Skidoo Ride

I went back out to the cottage last weekend....  It was yet again another solo trip.  Hailey had to work and Margarit had to play chauffeur for her.  The two younger girls didn't want to go out in the cold weather.  The roads were OK but not great.  I headed out on Saturday morning about 10:00 and got to the cottage by 1:00.  Up to Rocky Mountain House the roads were pretty good and only partially snow covered.  Heading west on the David Thompson Highway, particularly beyond the Sunchild Road, the highway was a little more snow covered.  It was overcast and snowing part of the way out and the temperature only got up to about -18C.  I saw a herd of wild horses pawing in the snow for food, around Misty Valley.  There was about 8 inches of fresh snow at the cottage but by the time I arrived it had quit falling and the sun struggled out a bit.

I unloaded the mattress and a bunch of pre-painted plywood that I brought out.  In the afternoon I started up both of the ATV's and to my surprise there were no issues with dead batteries.  I moved them out of the garage so I could get to the snowmobile.  I bought a new SkiDoo Tundra about two years ago.  I've never really been able to ride it much yet and the odometer showed only 0.5 miles.  Today would be the day...!!

I fired it up and went ripping around the subdivision.  When I first set out the snow plow had not been around the neighborhood yet and there was lots of fresh snow all over the roads.  I blasted around for a while and even hit some of the deeper snow on the ATV trails.  By the time I headed back the snowplow had gone through and created a race track from me along the road.  Managed to wind the sled up to about 70mph...!!

After that small dose of juvenile excitement I parked the ATV's back in the garage, but left the Skidoo out so I could go for another ride later.  I made some supper and packed all the painted plywood down into the basement through the floor hatch.  Later in the evening I was invited over to my neighbors Rob and Brenda for a visit.  We stayed up late, had a bunch of beer and swapped lies.

The next day I had a dose of the dreaded Nordegg headache but eventually shook it off.  A herd of deer came around and at one point there were seven of them.  Some ravens, magpies and whiskeyjacks, as well as the ever present red squirrels but otherwise not much wildlife around.  It got really cold overnight and I kept my truck plugged in so that I wouldn't have any issues trying to go home.  As I'd left the Skidoo outside, it wouldn't start and I killed the battery trying to turn it over.  I managed an armstrong start by yanking on the pull starter and eventually got it going.  Took another short ride and then put the sled and the ATV's away.

I worked down in the basement for a bit, attaching some of the painted plywood panels.  There was a knock at the door....  my neighbors daughter was out and had got stuck in their driveway and asked if I could pull her out.  I eventually rounded up enough straps and managed to pull her car out.  By this time it was too late for me to carry on with plywood installation so I just cleaned things up, locked up everything, and headed for home.  Saw the same herd of wild horses in the same general area on the way back, but otherwise it was a pretty uneventful drive......

Here's a snapshot of the coat rack I made using part of Margarit's collection of antique doorknobs.  I actually put this up last time I was out...

Another One

Here's another negative from that recent batch of Ilford Delta 100.  This one was taken a little over a year ago, in January of 2018.  I thought it was kind of fitting as we find ourselves locked into a rather severe, extended cold snap.  Speculation suggests that this will set back the mountain pine beetle invasion that has been devastating the forests in the mountains and foothills.  Essentially the temperature has mostly remained in the -20C range as a daytime high, often plunging down to -30C and colder at night.  With the wind chill effect taken into account, these temperatures often felt like -40C and colder.  There have been a handful of slightly milder days in between but for the vast majority of the time, since the latter part of January, this has been the norm.  It bounced up to about -8C this afternoon, and is forecast to be slightly warmer yet tomorrow, but after that we plunge back down into colder conditions, with night time lows back to around -30C by the weekend.  It wasn't quite that cold on the day that I took this photograph but I remember my hands getting painfully cold handling the big view camera.  I think this image kind of captures the mood of that sort of extreme weather.

Miners House

Last weekend.... the Family Day Long Weekend.... between working at the shop on my millwork project, I managed to find my way down into the darkroom to process some film.  Though I haven't shot much new stuff the past year or so, I still have a backlog of film to process, dating back to 2017.  This time it was a mixed batch that included some Ilford Delta 100 and some Fuji Neopan Acros 100.  It was all 4x5 sheet film, and all processed in Rodinal developer.

