Local Natives

Local Natives are a band from Los Angeles USA. They are an awesome band that i have been listening to for quite some time now. They are coming out with a new album called Hummingbird. They have released one song for download to their members called "Breakers". After hearing it for the first time today i can say its a pretty sweet song. There is a official music video on Youtube shown below. You can also preorder your copy of their new album from here.


Hope you enjoy,
Brad

Alan Watts

Here is a little video that I found and really made me think, Hope it makes you think as well.



Hope you enjoy, Brad

Camalot X4

I know that this is not new, but I am super excited to grab these cams. As many might know Black Diamond is coming out with a new Camalot, Camalot X4. They range from the C3 sizes 0-2 and up to the 0.75 size in the C4 cams. Since i am growing my rack I am pretty excited to see these come out and I am actually putting off buying more until these come out in the spring of 2013. Here is a little video that is pretty cool

Hope you enjoy, I will let you know how they are when I get them in the spring! Brad

Snow Guardians

Here is a trailer i found on a documentary on the search and rescue personal in the Rocky mountains. Pretty cool trailer and I will definitely be looking into the movie when it comes out. Hope you are all out enjoying the snow I know i should be... Happy holidays!





Cheers,
Brad

Banff Mountain Film Festival!!!!

This week in Kamloops the Banff Mountain Film Festival is taking place! I have never been to one before but I have heard a lot of really cool things about it. Here is the preview video for the festival.


The festival travels around to alot of cool places showing the videos throughout!! Hopefully you will be able to go in your community.

I recently bought some G3 Alpinist skins to go with my Armada JJ's so I am hoping that i will get to use them when I am done this semester. So far I am pretty happy with how the skins look and at how easy they were to cut to the size of the skis. Someone at G3 spent a lot of time and money to figure out a perfect system (and i think they found). Since its snowing quite a bit in Kamloops right now I am super excited to get out and ski!!!!

I Briefly talked about my Trip to Belize with my class in my last post. I registered in a field study for two weeks in Belize. I am heading down there with my class and visiting the University of Belize. Here we will learn about the Natural Resources in Belize and do some site seeing at the same time. I am super excited, I know just about everyone going on the trip so should be a good time.

Brad

P.S. Just a little side note I am participating in Movember so if anyone is feeling generous I am collecting money for donations at this site.

Barr Brothers Deacon's Son

 I just realized it has been a really long time since I have posted... Unfortunately i have been really busy with school and life. So i thought i would give a post to update things that are going on in my life. So far i have almost completed my first semester of my last year. I am really excited to be done. Once this year is done I will have a bachelors of Natural Resource Science. I was also accepted to BCIT for an Advanced Diploma program a little nervous about that and not 100% sure i am going to go but it will be a nice change. I heard about this song through my roommate, he was playing it on the stereo and i just had to know the name of the song. Hope you enjoy it as well, kinda a small band but definitely worth a listen. Barr Brothers "Deacon's Son.


Hope you have enjoyed,

Brad



If anyone is traveling to Barcelona anytime soon and need a place to stay there are lots of Barcelona host families that have rooms for very cheap. Living with these families you get a first hand experience of the culture and traditions of a Barcelona Family. One plus to this is the company that hosts this will resolve any problems that you might encounter during the stay. I would recommend this to anyone, I am actually heading to Belize with my School and we might stay with a host family to learn about the culture in Belize. Give it a try!!

