PeteZahut

Great story Rick!

Great series of posts and great story!

Awesome!

Thanks guys. Regardless of the results, the experience is always worth the trip. Bob, I am always around but just not commenting on posts. A lot of posts got just plain ridiculous with arguments and so forth. Turned me off from posting anything. Rick, I absolutely love the Castle drainage as well. Just wished I could have gotten to know the area before the fire ripped through the upper Carbondale area as I imagine that area was unreal. Good luck with your high country stuff.

I haven't posted for awhile so forgive the length. Due to other committments we decided to pack a few things in at the end of July instead of the usual August. So this year was a busy one with our annual boys fishing trip followed by a quick trip to the homeland of SK and finally a weekend to camp with only myself and the wife (the kid unit was left behind in SK to have fun at the beach with the grandparents). The boys fishing weekend was a blast as usual. This was our fourth year staying at Castle Mountain, I can't believe that they continue to allow us to come back. A bunch of mid to late 30s acting like teenagers. None of us felt good after that weekend. As usual we fished around the area targeting mostly South Castle and Carbondale. Not great numbers but managed a couple of real beauties on both rivers with both dries and nymphs. I caught a couple of cuttbows with serious attitudes and some definite acrobatic training. The weather was perfect and the water was a bit high and cold but very fishable. Here is a couple of pics of one from South Castle: I won't bother with the report from SK, no fishing just visiting. SK is still flat and hot. Regina is still growing. The end of our little vacation was spent camping at Mt.Kidd. Great campground, never been there before. We decided to camp there as it was close to the trail we wanted to hit. This was our anniversary weekend so what better way then to ditch the kid and spend some alone time. The past couple of years we have picked different things to do just the two of us. Last year was my choice where we camped at Lynx Cr and did the Barnaby hike which was outstanding. This year the wife decided she wanted to attempt the Ribbon Lake hike. So begins the bad decision, well not that bad. Reading up on the hike I found that you can bike the first 4km and hike the remainng ~7km to the falls. What a great way to reduce the time I thought. And being that I haven't ridden a bike in 15 years I thought what a great idea, let's bike up a mountain. So we rented bikes from K Lodge, great bikes by the way. Anyways, up at 5 am for some breakfast (bad decision, bran muffins...really??) and off to the trailhead. We take the bikes out of the truck and I go for a rip around the parking lot. I could immediately tell that my ass was not going to like the ride and therefore another bad decision. But we did it anyways and I absolutely enjoyed the ride. Not too steep and a really nice path. A short stop along the way to enjoy the view before completing the ride: We made it to the falls in only a couple of hours, under 3 I think but can't really remember. We stopped here for a snack and a change of socks as I am a sweaty betty. The falls are pretty awesome: So then started the tough part of the hike. It is a pretty steep ascent to the cliffs. We passed over a couple of interesting rock slides and then came to the chains. Not sure if you can see the little yellow sign just above the path on the side of the cliff which read "Cliff Hazard" ...no sh$t. We made it up the first set of chains and I was not feeling too comfortable. I got halfway up the second and could not get a comfortable foot hold. No rock climbing experience mixed with stiff hiking boots left me with a very hard decision. Go for it or not. Thoughts of my little girl, getting stuck and the climb down left me with the difficult decision to stop there. Not feeling comfortable enough to move on. It was a tough decision knowing our destination was only a couple more sets of chains away. But at the end of the day one has to make a decision based on comfort and risk. Here are a couple of shots of where the decision was made and a cool shot of the climb down the first set: Feeling a bit defeated I did manage to enjoy the hike down. But then came the best part of the trip, the bike ride down. I think there was a permanent grin from ear to ear as I raced my wife down, doing a slalom around the dozens of people hiking up. We were careful around corners not to hit anyone of course. I think it only took 20 minutes and don't think I peddled once. So much fun! I think I am going to buy a bike now. The next day, both a bit stiff and sore butts from the seats, we spent it fishing the Highwood and Cataract. Great fish to hands at a couple of places. Overall, a wonderful way to spend time with my wife on our 7 year anniversary! I consider myself the luckiest man on earth. I wonder where we will go next year??? A nice little vacation. I better get the running shoes dusted off for our second running of the Spartan Race in August. Perhaps another bad decision???

Me and a number of my buddies stay on Castle Mountain, plenty of options there. We have stayed there for the last 4 years and going back again this summer. Great launching spot for the rivers down there. http://castlerental.ca/

Happy birthday Clive!

Well done. We unfortunately don't have anything to donate. Made me smile to see someone step-up to a friend in need. I hope your friend's health will allow him to come home.

I second Icky. I have not tried the others and so I have no comparison and no opinion. I can however say that I was extremely pleased with the service and the quality of flies from Icky. I will order through them again.

Good luck and I wish you the best of health!

Great pics and story as usual! Great advice as well. I could feel the anxiety as I read and looked at the pictures.

Yeah it was the weekend before on the August long weekend. I only wish the wind would not have been as horrific as it was. There was definately a lot of fish in that second lake. Oh well, next time. I can`t believe you hiked up there in your wading boots! That would have definately made the hike more difficult in my opinion. Although I had great grip with my hiking boots, the fact they had only been used a couple of times on simple hikes and the resulting blisters I got made me a little grumpy at times.

I wasn't going to start a post about this since there have been a number of posts recently about Barnaby but I thought what the heck, I may as well share anyways. So you will have to bear with me with the sights and scenery seen a number of times already. Sorry about the big pictures, I am using my wife's droplets in Photoshop to resize for easier emailing and they are a little big. So my wife wanted a hiking challenge to test herself and I thought why not really test her with a hike up to Barnaby Lake. Six years ago on our honeymoon we got skunked at Michelle Lakes (heli trip) so I had a hunger to see a Golden up close and personal. With the kid shipped off to the grandparents we packed up the trailer and headed to camp at Lynx Creek with some friends. I managed to talk one of our friends to come up with us who had attempted this with me before only to be turned away by weather. This was not going to be the case this year. The hike is everything that everyone has described. Breathtaking and tough. The usual sights of the Castle valley: My poor friend who joined us. This was his second adventure with us and at the end of this one he said to us "Don't ever ask me again to join you on one of these!" Priceless. My wife on the hike. Shows the incline pretty good: We reached the first lake in a 1 hour 45minutes. Pretty good time but still took time to rest on the way up. Me attempting the first lake but nothing seen anywhere: Another view of Barnaby and my wife doing what she does best, capturing the moments: After a short visit on the first lake we headed to the second. Fishing was extremely tough as the winds were ridiculous coming off the mountain. It was such a beautiful place to be: The fish were actually pretty tough to catch that day. Between the many refusals and the wind knots I did finally manage to net one. They are even more beautiful in person: The hike down I thought was worse then the hike up. I don't know if it was the blisters from the newer boots or my quads burning as I try not to go racing down the mountain but it was definately not as enjoyable. The next day was spent fishing Lynx Creek and Carbondale. I don't want this thread to start down the random camping issue but it is ridiculous the amount in that area. A few photos from that excursion: My beautiful wife with a beautiful Cuttie Hillbilly toilet: Screaming Pines (we dubbed it that as the wind whistling through the burn on the Carbondale was quite eery): All in all it was an absolutely incredible weekend. Got to spend our anniversary at a special place, a lot of drinks and good laughs with even better friends. We did miss our little one as it was pretty quiet without her. Fortunate for her and unfortunate for us she got to catch her first fish while fishing at Lake Diefenbaker with her grandparents. Now that is priceless!

Awesome post! My wife and I (and possibly two friends) are going to hike there this Satuday. It is a fitting time as that day is our 6 year wedding anniversary and on our honeymoon 6 years ago we flew into Michele Lakes on a quest for goldens. I also proposed to her at the 3rd lake of Picklejar Lakes and so we have seen some amazing places together and I am really excited about sharing this experience with her on that special day.

I make all my major purchases at CP. I love the fact I can walk in there and Mike knows my name, my wife's name and my daughter's name. They taught me to flyfish through their beginner's lessons and through a float on the Bow. I know there are other great flyshops in this city but CP has treated me well and will continue to have my business. I am happy to hear that others have enjoyed their experience there.

Wow, this is such a great thread. keep it coming, it looks outstanding.

If your GPS is showing you a map then it is preloaded, bottomline. The GPS unit receives a signal from the satellites to figure out its position or time. There is no mapping information received from the satellite signal itself, only position and time information.

Never hurts to put in a complaint. I had horrible service at a local chain restaurant. After the horrible service I went onto their website and put in a complaint. I got contacted by the franchise owner who talked to the manager and got their side of the story. They apologized and gave me a credit at that location to try and win my patronage back. Doubt it made much of a difference there but they at least recognized the need to try and win me back. Enough of those situations might end up with a change in service.

When I started, after taking some lessons, I bought a Norman guitar which is also Canadian made and in the price range you stated. I loved the sound and the action was light (or small, not sure proper terminology) meaning the strings were close to the neck and easier to play. Something to check when you are starting out.

Awesome post! I always look forward to and enjoy reading your posts!

This is interesting and I have a very one-sided view of this. I have never understood why someone wouldn't share their experience or knowledge when asked. I can appreciate that people build experience and expertise and are proud of it but I don't see why they need to protect it. Unless you think it is a competition of some sort I just can't see the harm in helping someone out. I am in no way at that level but I do well. On Friday I ran into a couple of guys on the Highwood who were new to the sport. The one guy asked me politely for help in choosing the best fly out of his box. I took a couple of minutes to show him what works for me and what he could try. I felt there was in now way any danger that helping him in this way would affect my fishing experience. I am not sure if he caught anything after that but I was happy to at least give him a bit of a start. Anyways, this is a subjective question and totally up to you. I personally have no problem in letting someone know what I am using and what tactic.

This is interesting and I have heard it as well. My view on this is that a lot of this comes from the way our city is set up. I lived in Ottawa for a number of years and I always thought it had more "culture" then here. I think the main reason for that is that the downtown and Market are vibrant and busy and people want to be there. There are great restaurants, amazing museums and galleries all centrally located with a lot of really great festivals. This makes it very accessible. I found it quite difficult to find that sort of thing here and the main reason is I don't want to go downtown. I also found that a number of these things are so dispersed throughout the city making it difficult to get to (again, just my view). Any time anyone has said the no culture thing to me it has always been around the arts and I have always responded that it is here, you just have to work a bit harder to find it.

Everyone has their opinion about Mac versus PC. I personally would never use a Mac. I do a fair bit of HD video editing, my wife does a ton of Photoshop work and we have had no issues with viruses. I have a Core I5 (when they were offering it in a quad core) and it is unreal. My wife used to use a Mac at work and actually said that our home PC was better. So my point is, we all have our opinions and this one in my opinion is really a choice in preference. If you are used to using a PC then stick with it. If you would like to make a change then do some reading (and don't depend on the opinions here as I haven't read a solid argument from either side here). As for the 64bit issue brought up. Unless you are looking to run something extremely old then I wouldn't worry about it. Most apps still run on the 64bit machine. I am also questioning if it is an actual 64bit issue and not native drivers and so forth in the OS. Same reason why some apps would run on XP and not on Vista. By the way, I think you would be getting a pretty decent machine for that price. It doesn't sound like your normal use would stretch the capabilities of that machine.

I have a Fat Cat and always take the air out. I don't use it enough to care about the hassles of inflating and deflating. I like the idea of using straps connected to it but for me I avoided that and bought a huge backpack that I can fit the tube in deflated. I then clip on my flippers and hand pump and I am good to go. It is a lot of fun but does kind of suck when you get blown across a lake and then have to kick your way back. Is pretty tiring.

The wife and I flew into Michelle about 5 years ago for our honeymoon. This was a one day fish and was guided but flown through Ice Field. I in no way feel that we cheapened the trip or lessened the experience by flying. Being a newlywed I needed to save my stamina for other things if you know what I mean. To each is own.