Windy At The Gap

[bigalcal]

Here's a photo of how windy the Gap was last weekend!!

[Hawgstoppah]

LOL. wow...!!

[beedhead]

Holy Shmooly, That place is on the best part windy, bin there a few times when its absolute crazy, But not that crazy!

[trailhead]

Just to show how variable the weather is, today it was dead calm in that very spot. Oh by the way are there any fish there? I have tried that spot on more than a few occasions and have yet to even have a sniff.

[hiketofish]

I was in that area or at least south of it last weekend as well. The wind is what characterized the entire trip. First we were in Waterton, I was with my kids and we were on this ridge trying to get down to some lakes. Yes they are wearing lifejackets....but kids don't care and it kept them warmer in a ferocious wind. We were going to be doing some pack rafting... A few members of our backpacking group couldn't tolerate the wind so we made the tough decision of back tracking.

 

So the next day we went to the Castle river area and I decided to zip the kids up Barnaby ridge. Again the wind was howling. If you turned into the wind, you were almost blown over. I actually had my glasses blow off twice. This is the upper South Fork lake.

 

So someone had decided to make two lean-to type shelters out of spruce bows up there. I'm not sure subalpine areas are the place to be cutting down 50 or so spruce branches but my two kids saw these branches and starting building their own fort. Kind of like a tree igloo I suppose. The branches were cut and just left lying around so they kept busy building. They really wanted to sleep in it and I thought why not. So they popped their sleeping bags in, no thermarests and spent the night.

That night (Saturday night), the wind howled something terrible. My three man tent, now reduced to a lonely one man tent flapped and rattled all night long and I had the worst night out in a long time. Maybe 2 hours of sleep. Even the tent floor beside me was flapping up and down as the wind pulled up all of the tent pegs during the night. I'm sure if I wasn't in the tent, it would have blown away. I get up to check on the boys and they are just waking up telling me they got the best sleep ever... I said what about the wind? Didn't it keep you up. No they were sleeping from just after 9:00 PM till 7:30 AM. We had two other tents with us and they also had miserable nights with loud, shaking tents. Who knew? By the way the wind made for lousy fishing up there, although the kids had a great trip. My youngest even said he was glad we had to turn around the first day, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to spend the night out in their own shelter.

 

 

 

 

 

[BBBrownie]

Great story HTF, sounds like your boys are hardy, good for them!

[bigalcal]

Just to show how variable the weather is, today it was dead calm in that very spot. Oh by the way are there any fish there? I have tried that spot on more than a few occasions and have yet to even have a sniff.

 

Dunno.....never fish there. i see a lot of people trying tho'!!

[Giovanne]

Great story hiketofish!

 

 

[whataniceguy]

My kids can suck the fun out of anything, I wouldnt even entertain the thought of doing something like this with them. What a couple of troopers man, must be nice, I can only wish lol!!!

[Taco]

Cool kids Hike, you got them out there instead of lookin' at the rocks through a windshield

 

 

And yeah the fall wind can blow in the mountains, I've watched it take shale off the ridge tops and blow boxcars off the tracks

[beedhead]

Good Stuff, Hike To...Good on ya....My Oldest daughter likes to do that kinda stuff, Have had her to a couple Alpine Lakes, A little bit of complaining on the way up, But the looks on her face when we get there, is priceless....My youngest daughter would never think of it, well she says she wants to, but I know different, maybe when shes a bit older...

 

Cheers...Jeff..

[LynnF]

God...I'd kill just to get a kid in the boat with Gameboy in tow, junk food en masse and not hear at least 6 complaints an hour. And you get the most amazing adventure kids in the world. Outstanding....feel free to send them my way anytime!!!

[hiketofish]

My kids do get their electronic fix while driving. They don't seem too keen to play the license plate game like we did as kids or to count power poles. The key to hiking with kids is to take a long piece of surgical tubing, attach to the back of your pack and pull them up the steep hills. Don't let them drift back, pull them up, they never get tired on down hills but ups can finish them. I do admit to packing lots of candy as bribes. There was a big up to Lineham ridge in the first picture. They have contests to see how long they can keep a candy from melting away in their mouth. One bag of skittles is easily worth 10 km of hiking. This was their third backpacking trip of the summer, so they are getting used to it, and even look forward to it.

 

 

 

God...I'd kill just to get a kid in the boat with Gameboy in tow, junk food en masse and not hear at least 6 complaints an hour. And you get the most amazing adventure kids in the world. Outstanding....feel free to send them my way anytime!!!