Waiting

Another storefront, opposite the vacant ones in yesterday's post. This one isn't vacant, though, just on a winter hiatus. A pottery shop and café will open in the spring. The building recently endured an extensive renovation and nice, historically-sensitive facade upgrade.

Empty

Main Street is really just a couple of blocks long. With two new stores being built, and another building being repurposed and turned into a third new store, you might think we were riding the wave of a boom in business. Alas, it isn't so. There are plenty of empty storefronts.

Winter forest

The deck

Even the tree-sheltered part of the deck is pretty deep in snow. The chairs wait patiently for spring.

Cedars and sky

Compost

Composting is a way of life here. The path to the compost pile at our place is long, deep and snowy. When the snow gets "over the boots" (i.e. more than knee deep) like this no one is keen on making the required deposits.

Sunlight. Trees.

The same trees as the other day, but different light. Whole different photo.

The new grocery store

Three months ago the loggers were falling trees here and clearing the site. For a small town where the pace of life (and work) is typically pretty slow, construction has proceeded at an impressive rate. 

Log cabin

This is the first small cabin built, around 1970, by a US Vietnam draft dodger who moved to the wilderness and taught himself log-home building.

Horned icicle

After 35 cm of snow yesterday, the temperature today hovers just below freezing.

Picture-postcard trees

This is what snow-clad evergreens look like in my imagination. And in real life today, as it happens. It's snowing again to beat the band.

Picturesque returns

Colder temperatures and fresh snow again. And briefly, but alas only briefly, blue sky.

Not picturesque in the slightest

Slides

It's the kind of weather that produces avalanches and slides: heavy snowfall, followed by warm temperatures. The highway beyond our house has been closed on and off for a few days now. This is a tiny slide, just a twenty metres in length, not reaching the roadway, near our house.

Melt and fog

Slush

Yes, roadways are a bit of a mess around here right now.

January thaw

The outdoor skating rink has seen better days. Today it is more like a very cold wading pool.

Snow-clearing

All through the night, all through the day and on through another dusk. As long as the snow keeps falling, the snow-clearing crew keeps working. This is the main highway through New Denver. Not much traffic at dusk on a snowy weekday afternoon.

Dark and light

There's so much dark in the winter. The shadows of the mountains are long and broad and deep. But the direct sunlight, where and when you can see it, is almost blindingly bright. For all but an hour a day we live in the dark at the bottom of this photo. But we can see that there's sun out there somewhere, striking the tops of the taller south-facing mountains.

Snow bump

It's a planter on a deck, actually.

Parking lot snow

At the Health Care Centre parking lot they've almost run out of space under the apple tree to push the snow into. Poor tree. 

Snow domes

The Domes look even more alien with a fresh coat of snow.

Keep bears wild

Keep bears wild. Use this bear-proof garbage bin.

The creek-side trail in the village also provides doggy-do bags.

Green spot

While on a hike around town I looked hard for a spot of green. This was all I found anywhere, and I was actually surprised to find it. The wood chips were mounded up around the base of the tree as mulch, and the wind off the lake had blown away the covering of snow.

The lake that never freezes

Even after days of sustained minus-ten weather, the lake is still liquid. It's up to 500 metres deep in places, and 30 km long. There's just too much water here for an ordinary Canadian winter to freeze it. Two or three times in the last century it has frozen. I don't suppose it will ever happen again.

Helipad

The emergency helipad next to the health care facility.

A shaft of sun

A shaft of late-afternoon sunlight catches a few nearer trees while the north-facing slope behind them remains in perpetual shadow.

Oxygen

Behind the community gym, adjacent to the health care facility.

Hospital with a view

The staff patio at the health care facility (lab, medical clinic, nursing home, emergency department, allied health professions). It's a tough view to beat.

More Kohan Lights

Cold and lonely