For the longest time I wanted to go see the larches over Thanksgiving weekend, but with thick smoke still covering much of Northern Washington and Southern BC this year did not seem to be the year. Our friends Ignacio and Pascale and their two kids were planning to head to the Wendy Thompson Hut Sunday night, so we decided to join and I "settled" for some regular, gorgeous fall colours in Marriott Basin. We hiked in Saturday afternoon and as always we had a bit of a late start. F was hiking fast and didn't want to wait for her younger siblings, so we ended up sending Christian and F ahead to set up camp. N was keeping a steady pace, but was as always distracted by the many blueberry bushes - eventhough I thought they were passed their prime. On the way up I was reminiscing about the last time we where there. It was 3.5 years ago with skis, W in my belly and N in my backpack. It sure seemed like an easy hike compared to back then. A couple of hundred meters below the hut, Christian came back down to give N a little boost. 

It was hot as we started hiking the last part of the road towards Brandywine Meadows; and the kids dipped their hats in every stream we crossed. The kids were already fully engaged in a pretend game; gathering water to fill magical tanks to help save the world from evil laser robots. This was F (8) and I's first trip out without the rest of the family, but Scott was the mastermind behind the trip. The Alcoholic Traverse is a 30-something kilometer alpine traverse from Brandywine to Brew. We would not have tried to undertake it without Scott, Sandra, and their two kids, E (10) and H (7).

We quickly made it to the end of the valley, had a quick snack and filled up on water, and started up the big hill towards the ridge of Brandywine. This is were I first realized how heavy my pack actually was. I am used to carrying a pretty heavy pack, when going with the whole family, and although this pack was not quite as heavy, I felt it much more as we were moving substantially faster than our regular family speed. The uphill was also a bit of a shock to F's system, but Scott kept her going with a pole stealing game - at least until the last section before the col. Here we had our first crises of the trip. The rocks were loose and a bit challenging, we were falling behind fast, and all of a sudden things seemed unmanageable to F. She started spiraling, but we managed to regain composure relatively fast and met everyone at the col for a little break. The rest of the ridge went pretty well, although F did need to listen to a story for the last little bit to get out of her head and just hike without too many thoughts of what was to come. ​

By Christian

We're a 2-cargo-bike family (and now, also a tandem). We love them all. This quick post is about our electrified in-town kid-hauler (our Haul-a-Day remains fully "manual", like all our other bikes). Last year we put on a nice aftermarket motor system using parts from Grin, on our Madsen (aka "Boxy") and noticed (just before the start of the school year) that we put over 4,500km on it during its first year! Combined with the ~1000km Line spends bike-commuting and ~5800km I spend bike-commuting (used to be  ~9000km, but my work recently moved closer) this put us solidly into the "more km by bike than by car" category this year (not even including all the trips to the beach and bike-touring vacations). We anticipate more km this year, as the kid-drop-off-run is longer. Although we always biked a lot this upgrade let it entirely replace using an automobile (or the bus) for in-town trips in our family. The kids are protected from the elements, depending on traffic it's usually faster, you never have to worry about parking, and if you're super-tired you can always just use a bit more juice. Oh yeah, and of course it doesn't burn gas or even much electricity - the thing uses less power than we spend on cooking.

By Christian

It's been a long time since we brought our family up to Tenquille Lake. At that time, there was just 1 kid, and she rode in the backpack. Despite being one of the easiest alpine cabins to get to on the coast we had trouble - there was enough snow to hide the trail, but not enough to cover the bush such that we could ski properly, along with a solid slush-rain. Between that trip and doing the Owl-Tenquille traverse twice (once solo as a ski trip, once as a Veenstra Traverse) I've still never successfully taken the East access trail to the Birkenhead FSR. This time we succeeded... but it was still a bit closer than we'd thought it would be.

By Christian

The "River of Golden Dreams" is a cute little paddle down the river between Alta Lake and Green Lake, entirely within the resort community of Whistler. We paddled it once before, in a rented canoe, which was a nice paddle but a quasi-fiasco of logistics and an attempt to avoid tourist pricing. We now own a beast of a canoe, but also (more recently) two SUPs. Line really wanted to try it again on the paddleboards.

This summer we had two weeklong trips back-to-back, and it certainly seems we got the weather right. After a week of biking in cool, occasionally drizzly, weather it was time for a heat wave with basically no wind - what a great time to be on the ocean! We debated before the trip whether we should take the canoe or a pair of ocean kayaks (a tandem and a single) with kids in the hatches. The advantage of the canoe being easier packing and having the entire family in the same boat, allowing better "in-flight service" for the kids... but the kayaks are more seaworthy. With the heat and general lack of wind I think we made the right choice with the canoe. I've actually never been on the ocean with such weather before...

This trip was a bit of a last minute plan inspired by this 10 Lakes overnighter. However, with three young kids there is no way we can bike 120km with 2000m of elevation in a couple of days, so we planned to spend 6 days on the roads leaving time for playing and swimming.

We meant to leave Vancouver Wednesday early afternoon, but it quickly became clear that we would not be able to make the 2.25pm ferry, so we took our time and aimed for the 4.45pm, which of course turned out to be full, so we ended up waiting a long time for the 7pm that didn't leave until 7.45pm. We ended up chasing the last ferry to Saltery Bay and made it on with just a couple of minutes to spare. Due to the last minute planning we didn't really have a proper map of all the backroads, so we drove around the logging roads trying to locate Lois Lake Rec site until passed midnight. At this point the little kids were asleep, but our 8 year old, F, was not impressed and getting the tent setup was a stressful affaire. We were, however, all pleasantly surprised at how nice it was when we woke up next  to beautiful Lois Lake. The kids played by the lake while we packed up, and then we headed to our starting point by Duck Lake Rec site. 

Dates: June 22nd - 27th
by Christian Veenstra

Ok, ok, enough posts about the same trip. This is the last one, though. For some people, and probably me for planning other trips in the future, this will be the most important page. A map and split times for the trip. The longwinded trip report is split into three other posts.

This is part three of my solo ski trip around Garibaldi Park, accessed self-propelled from my doorstep via Pitt Lake. Read about the approach here, or the alpine portion here. This section describes what happened after I finish the alpine portion and discover that the Bucklin Creek FSR isn't anywhere close to what I'd hoped for...

This is part two of my solo ski trip around Garibaldi Park, accessed self-propelled from my doorstep via Pitt Lake. Read all about getting there here, getting back home here, or continue to read about the skiing portion.