After work Rideau Canal skate

A nice warm afternoon for a skate but that should have told me that the ice conditions would be crap. There was the occasional stretch of decent ice but mostly it was try not to wipe out in the ruts and slush. That said, there was some nice lighting in the Patterson creek area from the sun low on the horizon.

Winter Duathlon

With the Winter Olympics about to start I got in the spirit by getting in a two sport day on Saturday.

Rideau Canal skate

First off it was the canal skate. While not a sanctioned event and with un-olympian conditions, I did enjoy the skate. Starting at Patterson creek I headed downtown before turning around and skating to Carleton U and then returning. The ice was not great and was bad, especially between the Bank street bridge and Dows lake as well as the last stretch down to the Rideau centre downtown. It always amazes me how it is 10 degrees colder there than the rest of the city, or perhaps it is just because I skate so fast :-)

Randomn snowshoe

After the skate I headed up Mountain road to do some exploring on snowshoes. I basically followed various tracks in the snow for an hour or so before hitting one of the parkways in Gatineau Park. While I did not end up getting to any sort of lookout I did enjoy the hike and tested out my new boots and some steep terrain where the shoes worked great.

Rideau canal skate

Instead of going for a ski today I headed down to the Rideau canal for a skate. It has been years since I laced em up on the canal. This is often true of tourist attractions in one's hometown. It was a great day for it with the sun out but a mighty cold wind. Yeah it was cold but warmer I'll bet than Winnipeg :-). The ice was pretty good although you could tell it was windy the last time they flooded it. The only section that was closed was from the Laurier bridge to the NAC and there were crews out on Dow's Lake removing the snow.

It was not too crowded for a Saturday morning and it was an great skate although I would dress warmer on the next occasion.