Brohm Ridge

Last weekend my friend and I did some back country skiing at Brohm Ridge in Squamish British Columbia. I know it sounds really weird to say but we were skiing in July, and there was still quite a bit of snow. Me and my friend went up last yea on the August long weekend and there was more snow then which is crazy. We left fairly early Saturday so that we could make it back earlier. It took us about an hour to make it as far as we could in the truck. On the way up there are old gondola poles that were made in 1960 so that a ski resort could be put in. My Grandfather actually helped build the poles and the chalet at the top, so it was neat to see a little part of my grandfather again. Once we at the top we got out gear ready and headed out. We were able to ski in shorts and shirtless, which turned out to be a bad idea since we had forgotten sunscreen. It did not take us long to get used to our skis again and before we knew it we were at the Chalet at at the base of the ridge. We stopped there for just a second to grab some water and head out again. The views the whole way up were amazing and even though I have been there before I was still stunned by the views. We climbed until about 12ish, then we decided it would be a good idea to grab some lunch. Since we had only planned to head down at 1 we decided it would be the farthest we would go for this year. We had still made it farther then we did last year, and hopefully we will be able to go farther next year. We might actually go straight to the top of Mount Garibaldi at the end of the summer to finish off the summer. After a good lunch under some trees in the shade we headed down. I could feel my back and chest getting sore as well as a little dehydrated even though i had just about 2L of water. The way down was alot of fun, even though my leg had hurt from a soccer tackle the week before. Just before the truck there is a hill that we had to climb and when had gotten there we were both feeling pretty burnt and dehydrated so we both picked up the pace so we could get to the car and down a bunch of water we had there. All in all it was a pretty good get away from work and such and see my good friend. Below are some of the pictures we took when we were up there, hope you enjoy.

Current Swell

The other day I was looking on youtube for some new music, like I do on days that I have nothing to do, and I came across Current Swell. Current Swell is a band from Victoria BC, that play a different type of music from what i usually listen to, but after I heard "Cursed" I had to hear more. Since then I have listened to almost all their albums not and I really enjoy all the songs. Some of the songs have a slide guitar which I really enjoy listening to, it just has that different sound to it, have a listen you won't regret it.


After some research I found that this band won the Peak Performance project in 2011. This project is held on by a local radio station in Vancouver that gathers a bunch of up and coming bands and gets the public to vote on which one they think is the best one. The winner gets $100,500 to go towards their band. As well i found out that this band will be at Live at Squamish in August, and if i wasn't going to Metallica on the same day i would definitely be going to Live at Squamish to see this band.

Anyways hope you like the song, follow my blog for more good songs and posts about my adventures.

Brad



Now that football season is almost here there is no better time to get your tickets from Ticket america to see the some NCAA football clubs like Kansas State Wildcats Football (Tickets), Louisville Cardinals Football (Tickets), and LSU Tigers Football (Tickets). I really enjoy watching football and will take any chance I can to see it live.

Painted Bluffs

On wednesday me and my coworkers decided that we wanted to go on a trip to the Painted Bluffs provincial park. Usually this wouldn't be that big of a problem but the only way to get to this is by canoe. It took us the rest of the week but we were able to rent some canoes and find a truck to move the canoes.

If there is anyone who is thinking about doing this trip i would highly recommend it. There are some pretty amazing views and you get to canoe it, which is not something most people get to do every day.  We left around 9 in the morning on the Sunday thinking that the canoe portion would take  a long time. But once we got into the rhythm with the canoes we were across the lake in under 2 hours (Launched from Savona, 8km one way). When we got there there wasn't much of a beach due to the high waters we are experiencing in BC, but we were able to find a place to store the canoes, have lunch then head up the bluffs.

Once we hiked to the top of a little hill to the tracks we were amazed by the amazing sights to see. The picture below is just the beginning

We immediately started hiking up higher to get to the top of the bluffs. There is not really a trail anywhere so we started hiking up some spines (Which got a bit sketchy towards the top). The whole way up there was some pretty amazing colors. Once we got to the top we saw some awesome views of Kamloops Lake and of the painted bluffs. Here are some of the pictures that I took of the bluffs and the lake.

We happened to find a much nicer trail on the way down to the right, down a river. I would recommend taking that way up if you are a little squeamish with heights. All in all this was a pretty amazing trip and would recommend this trip to anyone who is looking for a good day trip.I hope i will be able to get some more trips like this in during the summer. Feel free to ask me any questions about the hike, i didn't have much time to actually write this post unfortunately. Well i am out, i hope you liking my posts and such let me know what you think Brad

Sasquatch 2012

Sorry everyone for not posting in a while I have been pretty busy with work and other stuff that I haven't found time to work on writing a decent blog post.As some of you might know last weekend was the big Sasquatch music festival at the Gorge amphitheater near George Washington. I had the chance to go for the first time this year and it was amazing, got to see some amazing bands, meet some really cool people and enjoy the sun. For those of you who have never been to the Gorge it is a pretty amazing place beautiful, the picture below shows a panorama view from one of my days there.

