Hike to cross country ski

 

Well it finally got somewhat cold again, and it did stop raining. But when the cold cycle ended we did not get any new snow either. So below about 1000 feet there is very little snow. 

So when I got a little bored of downhill skiing and decided to go cross country skiing - I had to hike up to the snow. The pond pictured here is tiny but it is convenient and the snow is good. But now that it is the weekend, and I have the time, I might hike up to the Sharatin bowl or Heitman Lake.

Yesterday I wanted a picture of the dogs and I skiing. So I did the whole tripod thing where I have only 10 seconds on the self timer and have to rush, counting in my head the whole time, to get to the right spot.  All the pictures were a little off. Then I decided to just do a short video and at home I took still pictures off of the video. The video was 4K and the pictures look pretty good.  This is a much easier way to get a ski selfie! And I got the video too at the bottom of this post.

Patrick

Sunshine and Hoar Frost

 

The top seven pictures are from Monday while the bottom two are from yesterday. Sunday night it froze hard and I was worried that the mountain would be a sheet of ice. And it did indeed freeze hard. But the skiing was still decent because while the snow pack was concrete hard there was a layer of rime and hoar frost on top. I think it rimed and iced during the storm and then there was just a thin layer of hoar frost on top. So basically I was skiing on carvable hoar frost on top of concrete.

The hoar frost was beautiful and everything was glinting in the sun. As I skinned up all the little crystals flashed like diamonds in the sun. 

Yesterday morning it snowed in town and then the sun came out immediately afterwards. After work I raced up to the mountain with the dogs expecting to find deep powder. But it barely snowed on the mountain. Still there were pockets of powder where the wind had drifted the snow, and crust underneath was still carvable. So the skiing was pretty good. 

I took lots of pictures and was actually kind of excited about them. But then when I got back home and downloaded them I discovered that they were all out of focus! The camera focus ring had accidentally got set to manual focus. I remember thinking that things looked a little blurry but I just thought it was the strong sunlight and my bad eyes. But no, the whole time I was taking pictures the camera was set to focus at about 10-15 feet.

This never would have happened with an iPhone, and it is the downside of using a real camera. Sometimes just one little button gets switched and you miss the picture(s). Still the picture quality with a real camera is far higher than with an iPhone. It's just that yesterday my fancy camera missed the pictures (LOL).

Patrick

This one is out of focus - my camera got set to manual focus by accident!

Fog and sun

 

Yesterday it did not rain and the sun came out. A little sunshine does make a huge difference, and it put me in a good mood.

It was still pretty warm and Pyramid was covered with a shroud of fog. There was a couple inches of new snow on high and there had also been an ice storm. But the snow was soft and the skiing was actually pretty good. However, once it freezes it will be a sheet of ice. The ice made the snow fast and it was spring skiing conditions in February.

At the top the sun was breaking through the shroud and I could see blue sky on high. I looked away from the sun and there was a colorful fog bow.

Patrick

Mist and Fog

Red alder catkins in my yard

 This is Kodiak lately - rain, mist and continuous warmth. The temperature has not varied from a few degrees either side of 40 for a couple of weeks. This is also a fairly typical mid winter event. Every winter there is typically a warm snap in there somewhere. And we did have an awesome 5-6 weeks of continual cold and snow earlier in the winter. So I just have to be patient, and also keep my fingers crossed that winter will return.

Patrick

New Camera

 

My old Leica pretty much wore out so I got a new one. The last one was over 6 years old and I tried to trade it in at the camera store and get credit for my new one. The camera store looked at my old one and said they had never seen such a hard-used camera. The camera store guy termed it 'exceptional wear', and would not take it. So they are sending it back and I will continue to use it until it does not work anymore. 

The old camera has a 28mm fixed lens and the new one a fixed 43mm - so they will serve different purposes. And with the old one I do not mind taking it kayaking in the rain or skiing. It has already paid for itself. Since I bought the old Leica I have worn out 3 different Fujifilm cameras. Leicas are impressively durable, and I am hard on cameras.

But hey, there is no point in babying a camera. If you don't have the camera with you - then you can't get the picture, and there was no point in getting the camera in the first place. I take my cameras elk hunting in the rain. 

Modern digital cameras are expensive, but if you think of it in terms of cost per picture they are FAR, FAR cheaper than the cameras we used to use back in the days of film. Back then I'd keep a camera for years (I used my Pentax from 1979 to 2006), but you had to buy the film and pay to process every roll. It cost something like 20 dollars for every 36 pictures. And that's in 1990s dollars. Basically back in the days of film you paid for the pictures as you went along. These days you pay up front for all the pictures to come.

I really like the new Leica. It is a little slow to start up, but I think it takes better pictures than the old one. I prefer the longer lens too. The old 28mm was just too wide - I like a lens that is more focused in on things. And if I want a wide angle landscape I'll just stitch a bunch of pictures together. I've found that 35-50mm pictures stitch together better than wider angle pictures do - less distortion. 

Anyway, here is to another 6-8 years of Leica abuse and hard use! In the end I bet I pay less than 50 cents for every good picture that I take with the new Leica camera. And that's totally worth it.

Patrick

Elk Burger Pie

 

The other night I experimented cooking with some elk burger and leftover gravy from a roast. Rather than make a classic shepherds pie topped with mash potatoes or as I call it a 'hunter's pie' (Click here for Old Hunter's Pie recipe). I decided to top my normal hunter's pie recipe with a pre made pie crust. In my fridge I already had some leftover gravy and a pie crust that had been in there a while. So I wanted to use them up.

Anyway, it worked out great. The gravy was an awesome addition and made it as good as a 'Marie Callender's' pot pie (my highest praise for a pot pie). My pre made pie crust did not do so well. It was stuck together and hard to roll out without tearing, but I think that is because it was probably past its recommended 'use by' date.

Patrick

Basic ingredients - that's a hunk of frozen hedgehog mushrooms in foreground

Vegetables browning and leftover gravy heating up

Added a little flour to browning vegetables

added elk burger

heated up frozen peas under hot water in colander in sink and added at end

added left over gravy (broth if no gravy handy) and capped with pie crust

Baked for 50 minutes at 350 and then left to rest for 10 minutes before I ate some

Garden is Alive!

 

A couple of weeks ago my garden was covered with a thick layer of snow. Even with continual rain and warm weather it took a while for all the snow to melt. But melt it did, and this past weekend I noticed that the kale and collard greens are still alive. Better yet the collard greens look very healthy and are putting up new shoots. At least I think they are collard greens. They were planted as part of a packet of gourmet salad seed mix. There were kale seeds in the packet too, and they are still alive too (but not looking very healthy).

In any case, what I think are collard greens are quite tasty. I put them in all sorts of dishes last fall, and this past weekend I harvested some more leaves. I cut them up with some store bought broccoli and added them to some ramen noodles. I added them to the boiling water when the noodles were just about done. Then poured off the water and added the ramen flavor packets. A very good, quick lunch.

Now I got to figure out exactly what variety of collard greens I got out in the garden. I want to plant a bunch more! A plant that hardy and tasty is what I want in my garden.  I may even encourage the plants to go to seed in the spring, and see if I can get some seeds that way.

Patrick

Update: I did some google sleuthing and I now think my 'collard greens' are actually 'Siberian kale' - that's what they most closely resemble anyway. But last Fall I did the same sort of sleuthing and was convinced they were collard greens - so who knows. Maybe this spring I'll buy both seed varieties.