Window to the soul of the earth.

Well we have had a few weeks off but we managed to get out this past weekend and do a hike into the Sooke hills. There was only 2 of us on this hike and it was a short hike only 8k. We did a simple hike up to the campgrounds and just hung out there for a bit and then returned back.

It was a pretty uneventful hike with the weather being pretty warm for the first week of February. With the weather so warm, it did make for some very green countryside with a few snowdrops poking their heads up though the ground. There has been very little rain for the past couple of weeks so as you can see by the pictures the river is running pretty low. With the river this low it get allot noisier than I described in the last post since more of the rock are uncovered. It is an interesting time to go out here every few weeks and see how the environment changes with the weather.

It did make for great refreshment since we both had been pretty busy lately and mostly stuck indoors. It made for some great bitch session to allow us to vent about the world and life in general. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is feeling stressed in their life to come on out a join us for the Hike Club.

We accept requests from others who would like to join us on a great hike and stress reducer. The only stipulation is that you must be male. Yes, this is a club only for men to enjoy, why well because we feel that men need a place to get away where they can act like men you know that simple male behaviour and some good male bonding.

We try to get out about every 2 weeks and go hiking sometimes every week sometimes every 3 week no real set schedule but we do get out regularly. If you are interested, and live in the Victoria BC area or are planning a visit here please email dragon@smartbomb.ca and I will contact you back.

Well until the next hike enjoy life.

We went down to the point to take some pictures this is a pretty big curve in the river you can see on the map. It was an amazing kind of day on the river since it had rained so hard in the previous days the river was running quite high. It is actually amazing how much quieter is along the trail when the river is running high. This was the second time we managed a hike shortly after heavy rains and I thought I had noticed it before. This time I was paying attention and noticed the quiet of the area. Of course the main reason it was so quiet was due to the rocks being covered by the water and not running over it. You can see from the pictures below that the banks and water fall where really swollen.

So how did our geocacheing go well, this was actually the first time we tried geocacheing and it went pretty well for the most part although either we where blind or the cache had been removed by someone. I was using the geocache program in my iPhone for tracking the cache and it led us to within 7 feet of the cache and we triangulated it by going past it and coming at it from different angles but where not fully able to find it. a bit of a bummer but as we practice this I am sure we will get better at finding them.

We visited the overlook near the ruins of that hotel that was to be built there about 20yrs ago. This area has a magnificent view of the fall shown below, it really quite amazing to see and when you hike around here on a regular basis you sometimes forget that such beauty exists. I highly recommend a visit to the falls area of the potholes and in general just do some hiking around.

After some discussions as was mentioned in my last post we have dubbed ourselves the “HikeClub” for men. Yes we are to be a men’s only organization and we are looking for any men in the #yyj Victoria BC area who would like to join us on our hiking adventures. If you’re interested you can contact me at dragon@smartbomb.ca the rules for joining us are simple whatever is discussed at hikeclub remains at hikeclub. Oh yea and bring your own water, snacks & pack, we hike anywhere from 8k to 20k depending on the day and how we feel. We go out about every two weeks at least twice a month on Saturdays, we start as soon as the park opens and the hike last from 3 to 7 h’s again depending on how far we go.

Great scenery you can see right from the campground area of the potholes.

It’s kind of like a great trip to a shrink but doesn’t cost as much and you get the great benefit of getting into shape at the same time.  I highly recommend this type of therapy for everyone out there, on top of getting into shape you also get to see great scenery like this. You can check out the map of todays hike from runkeeper here, or you can download the quick link to place it right into your Google Earth program here.   

Wide angle of the river rocks I will be watching and taking a shot of on each hike.

So back to the hike we left the parking lot at the usual spot and headed up to Leechtown. For today’s hike we only did 13.5k mostly because we had a nube with us today and we wanted to go easy on him. I did get a few decent pictures today and I now have a goal for some of the pictures I take. Like for instance this set of rocks on the river, if you look back at the other posts on our hikes you will see the same set of rocks covered in ice and once where the lower center rock is completely covered.   

So maybe for fun we will develop a complete set of rules for “Hike Club” so others can form their own, after all like I have said this can be the greatest therapy going and will cost you a lot less than a shrink.   

This is todays Complete Gallery of shots from the Sooke River Potholes along the Galloping Goose Trail..

Here is my story feel free to add you comments below on your particular story. As most of my friends know I have a great love/hate relationship with Apple products. The fact that I got an iPhone surprised several of them, but I did and for the most part I actually enjoy it and the apps I have added to it.

This is not a bitch about on how the phone works,  but there is a complaint or two about the place where I get the apps at. Yes, I mean the iTunes store. I have had my phone for a couple of months now and in the last month I wanted to install a couple of apps that would be useful to me and my business of web hosting and design. I actually held off on that because I knew I would be getting a couple of iTunes gift cards for Christmas.

Well yes, I got the cards for Christmas and proceeded to enter them into the iTunes store; they redeemed ok and credited my account fine. Then the fun started, well I went to spend them and found that it kept asking for a CC number. I just kind of sat there going WTF…. that makes no sense since I had just entered what I thought was the equal to money in my account and now I can’t seem to spend it.

First thing I did was re-read all the fine print on the card to make sure it was valid for apps. As far as I could tell on the card it fine print and large print says nothing about not being able to buy apps. I did send an email to Apple asking about this and received a response back within a few hours I was surprised at that since I did not expect a response  for a day or so.

