Andrew and I first heard about Danny Michel a couple of years ago when he toured with Stuart Mclean's Vinyl Cafe Christmas Show. He only played two songs (one being Tennessee Tobacco--which I love), but I (and I assume Andrew too) were impressed. He's also from Kitchener, Ontario, which helped in endearing himself to us as Kitchener-ites living in Edmonton. Unfortunately, I didn't ever get around to buying any of his CDs, although I frequently thought I should. When the CBC changed the programming format I started to hear more of Danny and I'm always happy to hear his stuff on the radio. Therefore, when I discovered he was playing a show in St. Albert (I can't even remember now how I found out), I was excited and immediately asked Andrew if he wanted to go. He did.
Before the show on Friday (Sept 25th) we'd hoped to dine (pig-out) at one of the local Ukrainian church's perogy dinners, unfortunately the line-up was huge, and we arrived too late to wait it out. Instead we drove to St. Albert and ended up eating at a Ric's Grill, which was okay, but not spectacular by any means (we'd never been to St. Albert's before and didn't know where things were so we went with what was close by the theatre). We went directly from dinner to the show; however, found ourselves sitting through what must have been 15 minutes of promos for the Arden Theatre's upcoming season. I understand that it's a relatively small theatre/city and so they really need to push the shows scheduled for the year, but it was a bit annoying to sit through. I felt like it pushed a little beyond "wetting the appetite with anticipation" and into "your annoying the hell out of me, just get to it" territory.
At any rate, after the promotional talk and the promotional video, Danny came out. It was just him and his guitar, no back up or anything. He strode out onto the stage with a mug (presumably of water...but one never knows) and a sheet of paper with his set list, and got down to it. Danny's a highly entertaining performer. It's sort of like he's had 10 extra-strength cups of coffee before hand, as he constantly strums at his guitar as he talks to the audience in between songs, and while he's playing he tends to dance around, stand tall and crouch down low as he plays depending on the dynamics of the music. Danny told us numerous stories throughout the evening, prefacing songs with explanations of how they came to be (which at least I find interesting). Of particular interest was the explanation surrounding the song Whale of a Tale, written after meeting a guy in a bar (in Kitchener) who had "done everything." The song was rather hilarious on its own, but shortly after beginning Danny forgot the order of the lyrics, had to stop, and someone from the audience shouted out the forgotten lines. Awesome.
Throughout the concert Danny performed a mixture of his older music (many of which I recognized from the radio) and stuff from his new album, Sunset Sea. As I mentioned before, it was just Danny, all by himself, so in order to fill in the gaps normally taken care of by a band, he used a recording machine controlled by a foot pedal. I saw this technique first used by Owen Pallett, also at a Stuart McLean concert. The artist plays a few bars into their recorder then they can loop the track throughout their performance to make it sound as though they're being accompanied by another musician. It's possible to record multiple tracks and have them played back simultaneous, but I'm not sure how many are can be run at one time. After the show Danny came out for a bit and talked with audience members who were still mulling about. We got the CD we purchased autographed.
A good night all-in-all. We even got home at reasonable hour, which was a blessing since we had our last major training run before the marathon to attend to the next day.
Ciao,
Andrea
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Cake decorating: the second to last post...I promise*
Last weekend (Sept 18th) Andrew and I held a "Let's eat cake party," with the purpose of letting me practice the cake I planned to make for my brother-in-law's wedding reception in October. It had a secondary purpose, which was to use up the fondant I had leftover from the cake decorating course I took a couple of weeks ago.
The Cake:
After poking around on a couple of recipe Websites, I found a chocolate cake recipe that I thought: a) looked delicious; and b) would be solid enough to hold up a second layer of cake (the only directions I've been given on the cake is that it should be chocolate). I used this chocolate cake recipe from Epicurious. I baked it the weekend before and slipped it into the freezer so that I wouldn't have to worry about the construction of the cake during the week leading up to the party. The general consensus on the cake was that it was delicious, and I have to agree. This probably had something to do with the amounts of butter, sugar, and eggs that went into it, but hey, it's cake, it's not supposed to be healthy. And from my baker/decorator view point, the cake came out relatively flat (not that it didn't rise, but that it didn't have a huge rounded top like the banana one I made as the smaller, second layer), was easy to slice, and wasn't too crumbly to make icing difficult.
The Icing:
What I mean by icing is the buttercream icing layer that went on the cake before the fondant. Buttercream icing is a lot like you might imagine, full of creamed butter. I had never made this type of icing before, since when I took the cake decorating courses it was always pre-made for us. I located a recipe on the Epicurious site for Swiss Meringue, which was what we were instructed to use at the cake decorating courses. The icing has three ingredients: egg whites, sugar and butter. First you heat the egg whites and the sugar in a double boiler until they reach a certain temperature, then you beat the mixture until they reach a soft, foamy, not-quite-soft-peaks consistency, then you add the butter. I only have a hand mixer, so I was a little worried about whether or not it would be able to manage creaming 1.5 pounds of butter, but it worked without a hitch (I also took the butter out of the fridge in the morning before I went to work, so it was very soft). Finally, I tried adding a little amaretto for flavour, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. It was richly decadent nonetheless.
The Fondant:
As mentioned above, the fondant was the leftover from my decorating course a few weeks ago, therefore the colours on this cake are a little wacked-out. When I do the actual cake I intend to do a light brown-beige colour for the background, then red, orange, and yellow for the leaves. Yes--the cake will be decorated with leaves rather than stars. I would have done leaves this weekend, except that for some reason Bulk Barn had tons of Hallowe'en cookie cutters, and no autumn sets. Since last weekend I've managed to procure a set of fall-themed cookie cutters from Michaels that has three different sizes of oak and maple leaves. I'm also planning to hand-imprint the leaves with veins to make them look more realistic, and maybe curl the edges on some of them so they aren't all lying perfectly flat, as real leaves wouldn't.
Ciao,
Andrea
*at least until the next big cake baking/project comes around...
The Cake:
After poking around on a couple of recipe Websites, I found a chocolate cake recipe that I thought: a) looked delicious; and b) would be solid enough to hold up a second layer of cake (the only directions I've been given on the cake is that it should be chocolate). I used this chocolate cake recipe from Epicurious. I baked it the weekend before and slipped it into the freezer so that I wouldn't have to worry about the construction of the cake during the week leading up to the party. The general consensus on the cake was that it was delicious, and I have to agree. This probably had something to do with the amounts of butter, sugar, and eggs that went into it, but hey, it's cake, it's not supposed to be healthy. And from my baker/decorator view point, the cake came out relatively flat (not that it didn't rise, but that it didn't have a huge rounded top like the banana one I made as the smaller, second layer), was easy to slice, and wasn't too crumbly to make icing difficult.
The Icing:
What I mean by icing is the buttercream icing layer that went on the cake before the fondant. Buttercream icing is a lot like you might imagine, full of creamed butter. I had never made this type of icing before, since when I took the cake decorating courses it was always pre-made for us. I located a recipe on the Epicurious site for Swiss Meringue, which was what we were instructed to use at the cake decorating courses. The icing has three ingredients: egg whites, sugar and butter. First you heat the egg whites and the sugar in a double boiler until they reach a certain temperature, then you beat the mixture until they reach a soft, foamy, not-quite-soft-peaks consistency, then you add the butter. I only have a hand mixer, so I was a little worried about whether or not it would be able to manage creaming 1.5 pounds of butter, but it worked without a hitch (I also took the butter out of the fridge in the morning before I went to work, so it was very soft). Finally, I tried adding a little amaretto for flavour, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. It was richly decadent nonetheless.
