Cypress

Guess where I've been today?

Cypress, no, not Cyprus; Cypress, the mountain. In Britain we have cypresses as a sort of annoying hedging, here, it is called yellow cedar and it is majestic. And on Cypress there are many, plus western and mountain hemlock, mountain fir, white pine and piles of beautiful, sparkly, glittery snow.

Alex Y and I went snow-shoeing. I was kind of expecting the snow shoes to be like the tennis racquet footwear you see in cartoons, but they weren't. They had crampons and were easy to use.

In the forest we saw whiskyjacks, kinglets, adult and juvenile bald eagles and really not much else. We looked for snow-shoe hare tracks, and tracks in general. We even thought we'd found some, but on reflection decided that they were just the result of some really regular nordic ski-pole stabbing.

There were razor thin people doing Nordic ski-ing and super-athletic ones who were doing something that looked like ski-ing and skating at the same time.
Me, I fell over three times, but hey, it was in snow and I have plenty of padding. My problem was walking downhill in the snowshoes, I think I got it in the end.

We stopped at the Lodge and bought poutine. I had always thought that poutine sounded disgusting, chips, curd cheese and lashings of ginger beer...er sorry, I mean gravy. I can't imagine a french French person would be seen dead within 100 km of a plate of it, but the Québecois love it.
In the summer, Austen insisted on trying it and really....it has an appeal. I think the quality of it largely rests in how good the gravy is. Today's wasn't great, but it was welcome.

The temperature on the mountain was -11º and so I had worn double everything. After about ten minutes of snow shoeing, my rucksack was filling up with discarded items. Still, easy to cool down, just reach down and grab some snow.

Maybe I'll ache tomorrow.
Who cares though.
Heaven is in the mountains and I've been there.