Dawn patrol

With the snow covering Vancouver, Anne proposed the idea of going skiing before work. The idea sounded a bit batty to me at first. Up waaay before dawn, skinning up in the dark, some great turns as the sun peeks over the mountains, and back in town in time for work. But heck, I'll try anything once, twice if it was disgusting the first time.
Yesterday proved to be the perfect test day. A light 10cm sprinkling of snow overnight, and the company Christmas party not starting till 11am gave plenty of leeway to be late. Sadly Anne had to be at work an hour before sunrise, so it was just Christine and I out for a ski.
We were astonished to discover ourselves packed and in the car by 6:10am. The Seymour parking was icily cold, but had 2 other carloads of crazies putting on skins. Soon we were on our way enjoying a beautiful dawn.
The skiing turned out to be a bit crusty, but we didn't much care. Great times were had by all.

Last Tuesday's massive cold rain storm convinced us that ski season had begun. Finally, there must be snow in the mountains. Bright and early Saturday morning, we headed up to Brew hut for some early season skiing.

Coastal mountains groaning under the heavy snow load

The snowpack looked a little thin, but luckily that meant Hey Steve! was able to make it 7 kilometers up the logging road. But perhaps I shouldn't have pushed Steve so hard. After all, there was a lot more snow on the road than when we headed up through the trees.

Obstacle free uptracks

Despite occasional stumps on the trail, fights with blueberry bushes and devil's club, spirits remained high as we got closer to Brew hut.



It started to get a little cold as we neared the col where Brew hut is located. The new hut is much easier to find than the legendarily buried Brew 1, but there was still some concern as neither Anne nor I had ever been to Brew before. The winds were very high near the col, and the temperature was plummeting rapidly. If I had read the alpine forecast, I wouldn't have been surprised by the daytime lows of -20, but I hadn't.



Brew hut was a glorious sight to behold. We tumbled through the door and delighted in the wind-free warmth of the hut. A thermometer left on the table of the toasty hut read -12. I couldn't believe it. It seemed so warm in there. But a second thermometer confirmed the reading. Yikes! After a prolonged battle, we finally got the woodstove chimney to draw, the smoke cleared, and we enjoyed some fireside warmth.

We enjoyed the company of fabulous crew of 9 New Wave VOC members. It was terrific to see the VOC traditions of relentless enthusiasm, home-made gear, nudity, and living off cheese, continuing strong.




After the coldest night I've ever spent indoors, the dawn presented a glorious sunny day of wind-scoured slopes waiting to be skied. Luckily on our retreat we found a small but delightful pocket of wind-deposited snow. Glorious powder skiing in early December during the driest fall season in memory. The turns were so good we went back for another run. Anne even went back for a third.

Happy tracks!

Some fancy skiing through incompletely filled-in boulder fields, stumps, roots, and shrubs, followed by a little hiking with the skis on the back, found us safely back at the car. I even christened the new skis with a long but fortunately shallow scratch. A brilliant frost-bite free time was had by all.

How much fun is watching a marathon?

Greetings legions of loyal blog readers. It has been a very long time since my last post, though the observant among you may have noticed a rare 5 star book appeared on my bookshelf.

Today I am reporting on the great rock and roll marathon. For many weeks Kathryn pestered me into coming along to watch her run the Seattle marathon. I wasn't immediately convinced. What with it being Thanksgiving in America, the long border lineups seemed to imply a weekend of 10 hours of driving, wandering around an urban centre, and then watching a marathon. In other words, not fun. But somehow I changed my mind and joined in, and boy am I ever glad I did. The weekend was more fun than a barrel of rabbits.

The rabbits: Me, Christian, Christine, Kathryn, and Mark

The lineup at the border was atrocious as predicted. Seeing the lineup at the Peace Arch and realising it would take at least 2 hours to get through, I attempted to turn around and head to the alternate crossing. Unfortunately, a series of wrong turns left me trapped in the Duty Free parking lot facing severe tire damage if I did anything but head into the border line.

And so it was that we partied in the car in line at the border; trading stories, listening to music, and eating ferrero rocher. Perhaps we had the music up too loud, for when the line lurched forward, I found the car battery completely flat. Luckily we rolled down the hill, so as not to lose our place in line, and managed to jump-start the car in under 2 minutes flat. Thankyou Eddy for selling me a car complete with jumper cables. Unfortunately, after we got through the border half an hour later, we had completely forgotten about the flat battery incident. We stopped at a gas station 1/4km on the other side of the border, filled up the car and found ourselves unable to start the car again. Luckily, another kind family offered us a boost. More thankyou ferrero rochers were distributed.