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| First layer of icing (of three...) to go on the cake. Each layer sets in the fridge in between icing. |
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| The buttercream icing. Despite halving the recipe I still had leftover. |
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| Me icing the cake. Probably the third layer by the looks of things. |
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| The banana cake layer all iced and ready for fondant. |
The Fondant:
As mentioned above, the fondant was the leftover from my decorating course a few weeks ago, therefore the colours on this cake are a little wacked-out. When I do the actual cake I intend to do a light brown-beige colour for the background, then red, orange, and yellow for the leaves. Yes--the cake will be decorated with leaves rather than stars. I would have done leaves this weekend, except that for some reason Bulk Barn had tons of Hallowe'en cookie cutters, and no autumn sets. Since last weekend I've managed to procure a set of fall-themed cookie cutters from Michaels that has three different sizes of oak and maple leaves. I'm also planning to hand-imprint the leaves with veins to make them look more realistic, and maybe curl the edges on some of them so they aren't all lying perfectly flat, as real leaves wouldn't.
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| The chocolate layer iced, and trimmed with fondant. I managed to get it on with almost no difficulties. |
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| Me applying the fondant to the banana layer. This one went on perfectly. No tears anywhere. |
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| The boarder applied to hide a small gap between the cakes. The green fondant rolled out and ready to make stars. |
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| First colour added, working on cutting out stars for the second set of trimmings. |
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| Almost there, just purple left. I found at this stage I could move quickly through the decorating. |
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| The finished product. |
Ciao,
Andrea
*at least until the next big cake baking/project comes around...
Monday, September 13, 2010
Hiking to the sky: the Jasper Skyline trail
First, the stats:
Distance: approximately 43 km running from Maligne Lake to Maligne Canyon (or visa verso).
Elevation gained: 1,380 m, the highest point being the Notch, at 2,480 m above sea level (also, I believe, the highest trail pass in Jasper National Park).
Time to hike: 3 days, totalling approximately 16.5 hours of hiking over all.
A couple of years ago I received recommendations for various hikes to try in Alberta from a co-worker. I wanted serious wilderness-type hikes, not the front-country, touristy ones that are jammed full of people from June to September. Last year we went to Lake O'Hara, which I blogged about here. This trip provided a "gentle" introduction to backcountry camping where you could choose to hike to the site, or take a bus, and where there was no electricity, but food lockers and safe drinking water was available. We elected to hike to the site (approximately 10 km and around 700 m elevation gain) to see if we could carry our packs for that long. We managed the trek without much difficulty, and I certainly enjoyed the overall camping and hiking experience, so we were game to go for a full out point-to-point camping experience. Thus, we choose to do the Jasper Skyline trail.
Initially, we planned the hike for the Canada Day long weekend, as I had an extra day off from work. However, the trail report at that time stated it was "Not Recommended" and when we called the Jasper office they confirmed that deep (as in up to the knees) snow was still present on the trial. After 20 minutes on the phone (the Park employees were pleasantly patient with me) I was able to re-book the our trip for the Labour Day weekend. The one difficulty was that we couldn't get the same campsite for our second night (Tekerra), which made for a long day to get to the campsite we could book, Signal.
Okay, so without further ado...the hike.
Andrew and I rose at our regular (or at least my regular) work-week time, and were driving toward the Yellowhead (Highway 16) by 7:07 am Saturday morning. The sky started out delightfully blue and pretty, unfortunately that didn't last. The further west we drove, the grayer the sky became and eventually rain did indeed fall. I had hoped we might somehow managed to get away with good whether for the weekend, but considering the summer we've had (cold and rainy) I wasn't surprised. When we first arrived at the Maligne Canyon parking lot, the rain had abated, but as we rode the shuttle bus around to Maligne Lake it started up again.
Note to future hikers: We would recommend parking your car at the end of the trail you plan to finish at and take the shuttle bus to the opposite end. This way your car will be waiting for you at the completion of your hike and you can just drive away when you're ready. Although the bus runs at somewhat regular intervals, there's no guarantee that it will actually be on time.
When we got off the bus at Maligne Lake it was drizzling. I dug my gaiters out of my backpack and strapped them on, and Andrew grabbed out his rain pants. As it turned out, I wore my gaiters for all but the last day when our hike was only 8 km, and I was just too lazy to fight with the mud-caked zipper one last time. The trail was very muddy, as can be seen in the below picture. The sun came out not long after we started up the trail, causing us to stop to de-layer. The first part of the trail was rather pleasant (aside from the mud) as we trekked through a pretty forested section and occasionally caught glimpses of mountain lakes. Maybe half a kilometre before we reached the Evelyn Creek campground (5 km into the trail) it started hailing--yes hail--but it was fairly small so we kept on trudging. After Evelyn Creek the trail took on a steeper pitch, which kept us pretty warm despite the weather. Of course, by the time we reached the Little Shovel campground (8 km into the trail) the sun was back out again. We paused here for a short break and we also decided to fill up our water pack as we'd read there was no water supply at our destination campground, Snow Bowl (13.5 km into the trail).
Note to future hikers: Although Snow Bowl does not have a creek or river running immediately through it like some of the other campsites, water is not very far away (you might have to backtrack 1/4 of a kilometer to fill up). It's no fun carrying 4 litres of water over 5 km of trails.
Not long after setting out from Little Shovel we broke the tree line for the first time and spent a good stretch of the remaining distance to our destination hiking across alpine meadows. If memory serves correctly we saw our first glimpse of snow for the hike during this section, it was also a tad on the cool side as we traversed this mostly open section. As we approached Snow Bowl we lost some of the elevation we'd gained earlier as trees re-appeared. The campsites are all nestled within wooded sections of the trail, and so we found Snow Bowl a bit of a maze trying to find our way between the cook area, the toilet, and our campsite. We were one of the last sets of campers to arrive at Snow Bowl (around 6-6:30 pm), and at first we were worried that all of the tent pads had been taken. This was reminiscent of our trip to Lake O'Hara where we spent 20 minutes running around in the rain trying to find a spot for our tent. At Snow Bowl we found an open one after only a few minutes,got our tent pitched and set to work on dinner.
Camping Note: We make our own backpacker's meals. You can buy them at places like MEC, or you can just pick up cheep noodle/soup packs (as a group of young men we met at Snow Bowl had done), but we prefer to make our own. Since we were only out for 2 nights, I made the same thing, a sort of dahl-like meal including: rice, red lentils, dried peas and tomatoes, and spices. I pack them into a zip lock bag and they take up very little space. When it comes to dinner time, you just add water! I make up similar packages for desert too.
Since it was rather cool, we didn't bring any books/cards with us, and it was getting dark, we went to bed early, around 9:00 pm. I had little difficulty falling asleep, although I woke up a couple of times during the evening. We managed to coax ourselves out of our sleeping bags around 7:45 the next morning. We ate quickly (oatmeal and tea), struck our tent, packed our bags and were off again by 9:30 am. We had a sizable distance to cover on our second day (21 km) and wanted to get a good head start. Unfortunately, we made a number of stops early on in our morning. We had to get more water for our bottles, we got too hot so we had to take off our long johns, etc., and so made somewhat slower progress than what we would have liked over the first stretch of the trail. Additionally, we got confused when we came to a sign pointing to the Watchtower mountain. One trail lead up, way up to the mountain, the other kept on in the direction we'd been traveling, but the sign didn't tell us what was on ahead. After some humming and hawing we (correctly) decided we didn't want to trek up to Watchtower, and kept going onto the Curator campground turn off (19.5 km into the trail, plus an extra 1 km off the trail to the actual site).
