncoordinated, try cross country skiing for the first time! It looks deceivingly like normal (downhill) skiing… Except your skis are even longer, and narrower, and I’m sure they don’t have nearly as much grip on the snow… Your feet are only clipped in to the skis by the very front of your toe so your heels can lift up – which is great in theory for going up hills, but it’s so hard to adjust to this rather than just lifting the whole ski at once!

Other skiers out there make it look ridiculously easy, just coasting up each hill as they come to it – we didn’t think it was going to be anywhere as easy as it looked, but while we were prepared for the effort it took going up small hills, we weren’t so prepared for the level of coordination it took, not to slide back down the hill! We would have been hilarious for others to watch… As it felt and looked like every other person there could cross country ski pretty well! When we got to the top of our first hill (these are pretty small hills mind you…) the thought of going down was almost laughable, as we hadn’t worked out any way to stop or to turn! Then we both couldn’t breathe for laughing after Lawrie started off, and stacked rather impressively twice in a row within the first few metres!

Before the laughing fits of the first hill!

Trying to lean forward like everyone else does...

But getting caught in someone else's tracks...

Apparently to stop, we learnt afterwards, you either snow plough, like on regular skis (which we had thought of and tried, but was disastrous, as the skis are very long and cross over really quickly, plus it just didn’t seem to work!) or you do a ‘hockey stop’ (ie. Skid to the side quickly – one thing on ice skates, which we are slowly getting, but a completely different thing on nearly 2m long skis!). So we had to make do without stopping… As for turning, you either go down the hills in the deep ski tracks that are already there on each side, and lean to the side to go around the curves rather than slipping out of the tracks, or you ‘simply’ skate down the hill, lifting your feet and steering like on rollerblades or ice skates. Sounds pretty good in theory, but it seemed pretty impossible to lift my feet and expand the possibility of stacking, once I was moving down the hill!