It was a week and a bit before out 3 week summer vacation, which were to start out with a week of hiking, so we felt like we needed to get the kids out doing some training and also check all the gear, but we did not want to leave early or return late, so we opted for a return to Seymour. This time the snow was mostly gone, it was hot and it was buggy... very buggy. We quickly made it to Brockton Point, hoping for a little breeze to blow away the mosquitoes, but there was none. We were not sure where we would be able to camp with the snow now gone, so Christian and I took turns scouting the area, while the kids relaxed with some reading and water play. We eventually decided that the best place was the exact same as on our last trip to Seymour, there was still a little bit of snow left there and the mosquitoes was in slightly smaller quantities. We still retired to the tent early for extra long bedtime stories. The next day the kids did some scrambling on the rocks before heading back home.
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After having more than one kid my favourite time of year has become right after the ski resorts close. Usually we get a couple of weeks of good skiing at the resort after closing - the access is super easy and the skiing usually is too. This year the post-closure season was unusually long, so we spent many weekend days both at the Cypress cross country area and on Seymour. With the skiing still good on a beautiful weekend in late May we decided to bring the overnight gear. We had a rough start to the day, with F having all sorts of problems, but eventually realized the real problem - she hadn't really eaten anything. Once that was dealt with the rest of the short ski was straightforward. At Seymour you can camp after entering the backcountry shortly after Brockton Point, so we stopped to set up camp just on the other side of the boundary. There is a nice flat and out of the way area just west of the trail. The rest of the afternoon the kids and I just lazed around in the sun, while Christian went to summit all the nearby peaks.
By Christian We recently acquired a pair of Atomic Backland boots on the cheap (broken/missing hardware - which I fixed) that fit our oldest daughter, who's 7. The only problem is that she's a DIN 1.75 (or maybe 2, soaking wet). The tech bindings with the lowest release values I could find were the Dynafit Rotation 7 (2.5-7) and the Hagan Pure 8 (4 - 8). But neither of those quiet cuts it. Rather than spend another season hauling two separate pairs of skis around for her (one for up, one for down) I decided to try and swap the springs on a set of tech bindings to get a lower release value - and I feel like I succeeded. Before we get started comes the obvious warning - I don't know anything about ski bindings. If you modify safety equipment based on a description somebody posted on the internet of what they did (for example, this blog post) and things go wrong you have nobody to blame but yourself. The first step was to pick the binding to start with. After looking at as many photos online as I could find, and making some guesses as to the internal mechanisms, I decided on the Hagan Pure 8. Also, it's a lighter binding and it's always nice to save a few grams. I thought the easiest way was to just make a little slideshow of some images I took disassembling the binding. Assembly is just the reverse.
If you go by the saying "adventure is when the outcome is uncertain" then today I ended up having a quality adventure in the city trying to retrieve a kite stuck way up in a tree at Columbia park along with 4 young kids. I think many would have given up long before, but the ridiculousness that ensued is perhaps what makes it a story worth telling...
I thought, in this pandemic year, I might break my streak of taking the big kids snowcaving every winter. It's become a bit of a tradition. Usually we go up to Red Heather, but we've been sticking to our local mountains this year (fortunately there are a few places on the North Shore that are accessible, yet not overcrowded, if you know how to navigate). Fortunately the snowpack is pretty deep this season, so being stuck on the North Shore wasn't a problem. It was Line who came up with a plan for how to overcome our usual strategy of bringing along an extra adult to help dig and manage the kids - she'd just come up herself carrying W, then head back down for dinner/sleeping, and come up again the next afternoon to pick us up. Since W is only 1.5 years old we decided against her spending the night in the cave, as we'd be without the backup of a warming hut.
October was a crazy month. It always is really, because of settling in to the fall weather, school, birthdays and Halloween prep, but this year was even worse for us with the looming prospect of going back to work, figuring out childcare logistics and the stress of finding new housemates with the added challenge of finding people who are similarly covid-conscious yet tolerant of a family with 3 kids in school and childcare. Once November rolled around, and all of the above was settled, we really needed a weekend away. Normally we would go to a cabin at this time of year, so we don't have to spend hours sitting around in the dark and cold, but that is not an option this year, so we wanted to go somewhere were we could have a fire. I looked up a number of car camping sites, and they were all closed for the season, but then we read the subscript at the bottom on the page. It seemed like we would be allowed to walk-in past the gate at some of the provincial sites: "Campground gates are closed during the off-season", "park users can still walk into the park if conditions such as weather permit", "some services and/or fees may be reduced". Seemed promising...
School was delayed by a week due to COVID and then the weekend before school started the smoke came into Vancouver for real. We had been watching the fires all down the west coast of the US. It seemed almost too good that we hadn't had a smoky season in Vancouver for the second year in the row and I guess it was. As we drove across the Lions gate bridge we could barely see the North Shore mountain and I wondered if we should be going at all, but the forecast called for clearer skis further north and the webcam on whistler showed mainly valley smoke. Maybe we would be better off in the mountains.
It was around 4.30pm when Christian announced that we had made it approximately 1/4 of the distance up the trail during our first 3 hours of hiking. I was discouraged to say the least, and a bit worried. Would we make it up before dark? At least we had done most of the elevation gain. We decided that it was time to start carrying N. The trail had been tricky for her so far - narrow with (for us) waist-high shrubbery and many fallen logs. N likes to hold our hand, and the narrow trail made that challenging for her and us. The (for her) face-high branches to push through didn't help (although we did bring pruners and the non-N-supervising parent did some trail work as we hiked). The rest of the way we alternated between Christian carrying N on his shoulders for the steeper sections and one of us holding her hand while she hiked on the flatter sections; both of which are hard when you are already carrying a big backpack. Luckily, F was bouncing along and the trail gradually became easier for us, although both Christian and I were huffing and puffing up the hills. Just before 7pm we saw the lake through the trees - needless to say we were pretty happy. The West side of the lake already had a reasonable number of tents, so we headed to the North side. At this time the mosquitoes were out in swarms. Again I doubted whether or not the trip was a good idea. The kids started rearranging the sand in the little river flowing through the meadow right away, while Christian and I got busy setting up camp and cooking dinner. We almost managed to get the little kids fed and in bed before it was completely dark. Christian and F stayed up for a later dinner, sitting on the big rock looking over the lake, having some quality daddy - daughter time, and discovering caddisfly larvae.
People routinely hike up to Berg Lake in Mount Robson provincial park and return in one day, but with three kids age 6 and under, we decided a week-long "expedition" was the way to go. Our friend and housemate Miriam would accompany us on the trip, evening out the adult:child ratio. Needless to say our packs looked and felt ridiculous, but we also knew that the real challenge would be getting our three year old, N, up the trail - whether it was on her own little legs or on someone's back.
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