In the spring a few of my friends (Rich So, Doris and Avery) did the Vancouver 100, which is the Baden Powell trail twice in one day. You can read Rich trip report here. I have no ambition to do anything that crazy, but I did need a goal to become in hiking shape for our Chilkoot trail trip at the end of August. I figured that completing the Baden Powell trail one section at the time would be doable for me and F over a summer. In the early summer Michelle and her son decided to join us as well. This is my report of our attempt.
2 Comments
There was a fair amount of swearing under my breath on the way to the Tenquille cabin last weekend. The snow started on the Tenquille Creek branch approaching from the Birkenhead side. Not enough snow that we couldn't drive the road, but not enough to ski in the forest. We carried our skis for 1 or 2 km. After putting on our skis we quickly lost the hiking trail and followed a boot-pack onto a terrible tightly treed side hill with lots of logs and a snow cover too deep for walking and too shallow for skiing. This was the point were Christian and I started wondering if we might have gotten ourselves in over our heads. This feeling was reinforced when a toddler pee break was needed in the slushy rain. Luckily F seemed unfazed by the situation and kept telling Christian that he should be a sparrow and fly through the bush. We decide to lose some elevation and cross the river in hope of mellower terrain and easier skiing. The skiing did become slightly easier, but by no stretch of imagination was it good. Our packs were pretty heavy too - around 60 kg total, but it probably wasn't the best packing we had ever done. Friday evening after returning from work at 5.30pm we managed to make a soup, carve a pumpkin, fix a costume, wax the skis, paint F face as a tiger, pack for the weekend and leave the house at 8pm to go to a halloween party. It was time efficient, but not weight efficient packing. I generally had a pretty bad time getting to the lake, but I kept seeing the deep post-holes in the snow from the previous weekend, and thought that they must have had it quite a lot worse. Around the lake the skiing became nice and pleasant, and we arrived at the hut in the afternoon four hours after leaving the car. It was still snowing when Ben and Christian headed off for a ski on the slopes just South of the hut towards Fossil pass. They skied three runs while Meredith, F and I got set up, played and cooked dinner. The hut is really nice and we managed to gather up enough firewood for a small fire. There was only one other party in the hut, so we had lots of space. The night was mostly uneventful. In the morning I woke up to a beautiful blue bird sky. Ben and Meredith looked almost ready to head off, so I got myself ready in a hurry and joint them. We skinned to the top of McCloud. The valley was filled with clouds, but the sky above was blue and the mountain views amazing. All my doubts about the trip from the previous day evaporated in the sunshine. The ski down the ridge was a nice dust on crust experience, so we did it twice before skiing all the way back to the cabin. In the meadows next to cabin, Christian and F were skiing together. F proudly showed me how she can now ski only holding daddy's hands. She even skied a few meters all by herself. Everyone was super stoked!
We had a quick lunch before heading down. The ski down was about as terrible as I had expected and took us about 3 hours. Although we at times thought that the combination of early snow conditions and a toddler was a bit too much, we still ended up with a warm fuzzy feeling once back at the car. The blue bird summit and F's first ski by herself made it all worth it. It was good to be reminded about our limits, though without any actually consequences. It will probably be a little while before we do another overnight ski trip - at least a few weeks. Stoke was high Saturday morning when we drove up the Brandywine FSR. As we arrived at the first parking lot it was clear that we were not the only ones stoked. The parking lot was almost full. I blame Richard So for getting everyones early season stoke up with his amazing pictures. We decided it would be worth it for us to drive to the end of the road given that we had a toddler and a complete beginner in our party. F was pretty excited about getting her new boots on in the parking lot. She has been skiing around the apartment a lot since we got her new boots and skis a few weeks back. It did take some negotiations to get her out of her princesse dress though, I had to promise that she got to put it back on as soon as we returned to the car. We walked our skis a few hundred meters from the end of the road before we put them on. The skis did not initially make us any faster, but they did make me very happy. Anita, our beginner skier, got some good skinning practise crossing all the little creeks and river braids in the meadows. Lena, Meredith and I went ahead and had a small run on the South ridge. We had a quick lunch and some playtime before we continued. Lena and Meredith skied to the summit, while Christian, Anita, F and I decided to just ski to the top of the ridge. I felt so happy skiing up, it almost felt unbelievable. The mountains were covered by snow again, the sun were intermittently peaking out, and here I was with my family enjoying it all. F had a nap in the backpack on the way up and some good playtime in the snow on the top. It was clear that she had missed the snow. She was eating it, digging in it and rolling around it. She, too, was so happy. At the top of the ridge I started wondering if our stoke might have been to high for the ability of our group. It was already 3pm and I knew going down would take us a while. F decided to ski between daddy's legs, so I tried to help out Anita as well as I could. She was doing great, but it was still slow progress. The snow was great at the top, then mediocre, and pretty crusty and tricky towards the bottom. We were pretty happy to see