Hanging Around Nordegg

I headed out to Nordegg on the afternoon of June 21st.... the summer solstice.  I needed to be there to attend a meeting on the morning of June 22nd.  Our local County Councillor was hosting an open house and inviting residents to come forward to discuss any issues.  He was specifically granting an hour or so of private time to citizens that are concerned about the proliferation of short term rentals.  There are now almost 40 of them in Nordegg, and it is getting out of hand.  The sense of community is being lost, and the County does not have adequate rules in place to govern the operation of these businesses.  With a complete bylaw re-write in the works, this was our chance to influence policy going forward.

This was also one of the weekends that the chimney sweep was going around and I got the chimney on our main cottage cleaned.  We checked the one on the guest cottage as well, but as the wood stove there only saw limited use this winter, a cleaning was not necessary.

I had two large photographs left over from the InFocus exhibition earlier this spring.  Both were detail shots taken up in Jasper National Park a few years ago.  I hung them on the high wall, up above the kitchen window.

While I was out the Edmonton Oilers were playing games 6 and 7 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Florida Panthers.  I watched game six at the cottage, and game seven down at the Fireside Lounge in the Nordegg Lodge, with some friends.  Sadly the Oilers came up short and lost the final game.

I played golf twice with my neighbors Reg and Shirley, and the second time my cousin Victor joined us.  Victor and Susanne were camping nearby with a bunch of their friends.  On Tuesday a group of seven ATV's took a ride up Shunda Road to the summit of Baldy Mountain.  I had never been up there before, and the view from above treeline, at 6800 feet elevation, was spectacular.  There are several communication towers up there, as well as a fire watch tower.

In August of 2006, seventy year old Stephanie Stewart, an experienced fire watch staff member, disappeared from a fire tower site north of Hinton.  There was a smear of blood on the steps, and a pot of water left boiling on the stove.  Some of her personal belongings were also missing, so it is not believed that this was an animal attack.  Since that time all fire watch towers that have public access, like the one on Baldy Mountain, have been secured with a fence and locked gate.  The public is no longer able to tour the towers.  Stephanie's disappearance remains unsolved.

Later that afternoon we also rode up the Brazeua Ridgeline Trail to the south of the townsite.  One of the guys that was along for the ride... a friend of a friend... was being very reckless.  He ended up rolling his side-by-side.  He was not wearing a helmet or a seatbelt.  His ATV was badly damaged and he beat himself up fairly badly.  He's lucky he survived with nothing worse.  It took him and his friends most of the evening to get his damaged ATV down off the mountain.

Later that evening I attended an information session and demonstration on Bear Awareness.  The two guest biologists explained how to identify the two bear species [Black and Grizzly], and how to assess their behavior in order to avoid an attack.  They also did a demonstration on how to use bear spray.

Later that evening we got some heavy showers and it became very foggy.  The next morning I awoke to heavy fog.  I had to tidy up and hit the road for home that afternoon and it was a rather uneventful drive back to the city.