Well, enough of this chronological story telling. Let's skip ahead to the good stuff (and coincidentally, skip right past that incident of me driving down the left lane of a road, that was not, as it turned out, a one-way street.)

Saturday's highlight was the experience music project , a rock and roll museum as it were. After a quick glance at the museum exhibits, we headed upstairs to play around in the sound lab, which included incredible practice rooms hooked up with drum kits, electric guitars, basses, acoustic guitars, pianos, and maracas.



Turns out Christian was a very capable drummer, which made the whole jam session come alive. Our rendition of wild thing was inspired by John Lennon's historic thrashed vocals rendition of twist and shout blended with the magical Pixies cover of wild honey pie. We had so much fun you couldn't wipe the smile off our faces with a Swiffer. I for one can't wait to play with a live drummer again. Perhaps it's time to search for studio space in Vancouver.

Once again, we'll skip ahead past a highly unusual pasta dinner at a posh Italian restaurant that strangely sported a cabaret of show tunes and voluptuous stripping, to the marathon itself. At a bright and early 6am, we all went to see Mark off for the start of his half-marathon, and give a good cheer to Kathryn and Christian who would be departing 45 minutes later for the full marathon. My original intention was to cut Mark off at the 8 mile mark and run the last 5 miles with him. Unfortunately, I got extremely lost wandering through Seattle, and when I finally found the marathon course again, he was long gone. I'm not sure I would have caught up to him anyway, as he finished his 20km in a blistering 2 hours 14 minutes. Instead, I waited on the side of the road for a few hours, till Kathryn wandered by.

Now I had been hoping that Kathryn would limp up, with severe cramps, having hit the wall, and I could encourage her to push on and finish the marathon. To my horror, she rounded the corner at high speed, glowing with the runner's high. I quickly tried to ramp up my speed, and catch up with her. Now, as some of you may know, before Sunday, I had never run further than 1 continuous kilometer in my life, so I was somewhat dubious of Kathryn's plan that I would run beside her telling stories for 8 km to distract her from her tiredness. But Kathryn's incredible surge of energy was very infectious. We were passing people like they were standing still which made the running very fun. To my surprise, I stuck with her to the bitter end. Kathryn polished off the marathon in a swift 4 hours 9 minutes.

No they're not chocolate. Those marathon medals are solid gold.

You can see the 4 star Seattle Pacific hotel where we stayed in the background of the photo. And we finally kissed Christian's head for luck, and good times were had by all.

Desolation Sound

Continued unemployment has given me a great opportunity to spend 4 days sea kayaking around Desolation Sound (map, PDF 202kb). Christine, Nancy, and I rented a singled and a double kayak and met up with Rob, Genevieve, and Anouk in Okeover Inlet.

Christine and I started in the double kayak, known affectionately in the guiding community as "the divorce boat." As you can see, we evaded the curse of poor communication, shared decision making, and control issues.


Sea kayaks take almost the same effort to paddle no matter how much weight you put in them. I was surprised at the first meal when Genevieve pulled out mustard, dijon mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, salsa, corn chips, avocado, cucumber, bagels, cream cheese, and sweet chili sauce. I suddenly wished I had brought more than cheese and crackers for my lunch. Strawberry rhubarb pie is just one of many luxury items you can cram in to a kayak.

Our main campsite was incredible. We had an entire Curme island all to ourselves. I'm sure in July or August there would have been 6 other parties there, but in September, the entire 2 acre plot was ours alone.



The marine life was abundant with large flocks of common mergansers, seals, purple and orange starfish, a distantly seen finned mammal, dinoflagellates, and plenty of jelly fish, including this monster (about 1 foot across)

Finally there was plenty of paddling amidst beautiful arbutus lined coastal shores.

Post party bimble

After a night of partying into the wee hours of the morning, we set off to sweat out the toxins. Not wishing to do anything too arduous, I proposed heading up to Cypress mountain for a short hike. Unfortunately, the hike I was thinking of was actually at Mount Seymour.

