J'ai testé les bottes The North Face Jannu II GTX sur une piste dans les Adirondacks (Mont Marcy) et j'ai été content de leur performance en général. Cliquez le lien pour voir ce que j'en ai pensé, plus en détails.

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Cliquez ici pour le reste de la critique des The North Face Jannu II GTX

Ice climbing is a magnificent sport of its own right. But before becoming a standalone practice, it was first a discipline of mountaineering, that noble pursuit of higher grounds for its own sake. The alpine origins of ice climbing shine through every aspect of the sport, from the French, German and Italian words to the mountain names that gear manufacturers give their products. One cannot practice ice climbing for long without getting curious about its ancestor mountaineering. So what exactly is mountaineering?

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Mountaineering: find out more here

“Are you a downhill skier or a cross-country skier?”

I cringe at that question. It’s not that I don’t like cross-country skiing or skiing down hills, it’s just that in its oversimplicity, this question dismisses a broad range of exciting and worthwhile ski activities. There is more to the ski world than just cross-country and downhill. In fact today, hybridism has blurred the inter-genre spectrum and created so many new possibilities that it is a shame to limit ourselves only to the two most widespread style.

For the casual skier who wants to try something new, this can be confusing. It seems that the lines have all been blurred. Take the skis themselves. There once used to be virtually only two types of skis. Thin straight ones and thick straight ones. Both really long. Walk into to a ski shop today and you might find a near-perfect continuum of sizes and shapes running the entire geometric gamut with no distinctions delimiting where one ski style ends and another begins.

All this can make stepping out of the comfort zone of the familiar ski disciplines can be difficult if you are not familiar with the various styles and corresponding equipment. To help we classified the various styles of skiing into individual categories and discuss in this article their respective gear. If you want to diversify and try a new style but don’t know how, take this as a starting point. If you haven’t considered trying some new ski styles, think about it now. Trust me, it’s worth it.

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Find out about different styles of skiing

Cela faisait déjà six mois que le grand tremblement de terre de la région de Tohoku avait ravagé le Japon. On déplorait 15,000 morts, et des milliers d’autres manquaient encore à l’appel. La reconstruction, qui prendrait des années, ne faisait que commencer. Sur la côte, des communauté entière furent effacées, remplacées par débris et boue infecte sur une terre saturée qui plus jamais ne pourra supporter d’édifices.

À dix milles kilomètres d’Ishinomaki, plus personne ne parle de la catastrophe. Les journaux ont depuis longtemps porté leur attention ailleurs et même la centrale radioactive, sujet favori des médias, ne figure plus sur leurs pages. Il ne reste plus rien à dire, on est passé à autre chose.

Mais au pays du soleil levant, les Japonais, eux, n’ont pas oublié leurs prochains. Chaque semaine, des centaines d’autobus remplis de bénévoles quittent Tokyo pour la zone sinistrée. Les volontaires sont des gens ordinaires

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Japon, voyage et bénévolat: la suite

Ho Ho Ho! ‘Tis the season to get GIFTS! But as part of the unspoken convention, we have to give some to get some. Fair enough, let me help you with that.

This winter I decided to put together a list of some of the most useful gear I have, and package it as a suggested gift guide. Here you’ll find a number of items that surprisingly many people still don’t own. The gifts I suggest are all things that I didn’t appreciate before I got one, but that have since become a permanent resident of my backpack or car trunk. I also limited the list to only items that are fun to receive. You won’t find spare batteries, camp suds, or water repellent spray in this list, only cool toys.

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Patagonia, Mountain Hardwear, MSR and more: Jolly christmas gift ideas

It’s two a.m. when a man’s voice announces wakeup throughout the mountain hut. One by one, the sardine-squeezed sleeping bags begin to wiggle and unzip. Headlamps turn on and people start shuffling.

Outside, we hear the sound of wind and rain beating against the thin walls of the mountain hut. My neighbour is discouraged. She complains that she couldn’t sleep last night. The altitude air is too thin, the hut too cold and too noisy with snorers. A quick peak through the window reveals that the darkness outside is windy, rainy and freezing cold. There will be no sunrise, she decides, and she goes back to sleep vanquished.

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Read more about hiking up Mount Fuji

In most people’s minds, Japan invokes images of crowded supermetropolises bustling with jam-packed subways, neon-drenched electronic districts and futuristic travel systems. Indeed, Japan has a highly urbanized population and some of the world’s largest cities. To visit Japan during the August high season, when the whole country grinds to a halt for the annual Obon vacation, is to suffer the stifling heat of this country’s hottest month in the suffocating pressure of the summer crowds. Or so goes popular wisdom.

But as large as Japan’s 128 million strong population may be, most of it is concentrated in a small portion of the country, leaving vast mountainous areas wild and untouched by urbanism. A prime example is Yakushima.

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Yakushima: Read on

How do you get started in whitewater kayaking if you don’t have any friends to show you the ropes? It took me a while to figure that one out. But I did, and I will now share with you what I found.

I first decided that I wanted to try whitewater kayaking while rafting on the Rivière Rouge. Perhaps you’ve tried the rafting trips offered by the many companies on the Rivière Rouge (ABV, Nouveau Monde, H20, Propulsion, etc…). They’re great fun, and I highly recommend them, but the whole time we were rafting I was fixated by the safety guide following us in his kayak. Inches above the water line, this guy would dive head first in 2m standing waves, return in an eddy and surf the waves with his boat. He would perform flips of all kind, effortlessly burying nose and tail of his boat into the water as he pleased occasionally tipping completely over only to eskimo roll right back up as if nothing had happened. When the sun shined too strong, he’d wet his hair in an eskimo roll. When our raft got stuck on rocks, he’d surf a standing wave while waiting for us.

It. Looked. Awesome.

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Read more about white water kayaking with Jean-Yves

The Leap.

It’s a moment that everyone must go through at least once in their lives. You worked your way up to where you are with a clear objective in mind and you have bold plans. You’ve come a long way, and now it’s time to take a leap of faith. But suddenly, at the critical moment, you find yourself standing at the edge of an abyss, scared to move forward. What’s ahead looks risky. You look back at what’s behind and it seems so safe and familiar. You consider changing course, turning around and sticking to the comfortable life you led before.

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Read more about The Leap

Florida is a very popular winter destination for us cold-stricken Quebecers. By March, we’ve already had 4 months of winter and have at least one more month of it before it all melts away. It’s only natural that we seek to escape our frigid fate, if just for a week. And so we head en masse for the sun-drenched beaches of the sunshine state.

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Click here to find out more on kayaking in Florida

I’ve tested the TNF Jannu II GTX boots on an Adirondack trail (Mt Marcy) and was globally happy with their performance. Here’s what I found.

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Read on about The North Face Jannu II GTX

J'ai testé les bottes The North Face Jannu II GTX sur une piste dans les Adirondacks (Mont Marcy) et j'ai été content de leur performance en général. Cliquez le lien pour voir ce que j'en ai pensé, plus en détails.

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Cliquez ici pour le reste de la critique des The North Face Jannu II GTX

Le pire c'est que je ne voulais même pas ces souliers. Je voulais les The North Face Single-track, mais par accident, j'ai commandé les The North Face Alkaline GTX XCR. Je voulais les Singletrack parce qu'ils sont légers et se rangent facilement dans un sac à dos. C'est selon ces critères que j'évaluerai les Alkaline GTX XCR. Ainsi, mon erreur sera à votre avantage puisque je ne pourrai qu'être impartial!

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Cliquez ici afin de lire la critique des The North Face Alkaline GTX XCR

I didn’t want these shoes. I wanted the The North Face Singletracks, but I accidentally ordered the The North Face Alkaline GTX instead. I wanted the Singletracks because they are as light as shoes get and their soft uppers flatten easily, which make them ideal features for packing into a backpack, and light on your feet. But my "loss" is your gain. It has allowed me to be an impartial reviewer of the Alkaline.

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Click here to read The North Face Alkaline trail runner review

L’hiver achève et on aura bientôt plus de neige et de glace pour jouer dehors. Au moins peut-on se réjouir de la crue imminente qui ouvrira la saison des sports aquatiques! En attendant, c’est le moment idéal pour recueillir l’expérience qu’on a acquis cet hiver, en but d’en faire usage l’année prochaine.

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Cliquez ici pour voir les meilleurs coins où patiner à proximité de Montréal

Ah spring, the most beautiful time of the year. Flowers bloom, birds sing and the mini skirt makes its long-awaited reappearance. As nature slowly awakes from its slumber, so too must we come out of our collective hibernation. For months we’ve been spending most of our time indoors, avoiding the cold by running from home to car and car to work. Most of us have done no running, no cycling, or swimming at all, and we’ve restricted our daily life to the small range of activities that can be practiced indoors (plus skiing, of course). Just as nature sheds layers of snow to reveal its winter-ravaged surface, we will soon peel off our coats and sweaters and gaze down at the atrophied, bloated mess we’ve become over winter.

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Running: more info on how to get in shape here

Anyone who’s taken the ferry from Vancouver to Victoria remembers the awe-striking natural beauty of the Strait of Georgia which separates Vancouver Island from the mainland. Whales protruding from a deep blue main, densely forested islands plunging into the sea and bald eagles flying overhead. It is without a doubt one of the most beautiful public transportation routes you can take in Canada.

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Click here to see more of the BC's Channel Islands

If you’re an average North American, you’re probably planning on toughing out the winter by staying indoors as much as possible. Maybe you’re one of those who suffer the cold all week, living only for the few hours of weekend you spend on the slopes. But there is more to winter boarding and skiing and many adrenaline junkies are discovering new snow sports like ice climbing.

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Click here to read more about ice climbing with Jean-Yves

I hate to disappoint some of you, but I did not complete the trail naked, eating twigs and berries. Here's the gear I used for my West Coast Trail fun.

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Read on about the gear Jean-Yves used on the West Coast Trail

My Experience

My West Coast Trail (WCT) experience started with as a rather impulsive decision. I had been in Victoria to spend a week sailing in with my friend in the gulf islands (an amazing experience where wildlife –whales, dolphins, seals, otters, bald eagles, wild deer etc… met awe-strikingly beautiful coastal landscapes). Since we’d been anchoring in bays and camping on random islands, I had most of my lightweight gear with me, but I had given up my early hopes to hike the trail for want of time –I had only four days between the planned return from sailing and my flight home. But when we sailed in to Victoria a day early, I quickly did the math and decided that I could do the trail in three days (probably a foolish conclusion), bought a bus ticket and hopped on the trail the next morning.

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Read more about Jean-Yves and the West Coast Trail