Meredith and Lena on the way down. They took the kid carrier and Anita's backpack, and Lena guided Anita down the easiest route. Christian would side slip in a tele-stand while holding Fenya between his legs and then lift her while doing a kickturn. I think he was pretty happy once she decided to go back in the backpack. From the backpack she was giving good advice to everyone: 'watch out for that hole', 'don't ski in the river', 'there is trees underneath this snow'. My favourite comment though was when Anita fell down and she said: 'She is taking a rest'. We made it to the cars just after dark. I had a big smile on my face as we drove back down the road. F asked me why I was happy and I explained that it was because I had such a good day with her outside. She informed me that she was not happy, because we were leaving the snow behind. "I am a sparrow flying high above the trees, mommy" F yells while running up the trail from the First Lake in Seymour Provincial Park. Before leaving the house I had very low hopes for the day. F didn't sleep every much last night and she had cried for about 50% of the time since she got up. About the Cheerios being too crunchy, the tear cloth being used to dry up milk and her princesse dress being in the dryer. Luckily the mood seemed to change as soon as we went to the car and she was happy as a clam for the rest of the day. We met with Michelle and her 3 year old, and Jen and her 7 month old at the Seymour Parking lot. The kids played at the trailhead for awhile before we set off. It is 1.1 km to the lake along the lower trail. The trail is pretty flat, but still challenging with lots of little ups and downs, roots and mud puddles. It probably took us an hour to get to the lake due to the amount of mud investigations going on. At the lake we had lunch and enjoyed the sun, while the kids waded around in the lake. Jen fed and changed the baby before taking her on a hike out to Dog Mountain. This August we went to Alaska for 10 days. First we spend 5 days on the Chilkoot trail, and afterwards we spend 4 days in Juneau. At first we stayed at the Mendenhall Campground, which is an absolutely gorgeous drive-in campground. It is right next to the lake, so you can look across to the Mendenhall glacier. The day-use area have a nice sandy beach, but even our campsite had a small private beach.
I am standing up pedalling. I have to pull the handlebars with all my power to make any progress. I am on my way up the first hill after the ferry to Fulford Habour, where we are starting a 5 day bike trip to Cowichan River. It is just a small hill and I know that there is much bigger hills to come. "I am not going to make" is all I can think - until I notice a weird sound coming from the chariot. I stop to take a look and realize that the breaks are on. Everything feels a lot lighter all of a sudden.
I discovered the Cowichan Valley trail a couple of years back, and I wanted to bike the trail ever since. This spring I put together a bike loop, send out an email to assess interest and managed to gather a few interested families. The final loop ended up being around 175km and 2000 m of elevation (link to mapmyride). We planned for 5 days on the road. The final crew was Scott, Sandra and their two kids (1.5 and 4.5 years old), Chris, Krystil and their daughter (1 year old), Christian, F (2.5 years old) and I.
Day 1: Tsawwassen to Salt Spring
F and I started the first day by riding from Tsawwassan to the ferry terminal by ourselves. We hoped to catch the 9am ferry to Swartz Bay with Scott and Sandra. Chris and Krystil was going to take the ferry to Long Habour in the afternoon, and Christian in the evening after work. F and I arrived at the ferry terminal with a casual 30 min to spare. We boarded the ferry without Scott and Sandra in sight and figured they probably missed it, which was very disappointing to F that had been talking about biking with the other kids all week. Luckily they just made it.
In January we decided to join the VOC's winter longhike. It is a big party in the mountains. During the day everyone build snow caves, and in the evening everyone have fun cooking in the snow kitchen. We arrived quite a bit later than everyone else, but Christian still managed to finish a snow cave for us before most other groups were done. I am generally not super keen on snow caves as I find them a bit claustrophobic, but Christian had build a nice big one. The tunnel was very short and lend to a nice area were I could stand up. The sleeping platform was plenty big for the three of us and I could comfortable sit up. F had been very excited about the idea of snow caves, but when it was finally done she denied to go inside. We managed to get her in to the snow cave for a few seconds, but quickly realized that we would have to sleep in the tent instead. Christian walked around to determine who had the worst snow cave, he found a couple of girls with only a snow tunnel, and he donate our snow cave to them. We then enjoyed dinner with everyone else in the large snow kitchen. F had a great evening and it only became better once we went to the tent. F gets so excited whenever we sleep in the tent, and she had not been in the tent since September. This was actually her first true winter camping experience, since we previously have only camped on snow in the spring. She never liked being covered by a blanket or sleeping bag, and the same turned out to be true for this trip. She ended up falling asleep on top of our sleeping bags just wearing her merino wool and fleece. I tried several times to cover her with a down jacket, but she would have none of it. Eventually she was in such a deep sleep that we could lift her into our sleeping bags, which made my night a lot better. In general the night was great, and this trip really marked a backcountry sleeping turning point. Prior to this trip I never expected to sleep much with F in the tent (or in a hut), but since January she generally sleeps well and only wakes to pee once a night.
