Mackenzie, BC - Murray Range

A lone trip to Mackenzie, BC was in my mind as I woke up and pondered the morning sun. My bag packed, the bear spray secured and water remembered, I set out towards the northern scenery of the Murray Range.

The route; uphill for the entire 5km to the peak - no respite from gravity. This is a view of the main route that parallels, and then mimics, the avalanche chute remnant. Absolute difficulty to climb the snowy chute so I managed to find footholds along the edges and scramble along rock outcrops through the difficult narrows and steep places. And then...and then.....it began - the rocky scree-turned-bedrock slope that edged toward 80 degrees of angle. Intense.

Here is a better, and more just, explanation of the slope. This is just before the "steep" part that cost me a few years of life I am sure.

Walking on more suitable ground - above the steep part I now could take the time to stop, rest and realize the immensity of this range. This is June, please remember, as you stare past me into the background.

I almost turned around, but I pressed on. And I made it. Moments later the wind, snowfall and darkness came in and pushed me back downslope.


But I first stopped for some summit pictures...

A startling whistle caught my ear and I immediately set upon finding the 'Murray Ridge Marmot' (as I named it...). We had a brief conversation on the peak, and we then both went our ways.
The downhill trek was an adventure of glissading, falling and two moments where I had to plead with my muscles and nerves to hold on for just a few more steps to safety. Four hours up, one hour down - to the victor comes the spoils, and in my case it was a lone warm bottle of Nelson microbrew.

Then, after a nights sleep in Mackenzie, belly sated with pizza and rest, I set upon hike number two. I found a large, pronounced rock outcrop along the highway home and decided to stop. And I climbed. And it was good.

The view from the top...

Alpine meadow flower...

Me scrambling up the lower section. It became a tad rediculous near the mid section of this hike and I, with great happiness, found a more subtle route down!

The Curse of Religion...an ongoing saga

Coming home today from a terse hiking adventure in the mountains of BC, muscles and lungs tried to their extreme extents, nerves tested (again...this is becoming a lurid continuing saga itself) and mind clear from time and an expanse of mountainous landscapes, I turned on the radio.

And what the FUCK?!?

One weekend, two days, 48 hours...all that has happened, or was chosen to report on, was lucid accounts of religious based bigotry and inanity.

1) Anglicans, not known for their foresight or clarity of though, astound the world - it is their moral compass that holds them true to their goal of protecting the populous from the scourge of male-male or female-female love. Can religions force people towards atheism any more pronouncedly?

2) "Militant Islam" has tied up a man, in the name of Allah, with explosives. Their religion has forced them to attempt to blow an innocent (although, I am sure he has sinned at some point in his life...there is no way to avoid sin as accusingly set up by religious myths) man up. To kill someone, because his book s different than their book. Because his myth, or the myth from the country that he hails from, is different. His tooth fairy is tall and wears green, their tooth fairy is shorter, a little more rotund, and wears blue stripes. And for this, death.

3) Lebanon vs. Israel - more sectarian christian violence and people twice subtracted from the abstract violence were killed. Maqny families now are missing a father - in their prime when they should be looking at the stars, playing with their children, telling stories, cooking with their spouses, visiting family, going on hiking trips, helping their neighbour fix a tractor, tucking in their children at night with a bedtime story and a kiss on the cheek....but now they are both in the ground, rotting. Back to the bacteria and nematodes, never again to see or be involved with their families. A religious war took them away.

4) What will come next....

Can we subtract religion as reality from our social plate? Ever? Finally?

But then, the worst of it was to come. I have no clue as to the date of this atrocity (thanks PZ) , but I hope that you are finished eating and are well digested - food may exit orifices uncontrollably if it is not well within the intestines and thus two sphincters safe from resurfacing. I wonder how many of these are teachers or community leaders - I would like to assume they are alone in their delusional understanding, but of course they are not. What kind of thinking can we suppose fed the list of three above?

In conclusion:

Lay religion to rest with volcanic gods, santa clause, the boogie man, and let these stories never be heard again. It does nothing - absolutely nothing - to better our society.

We have moved past the need for fake idols to worship - we now have meta-cognitive salience and knowledge. Revel in the truth and reality of the world and nature, leave hatred and misogynistic, genocidal, ignorant, sexist and dictatorial religion behind. It is a relic.

