Stein Valley, BC

Congrats to everyone who played Canadian Nats last weekend in Victoria.  I’m still out with my knee injury (the current diagnosis is a torn medial retinaculum) but it was exciting following everything online.  Congrats to Zephyr on reaching their goal of top-four in Canada and to my brother Dev who won bronze with Calgary’s Open team “The Ghosts”!

While everyone else was sweating on a field in Victoria I was relaxing next to the beach at Harrison Hot Springs.  This post though is from a backpacking trip to Stein Valley just before my knee injury over the May Long Weekend.  The Stein Valley is a great early season hike since it’s at a low elevation so that the snow clears out by the end of April.  Plus most of the hike is right along the river which means it’s hard to lose the trail (always a concern in the wild, wild BC West).    Unfortunately I’m missing quite a few photos since Rod’s camera met an untimely end.  Only about an hour from our car heading back out we stopped for a break near some steep cliffs and the camera went tumbling down.   That's our offering to the river gods I suppose.

The trail starts a little ways beyond Lytton, but to get there you have to take a ferry across.  It’s tiny with a maximum load of only two cars.  We had to wait awhile for our turn, but it was pretty neat.  It’s a “reaction ferry” which is propelled entirely by the river by angling the rudders into the current.  The overhead cable guides the ferry to the other side.  It’s environmentally friendly operating on just a little man-power to turn the rudders  (there’s an emergency motor which is rarely used) !   We were a bit worried as to high water levels since the spring melt can put it out of commission, but luckily we missed it by about a week.

The provincial park is a rare success story in conservation -  there was a plan in the 80s to log the valley, but there were enough protests raising awareness and public support  that a park was created in 1995.  A strong argument was that it was the last untouched watershed in the southern Coast Mountains.

Entrance to the park through the valley:

Stryen Creek bridge close to the start of the trail:

The park is run jointly between BC Parks and the Lytton First Nation since the Stein Valley has been used for centuries by aboriginals for spiritual purposes.  There are pictographs and petroglyphs, although you have to look closely to find them.  (FYI I didn't know this before but pictographs are paintings, done almost exclusively in red ochre, while petroglyphs are carvings).

Ponderosa pine trees forming a tree memorial for members of the Lytton band, a number of whom helped protect the Stein from development.

I think I’m going to introduce “thar” into my vocabulary. 

This park is also great because there are campsites every 3-4 km.  We decided to push on and go 15 km to Suspension Bridge Camp to escape the crowds and multiple boy scout/girl guide groups.   To get there we went past the “Devil’s Staircase”; this was the most elevation we got on the trail, which wasn’t that bad except that I had Beck’s “Devil’s Haircut” song stuck in my head the entire way up. 

The eponymous suspension bridge of “Suspension Bridge Camp”:

Vancouver’s Clubtread hiking website says of Suspension Bridge Camp “Lots of camping room here, but room for only about 5-6 tents *perfectly* level.”  Ha!  We were the second group of people to arrive.  Not wanting to crowd the first tent and not knowing how many were still to come, we tried to give the first guy some privacy but ended setting up on quite the slope.  I woke up about ten times each night having slid all the way down to the bottom of the tent. 

We settled into camp, enjoying the access to fresh water to soak our feet after 15 km of pounding.  The elevation gain wasn’t much (~300 m), but 15 km is still a long way with full packs!  Rod and I’s packs are snuggling after a long day.

 JS cooked us a delicious meal with lamb sausage, chickpeas and roasted vegetable curry.  We thought we were being a bit ridiculous dragging several litres of wine up the trail to enjoy with dinner, but we were put to shame by a crazy group in their mid-thirties who had whole vegetables (onions, leeks, dill, etc.), a cutting board, beer, a pineapple  (!?) and eggs.   In the morning while they were cooking up their eggs we saw a guy add a splash of amber liquid to the pan.  Olive oil we guessed?  “Whisky” was the reply. These guys had EVERYTHING, except for one member of their crew who did the whole hike in crocs and somehow forgot to pack pants (it was pretty chilly in the evening and you feel bad seeing someone wrap shirts around their knees). 

An amicable guy also brought his mandolin entertaining us all with everything from Acadian folk songs to a cover of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” (which I enjoyed much more than the original).  One woman had her own indestructible bear cache barrel which also doubled as a drum for musical accompaniment.   All in all a fun group of hard-core foodies.  

The next day we hiked another ~15 km (7.5 km in and back) to check out some more of the trail.  The trail keeps going another 30 km or so, but we weren’t super impressed beyond the Suspension Bridge; it was pretty much just bushwacking and mosquitoes, although there were some beautiful wild flowers and more glimpses of the river:

Victorious after surviving the Stein Valley!  Let me know if you have any other recommendations for backpacking trails in BC!

 

Amy’s Visit, Vancouver/Deep Cove/Gabriola Island

Earlier this spring my good friend Amy visited Van on the way to and from a stint on Gabriola Island to paint.   She brought back some amazing paintings as well as pictures (see the trees above) but you’ll have to wait until her next show to see the art.  In the meantime, you can check out her online gallery (www.fragmentsofsoul.com) . She gets all of the credit for these photos too.  I love this one she snapped of her cats hanging out on her luggage before she left Calgary:

On her first weekend in Vancouver Amy, Sarah and I went to Deep Cove, a little East of North Van.   It’s a charming quiet getaway from Vancouver.  We weren’t equipped for it, but the next time I’d like to rent a kayak and head up Indian Arm (a fjord of the Burrard Inlet).

Shots from the harbour in Deep Cove:

After the somewhat chilly walk we warmed up at Honey, a cafe famous for their honey glazed doughnuts.  They were a bit rich for me, but a lot of people rave about these “sweet balls of dough”.  Other yelp comments included “I ate two of these bad boys, with no regrets (my waist line will say otherwise though) “ and “While this dough is heavy, it still melts in your mouth. I'm drooling as I reminisce".

As if Honey’s weren’t enough, we decided to go all out for delicious Thai that night and are grinning after being stuffed with coconut milk concoctions.

After a good time in Van Amy went out to the island for a few weeks to take in the beautiful landscapes and trees which inspired Emily Carr.  She was extremely productive, creating tons of new work.  Looking forward to seeing it soon Amy!

On her way back Amy’s visit overlapped with one from Kiran.  We had lots of laughs over brunch and a walk down Commercial Drive (or simply “the Drive” if you are a cool Vancouverite ).  It’s a funky area of town with tons of good bars, live music, and fabulous brunch places.  It’s also great for spotting hipsters, which I have a tough time defining, but Wikipedia does a pretty good job.

  

Other Drive highlights: candy store, ubiquitous Vancouver rubber boots, and yarn bombing:

Speaking of yarn bombing, some pretty cool stuff turns up if you search it under google images including these gems:

All in all a fun visit with Amy, although I wish the rain had held off!   

Easter, Vancouver Island

Well, it looks like I might have time for a few extra blog entries in the coming weeks/months…At Flowerbowl a week and a half ago (Vancouver ultimate tournament) I managed to injure my knee pretty badly.  It’s still not clear what exactly is damaged (possibly a torn meniscus, knee capsule and/or a partial knee cap dislocation, but mostly likely a partially torn ACL), but only an MRI can really clear that up and we all know how impossible those are to get in the Canadian health care system.   So, while I wait for things to get better or to stay the same I’ll fill you in on some recent trips.

Over Easter we had a family get-together on Vancouver Island to paint my Mom’s basement.  I had never done any substantial painting before this and learned that I’m not particularly good at it (cutting or rolling) but thankfully it’s just the basement which hopefully will be poorly lit most of the time anyway.   We took frequent beer breaks which was fun but probably didn’t contribute to a quality painting product… J    We also subjected Rod to the Sharma’s terribly mainstream taste in the music for several days straight.  Hopefully there was no permanent ear/soul damage.     Too bad the weather so was so nice, including some gorgeous sunsets from the backyard (see title pic).

Dev tapin’ it up to save the poor door frame from my erratic paint strokes.

Sweet hat don’t you think?

Supervising the guys

Group shot of the painting crew (unfair that some people had a chance to shower already [Kiran!] and some of us didn’t…)

 A walk down to Maple Bay for a change in scenery and a break from paint fumes.

At the end of the weekend we took a short break to visit Roberts Memorial Park near Cedar.  Absolutely lovely views

Winter Wanderings, Greater Vancouver

Spring (maybe even summer) has finally arrived in Vancouver with ultimate/hiking/BBQ-on-the-beach season in full swing.   Before it’s too late I wanted to post a few pictures from some of my winter snow-shoe trips in the Greater Vancouver area.  I took a few, but most of the photo credits go to Rod and to fellow avy-course participant Jodi. 

Here are a few from a beautiful day up at Cypress snow-shoeing Mount Hollyburn.   There were lots of people on the trail, but I loved seeing the dogs heading downhill and slip-sliding out of control yet lovin’ every second of it.

Vancouver hiding beneath the clouds:

Clear view of the lions (the two medium sized bumps).  I hope to hike them one of these days when the snow melts.

A whiskey-jack (officially the gray jay).  At Whistler these birds are fun to watch since some of them have learned to perch on ski poles.

And some shots from a short-but-sweet snowshoe up Mount Seymour to catch the sunset.  

And finally some from an avalanche course Rod and I did, also at Seymour.  I felt a lot better about recognizing potentially dangerous terrain after taking the course, and it was good to get a lot of practice working with transponders.  It was actually pretty fun looking for buried backpacks in the snow with transponders in them...hopefully I’ll never have to be in the situation that the transponder is attached to a person instead.

Heading into avalanche terrain...

These dogs were awesome.  I wished I had a pair to help pull me up the mountain too!

Our fearless leader wielding a mini-saw to create a snow-pit.   This part got a little complex...not sure if I could repeat it by myself if I had to.  Pretty neat looking at all the layers though and seeing how weak some really are.  Bang it a few times with a shovel and you can make an entire slab collapse.  Yikes!

Snow pits mean lots of shovel action.

After establishing that one snow column we dug out was pretty stable with a Rutschblock test , we decided to make it fail! (I’m second from the left)

Our last exercise was a multiple-burial scenario.  We had a team of 4 with one leader, two people looking for buried transponders and myself to poke around to look for “jeans-guy”.   You know jeans-guy, he’s the one who shows up at whatever event unprepared, makes poor decisions, and then gets himself buried in an avalanche with no transponder!

Using a probe in search of jeans-guy at his last known location.

I was unsuccessful, but the others found the buried backpacks with the real transponders and we then formed a probe line in a pretty smooth operation and eventually uncovered the pack.