“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”― John Muir The trails in the Ministik Game Bird Sanctuary are largely unmaintained, wild, and unpeopled. That’s what gives the whole area its unique character and it’s that character that keeps…
The journey wasn’t a particularly difficult one. A geocaching buddy Hugh and I trudged across lake ice early in March, 2021 to get to an island on which a “puzzle” geocache was hidden. The story of that experience could be made more dramatic if two of us were hunched over walking into howling wind and…
It was a beautiful, clear day on Sunday, January 5th, when I decided to take a winter walk in the Ministik Bird Sanctuary starting at the U of A access road gate with the final goal being the Waskahegan Fire Tower. Along the way I stopped at some key waypoints and took photos with my…
“If you reach for the stars, you just might land on a decently sized hill.” ― Stuart Hill, The Cry of the Icemark I’d say the four guys who made it to Grizzly Ridge Tower on Sawridge Hill southwest of Slave Lake today weren’t exactly reaching for the stars; we were all out to experience the terrain…
It seemed as if I was floating along the Ministik trails today. Of course I wasn’t. Gravity was actually in full force. But during a couple of snowy hikes this winter, even when walking on snowmobile tracks, it was hard going, having to push, sink and sometimes slide in the snow with every step. It…
The temperature was brutal in Alberta during the last couple of weeks of December, 2017. For me it caused a sort of forced confinement during a holiday period when I’d normally be taking day trips, maybe taking some photos, maybe doing some geocaching. But when it’s -30 or -35 C with the wind chill it…
It was only a week ago I’d even heard about the Cardinal Divide, which is south and west of Hinton, near Cadomin. It’s a “divide” because on one side of it, water flows north and eventually empties into the Arctic Ocean; on the other side the water flows west and eventually empties into Hudson’s Bay….
Winter seemed to sneak in and pounce a little early this year. A couple of significant dumps of snow during the past few weeks seemed to bring us that mid-winter, snow and cold everywhere feeling in what seemed like a blink of an eye. My reaction to all that was to snap into hibernation mode,…
The trip to the next cache was actually fairly straightforward and, as I remember it, rather tame when it came to how much it sapped my energy. There wasn’t as much elevation loss and gain to get this one and I was thankful for that. After passing the cache sight once, I circled around and…
Okay, I knew it was going to be a long hike. I knew that. But knowing is only a mental concept until you actually do it. It still surprises me that this hike added up to 22 km and took me 5 hrs twenty minutes to do, 4 hrs moving, and 1 hour and 20…
