🏔️Snow trip to Sun Peaks, Canada

Fri 17th Jan - Thu 6th Feb

Despite this being a trip mostly focused on snow sport, I still wanted to do some painting and nature journalling when possible. The beautiful scenes of white-capped mountains, snowy trees and festive houses inspired me, even while snowboarding down the slopes tired me out.

The alpine environment

Travelling to another unfamiliar country is always a great opportunity to nature journal - everything seems so new and exciting. When we left Kamloops airport to drive to Sun Peaks we saw Canada geese and California Bighorn Sheep (both introduced I believe). After that the wildlife up in the mountains was more reclusive (understandably, considering it's winter).

On the ski lifts we spotted tracks that we were told could be deer, squirrels, snowshoe rabbits and lynx. We heard a local tell of seeing an ermine running across the road one evening. There wasn't much bird life either; ravens could be heard most of the time and once my mum and I saw a bird fly into the trees that we think was a Steller's jay because of its bright blue chest. However it looked like it had a yellow beak too, so could it have been a common starling?

There are also black bears living in the area (there were strict instructions everywhere to not leave rubbish outside). In fact there was even a sighting of the local black bear (so when we later went snow-shoeing we did the walk in the opposite direction 😆). It would likely have been grumpy at not being able to hibernate! Very unusual, and hopefully it got some rest again.

Nature journalling and painting

The only nature journalling I did on the trip was to actually catch up on pages from our recent camping trip to Dryandra and Barna Mia. On a day off from snowboarding I also painted a landscape from a photo taken at "Top of the World". There are more scenes like this I want to paint from photos, so maybe later I will practice some in my A4 sketchbook.

I'm also inspired by the decorations inside the Airbnb:

Snow-shoeing hike

On our second-last day we went on a snow-shoeing tour and this was another great opportunity to learn about the nature in British Columbia at the alpine level. I took some photos of the trees and pine nuts (spruce, alder, Lodgepole pine, Douglas firs and birch) to add to my nature journal later.

At one stage we stepped into a small clearing in the trees where birdfeeders had been set up. A couple of chickadees arrived but no cheeky squirrel that time. It was also lovely to see the number of dogs being walked by locals along the trails. We had some hot cider and biscuits before heading back. A magical winter wonderland walk! ❄️

Here is a page (done weeks later) referencing photos from the snowshoe hike: