Letter to a friend

I've been snowshoeing, I took my coworkers out for a snowshoe walk on mt royal, at night, last friday after work.

Most of them think snowshoes is an activity for grandfathers, a slow, easy affair.

They don't think that now.

And they are a bit more aware that I set out to find victims, not sports partners!

heeheehee.

but let me say in my defence that it was a spectacular little hike, with a solid uphill section (this killed the first half of 'em, then a great walk along the edge of the escarpment (the fear of being cliffside scared the next 25%), and then we came over the summit and down through the cemetery, which scared the bejezus out of the last 25%...

I organized the snowshoe rental and all the details and all they had to do was show up, which they did and the fun began.

Many had never been 1) snowshoeing, 2) on mont royal, 3) on mont royal the hard way, 4) winter hiking, 5) night hiking, 6) out for an adventure with the moi.

in other news my camera died, after being ran over by my bike on one of the worst bike rides of last summer (1000 islands parkway, which had a terrible, and puddly, sidewalk-type bike path that was crappy in every category. Anyway, it lived a few more months geting more intermittent, and then died. I wanted to wait a bit longer for the annual summer price drop, but g-f needed pictures taken at her book launch in 7 weeks (tick tick tick) and I wanted to take some winter pics before spring turned everything dogshit grey.

So celebrate I went out and did my first out-of-the-city adventure this year. I was aiming for lanaudiere, which is the eastern laurentians. I figured the place I was going, Foret Ouareau, was closer if I just went north and then east on some backroads.

I quickly learned that this was a shorter route.

But not... a better route.

In fact the road was covered in six inches of ice, and was full of steep climbs and descents and way too many curves. In other words, death city! I had ridden here last autumn and knew this, but thought they used road salt. My bad.

When I got to the park everything was good, and we had a great day in some very scenic landscape. We came home the easy way instead of the hard way.