Okay...so next came The Notch. Truth. It sucked. It's a pretty step incline (another blogger suggests the elevation gain is approximately 345 m) that requires some scrambling at the top, and in our case we had to do it through snow. Truth (again). As we stood at the turn off for Curator and stared up at the Notch in despair we thought we might not be able to make it to our designated campsite, Signal, by dark. Andrew was also suffering with a cold and so his lung capacity was slightly diminished. At this point I actually wondered if I'd gotten us into something we weren't going to be able to handle. Truth (for the third time). The climb is a challenge (even for a couple of people who had been training for a marathon), but it's doable and you don't need any special equipment. I was actually glad that the sun had gone in (it had been a sunny morning up till now) as otherwise I would have been sweating like crazy as we climbed The Notch. It look us an hour to cover the 2 km distance, but we did it, and we sure felt good afterward. Plus, once you've mastered the ascent you get several kilometres of relatively flat hiking as your reward.
By the time we'd reached the top of The Notch it was snowing. Despite only having a long-sleeve shirt and a wind proof vest on I didn't really feel the cool temperatures as we hoofed it hard across this stretch. As I mentioned before, we thought we weren't going to make it to Signal so we took advantage of the "rest" and powered ahead. Had it been clear, we might have taken it a little slower to enjoy the scenery, but as it was we couldn't see much.
Note to future hikers: A couple of points along this section of the trail are not as well marked as the rest of it. You have to look for the carins up there, although I think it unlikely you could get too far off track as at least on one side of you there's a big drop off the mountain.
We covered this mountain top section of the trail without break partially due to our hurry, but also partially due to the fact that there isn't anywhere to rest and be sheltered from the weather. The snow eventually stopped and the sun tried to come out. Around 2:00 pm (I'm not sure what the distance was at this point, we were just about to start our descent down to Tekerra) we came across a couple of hikers taking the trail in the other direction. We swapped information for a couple for minutes, which helped put "wind back in our sails," as it were. We would be down this section of mountain in under an hour and on to Tekerra (the next campsite, 30.5 km into the trail) in about that time again. Suddenly things looked rosy again, we were hiking down hill, the sky was cheering and we indeed made it to Tekerra before 4:00 pm, where we took a short rest.
Note to future hikers: If you only have 3 days, 2 nights to do the Skyline Trail, and are not an insane backpacking nut, I would recommend making your stops at Snow Bowl and Tekerra, regardless of the direction you hike the trail in. They're each positioned roughly 1/3 of the way along the route. We managed the trek all the way from Snow Bowl to Signal, but it made for a very long day. I imagine if it had been sunny and warm it would have been a challenge to keep ourselves sufficiently hydrated.
The last section of our second day was 5 km from Tekerra to Signal. The trail between these two points does a couple of ups and downs, which when tired is a little trying on one's constitution; however, there are no terribly steep climbs, and the scenery is very pretty. Once you've crested the last hill, the trail is all down hill to Signal, and to your car (if you parked at Maligne Canyon). We reached Signal around 6:00, set up our tent and began preparing dinner by 6:30 pm. By this point the sky had return to a mass of gray clouds, which resulted in a couple short bursts of hail/snow, but we were able to eat most of our dinner in peace and without getting wet.
Note to future hikers: They're no shelters at the campsites. Many have limited tree cover, but if it starts to precipitate you're going to get wet/snowed on. If you can spare the space, it probably wouldn't hurt to bring along an extra tarp and some rope so you can set yourself up a small shelter for cooking and eating.
Again we went to bed with the sun on this night, and again I fell asleep pretty quickly. I heard a little pitter-pattering of rain at one point over night, which turn out to have been snow. Winter came early to the mountains. Snow covered everything on Monday morning, although it was fairly light, and maybe a centimetre thick at best. We stood to eat breakfast, re-heated the leftovers we couldn't finish the night before (nothing like dahl and brown sugar pudding cake for breakfast), then packed up as quickly as we could. We were only 8 km from our car and all down hill. We were off at 9:40 am on our way down an old logging road (I think, or it might have been a fire access road...an old road at any rate). This last stretch was still a pretty hike, although it was mostly trees, etc. It also wasn't quite as steep as we'd expected. We'd been warned that one could easily end up with bruised toes by the time you get down to the parking lot, but we didn't find this the case.
The last section took us a little less than 2 hours, making it to our car around 11:30 am. Although we enjoyed our experience on the Skyline trail, we were also happy to see our car and get out of our hiking boots. We took our time loading up, made a pit stop at the nearby Magline Canyon teahouse/gift shop then headed home.
Last thoughts/recommendations for future hikers: Worth it. Absolutely worth it. You do need some level of physical fitness; however, to take on the Notch and the general alpine surroundings. Definitely not for a first-time backpacker.
*I don't think I mentioned this explicitly, but you need some kind of water treatment system, whether it's a filtration unit, or purification tablets I don't think it really matters, but you need something as there's no potable water up there.
*Be prepared for the weather! We saw rain, hail, snow, and sun. A rain/wind resistant coat is necessary, as are waterproof boots. We had frequent river/creek crossing and lots of mud which would easily soak canvas shoes/boots. Having a waterproof cover for your pack would also be a benefit.
*Hiking poles are a nice extra if you can afford it. I don't think they're absolutely necessary (Andrew and I actually shared one set between the two of us, I had the left, he had the right), but it's a comfort to have something to put a little weight on and pull you along when heading up hills.
I think that's about it. Enjoy the slide show, and feel free to ask questions. Next year's plan: The Rockwall in BC!
Ciao,
Andrea
Distance: approximately 43 km running from Maligne Lake to Maligne Canyon (or visa verso).
Elevation gained: 1,380 m, the highest point being the Notch, at 2,480 m above sea level (also, I believe, the highest trail pass in Jasper National Park).
Time to hike: 3 days, totalling approximately 16.5 hours of hiking over all.
A couple of years ago I received recommendations for various hikes to try in Alberta from a co-worker. I wanted serious wilderness-type hikes, not the front-country, touristy ones that are jammed full of people from June to September. Last year we went to Lake O'Hara, which I blogged about here. This trip provided a "gentle" introduction to backcountry camping where you could choose to hike to the site, or take a bus, and where there was no electricity, but food lockers and safe drinking water was available. We elected to hike to the site (approximately 10 km and around 700 m elevation gain) to see if we could carry our packs for that long. We managed the trek without much difficulty, and I certainly enjoyed the overall camping and hiking experience, so we were game to go for a full out point-to-point camping experience. Thus, we choose to do the Jasper Skyline trail.
Initially, we planned the hike for the Canada Day long weekend, as I had an extra day off from work. However, the trail report at that time stated it was "Not Recommended" and when we called the Jasper office they confirmed that deep (as in up to the knees) snow was still present on the trial. After 20 minutes on the phone (the Park employees were pleasantly patient with me) I was able to re-book the our trip for the Labour Day weekend. The one difficulty was that we couldn't get the same campsite for our second night (Tekerra), which made for a long day to get to the campsite we could book, Signal.
Okay, so without further ado...the hike.
Andrew and I rose at our regular (or at least my regular) work-week time, and were driving toward the Yellowhead (Highway 16) by 7:07 am Saturday morning. The sky started out delightfully blue and pretty, unfortunately that didn't last. The further west we drove, the grayer the sky became and eventually rain did indeed fall. I had hoped we might somehow managed to get away with good whether for the weekend, but considering the summer we've had (cold and rainy) I wasn't surprised. When we first arrived at the Maligne Canyon parking lot, the rain had abated, but as we rode the shuttle bus around to Maligne Lake it started up again.
Note to future hikers: We would recommend parking your car at the end of the trail you plan to finish at and take the shuttle bus to the opposite end. This way your car will be waiting for you at the completion of your hike and you can just drive away when you're ready. Although the bus runs at somewhat regular intervals, there's no guarantee that it will actually be on time.
When we got off the bus at Maligne Lake it was drizzling. I dug my gaiters out of my backpack and strapped them on, and Andrew grabbed out his rain pants. As it turned out, I wore my gaiters for all but the last day when our hike was only 8 km, and I was just too lazy to fight with the mud-caked zipper one last time. The trail was very muddy, as can be seen in the below picture. The sun came out not long after we started up the trail, causing us to stop to de-layer. The first part of the trail was rather pleasant (aside from the mud) as we trekked through a pretty forested section and occasionally caught glimpses of mountain lakes. Maybe half a kilometre before we reached the Evelyn Creek campground (5 km into the trail) it started hailing--yes hail--but it was fairly small so we kept on trudging. After Evelyn Creek the trail took on a steeper pitch, which kept us pretty warm despite the weather. Of course, by the time we reached the Little Shovel campground (8 km into the trail) the sun was back out again. We paused here for a short break and we also decided to fill up our water pack as we'd read there was no water supply at our destination campground, Snow Bowl (13.5 km into the trail).
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| The muddy trail. I was grateful for my gaiters for keeping my pants dry. |
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| A pretty look out onto a lake early on in our hike. |
Not long after setting out from Little Shovel we broke the tree line for the first time and spent a good stretch of the remaining distance to our destination hiking across alpine meadows. If memory serves correctly we saw our first glimpse of snow for the hike during this section, it was also a tad on the cool side as we traversed this mostly open section. As we approached Snow Bowl we lost some of the elevation we'd gained earlier as trees re-appeared. The campsites are all nestled within wooded sections of the trail, and so we found Snow Bowl a bit of a maze trying to find our way between the cook area, the toilet, and our campsite. We were one of the last sets of campers to arrive at Snow Bowl (around 6-6:30 pm), and at first we were worried that all of the tent pads had been taken. This was reminiscent of our trip to Lake O'Hara where we spent 20 minutes running around in the rain trying to find a spot for our tent. At Snow Bowl we found an open one after only a few minutes,got our tent pitched and set to work on dinner.
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| Me, holding one half of our water filtration system, Andrew stood down stream of me. |
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| Andrew unloading at our campsite at Snow Bowl. We were extremely relieved to take our packs off. |
Since it was rather cool, we didn't bring any books/cards with us, and it was getting dark, we went to bed early, around 9:00 pm. I had little difficulty falling asleep, although I woke up a couple of times during the evening. We managed to coax ourselves out of our sleeping bags around 7:45 the next morning. We ate quickly (oatmeal and tea), struck our tent, packed our bags and were off again by 9:30 am. We had a sizable distance to cover on our second day (21 km) and wanted to get a good head start. Unfortunately, we made a number of stops early on in our morning. We had to get more water for our bottles, we got too hot so we had to take off our long johns, etc., and so made somewhat slower progress than what we would have liked over the first stretch of the trail. Additionally, we got confused when we came to a sign pointing to the Watchtower mountain. One trail lead up, way up to the mountain, the other kept on in the direction we'd been traveling, but the sign didn't tell us what was on ahead. After some humming and hawing we (correctly) decided we didn't want to trek up to Watchtower, and kept going onto the Curator campground turn off (19.5 km into the trail, plus an extra 1 km off the trail to the actual site).
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| Looking up toward The Notch from the trail turn off to the Curator campsite. |
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| The mountain lake, about 1/3 of the way up The Notch. |
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| Still a long way yet to go (aiming for the snow covered peaks) but on our way. |
Note to future hikers: A couple of points along this section of the trail are not as well marked as the rest of it. You have to look for the carins up there, although I think it unlikely you could get too far off track as at least on one side of you there's a big drop off the mountain.
We covered this mountain top section of the trail without break partially due to our hurry, but also partially due to the fact that there isn't anywhere to rest and be sheltered from the weather. The snow eventually stopped and the sun tried to come out. Around 2:00 pm (I'm not sure what the distance was at this point, we were just about to start our descent down to Tekerra) we came across a couple of hikers taking the trail in the other direction. We swapped information for a couple for minutes, which helped put "wind back in our sails," as it were. We would be down this section of mountain in under an hour and on to Tekerra (the next campsite, 30.5 km into the trail) in about that time again. Suddenly things looked rosy again, we were hiking down hill, the sky was cheering and we indeed made it to Tekerra before 4:00 pm, where we took a short rest.
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| The snow covered trail on the mountain top. |
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| Andrew taking a breather at Tekerra, we were relieved to reach the camp and take a break. |
The last section of our second day was 5 km from Tekerra to Signal. The trail between these two points does a couple of ups and downs, which when tired is a little trying on one's constitution; however, there are no terribly steep climbs, and the scenery is very pretty. Once you've crested the last hill, the trail is all down hill to Signal, and to your car (if you parked at Maligne Canyon). We reached Signal around 6:00, set up our tent and began preparing dinner by 6:30 pm. By this point the sky had return to a mass of gray clouds, which resulted in a couple short bursts of hail/snow, but we were able to eat most of our dinner in peace and without getting wet.
Note to future hikers: They're no shelters at the campsites. Many have limited tree cover, but if it starts to precipitate you're going to get wet/snowed on. If you can spare the space, it probably wouldn't hurt to bring along an extra tarp and some rope so you can set yourself up a small shelter for cooking and eating.
Again we went to bed with the sun on this night, and again I fell asleep pretty quickly. I heard a little pitter-pattering of rain at one point over night, which turn out to have been snow. Winter came early to the mountains. Snow covered everything on Monday morning, although it was fairly light, and maybe a centimetre thick at best. We stood to eat breakfast, re-heated the leftovers we couldn't finish the night before (nothing like dahl and brown sugar pudding cake for breakfast), then packed up as quickly as we could. We were only 8 km from our car and all down hill. We were off at 9:40 am on our way down an old logging road (I think, or it might have been a fire access road...an old road at any rate). This last stretch was still a pretty hike, although it was mostly trees, etc. It also wasn't quite as steep as we'd expected. We'd been warned that one could easily end up with bruised toes by the time you get down to the parking lot, but we didn't find this the case.
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| Our tent, Monday morning. We were actually nice and cozy inside. |
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| The last stretch of the trail, on our way down to our car. Really very pretty! |
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| Andrew and I at the end of the trail. |
*I don't think I mentioned this explicitly, but you need some kind of water treatment system, whether it's a filtration unit, or purification tablets I don't think it really matters, but you need something as there's no potable water up there.
*Be prepared for the weather! We saw rain, hail, snow, and sun. A rain/wind resistant coat is necessary, as are waterproof boots. We had frequent river/creek crossing and lots of mud which would easily soak canvas shoes/boots. Having a waterproof cover for your pack would also be a benefit.
*Hiking poles are a nice extra if you can afford it. I don't think they're absolutely necessary (Andrew and I actually shared one set between the two of us, I had the left, he had the right), but it's a comfort to have something to put a little weight on and pull you along when heading up hills.
I think that's about it. Enjoy the slide show, and feel free to ask questions. Next year's plan: The Rockwall in BC!
Ciao,
Andrea
Monday, August 30, 2010
[Home] cake improvements
Since I posted about my cake-wreck experience a few weeks ago I have taken 2 cake decorating courses with one of the owners of Whimsical Cupcakes here in Edmonton. Last week's covered buttercream icing (covering a cake, piping, making flowers) and yesterday's was on using rolled fondant (colouring, rolling, shaping, etc). Both classes were informal, set up in the work space of Whimsical Cucpakes (which is quite lovely and I have serious baker-jealousy...maybe one day, when I go professional...right) and no requirements that everyone produces the exact same cake. Ailynn used to be a teacher so she's good leading the class through the techniques, giving people extra help when they need it, and she does the whole thing in a pleasant, cheerful manner.
