Life update: Squamish, climbing, skiing…

In last update, I was reflecting on how I didn’t like that the content of the now page was ephemeral. So I moved it to a normal blog post, a bit like a year in review post except it doesn’t have to be about a particular year, but just some ad hoc update.

Moved to Squamish

In November 2023, I moved from Montreal to Squamish in western Canada, British Columbia.

Squamish is a relatively small town (25,000 people), 1 hour drive north of Vancouver. It’s in the middle of mountains and that’s why I’m here.

After 8 years in Montreal, in flat, flat Quebec, it was time for me to move back to the mountains. While the BC mountains are 8,000 km away from the ones I grew up in (French Alps), it instantly felt like home.

I packed a U-Haul U-Box container from Montreal and had it shipped to Vancouver. Took approximately 2 weeks, not too bad. Then rented a van to move my stuff back home. Experience was flawless, and hardly beatable for the price.

I didn’t bring any furniture, but it allowed me to keep my guitars and vinyls collection and other emotional items, as well as all my sport gear (including my road bike), tools, kitchen stuff and so on, so I didn’t have to start from scratch all over again. It’s good not having to buy a screwdriver, can opener and all those small things you think about only when you need them.

Despite being small, the place I moved in has quite a nice view. Also bought a car for the first time since I’m in Canada. Quite necessary since there’s no carsharing option in Squamish.

Overall, it’s a perfect base camp for rock climbing, mountain and gravel biking, hiking, trail running and skiing (resort and backcountry). That’s for the sports I’m doing, but there’s even more to this place!

Climbed in Red Rocks, Nevada

With a couple of friends, spent two weeks in Las Vegas to go climb in the Red Rocks canyon. This was an epic trip, and had fantastic climbing, bouldering and hiking. (Last picture was during a day trip to Zion.)

Scarface

A month before moving to Squamish, I crashed on my bike while commuting. A combination of tires being too old, low pressure, being on gravel, going fast, and a small bump, resulted in blowing the front tire, which somehow escalated into dislodging the front wheel.

It felt like the ground vanishing under me (super weird feeling), and a fraction of a second later I was on the floor.

Cracked my helmet (no brain damage thankfully), teared open my face in a major way along the line of my jaw, and “road rash” all over my arms and hands. Had to get stitches on my face. Wound got infected after that (if the wound smells funky, take antibiotics, lesson learnt). Left me with a fat scar on my face.

It’s mostly just cosmetic as far as I can tell. Life goes on.

Skiing

Ski season’s on! Apparently not the best season here in BC in terms of snow, but still orders of magnitude better than what I was used to around Montreal. Can’t complain. Got big mountains and more powder than I’ve ever seen even on “bad” days.

Did some backcountry early season when avalanche risk was essentially non-existent. Moved to the resort (Whistler) as snow piled up and avalanche risk increased. Bought a beacon, shovel and probe and gonna do an avalanche training soon so I can go back to the backcountry safely.

The video above is on the main channel, but I’ve started using my secondary channel a bit more to publish skiing videos! I didn’t want to flood the main channel with skiing stuff since it’s mostly focused on music in the first place. Go subscribe!