This was to be my first attempt and shooting Delta for development in Rodinal.  I exposed the film at 64 iso, and processed in Rodinal 1:50 for 12:00 minutes at 24C.  This yielded some rather dense negatives that, though still easily printable, are a bit on the heavy side.  Moving forward I will reduce exposure, or development or a combination of both.

This particular shot is of an abandoned Miners House in East Coulee.  The house was donated by the Tasko family to the East Coulee School Museum, but now they are saddled with upkeep and taxes and are unsure what to do moving forward.  In the fall of 2017 when I was down in East Coulee for the premier screening of the Forgotten Prairie documentary, Museum director Barb Steeves let us in to the house to photograph.  At that time it was still furnished, but museum staff were about to clean it out.  The floor is beginning to collapse and some decisions will need to be made as to what to do with the property.

I shot this with my Ebony SV45TU view camera and a Rodenstock Grandagon 90mm lens in October of 2017.

Family Day Long Weekend

I had hoped to get out to the cottage, for at least part of the long weekend, but it just didn't happen.  Hailey had to work on Saturday and holiday Monday.  There was heavy snowfall in southern Alberta, making driving conditions poor.  Nordegg largely escaped the snow, but the highways between here and there were not great on Saturday.

I ended up at the shop for part of all three days of the weekend and got quite a bit accomplished.  Two of the three lower sections of the kitchen cabinets are now complete.  I installed the drawers and mounted the doors on Saturday.  In the spring I still need to find some tree branches and trunks to mount onto these doors, like the ones I used on our bathroom vanity and our pantry.  But for now we will install the cabinets without these finishing touches.

The weather remains pretty cold, as it has been since late January.  There is a full moon on Tuesday, and with it we are forecast to get some gradually improving temperatures.  It was still nearly -30 on Saturday morning when I went into the shop and on holiday Monday morning it was only a couple of degrees warmer.  Through the day on Monday it improved quite a bit and I think probably got up to about -15.

I came in to the shop on Sunday afternoon for a while and did the final adjustments to the doors and drawer fronts.  I also worked on the remaining two bedroom doors.  I finished installing all the tongue and groove pine paneling to the door frames a couple weeks ago.  This weekend I continued by flush trimming everything, filling all the nail holes and knots, and began sanding out the doors.  I continued with this finishing work on Monday morning.  Then I took a break to meet the girls for brunch, before Hailey had to head to work.  Then I came back for a couple hours in the afternoon to finish up the sanding, and to clean up the shop.

The doors are now ready to start finishing.  They will get three coats of satin lacquer.  After that I need to install the antique windows into them, rout out the hinge mortises, and install the door latches.  Then they will be ready to take out to the cottage.  I made the door jambs over a year ago and they have been in storage waiting for the doors.  Once I get these put in then I can finish up the casing and the baseboards in the cottage.

The interior finishing is close to getting wound up now.  I'm glad I have been able to do most of this stuff during the cold winter months.  If I can get the last of this work out of the way now, that will mean that I can spend a lot more time relaxing this year.  Never did get a chance to go fishing last year, and always meant to try a round of golf at the Historic Nordegg Course.  Also didn't get out much with my camera.  This year will be different.  Once these doors and cabinets are in, and the casing and baseboards are finished, there isn't much left to do.  I still have one center section of the lower cabinets to build.  The body is built already but I still have to face it, build the doors and drawers, and put everything together.  I also have a slab of fir that has to be trmmed and finished to fit into our bay window.  We have to come to a decision about counter tops so that once the cabinets are in, we can get these installed and put in our kitchen sink.  I'm leaning towards quartz or granite but haven't decided for sure yet.  After all of that there will still be a few odds and ends to look after.  This includes some interior shelfing, the upper cupboards, and some handrails.  But I can try to slow down and relax a little, and putter on those remaining chores at a more leisurely pace.  There are still a few things to do outside as well.  Highest on the outside priority list is to build a landing and some steps at each of the two entrance doors.  Once these are in we can get the final inspection done for our building permit.  We have a June deadline, and I think I should be able to make it....

