The Squamidian Report – Jan. 3 / 04

 

Also in this issue:

 Wildwood Warren

The Ontarion

 

Hi All,

 

I trust we all made it through the New Years celebrating. I usually manage to sleep through the whole thing.

 

We have had some crystal clear, sunny days that have made the scenery even more breathtaking than usual. By west coast standards it’s been a bit cold with lows hitting all the way down to minus 5. All that rain we had a while back fell as snow up in the high country so now its 10 ft deep up there on the hiking trails. Warren and I decided to try some snowshoeing up in Garibaldi Park. That’s the vast area of wilderness to the east of us that starts at the back yard fences of the houses across the street.

 

The parking lot for the park is an interesting 4x4 ride up a logging road that clings to the west face of Paul Ridge, and extension of Garibaldi Mt. The down hill side of the road drops off forever, the up hill side climbs at the same rate. As you climb, you get into amazing Yellow Cedar and Mountain Hemlock. These are all second and third growth trees but the second growth trees area easily 200 ft tall and arrow straight.

 

We strapped on our snowshoes at the parking lot and headed up the trail, which is actually the logging road continuing on up but there is no vehicle traffic allowed past the lot. You couldn’t drive any further if you wanted to, it had required a dozer to clear the road that far and they don’t clear it past the parking lot. It didn’t take us long to discover that all the ski and snowshoe activity on the trail had packed it hard enough that we didn’t really need ours. So we carried them. Bummer, they start to get heavy after a while but it was easier than dragging them with our feet.

 

The trail the whole way is along the west face of the steep mountainside but the trees are so thick that you can only see out in certain places. If you have the time and energy to climb up out of the trees you can have views in all directions but we didn’t have the time. The snow up there lays in heaps and mounds, covering everything. It clings to the tree branches like giant whipped cream. It simply would not be possible to walk in snow that deep without snowshoes if you weren’t on a packed trail. There is one spot where you can see out to the west and south. I took some digital shots from there. I won’t try to describe what we could see; rather, I’ll describe each picture. The shots were taken from a point that is 3.5 km NE of our house (As the crow flies) and about 3000 ft higher in elevation.

 

To view any of them, just go to one of my web sites (links at the bottom of this letter) and click on the ‘Pictures’ link. At the bottom of the picture page is ‘Winter Hike Up Into Garibaldi Park’ and under that is link 1 through 9. The pictures are all around 60kb or so in size, they should show in your browser fairly easily, even with dial-up.

Hike 1: looking south through the snow-covered trees at the clouds below.

Hike 2: looking west by northwest at the Tantalus Range, across the Squamish valley.

Hike 3: same shot, zoomed in on Serratus Mt and its snowfields, about 12 miles away.

Hike 4: same as #2 but with different clouds. The peak of Alfa is visible.

Hike 5: looking south down the trail, through the trees out into the clouds.

Hike 6: looking south out over Howe Sound and the valley 3500 ft below. You can spot the Chief near the centre of the picture.

Hike 7: this would be SW out over the clouds into the Coastal Mountains.

Hike 8: this is looking N up the trail. I loved how the clouds had defused the sunlight, giving a sepia effect.

Hike 9: this is looking S again, just different cloud effects.

 

Now you don’t have to look at any if you don’t want but they do give a good idea of the country around here. Very spectacular, very rugged, very steep.

 

We’ve had a fair amount of snow down here this week, even right down to the valley bottom and in the lower mainland as well. Vancouver was under a ‘heavy snowfall warning’ with expected amounts of up to 5cm. Everyone in the rest of the world finds that hilarious but it is a problem in Van where they simply can not drive in snow. Add to that the very steep and high hills in and around the city and you have mayhem. They ended up getting about 15cm. Up here we have received several deposits of 20cm or more. Looks very wintry for an area that should be green and mild.

 

Our snow is very different from the snows back east. There is no drifting and blowing except up in the high country where it is much colder and the snow is dryer. Ours comes straight down and stays where it lands. If we get a foot of snow, there will be a square column of snow a foot deep on top of each fence post. Ours is ‘postcard snow’.