Unfortunately there was a lot of traffic on the way, it took us much longer than expected to get down there and we ended up missing most of the Friday shows. We did get to see pretty lights which was pretty sweet, i have been listening to his music for some time now and his concert blew me away. The picture below is the crowd before we had a chance to head down and it only grew as the show went on.

Since most of the shows didn't start till noon most of the morning is spent in the campsite. I was fine with this, everyone in the campsites were very friendly, and talkative which made the time go pretty fast. The band I was looking forward to on the Saturday was Jack White. He put on an great show i would definitely go see him again if he ever comes into town again. When he started playing Seven Nation Army the crowd lost it and went crazy! Some other good bands on Saturday were Said the Whale, Metric and the Shins.

Sunday Bon Iver played and i have never seen so many people just in awe of great artist. For most of the show people didn't talk, either stood or sat and enjoyed the music. Monday probably my favorite day, great bands (GROUPLOVE, Sheepdogs,clap you hands and say yeah, The Joy Formidible, Fiest, Silversun pickups, Tenacious D and Beck). We spent all day at the Main stage enjoying the music. All in all i really enjoyed the Festival and would recommend it to anyone who is thinking of going. As long as you don't mind staying in a tent, spending three dollars for a shower and dirty outhouses. You forget all of these things as soon as some music starts to play. I really hope i can go next year, we will see where time takes me!

I would love to hear about what bands you guys liked if you went.

Till Next time

Brad

PS. Just bought some metallica tickets for august 25 in Vancouver! so stoked!

Said the Whale

Sorry everyone for no being able to post in the past couple of weeks i have been really busy with school and everything. Here is a band that i really enjoy listening to, and they are coming to Sasquatch this year!! They are from Vancouver British Columbia which is pretty awesome! They just released a new album a couple weeks ago called Little Mountain, i haven't been able to stop listening to it, amazing.

Here is one of my favorite songs from their new album. The music video is a pretty neat concept, the whole world turning into a Iphone screen. You have to watch it to understand. Hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! Ticketamerica.com has jersey boys theater tickets and Lacrosse tickets as well as all rodeo tickets for all cities including venue maps and seating charts. lacrosse tickets rodeo tickets jersey boys tickets

2011 Climbing

I know 2011 has been over for a while now but I felt like sharing some Climbing pictures of me last season. This first one in Squamish, went out with a bunch of friends and just climbed nothing better than that

This next one just outside of kamloops close to Cache Creek BC. The area is called prickly Pear Canyon, not alot of climbing there but some pretty good ones. This route that i am just starting here is probably my favorite route that i did that year, definitely pushed me.

This picture was taken at the Squamish Mountain festival. I entered myself in the Flashed dyno competition, it was my thrid year in a row doing it. I always have fun doing them.

R.I.P CR Johnson

2 years today CR Johnson passed away while skiing at Squaw valley Ski resort. He was an icon to skiers throughout the world and will never be forgotten. RIP CR Johnson. You will be missed CR. For everyone going skiing today or this weekend just remember who helped shape the sport of skiing to what it is today.

Amazing

This is some of the best climbing i have seen in a long time! This climb (chaxi raxi) is rate 9b, which is a 5.15b for people who live in North america, is located in Oliana Spain. That is one of the hardest climbs i have ever heard about.I have also never heard of Adam Ondra but i am going to have to look out for him more often.

BD athlete Adam Ondra making the first ascent of Chaxi Raxi (9b) at Oliana, Spain from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.

I got this video from an article on the top ten ascents of 2011. http://rockandice.com/news/1732-top-10-ascents-of-2011?start=10. If you have time i would recommend looking through them all there is some pretty sweet stuff in the article. Only a couple more months until climbing season starts i can wait to get out to some of the local crags in kamloops, Squamish, and Chilliwack. Who knows maybe i will make a trip out to Kelowna for a weekend to climb.