Canada Lynx

I left Nordegg at about 3:30 on Sunday afternoon.  Shortly after I got onto Highway 11 and started heading East I saw something cross the road about half a mile ahead of me.  I thought it was a coyote, as these guys are relatively common all over Alberta.  As I got closer, I saw that it was a Lynx.  About the size of a really big house cat with extra long legs....  He was not alarmed at the fact that I stopped and pulled the truck over to the side of the road.  He, or perhaps She... just continued walking at a leisurely pace, parallel to the highway.  I took a shot out the front windshield of the truck with my digital camera, and then pulled the truck up a little further as He/She continued walking along.  I got out of the truck and took a few more snapshots, including this one....   Eventually He/She turned and crossed the ditch and somewhat nonchalantly  headed into the woods....

Since we started regularly travelling out to Nordegg I've seen a lot of wildlife in and around the area.  This includes wild horses, black bear, moose, white tail and mule deer, porcupine, bighorn sheep, wolf, skunk, pine marten, red fox, coyote, bald eagle, great gray owl, ruffed grouse, spruce grouse, grizzly bear [tracks], elk, wolverine and now a lynx.  This is the first time I have ever seen a lynx in the wild....

About the only things left to add to the list are cougar.... and maybe Sasquatch...!  I'll keep my eyes peeled...!

February Weekend

It was a pretty low key weekend for me out at the cottage.  I left the office early on Friday afternoon so that I could drive out in daylight conditions.  It was about 2:00 in the afternoon when I hit the road.  It was cold, but once the truck warmed up to operating temperature, is was a pretty straightforward drive out.  This was yet another solo trip as the girls didn't feel up to coming out in the bitter cold.  I stopped in Rocky Mountain House and topped up the fuel tank before heading west on the Thompson Highway.  Traffic had been light all the way and was even more so once I got west into the foothills.  Beyond the turnoff to the Sunchild Road, the highway became partly snow covered and there was virtually no traffic.

I arrived at the cottage at about 5:00PM, just as the sun was beginning to set.  The furnace had functioned nicely and it felt pretty warm and cozy in the cottage compared to the -25C outside temperature.  I turned up the furnace to take the chill out a bit, and got the fire going.  I unpacked some of the gear that I brought along, and made a point of plugging in the block heater on my truck.  I made an early supper and relaxed for a while before stoking up the fire for the night and turning in early.

I slept in a bit on Saturday morning and eventually got up and stoked the fire up again and put some coffee on.  I was having a leisurely breakfast and sat around for quite a while just reading the paper.  It had dropped down to -32C overnight and despite it being clear and sunny in the morning, it didn't really warm up much.  By about noon I got dressed up and went outside to do a few chores.  I put some oats out for the deer... brought in a few armloads of firewood... and unpacked some plywood from the back of my truck.  The one and only neighbor that was out stopped by and said hello.  Tina from two doors over was out walking her dog and had also arrived sometime the night before.  She was heading back home later that afternoon and once she left, I was the only one out on Tamarack Trail.

The plywood that I brought out had been pre-cut and pre-painted in my shop.  I had it all cut down to pieces that were 4' x 5' and smaller so that I could pass them down into my basement, through the trap door.  It was a bit of a challenge to do it by myself, without bashing any holes in the wall but eventually I got it all down there.  This is 1/2" plywood that is being screwed on to the inside walls to cover up the exposed foam of the ICF block foundation.  I wouldn't bother doing this except for the fact that it is a building code requirement.  In hindsight I should have packed bigger pieces down there before I closed up the opening in the foundation...!!

I spent Saturday afternoon and part of Sunday wrestling these pieces into place and screwing them on.  There are a couple that need a little trimming and notching to fit but by the end of the weekend I have more than half of the basement walls covered.  I also put up the coat rack that I made out of old antique door knobs that Margarit had collected.

A made myself a dinner of pasta and sauce with a salad and hung around the cottage listening to music, playing guitar, and having a few beers.  It cleared right off in the evening and was very crisp and cold.  Once again it dropped down below -30 overnight.  There was a quarter moon that cast a nice glow over the snow covered landscape and with no light pollution, billions of stars were visible.