So we wandered about, hugging water reservoirs and meandering through the woods. After a bit, we turned around and retraced our steps in search of lake. We were rewarded with late afternoon sun, and a great show put on by the salamanders in the alpine lake. I think they may have been Dicamptodon tenebrosus, the Coastal Giant Salamander, but I couldn't really say for sure.

Colliseum Mountain

Just 15 minutes from my house, the hike up to Colliseum mountain makes an impressive escape from the city. The hike starts by cycling down the paved, silky pavement, of the car-free Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve. This fast 9km start takes you deep into the Seymour valley. Then it's a classic coastal grind straight up 800m through a fantastically steep, brooding, softly hemlock matted, old-growth forest, to a fabulous lookout over the city. A quick dip across a col takes you on to Colliseum mountain, where you can wander about on sprawling granite slabs. Baking in the mid-afternoon sun and seeking to evade some surpise September mosquito swarms, we took a walk down to Cornett lake for a very short swim. Lingering in the sunshine, we didn't get back to the biking trial till dusk, where we were rewarded with a great view of a Barred owl (easily identified by it's liquid brown eyes. All other owls in North America, aside from the distinct Barn owl, and the famously endangered Spotted owl, have yellow eyes. No I didn't buy a telephoto lens. We were that close.)

Jasper to Nelson by bicycle

The great Rockies ride went from Jasper to Nelson via Lake Louise, Castle Mountain, Radium hot springs, Invermere, Kimberely, and Gray creek.
The weather varied from 35 degrees and scorching sun, to 2 degrees and teeming rain and hail. Good times were had by all.

Bike breakdowns
Me, riding the 2004 Rocky Mountain metro:

• 5 flats
• 1 destroyed tire
• 1 annihilated freewheel
• 1 broken spoke

Anne, riding her 1993 Rocky Mountain hammer:

• none

Luckily all major bike breakdowns occurred within a few km of a bike shop. Incredibly, when my freewheel broke and there was no pedaling power to my wheels, I was able to coast all the way to a bike shop at the bottom of a hill.

The only low point to the trip was the Greyhound bus ride from Vancouver to Jasper. As of August 1st, 2008 Greyhound has instituted a new psychotic 1 bag per passenger rule. And your bike must be in a box. Seriously. They'll eat you alive if you don't follow their rules. I even wrote a song about it.

Cranky Greyhound Employee Blues.mp3

Magpie moth

Well, it would seem like many bloggers, my posts are unreliable and sparse. Over a month of beautiful summer adventuring and not a post to be found. I'll try and take some photos next week. In the meantime, I'll post my other nighttime visitor, Eurrhypara hortulata the small magpie moth.

Dead things

Having thoroughly enjoyed the dead things series on NatureNerding, I thought I'd contribute a picture or two of my own. At first I thought this was just a fallen whorl of leaves from a houseplant in the bathroom, but a close inspection shows it to be a rather splendid moth. Any species suggestions from you nature nerds out there?

West Coast Trail

I hiked the West Coast trail. It was 7 days of beautiful sunshine, guitar, beach walking, and outstanding food. I can't believe I forgot to take pictures of the feasts; tofu tetrazzini, beef stew with couscous, Thai peanut chicken stir fry, lasagna, stew with mashed potatoes, and spicy chicken pasta. The one pot meals were so tasty and convenient that I'm sure the dehydrator will be getting a workout for the next trip.

The team: Christian, Shauna, Mark, Kathryn, and me (not pictured).

Rather than slip your way up eroding coastal bush, the west coast trail offers you ladders. Sweet.

My first ever glimpse of an American Marten.






The mud could be intense, but was generally avoidable by careful probing with the hiking poles.



The short section of bog was one of my favourite parts of the trail. Endless easy boardwalks, abundant hummingbirds, and plenty of beautiful bog species.
Bog laurel
Labrador tea
Northern starflower
Hungry carnivorous sundews





Our only injury on the trail. An overzealous Christian gave Mark a boost up a tall step, which resulted in Mark pitching head first into the sandstone shelf. Luckily Mark's head absorbed the brunt of the fall, so there were only minor cuts on his knees from the mussels.

Those reflective blobs are sea-lions. What was I saying earlier about a proper telephoto lens?

And in the blink of an eye it was over. If I were to do it again I'd plan to take enough food to continue on to the Juan de Fuca trail. Good times were had by all.