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