I didn't learn a huge amount of new techniques in the first session as I've been playing around with piping bags and icing for awhile. But I did finally get a handle on rose-making, which I'd been unable to master on my own, and learned how to make a few other piped flower as well. And even though I didn't walk away with a boat-load of new skills I still enjoyed the class, plus I had a cake to take home afterward. The fondant class was good in that I learned what fondant is supposed to feel like. When I worked with it for my birthday, I had no idea and wound up with fondant that was too stiff (and I probably rolled it out a little too thick). I also learned that neither flour nor icing sugar should be used when rolling it out and working with it, which I hadn't known previously.
I've still got about 2 pounds of fondant, so I'm going to make another cake during my next free weekend to gain some experience. Plus, I need to see how long it takes to make buttercream icing, which is what Whimsical Cupcakes recommends when icing and decorating cakes. I'll put together a mock-up of the reception cake I'm making for my brother-in-law and his wife in October...except with electric pink and turquoise colours (my fondant has already been dyed, there's nothing to do about it). I also found out from taking the course that there are 2 Bulk Barns in town (well known to the residents of Ontario, but no so much to the folks in Edmonton), so I'll have to check out their baking supplies for more cake pans, leaf-shape cookie cutters and food colouring (the gel kind, not the liquid food dye you can by in regular grocery stores).
That's about all for now. There'll be at least one more cake-related post before all this is over, maybe two, then I'll stop...but no promises.
Ciao,
Andrea
I didn't learn a huge amount of new techniques in the first session as I've been playing around with piping bags and icing for awhile. But I did finally get a handle on rose-making, which I'd been unable to master on my own, and learned how to make a few other piped flower as well. And even though I didn't walk away with a boat-load of new skills I still enjoyed the class, plus I had a cake to take home afterward. The fondant class was good in that I learned what fondant is supposed to feel like. When I worked with it for my birthday, I had no idea and wound up with fondant that was too stiff (and I probably rolled it out a little too thick). I also learned that neither flour nor icing sugar should be used when rolling it out and working with it, which I hadn't known previously.
I've still got about 2 pounds of fondant, so I'm going to make another cake during my next free weekend to gain some experience. Plus, I need to see how long it takes to make buttercream icing, which is what Whimsical Cupcakes recommends when icing and decorating cakes. I'll put together a mock-up of the reception cake I'm making for my brother-in-law and his wife in October...except with electric pink and turquoise colours (my fondant has already been dyed, there's nothing to do about it). I also found out from taking the course that there are 2 Bulk Barns in town (well known to the residents of Ontario, but no so much to the folks in Edmonton), so I'll have to check out their baking supplies for more cake pans, leaf-shape cookie cutters and food colouring (the gel kind, not the liquid food dye you can by in regular grocery stores).
That's about all for now. There'll be at least one more cake-related post before all this is over, maybe two, then I'll stop...but no promises.
Ciao,
Andrea
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Checks and balances
Like many women (although I think it's just about anyone these days), I worry about my weight. As a child and teen I was overweight--not hugely, but enough to get teased when I was younger. High school wasn't so bad, I went to small school in a small town and thankfully, we didn't have any strong social cliches that made life difficult for those of us who were the geeky, music-type with a less than conventional fashion sense. When I entered university I lost 10-15 pounds, mostly by being stressed (my first year did not go well), and not eating well. As I continued in my post-secondary education I became more conscious about what I ate, started exercising more regularly and lost another 15-20 pounds (I'm not quite sure what I weigh at present as Andrew and I don't have a scale at home).
Now I am somewhat fanatical about nutrition, and I think have a greater understanding of it than when I started losing weight almost 10 years ago. Really, that initial loss was a fluke, as many students go the opposite way (Freshman 15, anyone?) and I didn't know the first thing about weight loss. Had I been living in residence where access to fast (and likely not very healthy) meals was easy instead of off campus I might have been doomed to a life of being overweight and possibly obese. What I did (and not in a well controlled, healthy manner I might add) that let me drop the pounds was I reduced my caloric intake (I can remember nights when all I had for dinner was a baked potato). This is the single most important factor in weight control: calories. You can exercise all you like, but if you don't take in fewer calories than you use in a day, you're overall body mass is not going to change.
However, the purpose of this blog post isn't preach weight loss tactics (as I am not an expert, merely an educated enthusiast). Instead, I want to report the results of an experiment I conducted with myself. For an entire week, I meticulously recorded everything I consumed. I weighted everything I put into my dinners, measured out the amounts of oil I used in cooking, etc, then added everything up so I could compared my caloric consumption with my caloric output. See, despite my belief that weight lost/gain/control is all about caloric balance, I didn't actually have any idea of how my behaviour measured up to my preaching. I also tracked all the physical activity I did during the week (a bit skewed by the fact that I'm training for a marathon and Saturday was a big run day), although I've been doing that for a while.
I had hoped to report my full nutrition intake for the week, but pulling the information together is taking more time than I had anticipated, so I'm going to report my best approximations for the time being. Time permitting (yeah, right) I will post my full food inventory later. I used the calorie calculator here: http://walking.about.com/cs/calories/l/blcalcalc.htm to determine my base energy requirement by entering my height (5'6" or 168 cm) and my best guess at my weight (140lbs, or 63.6 kg) and by setting my activity level at sedentary. For now here's what I found:
A number of things can be observed about my dietary habits from this basic analysis. One, my calorie intake varies greatly from day-to-day (SD = 568 calories). On my lowest day, August 2nd, I consumed 134 fewer calories than my minimum requirement compared to my highest day, August 7th, where I consumed 1,529 calories more than my requirement, but still had a deficit 140 calories. Ideally, I would prefer to balance my calorie consumption more evenly across my week, the exception being days when I participate in large amount of physical activity. As noted above, my current physical activity level is skewed since I'm training for a marathon. Once that race is over, I'll be running more like 15km on Saturdays and will therefore have to make sure my diet reflects that decrease. Additionally, in practice I find as the week goes on (say around Thursday) I usually start craving deserts, chocolate mostly, and I start to struggle to keep my eating in check. This to me suggests I might want to consider adding a small desert (we currently partake in an After Eight chocolate after dinner) into my diet, to help keep the later cravings in check.
Now, you may also notice that my calorie intake appears to be less than my total energy expenditure, which would suggest that I should be loosing weight. Since I do not own a scale, I cannot absolutely confirm or deny this, but I think this may be incorrect. My clothing still fit in more-or-less then same way it always has, and I'm still buying the same size of pants and skirts I have for years. I suspect the discrepancy here arises from the inaccuracy of estimating my calorie intake and expenditures. I cook most of my own food, from scratch, so there are no handy nutrition labels (not to mention those nutrition labels aren't always 100% accurate) on what I consume. For most of my calculations I used Wolfram Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com/) to determine the nutritional value of the raw/fresh/whole foods I ate, and I used the recipe calculator from the Daily Plate (http://www.thedailyplate.com/) to calculate certain recipes such as baked goods, and the 2 different pestos I used that week. Additionally, the calculator (http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc) I used to determine my calorie expenditure did not factor in information about my gender, age, or height, and so I'm not sure of the accuracy of its calculations.
What's the overall take home message of this experiment? I think, as long as I continue to maintain my activity levels, my daily caloric intake is okay. As mentioned above, I cook, from scratch, so my consumption of sodium, high-fructose corn syrup (or any other type of sweetener that tends to get added to store bought meals), food colourings and other chemicals manufacturers like to throw into food is low. In the spring, summer and early fall, Andrew and I purchase as much as our produce from the local farmers market as possible, so it's fresh. We also eat limited amounts of meat (usually only a couple of times a week) so our intake of cholesterol, and protein is relatively low as well. As noted, I would like to even out my diet, so the calorie intake is more consistent across the week, which I hope will keep cravings for deserts in check. Also, any diet I cannot stick to happily, is not worth sticking to at all. Food plays an integral part in our lives, and affects how we feel about ourselves and everyone needs to find their balance. I love food. I love cooking it and eating it. Keeping myself in balance is always a challenge, but as it has to do with my health and happiness, it's a challenge worth facing.
