The Great Outdoors: Gunn Lake

I've almost forgotten how to create a blog post, it's been so long. Just to get Blogger loosened up and moving again, I'll share my weekend hiking experience.

I've hiked before, but never overnight. Never having to carry all my provisions on my back. Last weekend me and two friends decided to give it a try, and picked the Baldy Lake / Gunn Lake trail in Riding Mountain National Park as our testing ground.

Riding Mountain is a great place to try out back-country camping, for a few of reasons:

1. The trails are very clear and well marked. It is impossible to lose the trail. Perhaps after a few decades of federal funding cuts the trails may get to be more ragged, but as it is, if you lose your way in Riding Mountain then you shouldn't be allowed outside of your house without a tether or GPS chip embedded in your skull.

2. There is lots of wildlife. (For some people this may be a con rather than a pro ..)

3. Firewood. The campsites and well stocked with dry chopped firewood. This is a HUGE bonus.

The trail we picked was very easy to hike. Mostly flat and grassy with only a few muddy spots or steep areas where you have to watch your footing. The 16.5 km hike each way is supposed to take 4-5 hours depending on who you talk to, but we did it in slightly less. Still, it's a long walk with 25 lbs on your back.

It rained for about 4 hours Saturday afternoon/evening, making for a nice green (and wet) campsite:

The rain sucked, but when the clouds broke you could walk down to the lake to catch a nice sunset

The final 1.9 km Gunn Lake portion of the trail is the most interesting, with some hills and a nice view of a swampy valley ...

... but it was the longer Baldy Lake / Central part where we saw most of the wild life, including two bears, a moose, a deer, rabbits, this weaselly thing ...

... and these salamandery things ...

Isn't he just precious? I googled Manitoba salamanders, and figure this guy is an eastern tiger salamander, or some sub-species thereof.

You can get an idea from the weasel picture of what the trails are like. See what I mean? Even the most incompetent hiker can't lose their way here, unless maybe they do bat spins and forget what direction they're headed in.

Unfortunately it was too cloudy to witness the Perseids meteor shower, if we could even stay up that late after driving for 3.5 hours and hiking 16.5 k, but the sunset and the wildlife gave us enough highlights to make us not regret the pain we were in afterwards.

If you do this trail, I highly recommend stopping in at the Olha General Store for an ice cream bar on the way home.

Olha Manitoba. Population: three old people sitting in a general store. It is a very well-kept little hamlet, actually.

Would I do this trail again? Probably not. I would look for something maybe a little shorter but more scenic and technically challenging, but it was a nice trip. That pre-chopped firewood at the campsite sure makes back-country camping a lot less painful.

Murder and mayhem in my neighbourhood!

I had to laugh while reading Ruthless, violent merlins launch gory enterprise from neighbours' roof in the FYI section of the Saturday paper. It was so over the top I wasn't sure if the author was trying to be humourous or if they were really that appalled at the behaviour of these "blasted raptors", and how the "carnage" continued "day by disastrous day."

Reading the column was good fun, but I had completely forgotten about it until this evening. We have merlins in our neighbourhood, and as I was making dinner (mmmmm, ramen noodles ...) I saw one of them darting into the apple tree behind my house, chasing a black bird. I couldn't see the action, but there was rustling of leaves and weird bird-like noises -- I presume the sound a bird makes as it's screaming for help -- and then the merlin flew off empty handed.

I now have an injured blackbird in the apple tree in my back yard. I would take a picture of it for you, but it looks pretty much like any other blackbird.

Am I disgusted? No. I find it surprising that somebody would be upset or disgusted by a wild predator attacking a fellow animal. Particularly since the violent merlins in question are close relatives to the adored peregrine falcons that make the Radisson Hotel home every summer. Thousands of people watch the web cam as the doting parents tend to the chicks and feed them food. The food, of course, is not take-out from Marcellos or the Green Leaf Café, but birds and small animals that have been torn to shreds by the "powerful, scythe-like talons and razor-sharp beak" of the falcons. It's always a big moment when the young birds are able to tear apart their own prey. "I was thrilled to see the parents bring food to the babies - twice! They are getting more independent every day; shredding the prey on their own in some instances", notes one commenter on the CBC web site.