Despite her not wanting to go into the snow cave, the whole event seemed to have made a big impression on her. She talked about it for days, and she even made a drawing: Semaphore Lakes has been on my bucket list for a while, so I was stoked to finally go there this past weekend. I had tried to recruit another family for our adventure, but since we were still expecting snow I did not manage to convince anyone to join us. Instead we were joined by a group of young VOCers: Taniya, Crystal, Emily and Vincent. We all met up at the trailhead around 9.30am, but they soon left us behind as F had decided to hike by herself. The trail was very muddy at the bottom, which for most probably would be a nuisance, but for F it was great fun. After an hour or so of hiking and poking the mud, F decided to go in the backpack. We hiked for little hour before stopping for sunscreening and snacking. Then another hour or so before arriving at the lake. The snow patches started about half way up the trail, but there were not continues snow until right before the lakes. At and above the lake there were continues and skiable snow. F had just fallen asleep as we arrived, so we got camp set up before she woke up again. The rest of our group had been lounging by the larger of the lakes, but joined our camp at the upper lake. In the afternoon Christian did a traverse of the railway group from Face to Locomotive on skis. Took him about 4 hours. Hopefully he will add a short TR later in the week. In the mean time the other VOCers attempted to summit Locomotive. They had left an hour after Christian and he met them on his way down. They had almost reach the south ridge at this point in time. Christian did a quick time estimate with them, and it was decided that they would leave the summit for another day and just go check out the view from the ridge. Despite not reaching the summit I am sure they all had a great time and I also think they learned a few things about navigation and snow travel - most of them were in light hikers. While everyone else were out exploring I was hanging out with F in camp. She spend some time transferring water and ice from the lake/puddles to rocks and trees. We hiked around the campsite, and we made therm-a-rest slides in the tent. Just as we were about to start dinner Christian returned. We had a great dinner of pasta and homemade pesto. On Sunday we slept until around 8am and then I got up to get ready for my ski trip to Locomotive. I left a little after 9am on my first solo summit attempt. I skied right from the camp to the south ridge. I left my skis a bit below the summit as there were several areas of exposed rocks. I was on the summit just before 11am, so I decided that I had time to get on top of Tender as well. The hike to Tender was mostly a snow walk, but did include some rock. The ski down from the ridge to the lake was fast on the perfect corn. I was back at the lake about 12.45pm. I really enjoyed summiting by myself. I was great to be able to just go at my own speed without having to wait for others or having others waiting for me. Back at camp Vincent was just getting out of the partly snow covered lake, so I decided that I needed a swim too. It was a very quick 'swim', but I did touch the snow. F was sleeping, so Christian packed down the tent, while I relaxed and ate snacks in the dry heather patch. We had a hard time leaving this gorgeous area, so we did not get out of camp until 2.30pm. The hike down was uneventful, but I did notice that the trail is actually quite challenging. It is very steep at places, there are lots of roots, large rocky steps and mud on the trail. It is not the easiest trail to do with a heavy pack. F hiked some of the way down, and we noticed how good of a hiker she has become. Her balance is really good, she anticipates how slippery the different surfaces are, she recovers from tripping over small obstacles, and she is starting to use her poles correctly. We were back by the car around 5pm and stopped for dinner in Pemberton. It ended up being pretty late by the time we got home, but luckily that also meant that F was a sleep when we arrived. Semaphore turned out to be just as awesome as I had hoped for. The access is easy despite the somewhat difficult trail, the campsite is absolutely gorgeous and locomotive is a great and easy objective. Last weekend Christian's work had organized a car camping trip to Lighthouse Marine Park in Point Robert. To add a bit more adventure and some exercise we decided to go by bike from Ladner. We didn't want to deal with the Massey Tunnel, which is why we started in Ladner. I had been looking up bike routes from home and liked the description of the dyke trails from Let's go biking. We started off from Ladner at a casual 1.30pm. It was a bit tricky to follow the dyke at first as there were a bunch of gates that was non-trivial to get the chariot through. On the dyke from Ladner to Wellington Park Fenya biked herself and I enjoyed checking out all the house boats. The best part of the ride was from the turn off to Westham Island to the train track crossing (going to the port). We discussed for a while how we should cross the tracks and eventually decided to walk along side them until we found a suitable crossing, which was just ~100 m east. We continued along the dyke until it ended by the road to the ferry terminal. We explored a road and a trail along the beach, but it ended 7 m below the road we wanted to connect with, so we had to retrace and follow the road the rest of the way to Point Roberts. You can see our full route here. In total it was 30km there and 17km back. At Point Roberts we went shopping and then joined the rest of the crew at the campground. All the other families were car camping, so we borrow a few camping chairs and joined them by the fire while cooking. F played with the older kids. They were really good at including her and she had a great time. Every night when we go to bed I ask her what the favourite part of her day was and the whole week after the trip she answered playing with the big kids. After dinner there were s'mores by the fire and afterwards the kids went for a bike ride. F followed one of the bigger kids around and went after him down a big hill. She lost it and had pretty big bail. There was a lot of crying and she wasn't fully over it until the next morning. She did declare shortly after the bail that she could go down the hill when she was bigger, and the next day she was back on the bike right away. Sunday we played at the campground and the beach. Lot of sticks and rocks were thrown in the water. Around noon we started heading home. F biked a bit, but mostly she collected flowers for her basket. After she went into the chariot we decided to just bike back via the fastest route while she was a sleep. Back in Ladner we picked up some strawberries and veggies before heading home.
