Tag: winter weather

  • Snowshoes on a Frozen Suburban Creek

    After a bitterly cold week the sun broke through the chill for a few hours on a recent Saturday afternoon. I met with some friends to explore a local creek, frozen and snowy, on a pair of trusty snowshoes.

    Adventure journal.

    I live in a winter city.

    It is cold, bitterly cold, freeze your cheeks frostbite cold for at least three months of the year. Nearly a million people live here. While not all of them savour the dark, chilly winters, most everyone embraces the hard reality of the climate. A hardy few revel in the snow and cold, and seek adventures unique to our northern location.

    In this winter city, I live in a suburban neighbourhood framed on three sides by preserved wilderness. Incredibly, the city has made an active planning effort to avoid development (apart from trails and bridges) of the river valley (to my west and north) and the twisting feeder creek bed (to the east).

    This means that I can access a vast ribbon of natural area on foot in fifteen. Alternatively, by driving for a mere few minutes I can find a place to park and step in.

    As the local pandemic restrictions loosened over the last week, I met some of my running crew for a snowy hike in the aforementioned creek bed.

    We wore snowshoes.

    Admittedly, these were unneccessary for ninety percent of the hike.

    Yet there seemed to be something more interesting about story called “Going Snowshoeing on a Frozen Creek” than a tale merely titled “Winter Hiking!

    The Whitemud Creek feeds into the North Saskatchewan River to the north. This is a broad, shallow river that flows east across multiple Canadian provinces and eventually drains into the Hudson’s Bay, whereas the feeder creek is a half dozen meters wide at best. Though I’ve never actually tested it I would guess I could stand in the centre in springtime and not get my shirt wet.

    The creek is frozen nearly solid by January each year, or at least solid enough to safely walk atop it. Thus, after a fresh fall of snow the creek makes for a smooth, flat course, and one boxed in on each side by an alternating combination steep banks as high as twenty or thirty meters, natural boreal forest, and a single track trail that paces through the woods that we often run in spring, summer or fall.

    By far the best part of the two hour, seven kilometer hike was time spent with three friends. I had not seen in any of them in person for over two months. Over the holidays we video chatted, texted, and shared pictures and stories. This is not the same as walking beside someone through the snow, even if they are wearing a pandemic mask.

    The ice crackled underfoot.

    We climbed like giddy kids under and around multiple fallen trees that had not yet been cleared away by municipal maintenance crews.

    We skidded across patches of bare ice on snowshoes meant for trudging through deep snow.

    The sun warmed the air with a loving apricity as we paused for breath, or conversation, or just to take in the simple natural views. Even the clean, crisp air of a suburban creek bed was a brilliant change from the hour spent hunkered down in our houses simultaneously avoiding the cold and a contagious virus.

    A winter city adventure, and a local travel adventure for a strange, frustrating year.

    I don’t think I could have traded it for a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

  • My Winter Runs Need to Get a Grip

    Sunday Run Day and for the first time in two months I took part in a group run with a small cohort of friends.

    Our locality has been on pandemic-related lockdown since late November, and all my runs have been solo. But COVID-related hospitalizations have been down. New case numbers have been declining. And the doctors say we can ease gently away from some of the stricter restrictions… like avoiding all non-essential personal contact. In other words, we can run together again.

    Of course, it also happens to be that we are in the middle of winter. In the middle of a cold snap. In the middle of temperatures averaging minus twenty and offering up moderate quantities of snow.

    Over a series of early morning text messages we pushed our usual eight-thirty meetup time by a couple hours to tempt the sun’s generosity. Also, given that it’s been months since we’ve seen each other in person, it was decided that a location more interesting than the regular high school parking lot was on the table for debate.

    Luckily I never take my grips out of the backseat of my truck in the winter, and when we converged in a river valley parking lot to engage the single-track snow-bound trails therein I easily added some necessary traction to my street sneakers.

    Some winters I splurge and buy myself winter trainers. They are extra grippy and have a bit more insulation. It makes it necessary to get out into the rough for longer, colder runs for a season or two … y’know, to justify the cost.

    But in a pinch, a pair of, wrap-on traction grips will substitute.

    We ran.

    Into the trails.

    Across a bridge.

    Into a meadow.

    Up and down, left and right.

    Between towering poplar dusted with snow.

    Eight kilometers later, twisting and turning through trail packed by a hundred other feets and a few dozen fat-bike tires, threaded between fresh knee-deep snow, we had logged the first group run of 2021.

    I missed those.

  • Apricity

    One of my favourite winter words is apricity.

    a-PRIS-uh-tee

    Simply, it means the warmth of the sun in the winter.

    It is a poetic word, in a way.

    The word apricity has an ineffable quality in that it is difficult to articulate what it means to someone who has never gone for a long winter walk under a brisk blue sky and felt the radiant heat of the sun on your cheeks contrasting with the frozen air.

    Apricity is the tangible tingling that pat your on the shoulders when you break from the shadows of snow-covered trees and step out into a ray of sunlight.

    The feeling of the sun crawling over the horizon late in the morning of a deep winter run and warming the bits of exposed flesh chilled by the pre-dawn trails is apricity.

    I live in a climate where apricity is less rare, but still a cherished moment in which to pause and let it all wrap around you like a wool blanket no matter where you are or what you are doing.

    The warmth of the sun in the winter. Apricity.

  • Maybe It’s Cold Outside?

    It’s Sunday Runday, and I’m going to stay in and ride the stationary bike.

    I woke up and looked at the temperature as I was letting the dog out at 6am. It was twenty degrees below zero with a brisk wind.

    Also, it snowed. Snowed lightly covering up the layer of glassy ice covering a double-digit percentage of the sidewalks.

    And… whimper, whine, whimper

    The truth of it is I wouldn’t have run today anyhow. Injury happens. It happened to me. And even little blips, like when you slip and slide on the ice (but don’t fall) and crank a muscle in your lower back and no matter how much you stretch it and work it there is a angry little knot there that is going to take a solid week to go away before you can stand up one hundred percent straight again. Oh, and don’t muck with back injuries.

    It’s Sunday Runday, and it’s my double-excuse day.

    Too cold.

    Too injured.

    Too much of an opportunity to get on the bike and do some low impact cross-training instead of running outdoors in the ice and snow and wind and cold.

  • squall

    as the door clicked shut
    my headlamp broadcast a stark beam
    slicing a path through the winter dark

    as I took my first steps
    my watch reached skyward for a signal
    tracking my pace across the icy walks

    as I started to run
    my face caught the sudden rush of wind
    sensing the winter air stirring ahead in the park

    as I felt the sleet
    my skin braced to the bluster crescendo
    wincing at sudden needles of assaulting ice

    as I turned back
    my heart sunk at the lost moment
    pondering my fortunes timing for not departing earlier

    - bardo

    I set out at about 730pm last night for a short evening run. From the time I shut the door to the time I warmed up my watch and started running, a rare winter storm, a blustery squall, had descended upon us and the still evening streets turned to sleet-pelted wind tunnels ... all without warning. It was all I could do to retreat back to the house as I was hammered with sleet.

    I have reserved some space on this blog each week to write some fiction, poetry, or prose. Writing a daily blog could easily get repetitive and turn into driveling updates. Instead, Wordy Wednesdays give me a bit of a creative nudge when inspiration strikes.