QUAITE a fun trip
Here I go, slacking again... I can't believe it's been a month and a week since my last post. But It's been busy. Luke and I went on a little picnic in Kananaskis at the end of April, and I brought along Basquiat! Here's the little video I made.
Speaking of Basquiat, I went to see his namesake's artwork! There's a Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibit on at the Schirn Museum in Frankfurt until May 27th. Since I worked a flight there at the end of April, I made it a point to go see the exhibition. It was stellar, and I was, as always, blown away by his artwork. Did you know he was also involved in the music scene? He was greatly influenced by many people, from Bach to Bowie, to Bebop. He produced and drew the album cover for a song that I would recommend listening to - Beat Bop.
Luke and I hiked Baldy - it was incredibly snowy and beautiful- and I did a couple of photoshoots with my friend Mariebelle (cause she's the cutest). She also writes beautiful poetry. You should check out her blog! Seriously incredible use of words, that girl.
Look how cute she is! And matching with the Palace Theatre in Calgary.
I feel like that mostly gets us caught up to this week! I had a pairing this past weekend. I left Friday and I got into YYC at 12:45am Monday morning and headed straight home, got some sleep, and then Luke and I used his days off (Monday and Tuesday) to escape to the mountains! We decided to head to Quaite Valley backcountry campground in Kananaskis, right by Lac des Arcs. We stopped at the Barrier Lake Visitor Centre to purchase our backcountry passes for the night and then drove around to the other side to start near Heart Mountain. We parked right off the highway and started hiking in. Everything we read said 9km, so we were prepared for that, and were pleasantly surprised to find it was only 1.8km! We must have been reading the directions from the Barrier Lake side.
We set up out tent in campsite #12. We had our pick of the lot as we were the only ones there! Luke and I sat at the picnic table and munched on our lunches before heading out for a bit more of a hike. We thought we might want to hike over to Barrier Lake lookout and take a peek. But, there was waist-deep snow in some spots, so it was pretty tough going. We decided instead to just make it to the fork to do either the 5km or 2.8km hike to Barrier Lake, and wandered back, as it was already 3:45 and we wanted to cook in the daylight.
We did take some fun photos along the way! Found a tree that had fallen and gotten lodged and did some climbing hee hee.
Once we got back to the campsite, we made some tasty rehydrated food - this time Luke had the Veggie Pad Thai from Happy Yak and I had the tasty Mountain Chili from AlpineAire. The boo packed all the food for this trip as I was away.. He did a great job! We had tons of snacks and tasty caramel waffles for dessert. We finished off the night retaking this photo 10 times, and having a lovely fire.
We got up in the morning, and had the fateful AlpineAire Bandito Scramble. When we woke up, we were looking a lot more like burritos than bandits, that's for sure.
A Lukewarm burrito
After breakfast, we packed up and hiked (read: walked) out to the car. We were obviously quite hungry as we stopped at Communitea in Canmore for lunch. It's a personal fave. They have the best bowls. And tasty matcha lattes, too.
It was so nice to get away one last time before I head to Belize. We really lucked out for weather, too. The forecast was saying rain on Monday, and we got nothing more than a few drops! Spring's finally here, people!
Here's the video I made for the trip:
I'm going hiking Heart mountain tomorrow with my mom, sister, and stepdad, but the rest of the week's just going to be getting ready for Belize. It's coming up quick! I leave in a week, tomorrow. For a whole month! We'll see if I manage to write any blog posts while I'm there. I'll probably be up to my knees in dirt (and mosquitos), but I hope to keep you all up to date.
What's your favourite backcountry spot? Or best hiking it-was-shorter-than-I-thought-it-would-be memory? Comment down there ↓ !
Have an awesome weekend. I hope you can enjoy this weather! Auf Wiedersehen!
