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Easter Newsletter:
(Click here for a list of prior newsletters)
Canmore, Alberta April 9, 2004

Dear Friends and Clients:

It's been a very good winter here in Canada. Maybe the total snow pack is a bit below the longtime average, but a well settled base and mid-pack made for good stability most of the season and there was no repeat of catastrophic avalanche events like we had in our backyard last year. It was also an excellent ice climbing season with lots of lines showing, that had never formed before. I managed to get out with my old climbing buddy Bernd ("The Deuter Guy") and do some of the hard classics like Polar Circus and the Weeping Pillar, both climbs being located along the Icefield Parkway. Very popular were our ice climbing courses, that we ran for the first year. Thanks particularly to our friend and fellow guide Brian Webster, who did a fair bit of guiding and instructing with us this winter.

Now Spring has sprung here in Canmore with yet another high pressure ridge settling in with warm temps during the day and a good freeze at night. I'll be off Sunday for a 5 day hut traverse in the Banff Park and a last week of heliskiing for CMH afterwards. Summer business is picking up with the interest being very strong for our Dolomite trips this year. While the purchasing power of the US$ for Europe travel has been low for the last two years and is only lately picking up again, I just realized the other day that the price for our 13 day Cortina Ferrata trip has not changed for 5 years! So much for the general notion of Europe being too expensive.......

For spring, we've decided to forego our usual trip down south to Colorado and rather do a road trip up here in Western Canada in order to visit friends and go see places and climbing areas we haven't been to. It's been 4 years in Canada for us now and we really haven't seen much beyond the National Parks in front of our doorway.

Below is also a recent shot of Max, who is growing like crazy and at 21 months, is talking non-stop, using about 70% English and 30% German, which is an adequate reflection of the time that I spent at home this winter.

We've been announcing its arrival for a while - and finally we have managed to post it on the web: TAAA--DAAAA!! Our Stubai Hut Trek with Glaciated Peak Ascents in the Austrian Alps. I intend to guide the September departure date myself. It will take me back to historical grounds of my early days of mountaineering, when at the age of 14! my friends and I got into an avalanche trying to climb the Schrankogel (3450 meters in winter. While some of my friends got seriously injured, fortunately we all got away alive to tell the story and call it a leaning experience! I've been back many times since and enjoy very much the Austrian hospitality and the tremendous scenery along the divide of the Alps and the border to Italy.

Cheers from Canmore and Happy Easter!

Jorg, Heather and Max

PS: Some snapshots of the winter season:

CMH Heli-Skiing in the Monashees with the Arrow Lake in the back	Bernd Kullmann on the Right Pillar of Canada's very own Weeping Wall
Bernd on the last pitch of Polar Circus	The MAX

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Prior Newsletters:
Newsletter @ November 21, 2002
Newsletter @ October 2001
Newsletter @ February 2001
Newsletter @ December 2000

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