 

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I had the most interesting computer crash. Something went very wrong during a full system backup on New Years Eve day (a logical time to do a full system backup). Anyway, when the system re-booted out of DOS it had trouble loading and ran at about the same speed as a snail in the arctic. It took over 5 minutes to open anything and the task bar was completely unresponsive. I couldn’t find any reasons for it so I dismantled the machine and cleaned and re-seated every board, chip and cable to eliminate that kind of thing. A yearly major cleaning of these heat sensitive machines is a good idea anyway although most people wouldn’t use it as an excuse to dismantle everything. After formatting the HD I loaded a known good disk image from last summer that included all the O/S updates and patches. That worked fine but of course a lot of other software was rather out of date.

 

I re-formatted and loaded the image that I had just made and it was toast. Nothing worked, and what did work was snail slow. One thing that has always giving me trouble has been my Firewall program so I uninstalled it. That seemed to fix things up but the Firewall wouldn’t reinstall, so there is a conflict there somewhere.

 

I re-formatted again and installed an image from two weeks ago. Everything came up fine, including the Firewall. I keep up to date data backups on both CD and over my LAN onto the old 586 using a great free Replicator program so it was just a matter of syncing to get back to normal. Now I just need to figure out what went wrong in the first place and avoid it in the future.

 

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Some friends of Warren & Janice gave them their old computer. It’s a 486 that is struggling to run Win95 but it’s a good system for them to learn on. Neither has any computer experience at all. Warren has been working very hard, learning to type and understand how to do things with it. As a challenge and a project, he has decided to write some columns about his life in the mountains of BC on his computer. His biggest problem at this point is for him to figure out how to transfer his file onto a floppy disk so he can bring it to me. They don’t have access to the Internet where they live so he can’t Email it. For any of you that don’t know them, they live in a log home he built himself, up a rugged logging road on the flank of Brohm Ridge, north of here. They even produce their own hydro from the waterpower of the stream that runs behind their place.

 

So here is a big welcome to Warren and his first contribution column to the Squamidian.

 

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Wildwood Harvesting

 

Wildwood:- an unfrequented wood or forest...so the dictionary says. I think that pretty much sums up what I look for when I go harvesting for my wood. It’s always an adventure, a treasure hunt here on the southwestern coast of British Columbia. You never know what you may find!

 

I suppose my background of logging, bushwacking, foraging and a lifetime of scrounging have forged me into the creative, wildwood artist that I am. A typical day might go like this. Pack up the chain saws, saw winch, caulk boots, winch straps, long-haired Shepard (don’t want to surprise the bears), canned beer, grub and a strong young fellow or two; Doug will do if there’s a shortage.

 

Now yah just don’t head off anywhere. There’s heck-of-a-lot of planning involved here - that is - days of scouting, trading with landowners, negotiating with forestry officials, bull-shitting with bureaucrats and last but not least, lobbying the logging companies.

 

The last major harvest/adventure was in untouched territory. I took Doug along; he was blown away! Imagine harvesting giant burls - warts ya might say ,.off humongous, over-mature red cedars. They were so big, in fact, Doug and I kept in radio contact to relay information whilst exploring ONE tree.

 

Most of Doug’ readers, I’m sure are quite familiar with our lifestyle. I just had an idea! If this article proves popular, I could provide a special column, called:- WARREN’S WILDWOOD EXURSIONS.

 

And so I must end for now as my typing skills and concentration are very limited compared to you typing buffs and I’LL leave you with this profound statement.” Wonderful thing, being an artist; you always come out smelling like a rose, or in my case, like a yellow cedar.

Wildwood Warren

 

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THE ONTARION REPORT

 

January 2, 2004

 

Hi everyone! Hope the start of the New Year was a good one for you! I see that Karin was the first to celebrate it again this year. Shucks, how come she always gets to go first? LOL! I guess it’s ok since she spent the money and effort to move 16 hrs closer to tomorrow than the rest of us a long time ago. Just kidding Karin, your account of New Years Eve in Oz was interesting and at least you had decent weather to celebrate it’s happening. Here in KW, the city fathers and mothers held a celebration at City Hall in Kitchener and at several sports complexes in Waterloo. It’s a nice way to spend New Years eve with one’s family. We still have no snow here in KW region but that’s ok, it’s a nice difference to be experiencing +10c temps and dry roads for once in 20 years. I’m waiting to see if I get to have a green birthday on January 11th. I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those! If it turns out to be mild and green on the 11th I’m going to make sure I take some pictures of it for posterity sake.

 

Well, I’ve just finished reading a book that Carole gave me for Christmas. It’s actually a pictorial account of the city of Kitchener’s history from 1880 – 1960. It does however mention in the captions below many of the pictures events that took place as recent as 1973 such as the demolition of the beautiful City Hall at King and Frederick Sts. Carole and I were among the last few couples to apply for our marriage license at this amazing building. I am still in shock at the demise of this great structure. When I think back to the many years we would pile in the car as a family and drive to see the Kitchener City Hall lit up in all it’s glory at Christmas time it stirs many good thoughts of my childhood.

 

Kitchener was famous for the display of lighting on the City Hall at Christmas. People traveled for many miles to take pictures of it lit up at night. It’s a real shame that we have to destroy history in the name of progress. What stands in its place is a huge brick complex that was erected by a conglomerate from Cambridge in 1974 to house an Eaton’s store among others. It’s now a food court and a fitness center. The main store is occupied by a Sears “outlet” center that supposedly sells off overstock at bargain prices. I think I’ve set foot in this place 5 times since the destruction of the old City Hall. I’ve taken a picture of the cover of the book and one of the Old City Hall that I will include with this Ontarion. I hope seeing the picture will bring back good memories of Kitchener for those of you who remember as far back as the 60’s. The author of the book describes most of the pictures well enough that one could venture out into the city and at least find the location if not the old buildings in the photos. I’ve already spent a couple of hours talking to Adam and Carole about the memories this book has brought back for me. It’s the first book I’ve actually read from cover to cover in a long time. I think I’m going to take my camera out one of these days and try to duplicate the photos from today’s perspective. It should be an interesting challenge. I may even add script to each picture and produce a CD of the results. If I do manage to complete this project, I’ll be sure to make it available to any of you who would like to have a copy. You’ll have to give me some time though. This project could take the better part of a year to complete so please be patient.

 

While reading this book, I had thoughts of the missed opportunities we’ve all had to document both our activities and our surroundings as we grew up. If only we’d had the foresight to take a camera out and snap pictures of our neighbourhood and it’s residents. Not to mention the local buildings that were once so prominent and are now only a memory. I guess the demolition of such structures is viewed as progressive and necessary at the time but the least the destroyers could do is preserve the old structures on film. Now that I’ve said this, I think I’ll take some time and travel around KW with my camera and take shots of today’s prominent buildings. Provided such things as CD readers still exist 50 to 100 years from now, someone may just appreciate being able to view the interesting buildings of 2004.

 

I hope that you’ve all seen pleasant flashes of years gone by while reading the Ontarion this week. Take a look at the picture of the old City Hall that I’ve sent to Doug and enjoy!

 

PS: By the way, the “old” City Hall was only constructed in 1923 and demolished in 1973. Hardly an old building by most standards!

 

Thanks again for tuning in! I hope you have a great 2004 and please keep reading.

 Bye for now….GREG.

 

PPS: Something to Think About>

Success is not always final. If you build a better mousetrap, nature will breed a smarter mouse.

 

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Greg’s pictures are posted to my web sites. Just click the ‘Greg’ link then look for the Kitchener links at the bottom of the page.

 

For low speed dial-up connections, just the basics:

http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b2/

 

For high-speed connections, a little more fancy:

http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/

 

Have a good one..

the doug

 

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