After breakfast on Sunday I tidied up around the cottage and shut things down.  Before leaving I went out and topped up the oats for the deer.  While I was out there with the feed, and checking on my game camera, a white tail doe wandered in.  I talked to her as she very cautiously approached the feed.   She was within about 15 feet of me and began to feed as I stood nearby watching.

I made a brief stop at my neighbor Scott's place before heading for home.  Scott is the contractor that lives out there and built my cottage for me.  I had picked up some parts for him and brought them out.... saving him the long drive into town.

It was about 3:30 in the afternoon when I finally hit the road for home.  Although the nice clear skies and winter sun made it look fairly warm, the temperature never got up above -20 the whole time I was out.  Its nice that the sun is getting a little more intense and the days noticeably longer at this time of year.  Back before Christmas it was dark by 4:00 in the afternoon.  If I wanted to make the three hour drive home from the cottage in daylight I had to leave pretty early in the day.  Now it is about 5:30 that the sun sets, and the twilight lingers for a while after that so the departure no long has to be quite so early.  In another five weeks or so it will be spring....

C-O-L-D weekend in the mountains

I just returned from a couple of days out at Nordegg.  I haven't been out for three weeks, and was really missing the place.  More importantly I needed to check that our furnace was functioning properly and that nothing was freezing up during this recent cold snap.  We have a forced air electric furnace which I wired in myself... with the remote assistance of my friend Rob.  It has been functioning just fine for the past few months, but my understanding of electrical leaves something to be desired.  I consider myself to be pretty handy and will tackle almost anything.  Plumbing, gasfitting, framing, finishing carpentry... you name it.  But electricity baffles me for some reason and I've never been able to fully grasp it.  

About ten days ago we plunged into deep freeze conditions throughout the province and it has not yet warmed up.  This weekend at Nordegg was no exception.  The daytime highs got up to about -20C, but at night it dropped down to -32C.  At times there was a bitter wind out of the east that nearly cut a person in half...  There have been a few warmer days in the past little while, but mostly it has remained really cold.  My recording thermometers in the cottage confirmed that on the main floor the temperature never dropped below +8C, and downstairs, by the water cistern and pump, it stayed slightly warmer.  I shudder to think what our power bill might be this month...!!  Mostly it has been running around $200 per month.  But even when it is warm, and we aren't using much, it still runs around a minimum of $45 a month.  And to shut things down and dump the water tank, and pump the partially full septic tank would cost us about three hundred bucks.  And... we really like using the place in the winter...!!!

I have been putting out some grain and a salt block over the cold winter months.  We don't want to attract bears so once they come out of hibernation, I'll stop.  But, while they are all taking their big nap, I'll feed the other wildlife to keep them healthy and coming around our property.  I pulled the memory card from my game camera while I was out there, and checked what had been going on the past few weeks.  Despite the fact that I have not been able to put out any feed for nearly a month, the deer come around religiously almost every day to check....

There is a rather skittish herd of elk in the area.... mostly cows.  I have only seen them once or twice this winter.  We saw a cow and a calf a couple of times of the summer as well.  With the fresh snow out there is obvious that they have been grazing around our end of the subdivision.  This time the camera got a bunch of shots of them.

Not sure what tripped the camera for this shot, as whatever it was was quickly out of the frame.  Sometimes falling snow sets it off, but that was obviously not the case this time.  The camera recorded a temperature of -36C.  It could have been colder than that at other times as the camera does not record anything if motion does not set it off.

Got these two shots of some coyotes in late January.  The first time that I have recorded any predators coming around.  I doubt these guys would be able to take down any of the healthy deer.  They were probably just wandering through as this is the one and only time that I have got a shot like this.

Not a particularly cold day.  Certainly compared to now, it is a veritable heat wave.  But is was snowing rather heavily and this doe had a dusting of it covering her back.  The girls have name this one Trudy... short for Gertrude.  She has an obvious scar on her flank... partly obscured by the snow in this shot.  I suspect she may have been attacked by a cougar in the past.

