This morning we drove up the Smith-Dorrian Highway toward Spray Lake to hike up Ha-Ling Peak. We were at the trailhead shortly after 10am and began up the switchbacks toward the top of tree-line. The trail gains over 600m of elevation before reaching the ridge between Ha-Ling peak, and Miner’s peak to the south.

As we were approaching the top, clouds were quickly approaching from the west. This was another reminder how quickly the weather can change, particularly at higher elevations – we experienced sun, rain, hail and perhaps even a bit of snow all within a 10 minute window. I didn’t take many photos due to the weather, but here are a few I managed to capture when it started to clear-up and the sun began to peak through the clouds.

A few weeks back we saw a performance at Calgary’s High Performance Rodeo of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, played on pianos and accompanied by Alberta Ballet – it was an amazing show, but the Tubular Bells was only the second act of the performance.

The first act was a four-piano performance of Canto Ostinato composed by Simeon Ten Holt; if you enjoy piano music, you should check it out it’s a very cool composition!

A few years ago, I started tracking snowfall at ski resorts so I could see the snowfall trends. It never really got past a bunch of numbers stored in a database; but after waking-up a few mornings in late-November and trying to check a bunch of different websites to see where the snow fell overnight, I decided to resume this little project.

Since early December, I’ve been working on a project to put all the snowfall data from the Rockies (and other select resorts in Western Canada) into one place. The result: Rockies-Insider.com (Since renamed to snow-reports.ca)

It’s a work-in-progress, but hopefully some people find it useful!

Cheers,

Mike