So what did they have to say on it well let me quote the email

“I’m sorry, but you will not be able to purchase software, games, or applications with store credit or an iTunes Gift Card in Canada. You will need to add your credit card info back to your account to purchase purchase software, games and applications using a credit card. Your iTunes Gift Card balance can be applied towards purchases of all other types of content on the iTunes Store (music, movies, TV shows and audiobooks)
For more information, please consult the iTunes Terms of Sales for Canada: English: http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/ca/terms.html
Apple is very receptive to the comments of customers. If this is something you’d like changed please send your comment to our feedback page. I urge you to use the iTunes Feedback page to send in your comments: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html ”

This was not much of an answer for me so I did some binging about the internet and what did I discover? Well it seems I am not alone in this (not that I really thought I was alone in it). It seems for a while Apple was claiming to uphold some vague Canadian law about taxes and software.  Which you can find out about on these sites this is a great post from a guy who chased it down http://www.jimwhitelaw.com/2009/09/itunes-credit-in-canada.html these posts on the Apple forums where just the day before I had my issues http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2280052&tstart=360 and here http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2180915 and there where so many more (click here for the search I did) wish I had seen it before I actually entered the cards into my account now my only recourse is to wait and see if Apple can be convinced to change policy or buy music, movies or books.

Now the one thing that is quite stupid here is that while Apple is claiming to uphold some vague Canadian law or it is simply their policy, Microsoft does not seem to have any problems letting people pay for apps, games and software online with a gift card. I have in the recent past used Microsoft points cards gift cards to download extra content and games on our Xbox. So it would seem that this is actually some idiotic outdated policy that was based on hearsay and not properly researched by some staffer at Apple.

I say Apple you need to change this policy to allow a rather large market and growing for apps and software to be able to buy them using gift cards. Why because well not everyone has a CC and from your stated policy you do not accept the Vanilla MC and Visa this is from your site “PLEASE NOTE: We are unable to accept credit or debit cards issued by banks outside of Canada or prepaid gift cards issued by credit card companies.” At http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/ca/terms.html plus if you have childer in the teen years the last thing you want is your CC easily available for them to be buy loads of stuff,  since you can easily get lost in the app store (or maybe that’s what Apple wants).

If you would like to help change Apples mind on this crazy policy then visit them here and let them know what you think about it. The iTunes Feedback page to send in your comments: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html .

Thanks
John Overall
Fire Dragon Hosting www.firrdragonhosting.com

Sunrise in the Sooke Hills

Well now that all the past blog updates are done for our journey to being able to carry everything we need for lightweight camping it’s time to sum up our hikes. We finished up the year with one final hike today, it was a great hike although the coldest yet it seemed.

We made some excellent time up to Leechtown making the 8k hike in only 90min (must have been the cold spurred us to warm up), although it did take 2.5 hrs to get back. Not too many pictures today just a couple a great sunrise pictures on the hillside and some interesting frost on the ground.

We did over 16k today although the map shows that we teleported for about 5k. Seems I had paused the GPS program when we stopped in Leechtown for a midmorning snack and forgot to restart it. You can see the map of this hike here http://runkeeper.com/pub/act/zGEYR3CfperIRz4nUI0v/map as you can see we made it to Leechtown and then we suddenly appear 5k back down the trail.

We did actually go about 500m past Leechtown this time just so we can start to get the lay of the land and start to explore the Kapoor park and check things out.

This was a pretty brutal hike not real sure why it may have been the fast pace up there of the fact that I had upped the weight in my pack to 10 kilos plus an additional kilo since I had to carry all the water today. For the last 2k back I was using my walking staff as a cane to help me along. Although as I am entering this my knee is feeling pretty good and bouncing back quickly, it could possibly be related to this great supplement that I am taking not real sure yet but am monitoring to see.

Now that we are on a regular schedule for our hikes I think we might make our goal of doing a 2 day overnighter sometime in March of 2010. In which we will hike out into the hills and spend the night do some sightseeing maybe even a little gold panning in the open areas that are available and head back. I do look forward to not having pain at the end of a hike and just feeling good about the hike.

I do think for the next couple of hikes I will keep my pack at its current weight and simply work on my endurance since my shoulders where feeling it today. Here is some information about the Kapoor Regional Park that might interest you http://www.crd.bc.ca/parks/reserves/kapoor.htm it does give a bit more information about the park.

2nd Creek of ice feeding the Sooke River

This was a great hike saw some interesting things along the way took some great shots of Ice Rivers flowing down the hillside and some pretty interesting icicle formations, including some strange plantcicles.

I hadn’t been as far up to Leechtown in about 6 or 7 years now and it sure has changed, it is now a park as shown in one of the pictures below called Kapoor Regional Park operated by the CRD. This is pretty excellent thing to find out because this means that at least that section of land is protected and should stay a park indefinitely.

So now that we have made it to Leechtown now what? Well it is time to build up our strength some more, I did notice that my knee which has bothered me on at least the last 3 hikes out, was hurting again but again we added more distance to our hike and I added more weight to my pack so it was not unexpected that it hurt. The last hike again only took a couple days to feel better so its healing pretty fast which is a good thing.

Now about this time I have added a vitamin supplement to my diet if it works out I will talk more about it as I see how it does for my hikes. Hopefully by adding this it will help me to heal up faster and be able to increase my distance and weight carried.

By now a few of you have been reading these posts please leave me a comment or two about what you think of the pictures, the trail or anything you may know about Leechtown and the Galloping Goose Trail.