Ciao,
Andrea
Suggested Reading:
I follow a number of food and nutrition related blogs. If you're interested, consider checking out:
Weighty Matters (written by an MD who specializes in treating obesity): http://www.weightymatters.ca/
Fooducate (maintained by an educated, and concerned citizen, but often features guest bloggers who are nutritionists, etc): http://www.fooducate.com/blog/
Food Politics (written by a nutrition professor, this blog pertains mostly to food safety): http://www.foodpolitics.com/
Now I am somewhat fanatical about nutrition, and I think have a greater understanding of it than when I started losing weight almost 10 years ago. Really, that initial loss was a fluke, as many students go the opposite way (Freshman 15, anyone?) and I didn't know the first thing about weight loss. Had I been living in residence where access to fast (and likely not very healthy) meals was easy instead of off campus I might have been doomed to a life of being overweight and possibly obese. What I did (and not in a well controlled, healthy manner I might add) that let me drop the pounds was I reduced my caloric intake (I can remember nights when all I had for dinner was a baked potato). This is the single most important factor in weight control: calories. You can exercise all you like, but if you don't take in fewer calories than you use in a day, you're overall body mass is not going to change.
However, the purpose of this blog post isn't preach weight loss tactics (as I am not an expert, merely an educated enthusiast). Instead, I want to report the results of an experiment I conducted with myself. For an entire week, I meticulously recorded everything I consumed. I weighted everything I put into my dinners, measured out the amounts of oil I used in cooking, etc, then added everything up so I could compared my caloric consumption with my caloric output. See, despite my belief that weight lost/gain/control is all about caloric balance, I didn't actually have any idea of how my behaviour measured up to my preaching. I also tracked all the physical activity I did during the week (a bit skewed by the fact that I'm training for a marathon and Saturday was a big run day), although I've been doing that for a while.
I had hoped to report my full nutrition intake for the week, but pulling the information together is taking more time than I had anticipated, so I'm going to report my best approximations for the time being. Time permitting (yeah, right) I will post my full food inventory later. I used the calorie calculator here: http://walking.about.com/cs/calories/l/blcalcalc.htm to determine my base energy requirement by entering my height (5'6" or 168 cm) and my best guess at my weight (140lbs, or 63.6 kg) and by setting my activity level at sedentary. For now here's what I found:
Now, you may also notice that my calorie intake appears to be less than my total energy expenditure, which would suggest that I should be loosing weight. Since I do not own a scale, I cannot absolutely confirm or deny this, but I think this may be incorrect. My clothing still fit in more-or-less then same way it always has, and I'm still buying the same size of pants and skirts I have for years. I suspect the discrepancy here arises from the inaccuracy of estimating my calorie intake and expenditures. I cook most of my own food, from scratch, so there are no handy nutrition labels (not to mention those nutrition labels aren't always 100% accurate) on what I consume. For most of my calculations I used Wolfram Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com/) to determine the nutritional value of the raw/fresh/whole foods I ate, and I used the recipe calculator from the Daily Plate (http://www.thedailyplate.com/) to calculate certain recipes such as baked goods, and the 2 different pestos I used that week. Additionally, the calculator (http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc) I used to determine my calorie expenditure did not factor in information about my gender, age, or height, and so I'm not sure of the accuracy of its calculations.
What's the overall take home message of this experiment? I think, as long as I continue to maintain my activity levels, my daily caloric intake is okay. As mentioned above, I cook, from scratch, so my consumption of sodium, high-fructose corn syrup (or any other type of sweetener that tends to get added to store bought meals), food colourings and other chemicals manufacturers like to throw into food is low. In the spring, summer and early fall, Andrew and I purchase as much as our produce from the local farmers market as possible, so it's fresh. We also eat limited amounts of meat (usually only a couple of times a week) so our intake of cholesterol, and protein is relatively low as well. As noted, I would like to even out my diet, so the calorie intake is more consistent across the week, which I hope will keep cravings for deserts in check. Also, any diet I cannot stick to happily, is not worth sticking to at all. Food plays an integral part in our lives, and affects how we feel about ourselves and everyone needs to find their balance. I love food. I love cooking it and eating it. Keeping myself in balance is always a challenge, but as it has to do with my health and happiness, it's a challenge worth facing.
Ciao,
Andrea
Suggested Reading:
I follow a number of food and nutrition related blogs. If you're interested, consider checking out:
Weighty Matters (written by an MD who specializes in treating obesity): http://www.weightymatters.ca/
Fooducate (maintained by an educated, and concerned citizen, but often features guest bloggers who are nutritionists, etc): http://www.fooducate.com/blog/
Food Politics (written by a nutrition professor, this blog pertains mostly to food safety): http://www.foodpolitics.com/
Monday, August 16, 2010
Lighting it up in Vegreville
People are usually interested/excited when Andrew and I spin our poi. It's fire. People are drawn to fire, (a little like moths, really) especially when another person is crazy enough to fling that fire around their body. We don't advertise our fire spinning skills for hire, but if you invite us over to a causal house party there's a good chance we'll bring food and/or fire. We're kind of a great party addition that way. We'll feed you, and entertain your guests.
At any rate...
Back in the beginning of July we attended a board game party, and seeing that it was the Canada Day long weekend we thought it would be appropriate to bring our own fireworks (I made some good ole' classic chocolate chip cookies too). Our hosts agreed it would be a fun show and allowed us to use their backyard as a stage. As expected, the other attendees were amused and as it turned out, a couple of members of the Vegreville Fair organizing committee were amongst the guests. They wanted to know, did we do shows? How about at Vegreville? Since Andrew and I generally only spin a couple of times a year, and it's always fun to perform in front of people who are likely not to have seen such a show before, we agreed.
Now, fast-forward to the weekend before last. Since poi is best viewed in a certain level of darkness we weren't scheduled to appear at the Fair until 10:30-ish. We stayed at home for most of the afternoon and early evening (we completed a giant run that morning and our feet were TIRED) and didn't head out to Vegreville until around 8:00 pm. We'd never been to Vegreville before, but we understand it's the home of "The World's Largest Ukrainian Egg" (I only say "understand" as we didn't actually see it while we were there). We arrived in Vegreville at around 9:30, called our Fair contact to let them know we were there, and met up with them a few minutes later.
We walked over to the fairgrounds (only a minute or two away from where we parked), were shown where we would be preforming, then since we had time to spare before our show, we wandered around the midway. I love roller coasters. It's been a while since I've been on one (for several years I made an annual trip to Canada's Wonderland to ride the rides, but there aren't any substantial amusement parks in Alberta) so I thought it would be fun to go on a couple of the midway rides to pass the time. Sadly, I can no longer tolerate little fair rides that more-or-less just go around in a circle. I got dizzy and nauseous on both of the ones we went on, and I really hope this doesn't mean I can't do big rides anymore too. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one feeling this way. Our whole party agreed that little circular rides don't agree with adult stomachs.
By 10:30 we were back at the bandstand where we were to preform. Unfortunately a band was setting up behind us who required the stage light on, but we seemed well received anyway. We spun to music by the "Afro Celt Sound System" (we don't usually use music, and we picked it maybe 20 minutes before we left home, then decided which songs to use probably less than 20 minutes from Vegreville), which seemed to work well. I sort of danced around to it as I spun, and the afro-celt beat complimented our show. We did 2 rounds of spinning each, plus a finale where we spun at the same time. The folks in Vegreville seemed to enjoy our spinning and our hosts told us that people were pulling out their cell phones and telling people to come over and see us. That's pretty awesome, I think. Plus the entertainment organizer wants us back next year.
