The ExploreNorth Blog

I find life at 40 below zero to be quite invigorating and even exciting, and though it’s a bit of a challenge, I love photography at those temps. If there’s ever any doubt that the Yukon remains a unique place to live, a few days of minus 40 will verify it

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours wandering around town by car and on foot, taking pictures that I hope will give those of you in warm places an idea of what it’s like.

The first step is to get the car ready, and having a garage makes that a great deal easier. While it’s not heated, it does hold heat well, so even when it’s -40°C outside (that’s also -40°F), it seldom drops below -16°C (+3°F) in the garage. That means that the cars don’t need to be plugged in to power the engine and battery heaters, and you don’t need to scrape snow, ice and frost off the windows.

This is my Davis weather station as I waited for the car to warm up after pulling it out of the garage. The graph at the lower left shows the temperature dropping overnight. Dressing both myself and the dogs takes a few minutes – lots of layers on me, and booties on the dogs with a coat for Monty for when we go walking (Kayla grows her own ).

The forecast called for a high of -27 but it actually never got close to that.

It was sunny as we headed into town, but the heavy ice fog blanketing downtown Whitehorse could be seen as I dropped down from the Alaska Highway on Robert Service Way. This was shot at 10:30, 47 minutes after sunrise.

It was nice to see that most of the electricity for Whitehorse (and beyond) is still being produced by the hydro generators rather than the diesel generators in this building – only one of the diesel generators was running. Yukon Energy has a graph online that shows the current state of production and consumption. As well as the emissions issues of diesel generation, it costs approximately three times as much as hydro generation.

The Yukon River right at the edge of downtown Whitehorse is always beautiful, especially so in these conditions.

Within a few hundred yards, the ice fog got very thick. I love the ghost ship feeling of the S.S. Klondike in the fog.

I headed over to the power dam, and drove back into the sunshine. Although it looks from this angle like the river is completely frozen, there’s lots of water still flowing under the ice.

It’s amazing how sounds travel in the deep cold. This Air North Hawker Siddeley 748 sounded like it was taking off on the road beside me!

Schwatka Lake right above the dam, with the extinct volcano Golden Horn in the distance.

From the dam I drove around the Riverdale residential area and then up Grey Mountain Road for a look back down into the fog. This was shot at 10:57.

Another look at Riverdale and the fog.

I thought that Long Lake Road might offer some good photos but the fog below in the downtown area was so thick that the only shot I got was this one of the point where the Yukon River freezes completely.

When the ice fog is undisturbed and has a distinct top to it, the view from the Canada Games Centre can be quite impressive. The fog was quite diffused yesterday, though.

The airport was, of course, a stop on my tour, but I just missed the Jazz flight’s arrival and nothing else came along. The fellows in the control tower must do a lot of reading on days like this

There are a lot of people traveling these days – the parking lot always has hundreds of vehicles in it, and some have been there for a long time. At $1.50 per day for parking (free for the first hour), long-term parking at the airport is reasonable here.

The Transportation Musem was the next stop – this shots shows DC-3 CF-CPY and the steamboat Neecheah, with Golden Horn in the background.

The museum’s new LCC-1 LeTourneau Trackless Land Train now has wheels and tires mounted.

Finally, I went back down into the fog to do some errands and get a few shots of life on Main Street. At this point (noon), it had warmed up to -36°. Life really does go on as usual here, regardless of what the temperature is.

All of my regular readers know that cruise ships play a significant role in my life, both in professional and recreational terms. I sell cruises, I work on cruise ships and I take cruises simply for pleasure. The tragedy still unfolding in Italy is obviously on my mind a lot.

I watched this tragedy develop starting about 2 hours after the Costa Concordia was beached on the island of Giglio. The first images I saw were of the ship grounded and listing – a significant event but unlikely to be life-threatening, it seemed to all of us discussing it on cruise forums.

Stories about the initial stages of the rescue operation were brief and often contradictory. Not until photos such as this started appearing did the magnitude of the accident become much clearer. This photo shows hundreds of people on the bow – where do you go from there?

The first image of the ship toppled over was so dark that although the photographer said that’s what it showed, it was impossible to verify. The morning light produced shocking images of the ship…

…and of the shocked and stunned passengers.

It quickly became clear that one man was solely responsible for the wreck, and his actions probably played a large part in the tragedy that ensued – Captain Francesco Schettino.

If you haven’t been on, or at least very close to a cruise ship, it’s hard to imagine the scale that rescuers have to deal with.

When you add in the chaotic conditions inside the ship, it was no surprise to hear this morning that some 20 people are still missing and that rescuers have started to collapse from exhaustion.

There has been endless speculation about this wreck’s effect on Costa, on parent company Carnival Corp, and on the cruise industry in general. My feeling is that you’ll find that once all the knee-jerk reactions have subsided, there will be some impact on Costa, but none on Carnival or the industry in general. I have dozens of clients sailing in the next 3 months, and have not had a single email or phone call about cruise ship safety. The majority of the travel agents in my network are reporting the same – there are no questions resulting from the accident, but lots of new cruise bookings.

The reality is that cruising is the safest form of travel that exists today. The vast majority of people recognize that this is an incredibly rare event. Many people think that the flight to your ship is the most dangerous section of the trip, but it’s actually the drive to the airport! The tightened regulations and enforcement that will no doubt result from this accident will make cruising even safer than it has been up until now.

I’ve only booked 2 people on a Costa ship, and I encouraged them to sail with a different line. Price, however, was their main criteria and it was very cheap. The reality is that Costa just doesn’t get good reviews from North Americans who have cruised with other lines. Cathy and I sailed on the Costa Mediterranea in 2006 and it’s extremely unlikely we’ll ever be on another Costa ship. The food and service were both mediocre and the decor was described by us and many others as “gaudy” – in a Baroque cathedral sort of way.

This commentary is not a sales pitch for cruising. In fact, I gave my 30-day notice to the travel agency yesterday. It’s been fun, but I’m going back to photography, writing and house renovations. And more cruising.

My thoughts remain with the thousands of people who have been affected by this tragedy. I can only hope that it doesn’t get any worse.

I first discovered the pleasures of snowshoeing while on a 3-day mushing expedition in the Rockies in 1991. I’ve had a traditional bent-wood set of snowshoes for many years, but haven’t put very many miles on them, usually opting to use cross-country skis instead. Cathy and I have found, though, that the skis are getting less and less use – that snowshoes are better suited to the trails that we use regularly – so went out 2 weeks ago and bought some hi-tech snowshoes. I got a pair of 25-inch Tubbs Journey Snowshoes and Cathy got a pair of 25-inch Tubbs Frontier Snowshoes. Yesterday, we went out for a loop around the property, and I wore a traditional snowshoe on one foot and one of the Tubbs on the other foot, to see how each step of the process, and the overall experience, compare.

As you can see, I’m comparing snowshoes that are very different in appearance. The traditional snowshoe is 10½ inches wide and 47 inches long. The Tubbs Journey is 8½ inches wide and 25 inches long. Although I didn’t weigh them, my impression is that the weight difference is negligible.

I wear light hiking boots, with gaiters if I’m going to be breaking new trail. The binding on the traditional snowshoe is all leather and dead simple – step into the front pocket, pull a loop around the back of the boot and attach with a single buckle .

The Tubbs binding is approximately twice as much work – step into the front pocket, pull the strap tight, pull a loop around the back of the boot, attach with a single buckle, and tuck the extra loop into a holder.

While the traditional binding is easier to attach, it has no side-movement stability for the heel.

The Tubbs, on the other hand, is extremely stable.

One of the crucial tests, of course, is the flotation value – how deep do you sink into the snow? Not surprisingly, the traditional snowshoe won here – it’s tough to argue against more surface area, particularly in the extremely dry, powdery snow we have in the Yukon. The depth of sinking, though, wasn’t dramatically different – about 5 inches for the traditional, 6 inches for the hi-tech. The solution to that would be to simply buy a longer set of Tubbs, and I already wish that I would have bought 30-inchers instead of 25 (though I’m well within the weight rating for 25s). If I start putting a lot of miles on, I may even upgrade.

Kayla doesn’t worry about flotation, just bulldozes through! Actually, deep snow is as tiring for her as it is for someone with no snowshoes, or too-small snowshoes.

This is one of the biggest differences between the traditional and hi-tech snowshoes – the crampons at both toe and heel on the Tubbs. On either packed moderate hills or steep powder hills, these make a huge difference.

I expected to be able to make a clear decision about which of the snowshoes offers a better experience, but it didn’t turn out that way. For the sort of light recreational walk I did, both are excellent. For longer backcountry use, I’ll take the Tubbs, though – the side stability is enough to make that decision easy. The age helps, too – if the old leather strap on my traditional snowshoes were to break, I’d certainly need a roll of duct tape with me to fashion a new strap

This is typical of the trails around our property and other areas in Mary Lake – most are just wide enough for a snowmobile.

Here’s a short video from Tubbs about the basics of choosing the right snowshoe so you can join in the fun!

Wow, it’s the 7th of January already! Times does fly when you’re having fun

We had a very quiet New Year’s Eve as usual. The City put on an excellent fireworks display at 9:00pm, and I made it to 11:50 before going to bed. Cathy says that the next-door neighbour put on a good fireworks show at midnight, despite it being illegal. The photo below is from the City’s show, not the neighbour’s!

The weather on average is still well above the norm, but I haven’t heard a single person complaining about it. I’ve been working at the travel agency a lot lately, and it’s so nice to be able to go for a walk at lunch without wearing even a hat or gloves.

On Tuesday I took a day off from the many jobs I should be doing, and drove to Skagway. I was on the road just before 10:00am, and took this photo at 10:05, a minute before official sunrise.

Spirit Lake Lodge is still open, though I noticed that most of the motel rooms have plywood over the windows now, so it may not be for long.

I stopped for a few minutes at the Carcross Desert to run the fur-kids.

I made a loop around Carcross and let the dogs out again for a run on the beach. This view is about as close as I get to my cabin anymore – it’s probably time to sell it and move on…

The snowplow was out on Bennett Avenue in Carcross cleaning up the overnight fall of about 3-4 inches.

I passed this snowplow down by Tutshi Lake, then pulled over at a viewpoint to get this shot.

Tutshi Lake was mostly still open, but a skim of ice was forming.

The overnight snow hadn’t been cleared from the access road into our normal stop on Tutshi Lake, so I continued on.

This classic view at Km 48 often stops me, in any season.

Another of the always-impressive views, at the Alaska border.

Skagway got a few inches of snow overnight as well, but crews already had Broadway pretty well cleaned up.

The final bit of snow clearing on Broadway being done, in front of the National Park Service headquarters.

The White Pass & Yukon Route shops.

Some of the wind gusts were very strong!

I made the detour to the viewpoint on the Dyea Road, just to see the snowy, very quiet harbor.

I love watching rotary snowplows/snowblowers of any size, but the bigger the better!

The wind reduced visibility quite a bit at the summit, to the point that the video camera was having a hard time keeping focus.

The lack of snow at this point along Tutshi Lake was odd, and I can’t figure out whether it was warm weather or high winds that did it.

The ice on Windy Arm was incredibly smooth and snowfree for a couple of weeks, and there are several good videos on YouTube showing people skating on it, but the wind dropped and enough snow fell in the past 2 or 3 days to end that for the year. It’s extremely rare for skating to be possible on any of the big lakes, which is why it got such huge attention.

Almost home, at 3:49 pm. This is the Alaska Highway at the boundary of the City of Whitehorse. Though you see very few buildings for the next 10 miles or so, so there are hundreds of homes on acreages off to the side out of sight.

Although Winter Solstice has passed so we’re getting more and more light each day, January is the month that usually brings the coldest temperatures, so I’m not going to get too cocky yet about having an easy winter. The weather so far this year has been incredibly erratic, but for weeks now the temperatures have been averaging far above normal and the snowfall has backed off to more normal levels, so it’s been very easy to deal with.

