Canadian Wilderness Adventures: ATV Tour
Recently myself and Spring had the opportunity to go on a day of adventures with “Canadian Wilderness Adventures” out of Whistler, BC. It was scheduled to be a jam packed day with ATV’ing on rugged trails in the Callaghan Valley in the morning followed by Canoeing the River of Golden Dreams in the afternoon. When asked if I had previous ATV experience I replied “yes”, but that experience was gained about 8 years ago in a field somewhere in Alberta. I was pretty overweight back then, not athletic in anyway and I basically just drove around in circles for an hour. Learning to properly handle a Quad has been on the To Do list for a while. In the future if we travel to more remote locations ATV’s might be the only way to get around. Plus, it’s serious fun! We have a secret! It’s also been a secret shame of ours that we don’t really know how to Canoe well. Canoeing is quintessentially Canadian and having now lived in Canada for 5 years myself and Spring should really know how to do it already. Spring grew up in Canada, in Alberta, so her shame runs deep, haha! We arrived in Whistler bright and early to begin our day. I was curiously nervous. I knew I’d be with a guide but I guess I always feel nervous right before I do something I’ve never done before. It’s always a guessing game to see how I will react when challenged with something new. We checked in at the Canadian Wilderness Adventures desk at the Carleton Lodge, signed our waivers and quickly headed out with Lewy, our ATV guide for the day to do the “Wild Wild West ATV Tour“. It was a quick drive to the Callaghan Valley and Lewy did an excellent job of getting us geared up and instructed to control our Quads. Let the Adventure Begin! Before we knew it our goggles were down and we were ripping along a rough gravel road. Our ATV adventure had begun! On the gravel road we had some time to get used to how the ATV’s handled. They rolled over potholes with ease and accelerated quickly, cornering well. Lewy told us to remember our past experience with Mountain Biking which really helped. The key was to always keep looking ahead and into the turns where I wanted to go, not where I wanted to avoid. Things started to get steep and technical. Eventually we started getting on to more technical trail, which got rougher and steeper. Making the conscious effort to keep my eyes up scanning ahead helped me to...
The Smith Rock Ascent Race Report
The Smith Rock Ascent is a trail race that is organized in Smith Rock State Park, Oregon. A few months ago a friend made myself and Spring aware of this race and we got stoked to run it. Not only was it in a place that has world class rock climbing, which we love also, it was also in Oregon, a beautiful state in the US we’d been hoping to explore for quite a while. We planned a road trip from our home of Squamish, BC down to Oregon for 7 days. The race would be on the 3rd day. We awoke on the morning of the race to Semi-Trucks revving their engines at a rest stop. The previous two days had been jam-packed with exploring some beaches and waterfalls and a lot of driving. Spring exclaimed: “This is probably the worst way I’ve prepared for a race ever!”. Our legs were stiff from sitting in the car and we’d gotten no sleep that night due to vehicles passing in and out of this rest stop. It wasn’t the best place to sleep but both of us were so tired the previous night that continuing to drive would have been too dangerous. We were about a 45 minute drive from the starting line so we headed out, stopping for coffee and a pastry along the way for breakfast. Not an awesome race morning combo I know. We pulled into Smith Rock and parked. We still had plenty of time before our race started so we went about collecting our bib numbers, getting changed into our running gear, filling our running vests with Hammer Gels and water. By the time we’d joined everyone else at the starting line we both felt pretty awake and ready to go. The energy was electric. A few days prior I’d gone to a free talk on fuelling for athletes given by our friend Paul at UPrise Performance Camps. He mentioned that some people have had success with taking a gel a few minutes before a race if they haven’t had breakfast. I hadn’t had much of anything to eat so I decided to take a gel before starting. A few minutes later the starting countdown began and you could almost feel everyone revving their internal engines. Go! I started out well. I tried to stay with the front 20% of runners. The course followed the Crooked River for a while before ascending a steep road. Thankfully this was in the shade. I ended up speed walking it which worked good as I passed quite a few people doing the uphill running trot which...
The Cap Crusher Race Report
Recently we ran in and completed a trail race called the “Cap Crusher“, the first running event of the year in the Coast Mountain Trail Series. This would also be our personal first race of the year and for Leigh likely his 5th total time running this year. It starts and ends in Capilano Regional Park, right near the immense Cleveland Dam. It’s name is very appropriate; “Cap” for Capilano and “Crusher” for the fact that this course will crush your quads. It climbs ~800m’s (2600ft) over a short 13km’s. There is an 8km variant to the course (named the toughest 8k in Canada) but we both chose to run the longer distance. Here is our individual experiences with this race: Leigh: So I’ve raced very little in the past. The Cap Crusher would be my 4th time running in any sort of organized race, ever. But, in 2015 I’d like to increase my base running fitness. Off the couch I’d like to be able to do +30km trail runs in the mountains easily. To help motivate myself this year I’ve signed up to run a bunch of races. So, we arrived at the starting line for the Cap Crusher early and picked up our bib numbers. There was a slight chill in the air coming across Capilano lake. In the distance I could see the snow capped summits of the Lions. Immediately we started recognizing faces and saying hello to the people we knew. The energy in the crowd waiting to start running was palpable. Gary Robbins, the Race Director, gave his speech about the course and then the countdown began. If you’ve raced before you likely know the energy in the crowd at this point, but if you haven’t I can only explain it this The energy is electric. It’s almost like you can feel everyones heart-rates start to increase as the countdown reaches zero. The main challenge at this point is controlling the urge to just sprint when you hear them shout “Go!”. Inevitably, there’s always a few in the pack that sprint out ahead, riding a wave of stoke that they hope will carry them to the finish line. Within 500m’s these early starters have usually slowed right down and begin to get passed. For myself, I tried to maintain a slow starting pace, but I knew I didn’t want to get caught up in the back 70% which would choke up and stall as the course narrowed to uphill, single-track trails. I ran harder at first to stay with the front pack until everyone started spreading out and then settled in to a slower...