In August last year we visited our friends Aisling and Steve in the Yukon together with Jen and Jon. We had convinced all of them that we should go canoeing, because that is what you do in the Yukon. We ended up being four families with a total of four toddlers between the ages of 18 months and 2 years old. We decided to on a 5 day paddle down the Nisutlin river. It is a purely class 1 river, and the full stretch ended up being around 150km. We rented canoes from a company in Whitehourse and the also shuttles us to and from the river in a little bus. The even stored all our car seats while we were paddling. We asked them what they would have said if we wanted a fully guided trip and they responded that there would be no way they would take us. We wondered if we might have gotten in over our head... after all the toddlers had only spend 1-3 days in canoes. After the first day, I was basically convinced that we had gotten in over our head. One toddler was very upset, the weather was bad, and I realized how committing the trip actually was. Once you start paddling there is only one exit and it is at the end of the 150km of paddling. Fortunately the toddlers quickly fell into some sort of rhythm. They learned to sleep and eat in the canoe, they enjoyed throwing rocks and sticks in the water and they mostly slept terribly at night. I enjoyed the paddling, when F allowed me to do any, but mostly I just enjoyed seeing the toddlers together in the great outdoors. I had really hoped to see some wildlife (not bears), but the only animal we ever saw was a porcupine. It was pretty cool though since I had never seen one before. We never really had must time for socializing - there always seems to be something you need to do, when you are camping with kids. Our daily routine looked something like this: 7-8am Wake up. Spend around 3 hours packing up the tent, eating breakfast and getting everything in the canoe. It always seemed like we were basically ready to go after 2 hours, but all those last minute things like putting the toddlers in life jackets and getting sunscreened always taking up more time than expected. 11ish Leave camp We usually paddle for around 2 hours in the morning. Depending on the day the toddlers might sleep, eat snacks, read books or play in the canoe. The front person looking after the toddler usually only managed to paddle if the toddlers were sleeping. Sleeping arrangements varied from canoe to canoe - I will write a separate post about this at some point. 1-2pm Lunch Time After a couple of hours of paddling we would pull over for lunch. Luckily the river had lots of nice pull out spots - mostly sandy river banks. Lunch was usually the most relaxing time of day as there were little stuff that needed to get done. 3pm Back in the canoe After a long lunch we would get in the canoe for another couple of hours of paddling. Our shortest day we paddled 2.5 hours and the longest day probably around 5.5 hours total. 5pm Pull over for camp After setting up camp, cooking dinner, eating and playing we would put the toddlers to bed. Most of the time one of the adults would end up staying in the tent. The rest would get a little bit of adult time. Sean on one occasion even managed to catch a fish that we roasted on the fire. All in all it was a wonderful trip. Canoeing is definitely something you need to do in Yukon. I do find canoeing more repetitive than hiking, but it is a great way to experience the outdoors in a slightly more casual way. We will definitely be doing more canoeing in the future... especially if we ever find ourselves with more than one child. Have you been on any overnight canoe trips with children that you would recommend? |
Recent tripsMarriott Basin
Alcoholic Traverse Tenquille Lake River of Golden Dreams Desolation Sound Eldred Valley Triple M Triathlon - Misty, McBride, Mamquam Recent tips and thoughtBoxy: Our kid hauling bike
Putting skis on a bike Making a low DIN tech binding What is in our backpacks? The bike canoe trailer Making kids crampons Digging a snowcave Make a kid towing harness Categories
All
|