Hiking in the Snow

It's August and the BC Day long weekend, so you know what that means. Time to visit the glaciers! Rebekah and I went with Brad and Gulcan to Strathcona Park to hike the Elk River Trail (click that link, its cool and turn on satellite view if it's not on) To see the hike even cooler, click here and open it in Google Earth, then you may have to double-click "Elk River Trail" in the pane at the left, then lower the viewing angle so it's not a bird's eye view so you can see the mountains.

We probably hiked about 25km, which was nice and enjoyable. The first day we hiked about 8.5km with all of our stuff up to the 2nd campsite:

That hike had us walk by a really cool ice tunnel:

Then the second day we did a day hike from the campsite up to Landslide Lake:

The trail continued in on an unkept path that was dangerous at times, but worth it when we got to Iceberg Lake, surrounded by glaciers, tall cliffs and almost frozen over:

Glaciers are cold:

On the third day, we hiked back from our campsite and drove home. The whole trip was a lot of fun. Dehydrated food tastes pretty good these days.

If you'd like to see more awesome scenery including some pretty cool waterfalls, check out the rest of the photos then go hike it yourself. It's even better in real life. And the amazing part is, it's all on our Pacific island!

Adam's Visit

My best-man-to-be Adam just decided to come and visit me in July for a weekend plus some, one week after I got back from Europe (and on a week's notice). I'm glad he finally made it. We drove around the southern part of the island and saw a lot of the cool stuff, like:

Mile 0!

Adam Kerr on Adam Kerr bridge in Adam Kerr park!

Mt. Doug!

Kissing a totem pole!

Ocean Blvd!

Vancouver!

Aren't you jealous?

I also saw whales on the ferry on the way to Vancouver to get him from the airport. Much closer than the legal range of 100m, but you can't help it when they appear out of nowhere.

See more photos in the photo album, including more whale pictures.

London and Bled, Slovenia

In June/July, I was flown off to Europe again for a conference to tout my new algorithm to the world. My ultimate destination was to Bled, Slovenia, a little resort town that is like Banff, only half the size and then move the town to the front of Lake Louise, then add a small island with an old church and a cliff on the side of the lake with a castle. So pretty much, not like Banff.
My journey took me there through London, purchased as 2 separate round-trip tickets. So, naturally I decided to stay in London for another week and check it out.

The food in Slovenia is excellent and really cheap. I had a nice variety of things from turkey in peppercorn cream sauce to cheese dumplings (which resemble brain-looking twinky shapes and are oh so tasty) to excellent pizza with tartar sauce on it (a really great idea) to cheese sauce filled squid. All of it was outstanding and about 1/5 to 1/3 what you'd expect to pay in Canada. Other than the food, I'll report that the people were friendly, then again it was a tourist spot, but everyone seemed to smoke. Oh, and they have really cool signs like these.
A very elaborate sign.

Dads with 3-armed rabbit girls cross here.

The conference was a lot of fun, and I got a large amount of questions after my talk, which I am used to getting. Most talks get 0 or 2 questions.
I got 6.

London was a lot of fun to explore. The first day I went on a walking tour, then I went back the later days to see other places that were omitted. Here are some of my favorite pictures.
This picture needs no caption.

How to park your Smart car.

The Physical Energy Monument.

Of course, there are many many more pictures in my photo albums, including the usual tourist pictures (I think these are better). Sorry to those who waited sooo long for me to put them up.