Alpine Climbing

My pictures from the Bugaboos are now online in the picture gallery.

There isn’t a full write up yet but the short story is…

Simeon and I drove to Roger’s pass and had bad weather for an attempt on Mount Sir Donald. Went and had a look at getting into the north end of the Selkirks but were defeated by a very closed logging road.

Carried on driving, driving, driving to Golden for lunch and then into the Bugaboos where we climbed; the Kain route on Bugaboo Spire and the West ridge of Pigeon Spire to warm up. Then after a weather enforced rest day, during which we hiked out to the car for beer, we managed the NE Buttress on Bugaboo and the Kraus-McCarthy route on Snowpatch. We also climbed a route on the Crescent Towers on our rest day.

The weather looked like it was going to break so we spent the last couple of days in Penticton doing a little bit of cragging on the Skaha Bluffs. It was very hot but we managed to stick to the shade and get a few nice routes done before heading back home.

Snake oil? It sort of sounds a bit like it… part with hard earned cash for…

“Calibrate your display–just like professionals. Spyder2express calibrates monitors in three easy steps–simply plug it in, specify your display type, and it does the rest, automatically calibrating your monitor or laptop. Check the before-and-after. You’ll see the improvement!”

I was a tad skeptical.

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A while back I got myself a Nikon D40. After my trip to Peru decided that a better, longer lens was in order. The stock lens that came with the D40 is an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 which is great but noticeably not up to the task of shooting candid street shots or wide angle landscapes. I’m not a fan of carrying multiple lenses while hiking or climbing and having to change them in awkward situations so I really wanted a single lens for all occasions – a “superzoom”. Continue reading »

A long, long while ago I bought a Canon AE-1. It was build like a brick and survived trips to the Arctic, Himalaya and Andes. A year or two back it died and simply wasn’t worth fixing so it took residence on a shelf while I waited for the price of Digital SLRs to drop to something reasonable.

I recently replaced my 35mm Olympus Stylus Epic with a Canon A630. This is a bit bulkier than I’d like but at least it runs on AAs which for me is a lot more convenient. I’ve gotten some good pictures out of it so far but this winter’s weather has prevented a lot of mileage.

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Alasdair and I spent a short day at Index Town Wall on Saturday. Thin Fingers proved to be “good character building stuff” as the crux of the first pitch was pretty wet. The second pitch was just plain hard especially in the cold. Probably the last day of rock climbing for a while so no complaints.

I took my new Canon A630 digital camera for a test drive and got a really good panorama of Mount Index and Mount Persis from midway up the Lower Town Wall.