Back to it

Two weekends ago Greta brought up the idea of climbing Black Tusk. Since the gang have seen it from pretty much every possible angle, we were all quite keen to do it. Unfortunately most people had plans already so this little adventure was postponed one week.

After a few emails back and forth during the week Greta, Colin, Lee, and myself decided that we’d have a “relaxed” weekend. Typically people approach Black Tusk from Garibaldi Lake via Rubble Creek (aka the boring switchback trail). Having been up and down the boring trail several times this past winter we decided to approach Black Tusk from the other side, via Helm Creek. The original plan was to summit Black Tusk on Saturday, check out Panorama Ridge on Sunday, and basically have a relaxed weekend. Just to give you an idea the distance we covered… from the parking lot to Black Tusk it’s about a 17 km (~10.5 miles) hike with ~1500m (<1 mile) elevation gain.

The hike in was more or less uneventful. Having not really exercised for the past 8 weeks due to my back my cardio had taken a step backward. The entire time I was playing catch up to the rest of the gang. However considering that Greta is training as a triathlete and wakes up at 5:30 every morning to train and I did pass a few parties along the trail I wasn’t THAT out of shape…

Black Tusk from a distance

We had to take off our boots and walk across a very cold river

Anyway, the weather started deteriorating as we got closer to Black Tusk. First the clouds rolled in, next it began quite windy and next thing you knew, it was snowing! It was snowing quite hard when we were at the Black Tusk ridge. Yes you heard it right, it snowed in June. Not able to see past ~50m we decided to bail and quickly found a campsite to set up tents.

Bail bail!

The snow/rain/hail did not stop for another 3 hours so we ended up cooking, eating, and hanging in the tent. The 2 person tent was quite crammed with 4 people in there (we had 2 tents but hung out in one). Eventually it stopped snowing, just about time for bed.

The next morning the sky was still covered by clouds. The weather forecast called for sunny weather but we were somewhat skeptical about that. We tried to dry out our gear and tried to warm ourselves up. Colin & Lee brought up some ridiculous amount of meat and proceeded to make THE breakfast of champions – bacon, sausages & beans. It sure didn’t sit in my stomach too well once we started hiking.

With view like this you wonder why I love going on these outdoor adventures

After about 2 hours of faffing around we eventually started hiking toward Black Tusk again. It was still cloudy but occasionally sun would peak out from the clouds. The scramble itself was quite sketchy – the chimney was still partially filled with snow, making the already difficult scramble much more challenging. Luckily everyone was experienced and we took our time ascending.

The Black Tusk chimney scramble (a bit to the left of this pic)

Greta ascending the snowy chimney (photo: Lee)

Greta climbing up

We ended up spending about 2 hours at the summit waiting for the weather to improve but it never did. Around 2 pm we decided we would start hiking down. The scrambling down was definitely scary. During one point of the down-climb I pulled out a rock the size of a basketball and almost lost my balance. We all took our time down-climbing one by one. When we got down to the ridge again we met two parties planning to climb the Tusk. I was quite amazed how unprepared these people were – most of them were wearing t-shirts & shorts and had no emergency clothing and a couple of them were wearing skate shoes! Considering the weather was quite unstable and the rocks were super lose I’d never scramble without a helmet and an extra set of warm clothing… but I guess some people are just not as prepared.

Da Tusk summit shot

We did bunch stupid poses at the summit

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It’s Tues so that means it’s time for Weekly Words Challenge again. The words this week were 6 and Lookup. Using pics from the weekend adventure…

Lookup
(Lee looking up to Black Tusk and saying goodbye)

Looking up to see Black Tusk in a distance

(Unfortunately I couldn’t find any pics that would represent 6…)

The “words” for next week are: Blue & Happy.

Who said it can’t snow in June?

Whoever said that is so dead wrong. We got hit by a full-on snow blizzard on Saturday up in the mountains.

Mark Madryga and your “sunny” weather forecast… you were so wrong!

(More on the trip later)

Random Bits

-I spent the past weekend at my parents’ place and had a fabulous time. I ended up spending a lot of time nerding it up with my brother – playing Street Fighter III on PS2 and Starcraft on our laptops. We used to play these two games when we were a lot younger so this brought back good memories (for the record, my brother is a bigger gamer than me). We ended staying up way too late Saturday night (2 AM in fact). On Sunday the family went for father’s day breakfast at IHOP. Needless to say, both my brother and I found it extremely difficult to wake up bright & early on Sunday for the breakfast.

