It was our first time trying to make videos and we had to learn as we went along.  It was surprising how much time is needed to produce just a three-minute film (a contest requirement) and how hard it was to fit our messages into such a tight time constraint.  We had planned to make a full set of six videos for the contest but ran out of time.  Oh, well, hopefully they run the contest again next year.

Please vote here for each of our four videos to win the contest (press the “View and Vote for Entries” button).

We can really use the three sets of avalanche safety equipment they will be awarding the top three videos (i.e., three sets of avalanche beacons, probes and snow shovels).  Plus one of our Scouts could even win the  Grand Prize of a full Avalanche Skills Training Course (AST)!

Voting ends April 15, 2013.

Currently there are only three competing entries and the highest number of votes for those entries is 27.  Let’s show the Canadian Avalanche Centre and the entire Canadian backcountry community how much support for avalanche awareness can come from Scouting in Canada!  Let’s rock the vote!

Thank you.

Backcountry Safety & Avalanche Awareness – #1 Avalanche Bulletins:

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Backcountry Safety & Avalanche Awareness – #2 The Ten Essentials:

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Backcountry Safety & Avalanche Awareness – #3 The Three Winter Essentials:

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Backcountry Safety & Avalanche Awareness – #4 The Evaluator System:

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The Mountaineer Scouts were guests of the Alpine Club of Canada, Vancouver Section, at their monthly social on Tuesday night.  The special guest speaker was the legendary Fred Beckey. Fred captivated the audience during a two hour slide and film retrospective of his over 70 years of climbing in North America. Fred turned 90 a few weeks ago. He says he’s on his way to Red Rocks, Nevada, for some rock climbing this spring and has plans for another trip to the Bugaboos this summer.

Here’s the ACC’s write up of him for this event:

“Fred Beckey will present highlights from his climbing adventures and first ascents. If you look in guide books for Mt. McKinley, Mt. Hunter, Mt. Deborah, Mt. Waddington, The Canadian Rockies, The Bugaboos, The Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, Wind River Range, Desert Tower, Squamish, Mexico (etc, etc…) chances are you’ll see Fred Beckey listed, often as the first person to ascend a particular mountain or route. It’s also likely he’s written the book. Whether you are a mountaineer or a rock climber, Fred’s got something to say of interest to you. And if you’re going climbing, there’s a good chance he’ll hitch a ride to the crag, the mountain or the ice. On January 14th, at least according to a couple of websites, he turned 90. Come out and wish him a belated Happy Birthday!”

Note: Fred mentioned that he was first introduced to the mountains as a Boy Scout (that would have been during the 1930s).

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It was a late night for the Scouts but this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet a living legend:
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The Mountaineer Scouts helped out this weekend with the Fraser Valley Council’s “Winter Camping Skills” course for Scout leaders.

Special thanks to Scouter Tim Driscoll (FVC DCC-Scoutcraft) for organizing the event and letting us take the group up into our playground!

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Video:

Okay….here’s a massive gamble.  A little narrated video of part of our experience this past weekend.  Lemme know what you think.  Don’t laugh too loud, it’s our first try at this sort of thing:

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Our first trip to Joffre Lakes Provincial Park for the year.

We have four new Scouts to introduce to winter camping.

Let’s see how they did….

Remember:  Click on the first picture to start a full screen carousel slide show of the pictures with captions.

Well, let’s try an all new format for this blog post!

Hover over the pictures to read the captions OR…better yet…

Click on any photo and start a carousel to view the photos full-screen with full captions!

Press the left and right arrows to change pictures (or click on the pictures themselves to go to the next one).  You can click on the “X” in the upper left corner (or anywhere in the white space) to return to the blog post.

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Click on any picture below to start a full-screen carousel view with captions:

You might also like this….

Before the two new Scouts could be called forward for investiture in our Troop, we first had to perform a ceremony with their parents.You might like this one….

We call it “Busting the Bubblewrap”.

With their sons at their sides holding the flags, I asked the parents if they were prepared for their sons to join our Troop.  I told them that they would have to acknowledge their acceptance of the challenges that such membership would entail for for their boys.  When they responded in the affirmative, I called upon the senior Patrol Leader to “present the bubblewrap”.  He put an 8 inch square piece of bubblewrap (1 inch sized bubbles) at the feet of each parent.  I then called upon the parents to “Bust the Bubblewrap” to signal their willingness for their boys to become Mountaineer Scouts.  The two parents then stomped out every bubble at their feet.  It was hilarious and the Scouts and parents loved it.

Busting the Bubblewrap!

Video:

Go full screen and increase the resolution to at least 720p for best viewing.

Here’s the scrambling section of the Stawamus Chief hike recorded on a head-mounted GoPro camera: 

And here’s some video taken from the summit of the Second Peak of the Chief with my Nikon P7700:

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We hiked 7.5 kms. (3,500 ft. elevation gain) up into the alpine region of Garibaldi Provincial Park (Taylor Meadows Campground, 5,250 ft.) on Friday in the late autumn sunshine.

Just as we were getting ready to go to bed on Friday night the first snow flakes of the year began to fall.

We woke up to discover that over four inches of powder snow had accumulated on our tents.

Here’s the story of our weekend attempt to climb Black Tusk and practice glacial travel on Helm Glacier.

Note:  Click on any picture below to start a full-screen carousel view with captions:

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For our first camp of the year we backpacked into Cheakamus Lake just south of Whistler, B.C.

The lake lies in the valley south of the Spearhead Range (including Whistler Mountain) and north of Garibaldi Provincial Park.

Park Rangers told us that there is now a resident pack of wolves up in the alpine region of Singing Pass and the Spearhead Range.  One day we’ll have to head up there and maybe get to see them for ourselves.

Click on any photo to start a full-screen carousel view with captions:

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