This is the 5-day weather forecast as of a few minutes ago. Anything above -25°C is good news – seeing single digits day after day is wonderful! Sunrise today is at 10:11am, sunset at 3:52pm.

Every job is so much easier, every activity is so much more fun when it’s warm. Going for long walks with my camera (this is downtown Whitehorse from the trail around the airport at 09:20)…

…plowing the driveway…

…using the snowblower can get silly …

…putting up the Christmas decorations…

…and getting in firewood. I got behind in firewood because good wood is getting tough to find. When you add up the costs in gas, time and vehicle maintenance, and then factor in the poor quality (very small size) of the trees I can cut myself, buying wood became the option of choice this year. I still have a couple of cords of self-cut that I need to buck up (on the left), but we had another 3 cords of ready-to-burn wood delivered a few days ago.

This wood came from the massive spruce beetle kill area around Haines Junction, on the Alaska Highway about 140 miles west of here. There are several companies working in the Haines Junction area now, with wood available in any size and quantity you want it – we ordered 9 cords cut to length, at $240 per cord (all companies are 20-25% higher this year!). That will supply well over 90% of our heat for 2 years.

The wood was delivered late at night and by morning had a couple of inches of snow on it. I was going to tarp it as soon as it was delivered but got lazy – oh well, a couple of inches doesn’t create much of a problem.

It’s rare to get local wood that’s large enough to need splitting to a size more appropriate for the woodstove, but almost 50% of the Haines Junction wood needs to be split, sometimes into as many as 5 pieces!

The next step is to fill the wood room in the basement – it takes almost 3 cords.

While I was loading the basement, Monty was keeping an eye on me from the doghouse. Kayla was facing inside the doghouse – that’s her bum on the left

Having the wood room filled is a really nice feeling. If we had to, we could function without electricity for weeks in a warm house lit by Coleman lanterns, with meals cooked on the wood stove, the garage serving as a refrigerator and the back deck as the freezer. Not convenient, but certainly possible.

The large wood stove that heats the entire house is just a few feet from the door of the wood room, so loading it is very easy. In the middle of a normal winter (whatever “normal” means now), the stove burns 24/7, but this year we often let it cool off. Right now, 14 hours after the stove’s last “feeding”, the house is still warm, so I may not re-light it until 11:00 or so.

Christmas is a very quiet time for us – although we get together with friends, there’s no tree in the house and we don’t do gifts. The past few Christmas mornings, we go to a neighbour’s house for a brunch with champagne and crepes.

Then we have a big turkey dinner with friends. This year it was at our house, and by the end of the evening, the excitement of having company and having the air full of wonderful smells had completely worn Monty out!

The day after Xmas is Boxing Day in Canada. The tradition in Great Britain was for the wealthy to give a box containing a gift to their servants on this day. Today it’s a national holiday in Canada and a few other Commonwealth countries. In Canada it’s the shopping equivalent of Thanksgiving in the United States – the biggest sales of the year! It’s not a big deal in Whitehorse, though – our total contribution was a $29 slow cooker at Canadian Tire

The sun is coming up, so it’s time to get off the computer and get some outdoor activities planned for the day

Merry Christmas to all of my friends and readers around the world. I hope that you have a wonderful day surrounded by people you love.

It’s been just over a month since my last post and I was having a bit of a blog-withdrawal issue, so I’m back. The reason that I was away for so long was simply that I didn’t have much to say. I’ve just been working, the weather’s been blah, I’ve seen no aurora in what was supposed to be a spectacular winter – etc, etc…

There are always many things piquing my interest, though – little things, big things, things that stick in my mind and things that I forget a few seconds later. Many of those things at all levels concern travel in some form, and I love learning about destinations, even ones that I know well. I take many, many travel courses as a regular part of my work life – the best one in the past month was put on by Tourism Vancouver, and I got my “Vancouver Specialist” certification (I also lived there for 40 years). Not only is Vancouver a great long-weekend getaway for Yukoners, it’s also the best port to sail from on an Alaska cruise.