A cool day in late January, but not nearly as cold as now.  Yet these two ravens are hunkered down in some of the hay that we left out for the deer.  The deer won't seem to touch this hay and have mostly just scattered it around.  I guess I've spoiled them with all the grain I've been feeding.

Here's the other extreme...!!  A couple of days later the temperature spiked up to +15C...  That was short-lived, as by early February we were in the deep freeze.

An Old One....

The cold snap continues.....  I parked my truck in the shop today, for the entire afternoon, so that it could thaw out.  The daytime high temperature made it up to about -23C today...  But it dropped down to -37C last night, and will get down to about the same tonight.  With the wind chill factored in it feels like the temperature is down in the -40's....  I guess this is the price to be paid for having such mild conditions so far this winter.

I am busy at work these days with lots of paperwork and accounting to catch up on.  All the calendar year end stuff that needs to be dealt with, plus there is a reasonable activity level with jobs to bid on.  But there is no work going ahead now and I am at my wits end dealing with my staff and trying to keep them busy.  Even amongst the older generation there seems to be this sense of entitlement.....

I was at work until after 6:00 this evening dealing with paperwork.   I puttered around on some cabinet stuff for half and hour after I clocked out.  Then I came home and watched my Oilers completely shit the bed as they lost yet another NHL game.  I'm certainly grateful that I made the decision NOT to invest in season tickets this year.

After the game ended I went down to my office and fumbled through some scans of negatives from past years.  With this cold weather there is no opportunity to shoot anything new, so I have turned my attention to older work.  I came across this one, shot down on the Paria Plateau in northern Arizona back in October of 2013.  This was on my first trip down there with my friends Brad and Rob....

Wasted Day

The frustrating day continues.  I killed the batteries on both of my trucks trying to start them.  Later in the afternoon I put the battery charger onto one of them, and will plug in the block heater overnight.  Hopefully I can get it going in the morning.  The day was totally wasted....!  I had lots of work I could have been doing at the shop, working on my cabinets and interior doors.  Instead I laid around home, doing nothing, and getting more frustrated by the minute.  I watched the Oilers lose another hockey game... this one a matinee game in Montreal.  Then, for the first time in my life I watched an entire Super Bowl game.  Not only was I totally uninvested in the game, it was also a very low scoring and boring game.  Now I have to try to get some rest, and hope that I can get the truck going in the morning so that I can return to work.... It just couldn't get much worse...

C-O-L-D Morning

Got up this morning and wanted to go to the shop and keep working...  But the thermometer reads -31C and my truck won't start.  I foolishly neglected to plug in the block heater last night.  I plugged it in this morning and hopefully in a couple of hours it will start...!  A very frustrating day to say the least.  Lots of work to be done and I can't get to it.  

Better Late than Never

It seems that winter has arrived in Western Canada... on Groundhog Day.  It has been cold and snowy the past few days... our first taste of "Real" winter weather.  Today the temperature struggled to get up to about -20C.  Late this afternoon the sun broke out and the snow came to an end.  We haven't seen a lot of accumulation... only a few inches.  With the clear skies will come even colder temperatures and it is forecast to drop down into the -30's tonight.

For the third weekend in a row I find myself staying home.  I had every intention of heading out to the cottage this weekend.  But road conditions were poor so I decided to stay home.  I don't really have much to work on out there, and my time is probably better spent building stuff at home.  To that end I spent 5 or 6 hours at the shop today, working on kitchen cabinets and interior doors.  I quite enjoy this kind of work, but after three weekends in a row spent doing this, I'm kind of itching to get back to the mountains...

I suppose it is better to be stuck in the shop on a -20C day than to have to be trying to build stuff on a nice day that could be spent outside...!  No hockey games to play this weekend so I don't have to try and fit that in to my routine.  The Monochrome Guild took down our show at Remedy Cafe this week, but the management liked it enough to invite us back to show again in March.
I was digging around through some old scans and came across this negative, shot five years ago in January of 2014.  This is the Maligne River in Jasper National Park.  The girls and I spent a weekend up there, and took my Mom along.  We did a short hike up into Maligne Canyon.