After we finished our show we hung around for another hour or so, heading over to the beer gardens with our hosts. We drove back to Edmonton that night (despite the 1.5 hour drive) since I knew I would sleep better at home. Overall we had fun, and I think both Andrew and are interested in doing it again next year.
Ciao,
Andrea
PS if photos taken during the show are made available online, I'll post a link. For now here are some old photos of us.
At any rate...
Back in the beginning of July we attended a board game party, and seeing that it was the Canada Day long weekend we thought it would be appropriate to bring our own fireworks (I made some good ole' classic chocolate chip cookies too). Our hosts agreed it would be a fun show and allowed us to use their backyard as a stage. As expected, the other attendees were amused and as it turned out, a couple of members of the Vegreville Fair organizing committee were amongst the guests. They wanted to know, did we do shows? How about at Vegreville? Since Andrew and I generally only spin a couple of times a year, and it's always fun to perform in front of people who are likely not to have seen such a show before, we agreed.
Now, fast-forward to the weekend before last. Since poi is best viewed in a certain level of darkness we weren't scheduled to appear at the Fair until 10:30-ish. We stayed at home for most of the afternoon and early evening (we completed a giant run that morning and our feet were TIRED) and didn't head out to Vegreville until around 8:00 pm. We'd never been to Vegreville before, but we understand it's the home of "The World's Largest Ukrainian Egg" (I only say "understand" as we didn't actually see it while we were there). We arrived in Vegreville at around 9:30, called our Fair contact to let them know we were there, and met up with them a few minutes later.
We walked over to the fairgrounds (only a minute or two away from where we parked), were shown where we would be preforming, then since we had time to spare before our show, we wandered around the midway. I love roller coasters. It's been a while since I've been on one (for several years I made an annual trip to Canada's Wonderland to ride the rides, but there aren't any substantial amusement parks in Alberta) so I thought it would be fun to go on a couple of the midway rides to pass the time. Sadly, I can no longer tolerate little fair rides that more-or-less just go around in a circle. I got dizzy and nauseous on both of the ones we went on, and I really hope this doesn't mean I can't do big rides anymore too. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one feeling this way. Our whole party agreed that little circular rides don't agree with adult stomachs.
By 10:30 we were back at the bandstand where we were to preform. Unfortunately a band was setting up behind us who required the stage light on, but we seemed well received anyway. We spun to music by the "Afro Celt Sound System" (we don't usually use music, and we picked it maybe 20 minutes before we left home, then decided which songs to use probably less than 20 minutes from Vegreville), which seemed to work well. I sort of danced around to it as I spun, and the afro-celt beat complimented our show. We did 2 rounds of spinning each, plus a finale where we spun at the same time. The folks in Vegreville seemed to enjoy our spinning and our hosts told us that people were pulling out their cell phones and telling people to come over and see us. That's pretty awesome, I think. Plus the entertainment organizer wants us back next year.
After we finished our show we hung around for another hour or so, heading over to the beer gardens with our hosts. We drove back to Edmonton that night (despite the 1.5 hour drive) since I knew I would sleep better at home. Overall we had fun, and I think both Andrew and are interested in doing it again next year.
Ciao,
Andrea
PS if photos taken during the show are made available online, I'll post a link. For now here are some old photos of us.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
First-time Folk Fest-ers
The Fest and the Tarps
This past weekend was Edmonton's annual Folk Music Festival, or more commonly known as: "Folk Fest." I had heard of Folk Fest before, but I'd never been. It is as one might expect, a festival featuring folk music, lasting from Thursday evening until Sunday evening--there's also a Wednesday night show, but it's a fundraiser and not considered (at least by some) a part of the "true" Folk Fest. There's a whole culture around the festival, which I still don't fully understand. From what I've been told, there's a magnificent "tarp run," which takes place at the beginning of each festival day where attendees run for a spot on the main hill. I understand that it's a whole complex affair where you have to line up (at the crack of dawn) for draw/lotto tickets, which gives you a place in the tarp run line. Then you're put into a corral in the order in which your ticket was drawn where you have to wait for the official release to the hill. Apparently if you're at the front of the line you get to escorted by a piper. On the whole there's a lot of waiting in between everything before the music finally starts. Andrew and I only attended the Friday night concerts and didn't arrive until after work, so we missed out on this experience.
The Folk Fest site is much larger than I had initially expected, with something like 7 performance stages in total. It takes place on a small ski/large toboggan hill in Edmonton, just off the river valley. We entered at the bottom of the hill and I must say, the first site of the main hill is impressive. Tarps are pegged down within centimetres of each other all the way from the bottom of the hill (where the stage is) to the top. From what I'm told these tarps can only be a certain size (8 by 10 feet, I think) and there are "tarp police" who will measure your tarp if they think it's too big. People leave their extra clothing, food, bags etc., at their tarp while they go around to the smaller stages to listen to music, but it's important to have a good spot for the main stage performances, which happens at the end of the day.
The Chairs
Before I can get to the music I still have to talk about the chairs--yes, the chairs. You can't just bring any old lawn chair with you to sit on at Folk Fest, you have to have special, low-lying chairs (the legs are maybe only 6 inches tall) so that people behind you can see. Again, there are "chair police" who will measure the height of your chair if someone complains. We had several discussions ahead of time as to what kind of chair we should bring--there are lots of different ones: little folding beach chair-types and less luxurious camp chair-types. There seemed to be quite the mix as to what people used. We opted for a Therm-a-Rest contraption that converts your sleeping pad into a chair since we figured we would use them on future camping trips. Andrew recently purchased a large air inflated therm-a-rest and made quite a comfortable chair, whereas I used a smaller foam-like mattress, which sufficed for one night. I'd definitely need to upgrade if I attended for an entire weekend.
The Music
I like music (if you hadn't all ready figured that out from reading this blog). I usually say I like just about anything for the exception of really hardcore rap and really loud "crash and boom" heavy metal (I'm okay with stuff like Metallica, though). So, I figured that Folk Fest would be right up my alley and was quite happy to purchase a ticket--although there was some question at first as to whether or not we should get a pass for the entire festival, or just one night. Since Andrew and I were first timers, we thought getting a single ticket would be a safer bet, just in case (in case of what, I have no idea). A friend of mine, who was instrumental in coaxing us into go this year, suggested Friday night might be best. (A considerable amount of ribbing between my friend and Andrew about how she was trying to indoctrinate us into the Folk Fest cult took place.) That way we would be able to see a mix of both session performances and main stage acts.
We arrived at the Folk Fest site around 5:30 pm, which gave us enough time to eat dinner (brought from home; however, there were plenty of places to buy food) and chat a little before heading off to the sessions, which started at 6:00 pm. I didn't have any particular musicians I wanted to see, but Basia Bulat (frequently played on the CBC) was on Stage 3, so we decided to start there. We picked a spot about half of the way up the hill and settled in for the performances. At the sessions, there are 4 different artists lined up along the stage and one after the other they play a song, with maybe a little witty banter in between. This session happened to be all female vocalists. Aside from the aforementioned Basia, there was Cindy Church, Kate Rusby (Scottish, by her accent), and Dala (2 young women who played and sang together). I enjoyed the music from all the groups, especially Kate who made me want to get up and ceili dance...except we were sitting on a pretty good incline, which would have made things rather difficult.
Shortly before 7:00 pm, a Folk Fest worker interrupted the performances to announce that a potential storm was on it's way, bringing with it expected high winds and strong rain. With this alert I pulled out my rain pants (and put them on) and my jacket, determine not to miss out on the music if it did rain. The sky definitely clouded over, and the winds were quite blustery, but no precipitation fell. After a while I took my rain pants off and put my jacket away, rather relieved no storm took place.
