Short and sweet, but have a happy new year!

In November or so Kathy and I attended the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival (a great event, visit their site for info) and were given a coupon for a free snowshoe rental from Venture Gear. Two years ago we were given a 30% discount on any North Face purchase, which we used to save $200 on our 700 fill down jackets.

Anyhow, so we used our coupons today, and were given 2 sets of MSR snowshoes to tramp around with for the day. Up to McCullough Lake we went! The weather was amazing, blue skies, no wind, around -5 up there which was perfect.

We initially had brought some ski poles along, I’d seen numerous pictures of people on snowshoes using them, figured it might be the way to go since I was sure I’d be unbalanced on showshoes. Not the case at all, it felt just like walking, they were light and only helped you move easier! It didn’t require any weird body balance, leg splaying or other antics, just walk and maybe sometimes you might step on your other shoe, but it was rare. We left the poles in the car…

Overall, this is a heck of a thing to do. We had our cameras out non-stop, and equipped with gators we felt we could have really walked anywhere, not needing the tramped down snowshoe path. Our shoes however, they’re not waterproof…so that would have stopped that. But really, we didn’t get wet feet until the shoes got back into the car and the ice that had built up on them melted in. My toes were toasty the whole day.

Another bonus was the workout it gave, you’ve got such good traction on up and downhills that you seem to just go go go. I admit I’m terribly out of shape at the moment, so there’s a chance that simply walking would have winded me but I certainly seem to feel my leg muscles much more than a normal 5.5km walk.

We’ll probably rent one more time from Venture Gear, since they offer a “rent them for a day, if you decide to buy from us you can discount that rental price” offer, then we may look at buying. For $150 it opens up the winter season so much to the activities we enjoy in the other three seasons, hike on any trail or no trail at all through 3 feet of snow = no problem!

Head over to the photos section for the rest of the pictures!

About two weeks ago I was looking at some images taken on my “small, walkaround camera”, my original Nikon Coolpix 4500. While it performs magnificently for macro shooting, it washes out the finer details of landscape or basically anything non-macro. I’m rarely overjoyed with shots from it anymore, what with it being slower than my Digic II cameras that have spoiled me so, and that it’s got a few dead pixels that actually show up in the final images.

So I did some research and most of the point and shoot cameras I’d want are priced upwards of $500, that’s just more than I’d want to spend. I don’t need 20d quality, but I do need something that I can tuck into a pocket when walking about the city and something that if I leave it in my car and it get’s stolen, I won’t be out a lot of money. Enter the Canon Powershot A540!

It has what I’m looking for, plus a black and white mode just for kicks. I managed to get a good deal on a Sandisk 2GB SD card (never trust the Staples store, go to their online site first and check out what price they sell it there, garaunteed it’ll be cheaper online…but they pricematch). Saved $60 on that card! Downside is it takes AA batteries, but it seems to drain them quite slowly…I bought 2400Mha rechargables for it though, which seem to drain all by themselves when left out of the camera…and fast. But when they’re fresh they seem pretty good, so far.

Anyhow, we went for a walk at McCullough Lake after getting it to test it out, here’s one of the shots just to entice…

So as it happens, our Juan de Fuca trip has gotten some exposure on hiking review sites, one of them (Best Hikes.com) has us in our own blog entry here. Pretty cool!