Live: deep powder in Canada
By meteomorris on 12 January 2020 · 8
It is ON in Canada. While it is dry and mild in the Alps, British Columbia is getting hammered with dry cold powder. Storms found their way to the mountains and in Revelstoke they experience the 3rd best winter of the past 13 years. Since the start of the measurements this season, 636 cm of fresh snow has fallen already.
The result is that the snow cover is already there 330 cm thick an the end of the storm cycle is not yet in sight. At the same time we have preety mediocre conditions in the Alps and the long term is still very unclear and not without risks. Any new snow taht will fall in the near future will accumulate on a very old snow pack which will guarantee avalanche. Combine this with powder panic after a dry spell and you know that a nwe storm will certainly cause problems in the Alps.
Meanwhile, a group of friends is already en route in British Columbia and the images below say everything. It is deep, it is magic.
January 20th, Arjen, me and a large group of other riders leave for Canada for the ultimate road trip along the Powder Highway. We start by visting some ski resorts, and we will then make some stops at perhaps the most beautiful gems of BC. We will end the trip with 3.5 days of heliskiing in the largest area of CMH: Revelstoke.
One spot left for the ultimate trip
There is one spot left for this ultimate trip. You can choose to come with us for the entire trip or just enjoy the heli for a few days. Flights are competitively priced at this time via Air Canada and the snow is there, so why not joins us? You can find some details about this trip here. Do you have any questions? Do you want to know all the ins and outs? Do not hesitate to call directly with Cloud9 or to contact Arjen or me.
All photo's by: Justin Nan
Comments
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heinzmannaaron op 16 January 2020 · 08:31Wow, looks really nice!
Are you sailing over the ocean to get to Canada? -
Expertmeteomorris op 16 January 2020 · 08:53@heinzmannaaron thanks. Since 2 years I compensate every trip I do through https://co2.myclimate.org/de/offset_further_emissions...
This is a Swiss programme. They are trustworthy and are very transparent and verbal about the successes of the specific projects. The programm has a built-in calculator.
I even compensate my trips to the Alps for which I use my car or public transport.
I always double the outcome of the calculations and then pay to compensate my offset.
As long as governments are not charging a CO2 tax it is the least I can do to travel and enjoy my adventures carbon neutral.
What do you do to offset your carbon footprint? Maybe we can learn something about it. -
AdvancedNidhugg op 16 January 2020 · 22:57Hope you have a great trip!
But it is an important question. I compensate my and my familys total carbon footprint with the swedish organisation https://www.goclimateneutral.org/se/ . That is also an organisation that I know is serious, with competent people and good transparancy. But even so, I have reduced my flying a lot. We are now testing to go down to the alps from Sweden with a Tesla, to try a low carbon footprint way of traveling. But what I really would like to see are trains from northern to central Europe with sleeping carriages so you go to bed in Denmark/Northern Germany and wake up in Switzerland.
*message edited by Nidhugg op 16 Jan 2020 22:58 -
Expertmeteomorris op 17 January 2020 · 12:20@Nidhugg thanks! I agree with the trains. I love to travel with the train, you see the landscape changing and don't have the airport rush.
Looking forward to your experiences when traveling to the Alps with your tesla. Could you share the cons and pros with us after your trip? -
heinzmannaaron op 28 January 2020 · 09:53@heinzmannaaron thanks. Since 2 years I compensate every trip I do through https://co2.myclimate.org/de/offset_further_emissions...
This is a Swiss programme. They are trustworthy and are very transparent and verbal about the successes of the specific projects. The programm has a built-in calculator.
I even compensate my trips to the Alps for which I use my car or public transport.
I always double the outcome of the calculations and then pay to compensate my offset.
As long as governments are not charging a CO2 tax it is the least I can do to travel and enjoy my adventures carbon neutral.
What do you do to offset your carbon footprint? Maybe we can learn something about it.meteomorris op 16 Jan 2020 08:53
I appreciate your compensation! It is a good way to reduce your carbon footprint if you have to travel (doubling the compensation as you do it is even better 😉).
Still the CO2 compensation is quite tricky.