The second session we listened to was also at Stage 3 (we decided we were happy where we were and felt no inclination to move) and was the reverse of the first session in that it was all men. Ray Bonneville (I would guess Irish, by his accent), Calum Graham (a wee youngin' of 18 years) and Tony McManus played guitars, while a pair of brothers from India (the lead/main brother was Debashish Bhattacharya) played a couple of traditional instruments from their country. Again, all of the musicians were quite good. I think Andrew and I were especially impressed by Calum who was quite accomplished for his young age and produced some interesting accompaniment to his playing by taping on his guitar.
Main Stage
A little before 9:00 pm Andrew and I made our way back to the main stage for the first show, which featured the Levon Helm Band. I'm fairly certain I recognized the name of this band, but I don't think I knew any of their songs. It also took me sometime to figure out who Levon Helm was, as there were a number of different leads throughout the performance. As it turned out, Levon Helm was the little guy at the drums (from our vantage point he seemed quite hunched, although he's also 70 years old, so it might just be an age effect). Despite not really knowing any of their songs (and it being very loud--I could feel the base reverberating in my chest), I still enjoyed their big band/country/blue grass sound, or however you might describe it.
As the sun went down attendees lit candles (those little tapper candles with plastic cups to catch the wax drippings were being sold for $2). The sight was quite spectacular and as we drove home a later we could still see candle flames from the other side of the river. Once the Levon Helm Band finished, Basia Bulat entertained while the stage was re-set for the next band, Calexico. Calexico is from Arizona, and definitely had Spanish/Mexican/Western feel to them. We only stayed for a couple of their songs as it was almost 10:30 pm by the time they started, and we had to get up early the next day to run.
All-in-all, Andrew and I had a good time. I'm definitely interested in going back next year, although for how many days is still up in the air. We may have another commitment at roughly the same same time next year in Vegreville (to be discussed in the next blog post) which may prevent us from going to the entire event.
Ciao,
Andrea
This past weekend was Edmonton's annual Folk Music Festival, or more commonly known as: "Folk Fest." I had heard of Folk Fest before, but I'd never been. It is as one might expect, a festival featuring folk music, lasting from Thursday evening until Sunday evening--there's also a Wednesday night show, but it's a fundraiser and not considered (at least by some) a part of the "true" Folk Fest. There's a whole culture around the festival, which I still don't fully understand. From what I've been told, there's a magnificent "tarp run," which takes place at the beginning of each festival day where attendees run for a spot on the main hill. I understand that it's a whole complex affair where you have to line up (at the crack of dawn) for draw/lotto tickets, which gives you a place in the tarp run line. Then you're put into a corral in the order in which your ticket was drawn where you have to wait for the official release to the hill. Apparently if you're at the front of the line you get to escorted by a piper. On the whole there's a lot of waiting in between everything before the music finally starts. Andrew and I only attended the Friday night concerts and didn't arrive until after work, so we missed out on this experience.
The Folk Fest site is much larger than I had initially expected, with something like 7 performance stages in total. It takes place on a small ski/large toboggan hill in Edmonton, just off the river valley. We entered at the bottom of the hill and I must say, the first site of the main hill is impressive. Tarps are pegged down within centimetres of each other all the way from the bottom of the hill (where the stage is) to the top. From what I'm told these tarps can only be a certain size (8 by 10 feet, I think) and there are "tarp police" who will measure your tarp if they think it's too big. People leave their extra clothing, food, bags etc., at their tarp while they go around to the smaller stages to listen to music, but it's important to have a good spot for the main stage performances, which happens at the end of the day.
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| A view of the main hill from our spot only a few rows up from the stage. |
Before I can get to the music I still have to talk about the chairs--yes, the chairs. You can't just bring any old lawn chair with you to sit on at Folk Fest, you have to have special, low-lying chairs (the legs are maybe only 6 inches tall) so that people behind you can see. Again, there are "chair police" who will measure the height of your chair if someone complains. We had several discussions ahead of time as to what kind of chair we should bring--there are lots of different ones: little folding beach chair-types and less luxurious camp chair-types. There seemed to be quite the mix as to what people used. We opted for a Therm-a-Rest contraption that converts your sleeping pad into a chair since we figured we would use them on future camping trips. Andrew recently purchased a large air inflated therm-a-rest and made quite a comfortable chair, whereas I used a smaller foam-like mattress, which sufficed for one night. I'd definitely need to upgrade if I attended for an entire weekend.
The Music
I like music (if you hadn't all ready figured that out from reading this blog). I usually say I like just about anything for the exception of really hardcore rap and really loud "crash and boom" heavy metal (I'm okay with stuff like Metallica, though). So, I figured that Folk Fest would be right up my alley and was quite happy to purchase a ticket--although there was some question at first as to whether or not we should get a pass for the entire festival, or just one night. Since Andrew and I were first timers, we thought getting a single ticket would be a safer bet, just in case (in case of what, I have no idea). A friend of mine, who was instrumental in coaxing us into go this year, suggested Friday night might be best. (A considerable amount of ribbing between my friend and Andrew about how she was trying to indoctrinate us into the Folk Fest cult took place.) That way we would be able to see a mix of both session performances and main stage acts.
We arrived at the Folk Fest site around 5:30 pm, which gave us enough time to eat dinner (brought from home; however, there were plenty of places to buy food) and chat a little before heading off to the sessions, which started at 6:00 pm. I didn't have any particular musicians I wanted to see, but Basia Bulat (frequently played on the CBC) was on Stage 3, so we decided to start there. We picked a spot about half of the way up the hill and settled in for the performances. At the sessions, there are 4 different artists lined up along the stage and one after the other they play a song, with maybe a little witty banter in between. This session happened to be all female vocalists. Aside from the aforementioned Basia, there was Cindy Church, Kate Rusby (Scottish, by her accent), and Dala (2 young women who played and sang together). I enjoyed the music from all the groups, especially Kate who made me want to get up and ceili dance...except we were sitting on a pretty good incline, which would have made things rather difficult.
Shortly before 7:00 pm, a Folk Fest worker interrupted the performances to announce that a potential storm was on it's way, bringing with it expected high winds and strong rain. With this alert I pulled out my rain pants (and put them on) and my jacket, determine not to miss out on the music if it did rain. The sky definitely clouded over, and the winds were quite blustery, but no precipitation fell. After a while I took my rain pants off and put my jacket away, rather relieved no storm took place.
The second session we listened to was also at Stage 3 (we decided we were happy where we were and felt no inclination to move) and was the reverse of the first session in that it was all men. Ray Bonneville (I would guess Irish, by his accent), Calum Graham (a wee youngin' of 18 years) and Tony McManus played guitars, while a pair of brothers from India (the lead/main brother was Debashish Bhattacharya) played a couple of traditional instruments from their country. Again, all of the musicians were quite good. I think Andrew and I were especially impressed by Calum who was quite accomplished for his young age and produced some interesting accompaniment to his playing by taping on his guitar.
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| A view of Stage 3 from our position on the hill. |
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| Me, on the hill, watching/listening to the first session on Stage 3. |
A little before 9:00 pm Andrew and I made our way back to the main stage for the first show, which featured the Levon Helm Band. I'm fairly certain I recognized the name of this band, but I don't think I knew any of their songs. It also took me sometime to figure out who Levon Helm was, as there were a number of different leads throughout the performance. As it turned out, Levon Helm was the little guy at the drums (from our vantage point he seemed quite hunched, although he's also 70 years old, so it might just be an age effect). Despite not really knowing any of their songs (and it being very loud--I could feel the base reverberating in my chest), I still enjoyed their big band/country/blue grass sound, or however you might describe it.
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| The first main stage act, the Levon Helm Band. |
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| The hill in the evening, after the sun had gone down. |
Ciao,
Andrea
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