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Sunset over Skagit Bay, Mt. Vernon, Washington

Kris — Sat, 04 May 2013 02:20:48 +0000

This picture was taken a couple of months ago while I was on my way to Seattle for work. While the sun was going down, I decided to do a small detour from I-5 and search for a spot to take a picture. I wasn’t really happy with the spot as I thought I was going to be able to get closer to the water, so I had to settle with this location in Mt. Vernon, Washington (map link).

Sunset over Skagit Bay, Mt. Vernon, Washington

Port Coquitlam: Deboville Slough Turtles

Kris — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:02:48 +0000

Deboville Slough in Port Coquitlam is one of our favorite wildlife areas as it has such a variety of animals that are easily visible due to the open views. In the past we’ve seen coyotes, deer, river otters, beavers, bears, turtles and a large variety of birds.

Last weekend when we decided to go there for a casual stroll the amount of turtles we saw was incredible. Normally you see one every now and then, but this time we spotted around 8 in half an hour.
The turtle found in Deboville Slough is called the Western Painted Turtle and is easily recognizable by its yellow and red stripes. In the wild, they can live for more than 55 years.

On the final leg of our walk Ine spotted a black bear in one of the fields, that made the total bear spot count of last week a solid 4. We spotted a mother and 2 cubs earlier at week while driving home from work. Definitely not bad for April.

Pitt Lake Ospreys

Kris — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 04:59:56 +0000

Last Saturday we took a quick walk at Pitt Lake in Pitt Meadows. Although the weather wasn’t too good, we decided to go out anyway as Grizzly needed a good walk and except for high winds, we stayed dry, so no complaints (Me and Bert weren’t so lucky the day after though… we got absolutely soaked on a hike to Jug Island…).
Not much to say otherwise, we saw lots of Ospreys, Grizzly had some playtime on the lakeshore, but that’s about it, so I’m just going to skip to the pictures. Hope you like them.

Cannon Beach, Oregon Coast

Kris — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 00:14:02 +0000

During the Easter long weekend we decided to go an a short trip down south to Cannon Beach at the Oregon coast. Cannon Beach is a small town in Northern Oregon, not far from Portland, with lots of character, small shops and restaurants. One of the main landmarks of the town is Haystack Rock, a big monolithic rock on the long sandy beach of Cannon Beach. At low tide, the tide pools of the rock are filled with starfish, sea anemones, crabs and many other inter tidal animals. The rock is also a nesting site for many sea birds.

On the first day we did our tradition trip down to the Tillamook Cheese Factory, but otherwise we stuck around Cannon Beach, doing some long walks with Grizzly on the beach and soaking up the sun. It’s been twice in a row now that we stayed in the Surfsand resort and it was a superb experience both times, highly recommended.

Anyway, here are some pictures from our stay:

Father and child at Big White Ski Resort

Kris — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 23:36:02 +0000

This picture was taken in January during our ski trip to Big White Ski Resort in British Columbia. It shows one of our best friends with his one year old son enjoying the warmth of a bonfire that was set up in the ski resort.

Father and Child enjoying a winter campfire

Powder Mountain Catskiing

Kris — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 05:53:14 +0000

This weekend I went cat skiing with Powder Mountain Catskiing between Squamish and Whistler. This was something that has been on my list for quite a while, but I’ve never gotten around to actually do it. For those who don’t know what cat skiing is, it’s a sport where they tie tiny skies to the paws of a cat, make it go down a steep slope and it is up to you to chase and catch the cat.
For those that are still reading this and don’t believe this explanation, the above is indeed not true… Cat skiing means that you get driven up a mountain with a Snowcat, a truck sized fully tracked vehicle designed to move on snow. This allows you to reach back-country areas that have untracked deep powder to ski on.

Powder Mountain Catskiing is located between Squamish and Whistler, around 25 minutes by car from Squamish. Over the last week a storm had dropped around 60-70cm of snows over a couple of days, which caused us to only be able to ski tree areas as avalanche danger was too extreme to head up to the high alpine. Due to this the day was a bit more advanced with shorter runs, but nevertheless a lot of fun. The snow pack was around 4 meters at most places, so falling created a bit of a challenge to get up in such deep powder.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures as I wisely enough left my camera at home, but I used my GoPro camera to take some quick shots and create a video of the experience.

First up, the video:

Next, some of the pictures. The first two pictures were taken by me with my GoPro camera, all the others are taken by one of our guides named Stu. Huge thanks and credits to Stu for these pictures!

Englishman River Falls

Kris — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 05:58:01 +0000

Englishman River Falls Provincial Park is a small Provincial park located near ParksVille, British Columbia on Vancouver Island. (Google maps link) A short hike connects the the upper and the lower falls with a natural pool at the bottom of the lower falls which is popular in summer for swimming. When we passed by a couple of weeks ago a big boulder blocked the view of the lower falls so I couldn’t get a good shot of those falls, so again only a single picture post this time of the Upper Falls of the park.

The Upper falls at Englishman River Falls Provincial Park

Harisson River sunset reflection

Kris — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 15:27:26 +0000

While driving back from Harisson Hot Springs a couple of weeks ago looking for Sasquatch, we stopped on the side of Highway 7 to enjoy a wonderful sunset reflecting on the water of the Harisson River. (Location on map)

Harisson River Sunset reflection

Hawaii – Final Images and bonus

Kris — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 03:21:53 +0000

Sorry for the lack of posts, but on top of a very busy period at work and vacation, my main hard disk started showing signs of corrupt clusters, which forced me to get a new HD, reinstall, … Luckily Windows 8 is very easy to reinstall and I seem to have a solid backup scheme going on

I could keep posting pictures from Hawaii, but I have to stop at some point and return to reality and Beautiful British Columbia. So this is the last set of pictures from our trip to Hawaii, if you want to see all of my Hawaii pictures, you can find them in the Hawaii Gallery.

Bonus video if you reach the bottom of this post
This is a random video of me trying out my new GoPro camera toy on the first day of skiing 2 weeks ago in Big White Ski Resort in BC. (Music By Alberta boy, Corb Lund)

One thing I noticed is that it seems to be impossible to show the steepness of terrain on these videos, everything looks rather flat… Something new to learn to work with

Best photos of 2012

Kris — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 20:52:34 +0000

As part of a blogging project of one of my favorite photographers, Jim Goldstein, I’ve selected my personal selection of my best shots of 2012. Once Jim has collected all of the “best of” posts, I’ll post them here as well.

In random order, since I find it too hard to rank them from 1 to 10

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Cheers,
Kris