Learning to Ski Steeps with “Extremely Canadian”
This year myself and Spring at Pebbleshoo have set ourselves the goal of training and educating ourselves a lot more in regards to the activities we’re interested in. Being honest it has felt like our ski game has been stuck in 2nd gear for a while now. We both took an intro to skiing a few years ago, learning how to do a downhill wedge and ski bunny hills but apart from that we’ve been simply trying to teach ourselves the proper technique. It hasn’t worked. So recently we had the opportunity to take a 2 day Steep Skiing Clinic with Extremely Canadian out of Whistler. Our expectations with this clinic were to go from being cautious skiers capable of linking a few turns down black diamond runs to feeling confident on double black diamonds and skiing more fluidly and aggressively. Day 1: Our Mettle was really tested on the first day. It was awesome! It was a slow progression through the day of skiing steeper and steeper snow. First, after meeting our guides at the Whistler Base, we did a warmup ski run so our instructors could determine our competency and expectations. After watching our ski form we were split into groups and myself, Spring and two others were assigned to Extremely Canadian guide Peter. First up we did some laps on a groomed blue run so Peter could watch us and give us advice on how to improve our form. For balance we practiced picking our uphill ski off the snow while we completed a turn. I found this incredibly helpful right away and realized my balance was all wrong. Peter was great with giving individual advice to each of us to help us iron out our own specific issues. Next we practiced pole planting form. Something we’ve been sorely neglecting and it was definitely needed. From there, after warming up and some guidance, we cranked it up a notch and hit our first black diamond run, Whistler Bowl. We’d never skied it before but Peter was great with getting us into it safely. Skiing Moguls, but not as we knew it We did a few laps of Whistler Bowl, working on a few different techniques while getting used to the steeper angle. One of the techniques that stood out for me was skiing on top of moguls rather than between them. I was so focused before on trying to stay in the runnels between the moguls that I’d never thought to just ski the bumps on top of the moguls. The rest of the day was a mix of exploring the various bowls on Whistler Mountain and skiing steep...
Hat Mountain Photo Essay
Hat Mountain is a small peak in the North Shore Mountains near Vancouver that is not as popular due to being dwarfed by it’s neighbour summits of Brunswick Mountain and Mount Hanover but also because it is not heavily featured in hiking guidebooks for the area. I’ve found that mountains that are well documented and detailed in guidebooks will almost always grow in popularity. The description for Hat Mountain on the popular mountain database bivouac.com reads: “A minor bump located on the NW shoulder of Mt. Brunswick.”. Wow, I wonder why hardly anyone goes there! These lesser mountains have always interested me, I guess because I like a good underdog story and none of the “minor” or “insignificant” summits I’ve visited have disappointed me yet. They’ve always been highly enjoyable to climb and offered amazing views out towards the other summits nearby that would be considered “significant”. Check out my photo essay below to see what you can expect to encounter if you climb Hat Mountain. Directions: If you’d like to visit this mountain for yourself you can find instructions at this link: Clubtread: Hat Mountain We followed the 3rd option, ascending the mountain via the Hat Pass Trail. We highly recommend it....
14 Adventures in 2014
So last year we did a recap of our Top 13 adventures in 2013. It only seems fitting to follow suit this year with a look back on our Top 14 Adventures in 2014. It’s always interesting looking back over the photo albums. In hindsight an entire year can seem pretty short, it’s only when we actually sit down and remember what we did and where we went that we begin to realize just how much we packed into those 12 short months. It was a tough process cutting down our list of adventures to only 14. In the end we decided to cut out anything we didn’t do together, which was actually quite a lot. Spring did a ton of running in 2014, mostly solo or with some running friends. She also ran 80km of technical trails in the Squamish50 race. I was there, at the Aid Stations and the Finish line, but not beside her in the fray. Myself I got out a few times either with other friends or solo to visit some mountains I was interested in. Excellent experiences, especially the solo trips, but getting out with Spring and sharing the adventure always makes it better. If not for just the fact that I have a subject for my photographs. I also want to point out that both myself and Spring currently work full-time, 40 hours per week jobs. Myself, due to my work requiring an odd schedule, I worked about 60% of my weekends this past year. We’ve also increased the work we’ve been doing on Pebbleshoo by working with Brands and Companies we believe in to write for them and create content. To add to this, in 2014 neither myself nor Spring took any Holidays. You heard that right. Apart from the odd Statutory Holiday weekend of 3 days, we took no other periods of time off longer than 2 days. Mostly it was 1 day adventures. I guess the point I wanted to make is that there is 52 weeks in a year. There is no reason why you can’t make 52 unique memories from new Adventures every year. I’ve been working most weekends but we still make it work because we’re motivated. During the Summer, after finishing an 8 hour day at 5pm, there is still a good 6 hours of usable daylight to get out and explore. The most important step, and likely the most difficult for most people, is putting yourself in a place that enables the way of life you want to live. Living in our home of Squamish means that we rarely need to worry about commuting....
