Spring has sprung on the West Coast...

Downtown & Island mountains

It's not really a 'Canadian' winter in Vancouver; it only snows in town a few times a year and it's certainly not cold enough for the pond ice hockey they have further north.  But it's still nice when it finishes, so to mark it's passing here are some of our winter highlights (and, unfortunately, lowlights):

• We both learnt to ski.  My initial advantage of 2.5 days of skiing 5 years ago quickly faded as Mark applied his normal training dedication and obsessive internet browsing to   improve his technique.  It was lots of fun until...

• Mark ruptured his posterior cruciate ligament (PCL, twin to the more commonly torn ACL) on our 'final run' at Whistler at the end of February.  Walking wasn't very easy for the first week or so but he is now back in action with some light hiking and running with a mega carbon fibre knee brace.  He might need an operation when we get back to the UK, but we're still planning lots of adventures (just with a bit less brutal downhill)  

Me post race with running buddies

• I trained hard for my first 25km trail race on the North Shore mountains.  The 1700m elevation was pretty punishing, but not as much as tweaking my knee on the final stretch - bit of a limp home but still really pleased with my progress.  Next up is another 25km race in May in preparation for the big one, 50km, (12.5km straight up a mountain, eeek!) in August.

• Despite occasional 'Baker days' (when you can see the huge and snowy Mt Baker 100km away in Washington State), it rained A LOT, which I guess at least topped up the reservoirs...

• We had our first visitor, the fab Nicky Smith who had just finished being very clever at a 'ski conference' in Colorado (where there was no snow) and then almost drowned in powder (the rain does have its uses at altitude) at Whistler.  And she reports our sofa bed is pretty comfortable for anyone planning a visit....

From Bowen Island

So, that was our first Canadian winter, next year we will try to get somewhere properly cold (I asked someone from the Yukon Law Society if they were having nice weather in February and she said 'yup, it's been above -40degrees for 3 days' now so think we need to try a bit of that...).  We've already made our first camping expedition for 2012 (see next post) so hopefully we'll have many more sunny days to come...