-Today was the 2nd session of work’s 8 week yoga class. I’m not the most flexible person in the world so hopefully yoga will help me in that department. Apparently yoga is good for your back too so that’d definitely help loosen my back muscles. Surprisingly though, I didn’t find the yoga moves all that difficult. Maybe our instructor is taking it easy on us since half of the students are in their 40’s and I’m by far the youngest person in there.

-If you haven’t heard, bacon sandwich is the best food for curing a hangover. Who knew bacon can be the answer for that nasty headache in the morning?

-It’s been close to 8 weeks since my back went kaput on me. 8 weeks without heading to the mountains is slowly killing me inside. Don’t get me wrong, the weather has been fabulous and I quite enjoyed staying in the city and hanging out with friends. But the idea of exploring unknown mountains, pushing your body and covering it in sweat, seeing stunning views from high above, waking up in the early morning and looking out from my tent to see the breathtaking sunrise and laughing at stupid jokes with friends are just some things you don’t get in the city. I really need to head out this weekend. My body is calling for it! Destination to be determined!

-It’s a bit early for Weekly Words Challenge but since I’ll be busy tomorrow night taking natural light model shoots at my photography class I’ll post the pictures earlier than usual. This week’s words were C and Wood.

Crossroad

Wooden Dragon

Morning Wood (get your mind out of the gutter)

Middle finger salute to Canadian cellphone carriers

If you’re a Canadian cellphone user you’re probably familiar with the year old policy of charging 15 cents per incoming text message if you are not on a text plan. If I recall it correctly, they started doing such in the states as well. Last July I blogged about this ridiculous policy and how cellphone companies cannot justify for charging such fee.

From my old post (my complain letter to Telus):

…Telus claimed that every day 50 million text messages are sent across Canada. There are 3 major carriers in Canada – Telus, Bell, and Rogers. So this means each day roughly 16.67 million text messages are sent on Telus network across Canada. Considering there are 10 provinces and 3 territories in Canada, the exact number of text message being sent each day per province/territory certainly cannot exceed more than 5 million. Considering that each SMS character is 7 bytes and that an SMS message can contain a max of 160 character. 7 bytes * 160 = 1120 bytes. Adding all the overheads each SMS message is merely few hundred kB at most….

…By adding this 15 cent to receive a text message, all of a sudden Telus is pocketing an additional $7.5 million each month!

Clearly there’s something obviously wrong here. I believe I just demonstrated that 30 cents per message is just plain ridiculous. Heck, even 15 cents per message is too much. Furthermore, people can’t choose who they receive text messages from, so charging them for their incoming text message is extortion.

Today I came across an article on CBC about how research have estimated that cellphone companies markup 4900% on some text messages.

From the article:

It costs a cellphone company a mere third of a cent to transmit a text message that it charges customers as much as 15 cents to send, estimates a University of Waterloo professor.

“Some people think it’s not a big deal,” Srinivasan Keshav told CBC Radio’s The Current Thursday. “But others might think that the markup of 5,000 per cent is a bit excessive.”

I was so damn right about this “extra” fee. It’s basically another way for the cellphone companies to increase profit. I’m so mad that us Canadians are paying such high price for cellphone plans and all the unnecessary extra fees (i.e. text message, network fee, 911) and no politician is doing anything to help us. I thought politicians are suppose to represent us? The Canadian government should be ridiculed for allowing Canadian cellphone carriers charging these extra fees and not protecting its citizens from such unfair practice! Arrrr!

WWC 89

Having my photography course on Tuesday night for the next 7 weeks or so meant the WWC posts most likely won’t get posted till late Tues night or Wed evening. Tonight in class we learned that the instructor had a professional shoot the other week and his pictures will be published on Hello Magazine. Pretty neat stuff.

Anyway this week’s words were A and Favourite Song.

Alcoholic Secrets
(This was from past weekend’s Granville Island Brewery tour)

Favourite Song – Ring of Fire

Next week’s words are C and Wood.

Ok time for some zzzzz!

One penny for you

For those who are wondering… the new toy I mentioned in my previous post is not a new camera. It’s actually a new lens – Canon 17-40L F4 lens. Since I shoot a lot of landscapes and I plan to move to a full frame camera eventually in the future, this lens seemed like a no-brainer. I got it used from someone in the states at a significantly reduced price. Win one for me!

Now I have a new lens, I’ve been trying to sell my 18-55 IS kit lens on Craigslist. Unfortunately there hasn’t been that many offers. The best one was this guy trying to scam me. I can’t quite figure out how he could scam me since I’m the one that’s selling the good. Maybe one of you can figure it out for me?

My original ad goes something like this…

Selling my 18-55 F3.5-5.6 IS lens. It’s in pristine shape and very sharp. Comes with all the accessories (lens, front & rear caps). UV filter since day one. $XXX local sale & cash only.