McBride Trekking: Bear, Bear, Cliff.....

Two hours south-west of PG is a little humble town (village?) of McBride. Nothing but cowboys, out of work loggers and mountains....the cowboys avoidable, the logging aura unavoidable, and the mountains unquestionably awesome. Hunkering down in a place like this leaves you with little else to occupy you mind other than 'the mountains'.
In the crisp morning, as the sun was pouring its wealth of energy towards us in anticipation of the heated day ahead, we drove into the woods to find our trailhead among the lush forest. Found, overgrown and ominous, we packed up and began the unmistakably mosquito riddled hike. Once above the deciduous/coniferous boundary the flying critters abated, the sky opened up and we left the biological wonder of the forest and entered geological wonder of the craggy mountain ridgeline.
We climbed up and up and up, until and a ragged, soggy cliff face barked at us to stop. Our better judgement ended our hike shy of the peak, but regardless it was a hard, wonderful hike.


The next morning, waking up to our sore muscles and fond reminiscent images of yesterday's hike, we pointed ourselves toward the next target - Kristi Glacier. We soon found out, after an hours hike, that we were not going to be able to reach the glacier. So, we changed plans and decided to hike up an old(ish) landslide scar, through the eroding stream to a rocky mountain side.

Then there were the bears.....





Early on in the Eagle Creek hike we came upon an old hunting cabin - now a truncated storage place (more realistically and out of commission truncated storage place). Inside were messages from other hikers, old stores and equipment. Nothing was new or usable, but the historical merit of the place and the content were quite dramatic.

Taking a lunch break less than halfway up the mountain. After an hour of hiking along the river basin, hugging the turbid flow of the snowmelt, we came to the beginning of the arduous uphill section. Here we took our first opportunity to stop and regain our muscular composure and feed ourselves. We knew nothing of the hike above us - that which we were about to take on - but knew only of the need to go higher...

Im lichen this tree......

Further up the mountain we ambled onto a spurious outcrop for some pictures. A glorious view was granted for our labour, and we still had higher to go. But, and there always is a 'but', our travel to higher altitudes was halted by a rocky cliff that was impassable. We tried to scurry our way across the first section, learning the frightful way that cliffs and nerves don't make for fluid movements. We got across a spurious section rife with saturated scree and a rotten (geologically rotten) cliff face, only to face defeat upon eyeing the next stage. So, satisfy with our accomplishment to get this far, and filled with grief of having to re-climb across the scree-cliff, we turned back. Seven hours after leaving our car, we returned sore and hot. Exuberant....but sore and hot.

Marmot. The Whistler. The marmot is the whistler, apparently, not satan. Although....

A top-down view of one of the lower ridge lines.

Crystal posing by the side of the landslide debris. Pictured here is only half of the actual amount that covered the trail and solidified our decision to leave the glacier dream and to take on the new dream of climbing the landslide scar. Quite a good decision it was!

Me and her, the last picture before our camera died. After this were the bears....and the forest of death....and the attacking grouse.....and more forest of death...then the triffids.....then the other bear.....then the raging river of doom.....then home.

"Shaking off the anaesthetic of familiarity"

A lucidly simply, yet daunting, purpose of science. Quoted from the most literate science educator I have yet to come across, Mr. Richard Dawkins. I am just dipping my neurons into "Growing up in the Universe" and already I have evaluated new ideas and changed the way I will teach science - enlightenment, if ever there was. I hope you take the time to watch it if you can.

As I sit and watch the waters of the Fraser and Nechako sweep over my new city as the people watch with a torrent of complacency, I ponder It. Science. Earth. Cosmos. Insects. Evolution. Macro-Invertebrates. Legumes. Industry. Society. Ethics. Godlessness. Not needing a myth to lean on ... It.

On a lark!

....a new friend for the list.

This one is quite different from the rest in terms of both ecology and geography. The majority of the other posted birds are either from a wetland or temperate aspen forest - all indicative of lowland birds. However, this weekend gave a succinct opportunity to explore the birds of Jasper. In a high alpine region of Alberta, among the barren lichen, scree and boulder filled landscape came a chirp.

And to it I ran...