Ahh.

May long signals the return of camping season (for those of us not crazy enough to camp year round), making it truly one of the happy times of the year. It isn’t the greatest day this earth has ever known, because as we all know that is my birthday… but May long ranks pretty high up there on the list.

This year we headed up on Friday, trying to get there early enough to ensure we got our traditional spot. We did manage to make it out there by around 1pm, but sadly some family and their camper had already taken the perfect spot by the time we arrived. After a brief tour to see what other sites had to offer, we decided on one with a fairly large area cleared of snow (the piles in some of the sites were up around 5 feet high), and a reasonable amount of distance from neighbours.

After we set up the site, we went and explored a bit up the Smith-Dorrien highway to try and find a hike that didn’t have drifts up to our waists. This was not to be as the Black Prince Cirque trail was clogged with snow, but we did have a good deal of fun “helping the thawing process” along the side of the creek nearby (read this as trying to see how big of a chunk we could break off the banks at one time). Repeat this at another creek and the north end of Lower Kananaskis Lake and then it is time for burgers and Big Bear!

Ok, I’m lying about being excited to have Big Bear (really bad beer in a 1.18L format), but it was certainly cold enough to choke down hanks to the snowbank refrigerator we had stored it in since we set up the site many hours before.

Saturday was supposed to be the day we conquered King’s Creek, rebuilding the bridges we had constructed last year and adding more further along the trail, but the dang snow and a creek that was as big as I’ve ever seen it made reconstruction nearly impossible as landmarks I expected to see were either washed away or completely under water.

Our very first bridge did survive the winter, but I think it may require some cleaning up as I believe that a fairly large log jam has formed above it and will wipe that bridge out if given enough water and a few more logs. I’ll have to do a picture comparison to see if my brain is telling me the truth, but I’ll have to get the new ones off Scott at some point to do so.

All in all, I’d say this weekend was a success… no rain, no wind, no snow, minimal jerks in other sites, and some seriously good time spent watching fire-tv. plus Big Bear!

oh look… pictures!