WHITNEY WINTERS: Thanksgiving

We had a fun family week-end here in Whistler, with a full house that included Char & Tor, who are both living in Vancouver. Charlotte has started her grad project in Conservation at UBC, researching how global climate change may affect wild salmon productivity. Toria (who is currently injured so off ski racing for the season) has just started first year in Kinesiology at Langara College.

While the focus for the week-end may have been the festive Turkey dinner, the traditional puzzle provided some in-between entertainment.

Notice how cousin Ben and nephew Mike are racing Char to get the most pieces into the puzzle?

A few of us drove to Pemberton valley for some fresh vegies and pumpkins from the farm. Here are cousin Jane and Irene in the raspberry patch.

The weather allowed for a hiking day too. With all the options around Whistler it was hard to decide, until we saw rain clouds and opted out of the higher alpine route.

So we drove up beyond the 2010 Olympic Park to Callaghan Lake...

I took our SPOT along so you can click the links below to see where we started the hike.

http://fms.ws/3eWFY/50.19289/\-123.18262
If the above link does not work, try this link:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=50.19289,-123.18262&ll=50.19289,-123.18262&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

Well, it's not like October in Quebec or Ontario, but we found some Autumn colours. We started out in a brief hail storm, wearing all our layers.

The trail winds through the woods, over some creeks, by numerous small ponds, and through alpine bogs....

We ate lots of fresh blueberries, but just looked at the mushrooms....

The trail wasn't steep so by the time we reached our destination (Conflict Lake) we had only gained about 150M.