Sasquatch Band of the Week

As everyone should know by now Sasquatch has uploaded the line up for this years show!! So many good bands are going to be there and i am very excited to go! One of the many bands i am looking forward to is Joy formidable. They are a Alternative rock band from Wales. They started in 2007, but they seem like they are just picking up some steam here in North America last year, better late then never though! Hope you enjoy this song it is one of there hits. Hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think? I will post a new Sasquatch band every week!

High Avalanche Warning

Due to the high avalanche warnings along the Coquihalla i am unfortunately not going to be going touring tomorrow. I was really looking forward to this touring trip. O well better safe than sorry. Hopefully the weather and conditions get better by the end of the week, if we are lucky we will be able to go then. Looks like i am going to be spending tomorrow doing school work down at the school... Since i am most likely not going to be posting anything tomorrow i will post some pictures now from one of my ski days last year at sun peaks. These pictures were taken by one of my friends Alix Turk, she is an Adventure tourism student at TRU as well.

This was probably the nicest day I have ever seen at Sun Peaks during the winter, it was so nice i was able to sun tan for a bit during lunch!

Sail

Another great song! Enjoy!

Worlds hardest Ice climb... Conqured!

This season Tim Emmett and Will Gadd conquered the massive Helmcken Falls in Wells Grey Provincial park in Clearwater BC. This is the only known ice climb in the world that is overhanging. They are not actually climbing on the falls they are climbing on the mist that is being blown onto the wall behind the falls. I have been to these falls during the fall, and they are some pretty amazing falls, if you ever get a chance to see them i would highly recommend it. I went to a talk by Tim Emmett last august where he showed the Squamish mountain festival visitors a sneak peak at this overhanging ice climb that he was working on. It was amazing just watching them prepare and get in the right mind set to even think about starting this kind of route. Since nothing like this has ever been done before, they were definitely walking into unknown territories. Props to them though being able to do such a hard climb. It took them 4 hour to complete the climb which is a long time to be siting on the wall freezing. Below is a picture that i got from a news article on the climb if you want you can get some more information from the site as well. (http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/daredevils-conquer-worlds-hardest-climb-at-wells-grey-provincial-park/story-e6frfq80-1226217061928) As well there is a picture of the falls that i took when i visited wells grey provincial park a couple years ago

Where is the sport of Ice climbing going to go next? I guess we will have to wait and see

"Denali Experiment"

This is an amazing video! Very little skiing in the movie but the narrative and the idea of hiking the Denali is amazing. I hope one day that i will be able to do something like this. Its amazing all the time it takes to plan and go through with an event like this! Beautiful scenery, amazing skiers, and a great story. Why wouldn't you want to watch it?

The Denali Experiment from renan ozturk on Vimeo.

Hope you all enjoy

Black Keys

Listen, you won't regret it!

Tragic News

Three skiers were killed in an avalanche in Stevens pass Washington on the weekend. My thoughts go out to there family's and friends. It should be a real eye opener for everyone who skies the in the back country... They were skiing not to far out of bound of the ski resort as well which makes it even more scary. Here is a link to powder magazine where they talk about it in more detail. It seems like they were very experience and had the right equipment as well. You never know when an avalanche is going to strike which makes it even scarier. My thoughts go out to them, RIP

Monday Music

While listening to music this morning i came across a song that i thought everyone should hear. Let me know what you think i am going to start posting music every Monday now hope you all enjoy it. I know its a lot different from the last song i posted by i have a wide range of music i like Let me know what you think

Living?

I was told once that "You need to live your life and stop messing around", this made me stop and think. What is living? In my opinion it is different for everyone. This person dropped out of school, to travel to Montreal and work for a year, after 4 months she couldn't find a job and now works in a small town gym. Since i was told this i have almost completed my schooling hiked Yak peak on the coquihalla summit, met some really amazing people, skied on August 1st in squamish, and a few other trips. I can't help but think... who is actually living, but that is up for interpretation for the person who's life it is. I know this all sounds pretty weird but i was just thinking about it today.

Anyways, i have a Ski touring trip planned for Zoa peak along the Coquihalla highway on Wednesday, I am really excited to go. Never been touring in the Coquihalla area but i have heard that it has some amazing skiing. Here is a picture of me on the top of Yak peak in September of last year, this peak is close to where i am going to be skiing.



This trip was a pretty amazing trip and would highly recommend it to any one who wants a good hike. I went with one of my friends from school we left on a Saturday. Since neither of us had actually done the hike before it was a bit of an adventure. On the way up i must have stepped on a hornets nest which caused them to attack my friend... she was stung 25 time all throughout her body. Once we were out of the trees the hike got pretty steep and was a bit of scramble in some areas but was alot of fun. After a while the trail opened up and it was the beautiful alpine meadow right to the top. On the way down it started to rain so it was a bit of a push to get down to the bottom. once we were down we were happy.

To me living is what ever makes you happy, and what i am doing with my life now makes me happy and that's all that should matter.

Hope you all have a good week.

Amazing day of skiing at Sunpeaks

Hello again,


Just got back from an amazing day of skiing, sun peaks got about 20 cm of fresh snow. Its wasn't that much snow but it was enough to make the day great. I decided to go touring to the very top of the mountain, it was very foggy and windy. Here is a picture of me at the top it was really nice, no studying, no homework, no one to bother me and the best park was the untracked powder awaited me.



I talked to some pretty cool people on the chair lift that i probably wouldn't have talked to if i was with my friends (don't get me wrong the more people to ski with the better). One guy was a forester from kamloops, we talked about my degree and whether i should take the GIS class diploma or not. He also mentioned that the forestry market is going up which is awesome as well so when i graduate i can get a job in the field!

One of my buddies who i have climbed with posted a video of a first ascent he did in squamish. I went out with him once to scrub some of the boulders around here, there is so much potential there. This one is called "for the birds" which is a highball problem in the area. Pretty sweet need to watch.



Time for me to start to clean the house now

see yea

Hello again

I know I said that I was done for the day but I wanted to share one of my favorite songs by Grouplove with you guys, hope you all enjoy



Let me know what you think, if you don't like it send me a fairly recent song that you think is better.

Anyways have a good night hope you all have fun on this friday night, I know I will

Beautiful day in Kamloops

Hey,

Its finally reading break! Now i have some time to catch up on some relaxing time, at least for the next couple of days. Unfortunately my brother left me with a dirty house for the break to go visit family so i am going to have to clean that up as well. I am actually going ski touring tomorrow tough up at sun peaks resort, i hope to get a couple good runs in if there is any snow left. I will take some pictures and post them after. I bought myself a nice pair of Armada jj skies the other day to bad i can't afford to get some new bindings. Its almost a tease just having them sit around in my room while i have been studying for my midterms. Probably wasn't the smartest idea buying them but o well it will be worth it.

I am starting to plan my summer out and so far i am going to be pretty busy. Hopefully i get a job at agriculture and agrifood canada again. It was a great job and i learned alot about Beneficial management practices (here is the site ). We worked on farms out in westwold to test to see how efficient they are with their Irrigation. I was amazed at all the equipment needed to run a farm. I think that will be my dream, is to own a operating farm.

As well i am hoping to go to Sasquatch this year! i am really excited to go to this because two of my favorite band are going as well as some pretty awesome others. I don't know if you guys have heard of either grouplove or Said the Whale but they are amazing and every one should look them up.

And like i said in my last post i am going on a 7 Day canoe trip to Bowran lakes in British columbia, should be a fun trip i am going with 3 really good friends who all get along really well, so i am hoping everything goes well.

Well i am going to head out, i will keep you posted with pictures and entries on how my adventures are going

Hope you enjoy,

Brad

Hello internet world,

I am pretty new to this whole blogging world and thought i would give it a try. My name is Brad white i am a 21 year old student at Thompson rivers university in Canada. I am currently in my 4 year of Natural resource science. I thought this would be a good way to get my thoughts out of my head. If you like what i do you can follow me on twitter if you really want @bradwhite123. I have very strong interests in music (if you have any good band let me know i am always up for some new music), Skiing, Rock Climbing, and hiking. I am actually going on a 7 day long canoe trip up in bowran lakes this summer i am pretty excited about.