1. It is not easy to estimate the exact amount of carbon emissions you save by supporting a project over myclimate (or another company like that) - How conservative do this companies calculate?
2. The compensation only counts if the money from myclimate is the only possible way to realise the project. If they implement a project also without your money, the compensation over myclimate doesn't reduce the global carbon emissions.
Finally we have to be carbon neutral by 2050 if we want to reach the climate goals from paris to limit the global warming by 1.5 degree. At that point we can not compensate our emissions with funding some projects in developing countries anymore (at least not at the scale as we do it right now...)
So the most effective way to lower our carbon footprint ist to lower our demands and to think about what makes us really happy. I believe that everyone of us can find activities with low carbon emissions that are really fun as well.
I got lucky I live in Switzerland the mountains are my backyard. I don't have to travel for hours. But in sommer surfing is also a really nice thing to do. For me right now that is not an option, because I have to travel for hours (by car or plane) to reach some nice surfspots. So I don't do it.
Changing our behaviour and attitude is not easy and I am also struggling, believe me. But in my eyes that is one really important puzzle piece to solve this climate crisis (politics and the economy are of course also responsible to solve this!). -
AdvancedNidhugg op 12 February 2020 · 07:51@meteomorris
We ended up going to Northern Norway instead of the alps, but we still went in a Tesla and it is a drive of 1450 km, so I can give my impressions of a long drive in an electric car. There are differences between driving in northern Scandinavia compared to driving south through Europe, mainly that its colder (we had -32 C in one direction), its not only motorways (the allowed speed is lower), and the space between the superchargers is much longer, so you sometimes have to charge more often then you would have driving south (the electricity mix is also almost totally fossil free).
The Tesla was a model 3 with the big battery, so its supposed to reach about 500 km on one charge. With a fully loaded car (no ski-rack on the roof though) we reached between 300-400 km on every charge (but sometimes we had to stop more often because of lack of chargers). We could also see that when we tried driving faster, the range declined in a significant way (testing at 150 km/h we ended up with 2,6 kWh/10 km giving us a range of less then 300 km, at 120 we where at 2 kWh/10 km and a range of 350 km and at 90-100 km/h we where at 1.6kwh/10 km or a range of about 450+ km. When we had significant amount of snow on the road, or really low temperatures (as in -20 or lower), this range declined 10-20%. The recharge was about 20-30 min each time.
So our conclusion was that driving a long distance drive with a fully loaded electric car is a real option now. The Tesla passed the big stress test, the long drive from Narvik to Gällivare over the mountain pass of Riksgränsen and Abisko in gale force head winds and -32. The recharge time wasn't felt as a problem, once you stretched your legs, gone to the toilet, changed driver and bought a coffee, the car was recharged. The range, especially at motorways, still feels a bit short, I would have preferred to drive perhaps 1 hour longer then was possible now, but it wasn't felt as a big problem. The self driving was really nice for the hard driving hours in the middle of the night, and it made the driving calmer so it was easier to sleep for the passengers. And of course, the cost of electricity is much lower then the cost of gas.
All in all, I would say that driving to your next powder alert in an electric car is now absolutely an option, but before you won't notice any drawbacks (only plus) compared to a fossil car, the range would need to increase another 20-25%, but for now, that drawback is something I am ready to accept to travel with a smaller carbon footprint.
And the skiing in Narvik was epic! -
Expertmeteomorris op 12 February 2020 · 08:21@Nidhugg, thanks for sharing! Amazing that the electricity mix in Norway already is almost totally fossil free. In the Netherlands they are far behind. In 2013 an agreement was made between government and the industry. The goal was to go from 4% to 14% renewable energy in 2019. We didn't succeed. Only 11% is renewable right now and we need to pay a fine as a country since we didn't achieve our goals. We have 100.000 (heavy subsidized) electric cars on the road, but 89% of our electric power is coming from coal.
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AdvancedNidhugg op 12 February 2020 · 23:36The energy mix is actually even better in Sweden, who export non fossil electricity annually (Sweden import fossil energy from time to time, but export more non fossil electricity). This is achieved with nuclear and a lot of hydro power, and an increasing amount of wind and sun.