Vancouver isn’t really the trigger for this post, though, it’s the “Top 50 Ski Hotels” list in this month’s edition of Conde Nast Traveler. There are a few things about the list that I find interesting:

• The top-rated hotel, the Westin Riverfront in Avon, Colorado, is one of the least expensive hotels, at $179 per night.

• Whistler, British Columbia has 6 hotels on the list: the Pan Pacific Whistler Village Centre is #9, the Four Seasons is #12, the Fairmont Chateau Whistler is #14, the Westin is #33, the Pan Pacific Whistler Mountainside is #35, and the Hilton is #41. This is a very, very different list than TripAdvisor has for Whistler, where these hotels rank 1, 3, 11, 14, 6 and 10 respectively on the list of the 56 recommended hotels in Whistler.

• The Canadian Rockies have 3 hotels on the list: the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise is #10, the Fairmont Banff Springs is #19, and the Rimrock in Banff is #37.

• Alaska has 1 hotel on the list, with the Alyeska Resort at Girdwood in 50th place.

Maybe when I win the lottery my hobby will be staying at all of the hotels on these lists. You know, just hop in the Learjet and go to Jackson Hole for a couple of weeks, staying at #2, 3, 11, 24 and 34 But so far, I’ve only checked off one on that list (the Fairmont Banff Springs – and I agree with Conde Nast readers that the rooms are the one category that drops it from a much higher ranking).

It’s almost 2:30am, and I’m sitting under my SAD light trying to get out of this mood. The Winter Solstice occurs in 51 hours, then the days start getting longer again. The forecast is for mostly sunshine today (for 5 hours and 40 minutes), so maybe it’s a good day to hit the road. It’s snowing in Skagway, though, so not that direction…

For the past 3 days, everyone in Whitehorse is talking about the weather. On Wednesday we got one of the wilder storms I’ve seen in my 22 years in the Yukon.

This is what the deck looked like at 11:00am on Wednesday – the Xmas decorations didn’t fare too well in the high winds Our home weather station, which is in a somewhat sheltered location (every possible location for it is sheltered to some degree) recorded a 43 kmh gust a few minutes after I took this photo.

At about 1:30 I decided to go out for a look at the wild world. The first stop was a shopping one, though. One of the things that gives Whitehorse the character it has is the abundance of unique little shops. Last Saturday we’d gone to a sale at the Cliffside Country Store & Greenhouse, and I stopped in to pick up our purchase.

I’ve been going to Cliffside for quality plants for years, and the new owner this year is having a lot of fun with her year-round furniture and accessories store. Since Country House Antiques shut down a few years ago, we’ve been hoping that someone would fill that void, and Fay has done that, albeit on a smaller scale.

This is what we got – this water feature was exactly what we’ve been looking for to add some more warmth to the living room.

The next stop was the airport, which had the potential to be interesting. Air North’s Hawker Siddeley HS 748, apparently heading out on a charter, provided what I wanted

Aircraft landings and takeoffs were all but invisible because of the heavy snow so I continued on. The cornices on these trucks at Klondike Motors are evidence of the strength of the wind.

Daphne Mennell’s wonderful horse statue at the new Public Safety Building looks even better in the snow.

The storm had calmed substantially by the time Cathy had to go to work at 8:00am on Thursday, but the driveway was heavily drifted out near the road. Whenever we think about getting new cars (ours are both 11 years old), days like this keep 4×4 or AWD high on the “must-have” list.

The view from the basement windows is getting rather limited. I have a lot of firewood that needs to be cut to length and stacked under cover yet.

Cathy took a day off work yesterday (Friday) so we could go to Skagway. It was -24°C (-11°F) and snowing lightly when we left home. On the way, we made a loop around downtown Carcross to see what’s new. Construction of a new home for the water delivery truck appears to be far behind schedule – this is tough weather to be pouring concrete!

The one-way street and many signs that were added this year have caused a great deal of controversy in town.

It was great to see that the Caribou Hotel now has the heat on and people are back working on it. I hope that means that it’ll be open next summer

There was less snow in the White Pass than I thought there might be, and even the wind wasn’t too bad.

Summit Lake. Yes, it was as cold as it looks – the air temperature was -19°C and the wind chill was certainly in the high 20s.

Once in Skagway, where it was only -12°C (+10°F), I picked up my mail, then went see if there were any seals at the mouth of the Skagway River. There weren’t, but I took this photo of one of the lowest tides I’ve seen at Yakutania Point.

The view down Taiya Inlet.

Looking back at the White Pass summit as we headed north in the evening light (3:30pm – sunset was at 4:17). The only wildlife we saw on this trip was a moose on the road just south of Bove Island (halfway back to Whitehorse) – there weren’t even any tracks of other animals.

The big job today may be to tear down my dead snowblower. It may need new drive belts, which is a big job at minus 25 (the temperature as I write this). I’m hoping, though, that some part of the drive system has just iced up and a couple of hours with a heater under a tarp will cure what ails it. Fingers crossed…

We’ve had a bit of snow on the ground for almost 6 weeks now, but Winter truly arrived on November 11th – it’s been snowing every day since then, and we have an accumulation of perhaps 9-10 inches now.

The 14-day weather forecast at The Weather Network is quite bizarre, going from a low of -32°C (-26°F) on Friday night to a high of -4 (+25°F) a few days later!

Between Cathy and I, we kept the heavy snowfalls under control. The snowblower certainly makes a tough job easy – between driveways, sidewalks and pathways we have a lot of area to clear.

Adding some Xmas silliness beside the hot tub helped my mood in particular. How can a blow-up snowman and decorated plastic palm trees not make you smile?

I finally got the garage sorted out, servicing the bike and putting it in a back corner so both cars fit easily. Cathy’s Tracker has been inside for weeks now, since scraping the frost off her windshield became necessary every morning.

Yesterday I wandered around Whitehorse for an hour or so taking photos. There’s still a surprising amount of outdoor construction going on, including this condo development on the bank of the Yukon River.

The historic telegraph office at the MacBride Museum.

This is the railway line behind the White Pass & Yukon Route station, a busy place in the summer with the trolley running and lots of people walking along the waterfront path.

The Yukon River has barely started to freeze yet, though most of the lakes have got a good cover of ice.

I was surprised at how busy the city was – this is Main Street at about 2:30.

The dogsled sculpture in front of the Yukon Quest race office looked much more in character than it does in the summer

Looking along Elliott Street, across 2nd Avenue.

The winter sun provides no heat but I do like the way it looks behind these banners down at the Visitor Reception Centre.

Some of the “protestors” who have been camped on the lawn at the legislative building are still there. Or perhaps just the tents are…

Coming into the travel agency this morning at 9:30, the day was looking like it might be nice, but as I write this just before noon, there are still just a few little patches of bright sky.

I’m trying hard to slow down when I travel but so often that just isn’t possible. Sometimes I have two options – to see something quickly and superficially, or to not see it at all. I was up 2 hours before the 08:34 sunrise on Wednesday in order to maximize my day, in particular my last few hours of a too-short visit to Banff.

I took a few photos around the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, and was at their Bow Valley Grill for breakfast when it opened at 7:00. Both the service and meal in the magnificent, nearly-empty restaurant were excellent.

As the sky started to brighten, I added some more night photos of the hotel.

One final shot from my room, looking down the Bow River, at 08:36. This is a super-wide-angle view, shot at 18mm.

I had a very short list of must-sees in Banff, the first place on the list being Bow Falls, right below the hotel. With the high country freezing, the flow of the river is fairly low now.

I spent 25 minutes shooting in the area – the falls, the historic Waldhaus Restaurant, some elk crossing the Spray River.

I explored some of Banff’s residential areas…

…then went downtown to get Cathy a new Helly Hansen fleece. Most high-end outdoor-oriented shops in the world have a branch in Banff.

