Heat Wave in BC

Apparently we broke the heat record in Vancouver yesterday, July 29th, together with many other places along the coast of BC. This is the hottest summer since 1998. And predictions are for high 20th till mid next week. High tempertures in the upper thirties are common to the interior of BC but not so much on the coast - it's called temperate rainforrest for a reason.

Area (Station) / New Record / Old Record (year) / Records From

Metro Vancouver (Airport) / 34.0 C / 33.3 C (1960) / 1937

North & Central Coast (Bella Coola) / 41.2 C / 34.4 C (1898) / 1896

I am melting away at home, spending most of my time downstairs were it is cooler. Not much other activities going on. Although I was out in my K1 yesterday at 4pm for practise with the kids. Luckily, the workout was short. Mostly we train in the evenings now.

We did go for a quick hike up Grouse Mountain on Monday though with temperatures just below 30C. What a slog.

Some pretty flowers greeted us on the top.

But the bears were resting in the bushes - only an ear visible through the fence

..and claws

We will be off to Kamloops for a sprint regatta this weekend. Expected high temperatures 34-35C and lows 18-20C. Camping will be so much fun with no trees along the lake to provide any shade.

Week of July 18 - hot cooler hotter - what a summer

Another nice week in the Vancouver paradise. Today is the first time it rained in a LONG time - thunderstorm after sun and scorching hot at 28C all day. So it is almost welcome.
People always ask me why I don't go traveling now that I have all the time in the world but I am quite content with what we have here around us. And of course we need to save up for the trip to Sydney, Australia in September.

A long mostly hot week of training in K1.

Sunset at Deer Lake after finishing our second workout of the day on Thursday - the evenings are nice a calm!

We started it off with a Hike and finish today with a surfski race really surfing some waves.

July 19: Hiking the Elk-Thurston Trail near Chilliwack. There is lots of great hiking in the mountains south-east of Chilliwack. This one gets you up onto one of the first ridges out of the Fraser Valley with splendid views of the Fraser and Chilliwack Valleys. For a LOT more pictures see here http://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/ThurstonMountainHike20July2009#

After about an hour climb through the trees you get to the top of the ridge with fantastic views over the Chilliwack River and the mountain ranges surrounding it

View back onto Elk Mountain with the Fraser Valley farmland in the background

And the other treat once you reach the open ridge - mountain meadows covered in wild flowers.

Steep slopes covered in flowers

Tiger Lilies - just one of the many wild flowers close-up

Not sure if we ever reach the top of Mount Thuston but this is about the point we turned around after 3hrs of hiking. The Lucky Four Mountains in the back.

And on the way back we were treated with some wild strawberries - although they are just starting out this high up at ~1500m

July 25: Howe Sound Downwind Race from Porteau Cove to Squamish (~16km). This area just north of Vancouver is known for its strong inflow winds due to the high mountains at the end of the inlet (leading to Whistler). The past 4 years the winds never really materialized for this race but this year was different. Jeff and I took our double surfskis up there and were joined by a lot of the Tuesday night regular racers. The most famous participant was Greg Barton, two time Olympic gold medalist for the US in sprint kayaking (K1/K2) in the late 80's. Since then he has founded a surfski company with another famous surfski paddler and has done surfski races all over the world. He just moved back to Washington and decided to check out the local race scene. Well he beat us all by a long shot. Only real competition he would have had - Ian Mackenzie - Canadian National Team member for marathon sprint - had to pull out early due to equipment problems. But this enabled Jeff and I to come in second. The first 2/3 of the race we had awesome waves to ride, the last 1/3 we made a small mistake and ended up with racing cross wind which was gusting at up to 28 knots - not so much fun. All in all a great race and we finished in a respectable time of 1hr14min.

The finishing beach in Squamish with our double in the forefront- tide was going out the whole race.

The post-race beach party - Greg Barton in the back

You might be able to image the wind looking at this kite surfer - we saw them jumping up to 5m into the air

First half of July - Routine is settling in

We had a mixed bag of weather the first couple weeks of July - some cold , some rain, some sunshine, some warm. Most of the time was spent training and recovering.

Our neighbour's cat Digger is showing you want recovery really means

Our summer training facility - Deer Lake. With Jeff's and my K1 in the forefront.

The picture above shows you why we can't train on Burnaby Lake in the summer. The whole Lake is choked up with weeds. Those get caught on your paddle, your rudder, reduce your "sprint" speed to snail pace and you end up covered in them from head to toe. NO fun. But the city will start dredging it in September.

I also started my outplacement services Kodak paid for - they teach how to prepare yourself for finding your next job such as resume writing, networking and self marketing. Their office is downtown so I got to bike there a couple times. There is actually a nice bike route from our place in the southeast of Vancouver all the way Downtown - but you have to get over the hill. Luckily there are more gradual ways than the one I took for years riding to work. Off course I count the biking as cross training.

Some Highlights:
July 5th: Instead of doing a big hike we ended up canoeing up Still Creek (flowing into Burnaby Lake) on July 5th. What a great urban paddling experience on one of the nicer days the past 2 weeks. We saw lots of birds - ducks, eagles, herons - as well as a raccoon, frogs, carp and of course many pretty flowers. No beaver though since it was too early in the day and too hot. One section seemed to be loaded with HUGE carb and Jeff wished we would have brought a fishing rod. For more pictures go here http://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/CanoeingStillCreek05July2009

Jeff steering the rec canoe

We saw LOTS of herons or maybe it was the same one all the time

July 11-12: Sprint regatta on Whonnock Lake in Maple Ridge. This regatta is more intended for the new paddlers and fun sprint races. So we had many mixed boats where we mix gender (girls and boys) and age catergories (15 + 40) as well as did some cross dicipline races - meaning I had to race C2 - high kneel canoe. Not pretty but we did finish. See the BCKC blog as well as this link (http://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/RidgeRegattaJuly1112) for more stories and pictures.

The mixed WAR CANOE was certainly the highlight of the regatta. I am in seat 4 paddling on the left of the boat. Did I ever mention I love teamboats?

July 13th: This was a regular training day but we did hike up Grouse Mountain again (BCMC trail 1:05) after a K1 (6x 5' on 2') practise session. It was a clowdy and cool day on the mountain and the grizzlies were hiding away as well. But we found some really pretty flowers: