Fortunately, the final 25KM walk from Kinlochleven to Fort William was afforded decent weather and I was able to avoid taking the bus as I had threatened the day before. The final leg of the WHW is quite enjoyable and with the exception of a rather steep ascent immediately outside of Kinlochleven, quite a relaxing […]
Rain, rain rain. Day seven was another perpetually drenched walk through the Highlands. This day in particular I recall being especially soggy. So soggy in fact that I cut the day short when I reached Kinlochleven at around 2pm. The day began well in Altnafeadh, with a foggy yet surprisingly mild and dry morning. Altnafeadh […]
This is another double post; days four and five on the WHW. A grand total of three photographs from day four given the absolutely atrocious weather. Cold, wet and muddy combined with uncountable numbers of midges. I’m fairly comfortable with flying insects given my years spent silviculture surveying out in the hinterlands of Northern BC…however […]
I have combined my third and fourth days on the WHW into one entry largely because my third day was utterly horrible from both a aesthetic and physical perspective. Leading the morning trek from Critreoch Forest was another scorching day of +30 degree weather. What was suppose to be a 20KM trek to Inverarnan and […]
This is my favourite photo of Kingston. Yeah, I know, it’s been doctored with some silly Photoshop antics, but it manages to captures the uniqueness of the city in a manner that only someone who has lived there would appreciate. The old S&R department store, a mainstay of downtown Kingston closed in 2009, but has […]
If one follows a strict 7-day approach to the West Highland Way, Day two from Drymen to Rowardennan rolls in at a cool 15 miles (24KM). By the first day, I knew I wasn’t going to be following the classic 7 day itinerary and was opting for an 8 day approach. Drymen to Rowardennan became […]
Milngavie is actually pronounced in a manner that is not remotely close to how it is spelt. Welcome to Scotland. English is spoken, but not really. People who live in Milngavie and the surrounding area are intimately familiar with the American pronunciation of their town, that one can actually get across their geographic question without […]
I vaguely remember being lectured about Cambridge at planning school. I either wasn’t interested, or four years of often low-ball government work has seriously dulled my academic memory. What I do remember was that it was apparently awesome and probably the best example of a walkable, cyclist friend, car hostile town in the world. That’s […]
Straight south of Piedra del Fraile is Col. Electrico (1880m). Just a baby. However, it’s a 1000m four hour slog straight up a somewhat maintained trail to the base camp @1500m (with another hundred or so to the viewpoint at Paso del Cuadrado). This last trek in Patagonia is a good example of why it […]
C.B. Poincenot is one of those conveniently located trekking camps that accommodates early morning hikes to strategically located vistas (all without the nuisance of carrying along your gear). Lago Los Tres is about 40 steep minutes from C.B Poincenot and certainly worth the time. It’s also where I left my nice pair of wool gloves. […]
Argentina is crammed full of cool little towns, especially near the mountains. El Chalten is one such location. Cool and rustic with an edge of unfulfilled promises, El Chalten was developed from the ground up (a planner’s dream case-study, by the way) in 1985 as a deterrent toward Chile with a side consideration as a […]
From Puerto Natales it is a quick hop to the Argentinian border where one is immediately reminded that the Falkland Islands (if you didn’t know) do indeed belong to Argentina (best to ignore that they were decisively defeated by the UK in 1982). The 30th anniversary of that conflict was being ‘celebrated’ while I was […]
For some reason I never bothered to finish of my final Torres del Paine entry until now. I had the photos and a few lines of text good to go back in May, however I failed to finish off the post. Probably because I was in the middle of a move back to Fort St. […]
Despite having lived four and a half years in one of China’s four ‘ovens’ (Nanjing), I have never jived well with heat. I’m a fan of temperatures that sit below +20 and if I had to choose, I’d take below freezing well before a +30 day. Sweating is incredibly uncomfortable, and high temperatures will drain […]
Three hours off the ferry to Puerto Natales will land one within striking distance of the famous Torres del Paine National Park. While I like to say I was traveling around Patagonia, this was really my first view of this region, having spent the previous two weeks in Tierra del Fuego. Torres del Paine National […]
One of three navigable channels linking the South Pacific to the South Atlantic, the Beagle Channel earned it’s name from the passing of the HMS Beagle in 1833, carrying a relatively unknown naturalist named Charles Darwin. Given it’s relatively narrow attributes, most of the large ship traffic chooses the more southerly Drake Passage or northerly […]
It’s been ages since I hammered something out on this website, yet with a journey to the end of the world under my belt, It seems right that that it be documented in a more permanent fashion that a bunch of photos and lame status updates posted on Facebook. Patagonia has always been high on […]
The Alaska Highway is arguably the most interesting built piece of the Northern Rockies. I’ve had the opportunity to make a few runs as far as Liard Hot Springs (about 250km north of Fort Nelson) but didn’t have the time (or rationale) to run up to the Yukon border, which would involve another 250km. Similar […]
It’s tough to take a good photo in Fort Nelson. Picturesque is hardly a good description of anything within walking distance and one does need to get creative with angles to remove the ever present beer/pop cans that live on the sides of the road. Or, in the case of the two below photographs, actually […]
It’s possible that there may be a bounty of flowers in and around Flower Lake during certain times of the year, but I was not able to see too many. A return in late September might be able to capture some of autumn colours, although I’m told that the change is often very rapid. Flower […]
Shot near Mile 351 (Steamboat) on the Alaska Highway around 21:00, 19th of August. It’s been a hot fire season this summer with a good number of blazes clearing out the forests in northeastern British Columbia. The smoke has cleared off this past week.
Approximately 10km west of Summit Lake at Mile 337 (610KM) is the short Baba Canyon day trek.
On the northern edge of Stone Mountain Provincial Park, BC, just off Mile 392, Alaska Highway. It’s like Jasper/Banff…without the people. Cool Rocks Tasty water Lost erratics Limestone cap – 2100m – Flower Lake in the distance (Mt. St. George) Middle Earth I was out this way again today and almost killed myself on the […]
I mulled about this purchase for quite awhile. The K-5 is probably the best DSLR produced by Pentax to date, and it caved in the competition when was first released. It is a 2010 model though and part of me was desperately in love with the silver edition (why Pentax doesn’t make this absolutely gorgeous […]