Dear everyone,

 

You are the lucky readers of my tales.  If anyone gets this link at 2 different email addresses or doesn`t want to hear from me(!) then please email me and I`ll take you off the list.

 

This is now the fourth time I`ve tried to send a message (there have been some email problems related to the fact that the computers in Quebec are French and weird) but if you're reading this then it's worked so here goes a brief summary of what I`ve done so far:

 

Flew out to Seattle where we had an amazingly clear day for the flight over the northern prairies.  Terrain is strange - totally uninhabited with a strange contrast of dead straight roads and implausibly twisting rivers.  Flew round a cool volcano below its peak to land in Seattle. Seattle is a nice city, but has a sort of strange SimCity-like unreal sheen to it; it is also about 50% road by land usage.

 

(Seattle from Space Needle)

 

Then travelled up to Vancouver which is a seriously cool city.  I could definitely live there (Kate and Anna, you will have such a good time).  The setting is faultless with sea one way and mountains and forests in the other directions.  Apparently (like Seattle) it rains a lot but we only witnessed glorious warm sunshine.  We went to an ice hockey match here where, true to form, the gloves came off for the first time after 87 seconds.

 

(Vancouver from Grouse mountain, 1250m, which we walked up)

 

We then travelled by train over to Jasper in the Rockies.  Upon picking up our car we were asked where we were travelling.  When we replied Calgary they told us to check if the road had been re-opened.  It turned out that, despite it still being September, they had had an early heavy snowfall! Welcome to Canada.

 

(First ascent above snowline – c. 1500m)

 

  However, the upside to this was that the drive to Calgary, which is already considered to be one of the world's best, looked even more spectacular with lots of snow around.  The route follows a series of glacial valleys (remember that U-shape you were taught in geography?  it's true!)

 

(U-shaped valley showing road)

 through different forests past a couple of glaciers and over the odd pass while peaks of 3,500m and more surround you.  There are lots of lakes which are a curiously bright blue colour.)   It has to be seen to be believed.

 

(Peyto Lake – it’s real colour is actually brighter than this)

 

We saw the sights around Calgary (the "local" sites turned out to generally involve a 400k round trip - this is N. america for you) but we had a hire car so were able to cover distances fairly rapidly ;-).

 

Some of the scenery around Calgary is very strange with canyons amoung the prairies that cannot be seen until you are on the edge.

(Badlands, ‘near’ (200km from) Calgary)

 

 

We then went up to Banff to do some hiking.  We soon found that the recommended time for hikes could be beaten by about 50% so set off on the harder ones given.  The second hardest turned out to be fairly do-able but when we reached the top (a supposed natural amphitheatre) visibility was c. 50m and there was 12 inches of snow so we never actually saw it.

 

(Cascade amphitheatre, presumably. 2150m)

 

We did, however, come across fresh bear prints, which was quite exciting and necessitated maintenance of conversation for the whole 4 hours of hiking (the advice one is given).  Even for me, this can become quite difficult and we were even reduced to debating the merits of various varieties of lettuce at one particularly uninspired period.

 

Buoyed by this success we set off the next afternoon on the "hardest" hike in the region, a 15km loop that takes you up to 2,350m and advises that it's for 'experienced hikers only'.  Emboldened by our 2 days hiking experience to date we decided we were experienced and set off.  The true story of the hike is long but in summary, the route became unclear owing to the 18 inches of snow above 2100m.  Only one person appeared to have done it since the snow so we decided to follow their footsteps and only began to doubt this strategy when they suddenly veered straight up a steep scree slope.  Unfortunately we had no alternative but to follow so we did.  After about 30 min of difficult climbing up a narrow scree gulley, it became clear that this was probably not the true path but descent looked unappealing so we carried on until gloriously coming over a ridge just as we were starting to get seriously worried.  The view was magnificant with > 50km visibility.

 

(elation on finally reaching top looking away from route up – 2450m)

 

What was also visible, rather comically, was the true route of the trail over a simple pass about a km to our right and, crucially, at least 100 m lower down.  Oops.  We realise now with hindsight that the footsteps were probably from a serious climber.  Anyway, it's damn cold at 2450m (8000 feet) so we managed to scramble down back on the path before sunset.  A truly memorable day.

 

Where we emerged

Correct Route

(looking back up descent route showing our path and trail path)

 

Unfortunately we only had a few days in the Rockies (the most naturally beautiful place I've seen so far) so we did several more spectacular and easier hikes, including past the wonderfully named lake Minnewanka, the famous resort of Lake Louise and to the Saskatchewan glacier.

 

(Couldn’t resist it – will try to get this into FHM!)

 

(Lake Louise)

 

(Saskatchewan glacier from Parker ridge, 2300m)

 

Next came our 54 hour train(!) across the country to Toronto (where we bumped into the Queen) and heading to Montreal and Quebec.  The autumn colours are absolutely unreal around here and the character of the country changes noticeably as you get further into French-speaking Quebec.

 

(Canada colours, Quebec)

 

The food improves, the age of everything increases but the customer service and general helpfulness plummets quite amazingly.

 

There is more amazing scenery including some spectacular waterfalls and canyons, one of which had a precarious suspension bridge, upon which we scared a lot of people by getting some alarmingly effective resonance (knowledge of physics has many uses!)

 

(St. Annes canyon suspension bridge)

 

We had a brief foray up the St Lawrence and spotted some Beluga whales and Minke whales but, alas, didn't see any of the rare blue whales.

 

(Beluga whales in the St. Lawrence, Tadoussac)

 

From Montreal it was time to say goodbye to Canada, but I will defintiely be back as the scenery there needs more than a month to be properly appreciated.  It certainly defeats anything I've ever seen in Europe and benefits enormously from being far less developed.

 

We then headed over to Boston, USA, on an absurdly slow train/bus journey that managed the feat of taking 14 hours for a c. 350km journey.  Trains in N. America manage the not inconsiderable feat of making our ones look fast and efficient.

 

Boston was cool, and it was nice to see a few familiar faces as we joined up with 6 guys from my rowing crew to take part in the US's largest regatta.  We didn't do particularly well (though, no worse than we'd hoped) in the racing but got a few cheers and mentions from the commentators by flying my Union flag from the stern of the boat ;-)

 

(see http://www.jetphotographic.com/showphoto.php?id=16240 - I'm the one in the white cap that yoou can't see, probably looking knackered)

 

I already have more tales from the US but anyone who’s got this far will have had enough so I’ll send another update later.

 

Hope everyone is having fun back home, I’m currently in Washington where I haven’t managed to be shot and I believe they’ve just caught the bloke anyway.

 

Chris