His original email…

Hello seller,
i am intersested in your ads and i want to know the present condition of the ads and also know if you still have it avaliable for sale.My ideal payment is paypal/westernunion money transfer, if you want that let me know in your response to me. i will take care of the shipping cost by adding it to the cost of the item. Hope to read from you soon.. Thanks and Godbless

The part about Western Union money transfer rang a bell in my head so I responded with the following…

Hi,

Lens is still available where are you based? I’d only deal with verified paypal account.

Let me know.

Which he then responded with this ridiculous email:

Hello,
thanks for your reply..well am Jeff Smith from florida but the item is needed in one of my store in west africa i would have love to come for the pickup myself but due to some reasons i cant come so i will be paying for the shipping….so i will pay you via paypal….kindly get back to me with your paypal email address so i can proceed for the payment without any further delay… Note: I will pay you $80 for the shipping fee
Jeff

Does this guy think I’m an idiot or something? I didn’t bother replying back to his email and had a pretty good laugh. I still can’t figure out how he’d able to scam me with Paypal though. Hopefully I’ll be able to sell the lens soon. In the mean time here are some pictures from this past weekend. Enjoy.

Jump up & down

Went for a quick walk around False Creek tonight to play around with my new toy. I’m happy.

Crying in Joy

If you haven’t heard, yesterday was Apple’s WWDC and quite a few new products were announced. Out of all the product announcements the most exciting one for me was the new Mac OS 10.6 code named Snow Leopard. I have been a PC/Windows user for as long as I can remember. My first computer had Windows 95 and I have spent countless time installing and tweaking various Microsoft operating systems to know a lot about them. While my laptop at work is in XP, 90% of the laptop I run tests on are using Vista. For me Windows XP was a huge improvement for Microsoft. Vista, on the other hand, was and still is a huge disappointment. When Windows 7 pre-beta was released last Nov or so I had the chance to play around on it. I was greatly disappointed by it. Since I was considering getting a new laptop and switching to Mac all together, my disappointment with Windows 7 was the final draw. I got a MacBook Pro in Dec and I could not be happier. OS 10.5, or Leopard, is an excellent operating system. It’s very smooth. I absolutely Expose (Vista’s equivalent of sliding windows, but Expose is much better implemented). Reading the improvements Snow Leopard will have make me extremely happy that I made the switch. Wanting every user to upgrade to Snow Leopard, Apple announced that Snow Leopard will cost $29 for current Leopard users. Yep $29! I was shocked to hear about this price scheme. You certainly won’t hear Microsoft selling Windows 7 at this ridiculous price anytime soon. This is a great step forward. Not only Apple is encouraging people upgrade, Apple is also encouraging people to buy for their software, rather than downloading it illegally. I can’t wait to upgrade to Snow Leopard this Sept!

Man I sound like a freaking Apple zealot. Maybe Apple should hire me to do their commercials.

It’s Tues so that means it’s Weekly Words Challenge time again. This week’s words were Lean and 3.

Leaning Bodies

3 Idiots

3 white pins, a poster girl, and a lonely red pin
(Wow that’s a mouthful)

The words for next week are: A and Favorite Song.

That’s all folks, I’ll do a quick update either tomorrow or Thurs as I have something extremely exciting that I have to tell you about!

Randomness to the maximum

Just a few random thoughts…

-I watched The Hangover last night with Ran, Meghan & Evan. Man what a hilarious movie! I haven’t laughed this hard in a while. I’d definitely recommend this movie.

-Up 5-0 in game 5 of the NHL Stanley Cup finals, the Detroit Red Wings kept their feet on the gas pedal and continued to attack. How did the Vancouver Canucks play when they had a 2-1 lead in the playoffs? Well they started trapping the Chicago Blackhawks, sat back, and stopped attacking all together. Unfortunately for the Canucks, this defensive style cost them the season. Hopefully the Vancouver Canucks coaching staff is watching game 5 and will learn a few things from game 5.

-I came across a pizza tv ad the other day. “____ style pizza, now with 5 real meats.” Ummm… now with 5 real meats? Are you telling us that all the pizza you made prior to the ad were made from fake meat? Am I the only one seeing the irony with this?

-I’m still uploading my pictures to Flickr. Currently the most viewed pic on my Flickr account is the following pic. Why am I not surprised?

I lied

I lied, I ended up uploading my WWC pics first before uploading the rest of my pics to Flickr. I just couldn’t bare the idea of Tink guilt tripping me over not posting pictures for this week. God knows what she could do with her magical power. Anyway Here are my pictures.

Yellow

In my wallet (ya I wish)

Next week’s words are Lean and 3.