Just a Gwai Lo - fun within prescribed limits

Karen and I went up to Hollyburn Mountain in Cypress Bowl to snowshoe on the free trail with the hiking club this past Sunday. This time, instead of taking with me the old Olympus, and instead of limited visibility, we took along the DSLR, wrapped it up in the protective tarp that came with the carrying case, and set out to clear views of British Columbia's Lower Mainland. At the top of the cross-country ski run, just before the steep parts of the mountain, while fumbling with the camera to get a good close-up of the cute little birdies, one of said cute little birdies snatched the remains of my turkey and cheese sandwich. Other adventures on Sunday included falling and slipping down the mountain face not once but twice, then on the time I intended to slide on my butt, hurtling down at 12 km/hour (if my GPS logger is to be believed), an orange marker pole came out of nowhere and bit me on the face. I subdued it, but there was some bleeding.

Somehow I managed to take the above masterpiece, which Sameer generously described in the comments of the photo on Flickr as “like something out of a fairy tale.” This one gets the large and above-the-text treatment, unlike my usual adorned-inline-with-the-text job. There's no advice I can give about how to duplicate it, other take three shots, fiddle with the settings between each shot, and keep the best one. As with last time, I took along the GPS logger and got the locations of the January 20th photos mapped [January 5th trip map]. Earlier today I also added all my geotagged photos into one set, itself having a map.

After this and the previous trip, we've decided that we have had our fill of Hollyburn, and are turning our sights to Mount Seymour. Count me out if it rains, but the trip I took there before exposed me to some pretty intense snowboarder dudes (the ones who carry shovels with them as they go down what look to this untrained eye as 90 degree inclines) and lots of slope variation. This weekend I'm going with some work friends, so this will be a different—which is to say familiar—crowd, since the hiking group is almost always comprised of strangers. I'm bringing the good camera, weather permitting.