Merlin. source: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu

Story time: I had an opportunity to visit the famed San Diego Zoo a while back. My favourite part was not the zebras or rhinos or strange Asian mammals that I didn't know existed, but an incident that occurred in the bird enclosure. At one point there was a low-hanging branch reaching out across the walking path, and right in the middle of this branch was a spectacular bird from someplace like Madagascar. This amazing and exotic bird, with vibrant red, blue and yellow feathers, had in it's beak a hairless baby rodent, and it was repeatedly beating the rodent against the branch. Over and over again. Thunk, thunk, thunk. I'm sure the thing was dead, but it just kept pummeling the crap out of the animal anyhow. This amazing, exotic, colourful bird. I think my wife almost threw up, but I thought it was hilarious.

Maybe I'm not normal, but my fascination was not so much a matter of blood lust or murderous tendencies, but my interest in nature. I grew up in a small town surrounded by forest and have a great interest and appreciation for all wild things. You don't often get to experience a lot of the nitty-gritty happenings of wild animals, so when you do see nature at work it is quite interesting. That, plus the bizarre juxtaposition of this glorious bird doing something so brutal, provided endless amusement for me. Much like what watching Queen Elizabeth in a hot dog eating contest might do.

Seeing nature at work is even less common when you live in the city. I'm not talking about joggers getting chased by ravenous racoons. That's not normal. I'm not sure what's going on there. I'm talking about the normal predatory animal behaviour that has been making the world tick for eons. I think rather than complaining about the slaughter in her back yard, the lady who wrote the Backyard Bullies article should appreciate her front row seat to this amazing spectacle.

UPDATE
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I contacted the author of the Backyard Bullies article, who sent me this:

Bipole disorder: What's a caribou to do?

You might be surprised to learn that caribou is not just a delicious beverage. It is also a species of large deer-like creature that lives in the bushes of Manitoba. I have never seen a caribou, but I am inclined to believe they exist, and that we should protect them so that they continue to exist.

I was reminded of caribou while reading this ChrisD.ca post about Manitoba Wildlands and their concerns related to Bipole III:

Seven woodland caribou herds are located in the study area, with greater risks for four herds ... Manitoba Hydro was allowed to define the project area, study area, and local study area so it can pick information to use, including to self assess impacts..

Kind of funny that one of the people responsible for putting the beasts in harm's way has his mug on page 2 of the 2006 study that shows they're in harm's way. Also funny that the 2011 Caribou Action Plan only covers the two herds in Eastern Manitoba. One might get the impression that we only have those two herds!

So, let's go back to the 2005 report. It includes a map that shows where the all the various caribou herds were located at the time:

While herds move around, the general area in which they're located tends to stay the same. (There is a map from 5 years prior in the report to illustrate.) I took the map and added the "final preferred" route for the west-side bipole III line as best I could:


As you can see, the route definitely cuts through at least three caribou ranges (6, 7 & 10), and likely impacts herds 3, 8 & 9 as well as they move around. The seventh herd that Manitoba Wildlands is likely referring to is herd 2 (Kississing).

Of the six herds that are impacted by Bipole III, four are listed as a "conservation concern" -- one "high" and three "medium". In spite of the fact that there is a "high concern" herd in western Manitoba, the government's Action Plan only addresses the two eastern herds. Why is that? They certainly planned on studying western herds. From the 2006 report:

Such plans will be developed initially for the high risk ranges and will include population and habitat monitoring, research and communication. This plan development process is well underway for the Owl-Flintstone lakes range and has been initiated on the Atikaki-Berens, Naosap Lakes and Wabowden ranges.

What the hell happened to Naosap and Wabowden? I'm going out on a limb here and saying that with west-side Bipole III impacting both herds, they suddenly became unimportant to the government. If you have a better explanation, please speak up.

I don't have a good map of the proposed east side route because Hydro seems to have removed it from their web site, and it was never finalized anyhow, but it would look something like this:
The Atikaki-Berens range would be impacted, and possibly Owl-Flintstone as well, although this report says that the range historically never got any nearer to the lake. Atikaki-Berens has the largest range, extending right from Lake Winnipeg into Ontario. I'm not a caribou expert, but that suggests to me that perhaps the caribou have a little more leeway in avoiding the HVDC line than the western herds which are more constrained.

Jon Gerrard might tell you that the caribou could be avoided all together by sending Bipole III down the middle of Lake Winnipeg, and he might be right. In any event, the concern here is that the environmental impacts of the western Bipole III route are being glossed over. Let's be nice to our furry friends and make sure they're protected on BOTH sides of the province, so that maybe .. maybe .. one day I can see one in the wild. And shoot it. (Just kidding! Yeesh ..)

Updated: Caption Contest!

Caption contest Winners!

With a little bit of help from production floor staff at the Anybody Want A Peanut t-shirt factory, we have selected the winners:

Shaun Wheeler

Manitoba: Because we've all woken up in a strange place after a night of drinking

Runner up: Reed Soloman

The Manitoba Government's plan to kill Purple Loosestrife with a controlled release of Polar Bears got off to a rocky start today when instead of destroying the weed in a fit of rage, the Polar Bears frolicked and later attacked the cameraman in a drunken stupor. When asked how it will deal with the increased population of Polar Bears, conservation Minister Bill Blaikie replied "That's when we release the genetically engineered velociraptors. It's all a part of the circle of life.

Reed gets points for most elaborate caption, plus I like the part about the genetically engineered velociraptors. Congratulations, dudes. Your tickets will be in the mail as soon as I know where to send them.

We sincerely thank all people who entered. I think this was fun, and there were a lot of good entries. I will definitely do it again if somebody else sends me swag.

Thanks also to Eugene and Cineplex Movies.

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Welcome to the first ever Anybody Want A Peanut caption contest!

I have some summer movie / IMAX 3D passes to give away courtesy of the nice folks over at Cineplex Entertainment. Rather than randomly giving away tickets, I thought I should make you work for your movie, and I found my inspiration when I visited the Manitoba Government website http://www.gov.mb.ca/



I am sure that a full 0.000001% of Manitobans have seen a polar bear in a meadow of purple flowers, so it is certainly an appropriate picture to represent our province. As soon as I saw it I began thinking of captions, like:

WTF? Maybe I was supposed to turn left at York Factory

I think you can do better. Send me your captions, and I'll pick some winners and send them a couple tickets. You can leave your caption in the comments of this post or you can send me an email at cherenkov *at* live.com, but make sure I have some way to get a hold of you.

The contest closes on Tuesday, July 19 Wednesday, July 13. NOTE NEW DEADLINE!!

update: purely by accident, I stumbled upon the ad agency that created this web page: McKim Cringan George. They also did the new City of Regina logo that I mentioned a couple months ago, and a bunch of other stuff you would recognize, like the very cool Folk Festival posters.

The Falcon Cam is back, and other stuff...

The CBC falcon cam is back in business for 2010.


Watch that little cheating whore Princess raise her chicks with her new young stud Ivy, whom she hooked up with after dumping her long-time mate Trey.

Women. I tell ya ...

Fun fact about peregrine falcons: they can dive at their prey at over 200 mph, making them one of the fasted birds on the planet. They also have a taste for human flesh.

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Still on the subject of dangerous birds: what is the greatest threat to Winnipeggers? A: Geese.

"They can beat the hell out of you," warns animal behaviour expert Jim Shapiro, a professor at the University of Manitoba. He's taken a beating from a gosling's father during his research. "I was not paying attention and got hit in the groin."

I took Dr. Shapiro's course at the U of M (btw ... why is everybody named Shapiro a doctor?) and I am here to tell you that geese are not dangerous. Good thing too, because that would be pretty embarrassing:

person 1: Oh my God, you're missing half your face? What happened???

person 2: I got attacked by a goose.

person 1: A goose ...

person 2: Um ... I mean a legendary ninja warrior they call "The Goose" because of, ah, his freakishly long neck. Ya ... that's it.

Professor Shapiro used to bribe us with higher marks for helping him round up and weigh his angry and dirty geese on his goose farm south of Winnipeg. (A large Canada Goose weighs 15 lbs. Most are 11-13 if I remember correctly. Nice size for a family dinner.) A goose does not have teeth, and does not have sharp talons for ripping your ear off. All it can do is beat you with it's wings which probably hurts it more than it hurts you.

So, unless you pick up the goose and hold it in front of your groin, I don't think you have anything to worry about.

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Still on the subject of things without teeth ... have you seen the new Olympic mascots?


Hey kids! Come and play with the one-eyed monster! It won't bite ... I promise!

The Running of the sheep

Three men were seriously injured Sunday during the Running Of The Sheep in Madrid, Spain. The annual spectacle, which began in 1372 as a protest by farmers, has since turned into a week-end long festival and tourist attraction. However, many people question whether it is all worth while.

American college student, Daniel Rickards, had to have his left leg amputated after being trampled and then gnawed by ravenous sheep.

"I entered the Running Of The Sheep for the adrenaline rush, you know, I though it would be a blast. Now look at me. My dream of playing pro football is over."

Sadly, stories like Daniel's are all too common. Still, the organizers insist that the show must go on. "How can we turn our backs on 700 years of tradition?" they say.

How can we, indeed.