Leaving town, I spent a few minutes with this elk alongside the highway. Elk used to be a huge problem in town, but in 2000, a few hundred elk were captured and shipped to other areas, and I only saw 3 of them.

Highway 1, shot from the Mount Norquay overpass just west of Banff.

As soon as possible, I got off the freeway, onto the Bow Valley Parkway.

The Parkway was very quiet – it’s mostly 2-lane, and that splits into 2 one-way roads in a couple of places.

The Parkway was even slower than I had expected due to much of it being ice-covered. The Buick handled it quite well, though, slipping only when I braked hard to test its traction.

The Rockies are incredible. Cathy and I agree that we need to plan a week-long road trip in the Banff-Jasper area some day in the not-too-distant future, perhaps next Fall.

Castle Mountain is one of the most impressive peaks.

When I first saw this memorial to the men imprisoned at the Castle Mountain Internment Camp, I thought it was one of the camps for people of Japanese descent. But I was wrong – this was one of 24 camps across Canada that held a total of 8,579 men, mostly Ukrainian, during World War I. As with other such tragic events, the imprisonment was fueled by hysteria, not reality.

One of a handful of lodging places along the Bow Valley Parkway, at Baker Creek.

Spindrift among the high peaks.

Morant’s Curve is one of the classic locations in North America to shoot trains, and I was determined to sit there until a train came. Luckily that only took about 15 minutes I chatted with a fellow from northern Alberta who had been there watching trains for 2 hours when I arrived – his count was 3 so far.

I was rapidly running out of time (my parents expected me in Kelowna mid-afternoon), but took a bit of a detour up to the Lake Louise ski resort to see how the season was progressing.

Twinning of the Trans Canada Highway (Highway 1) through the Rockies is a multi-decade project that is nearing completion. This section of construction is about 10 miles west of Lake Louise.

Highway 1 just west of Field (British Columbia), with the Canadian Pacific Railway line above it.

A closer look at the peaks seen in the photo above.

One of the most impressive sections of highway upgrading has been the one through Kicking Horse Canyon just east of Golden, BC. The total cost of this will approach $1 billion by the time it’s finished!! This incredible rock cut is right at the eastern end of the Park Bridge.

The Park Bridge.

This is the worst section of the Trans Canada Highway that’s left anywhere in Canada – there are several 40-kmh (25-mph) curves.

Another major bridge project at Donald, west of Golden.

“Teepee burners” at lumber mills used to be a very common sight in BC, but most have vanished as clean-air regulations have been enacted and tightened. This one east of Sicamous was turned into a pub a few years ago – that apparently didn’t work out and it’s now a liquor store.

I got back to Kelowna just after 5:00pm on Wednesday and had a quiet evening and the following day with my folks. On Friday I had a very early start, getting up just before 04:00 to catch a 06:00 plane to Vancouver. I was a bit early, so stopped for a few photos in downtown Kelowna. I’d heard on the radio that the city wants the abandoned boat Fintry Queen gone soon, so got a final photo of her.

“Kelowna” means “female grizzly bear” in the local Indian language – this grizzly sculpture by Brower Hatcher was installed in 2010.

I had almost 3 hours to kill at the Vancouver Airport, which was very quiet in the area where my flights both arrived and departed from.

There were lots of regional flights leaving, but the total number of people wasn’t large.

It was odd to see many planes being de-iced.

My flight to Whitehorse departed on time at 09:45. I had a view for about 20 minutes, then climbed above a solid cloud layer for the rest of the 2-hour flight to Whitehorse. This is along the coast approximately opposite the northern end of Vancouver Island.

on the final approach for landing a Whitehorse. Two years ago that large bare area was forest – in another two years it will be full of homes and businesses. This is the Whistle Bend project.

I was gone for 8 days, put 2,097 km on the Buick Lucerne I rented, and have 771 photos after editing. The next trip we have planned is June 1st next year, when we’re taking 4 friends from Ontario on an Alaska cruise on the Celebrity Millennium followed by a short land tour to Denali.

But, my plans have been known to change quickly