Acorns, Part 3: The Stawamus Chief
<Acorns, Part 2: Starvation Lake “The Chief” is a large dome of granite that overlooks the main core of Squamish (official name: Stawamus Chief Mountain). If you’ve been through Squamish you’ve seen it. When we started meeting people in Squamish for the first time and told them we were getting into hiking almost everybody asked us “have you hiked the Chief?”. We did some research and found out it was a steep hike up the backside of of this granite dome which eventually leads to some scrambling and walking up granite slabs before reaching the most popular summit, the South one. People generally rated it as difficult and, I’m not going to lie, we were pretty apprehensive about attempting it at first. It was going to be the first summit that we’d hike to the top of in Canada. At that time we still didn’t really understand how elevation gain would affect the difficulty of a hike. We put it off for a while, convincing ourselves that we weren’t ready yet. We began to hear more horror stories from people who’d slipped on the wet rocks or had pushed themselves to the point of throwing up due to how steep and sustained it was. It all just added to the notoriety of it. Eventually, cautiously, we decided to attempt it. This was back in 2010 and the Chief wasn’t near as popular back then as it is today. Today the trail has been vastly improved. Wooden staircases have been installed for the lower scrambly sections and the trail has been rerouted higher up to avoid difficult wet sections. Back then you couldn’t actually just start hiking the trail, it started with a section of rock that you had to scramble up to access the trailhead, beside a large sign that read “This is not a walk in the park”. We scrambled up these boulders and began heading up. Within a few meters the quads on my legs were burning with a searing pain and I could feel my heart working overtime in my chest. Every 5 minutes I had to stop from the pain in my legs and to catch my breath. My face was turning various shades of red and purple. This is what dying feels like Boulders, before we knew climbing them was a thing I remember that first ascent taking a long time. In reality it took us about 2 hours to get to the top but our progress was excruciatingly slow. Spring was definitely more capable than I was at that point so she waited patiently as I stopped every few feet to rest. About...
Acorns, Part 2: Starvation Lake
< Acorns, Part 1: Coho Park and the Smoke Bluffs The term “maturity” is pretty odd when you think about it, especially in relation to modern, westernized, civilization. What is it to be a mature individual nowadays? There is a societal pressure to achieve maturity. To be called immature is an insult. Myself and Spring felt this pressure in Ireland. We felt a pressure from our peers and elders to secure stable income, to be responsible in our choices and move towards the expected goal of getting a mortgage, maybe having a child and settling down. When we left Ireland behind, and left everyone we knew behind, something changed. It was like that pressure valve to conform to our culture’s definition of maturity was released. A weight was lifted from our shoulders. We were no longer keeping up with anybody’s expectations. When I was a child my mother would send us out of the house during the Summer months, to get out of her hair but also to give her time to clean up our mess. With those long days free to do what I wished I’d usually, along with some friends, try and find some woods or fields nearby to explore. I was always curious, like most Children I believe, of the places that Man hadn’t seen fit to manicure. With age and the burden of responsibility I’d forgotten this curiosity, but now, In Canada, with no peers to speak of, I felt it rekindled. I don’t think people ever truly “grow up”. I don’t accept that we pass a rubicon where we have to lose touch with what motivated us as children. I feel we choose to suppress those “childish” inclinations for ones we have been told make more sense for adults. Similar to my youth, in Canada now I’d see wild places and wonder what’s hidden behind those trees or where that river flows to or what I could look out on if I was standing on that shimmering white summit. I didn’t care if exploring those places would advance my career, or lead to financial stability, or allow me to keep up with the Jones’, I was driven by pure curiosity. Shortly after our first few forays out on trails in 2010, mentioned in the first part of this series, we started looking at some trail maps for the vicinity around our home in Squamish, BC. At that time we didn’t have internet, we’d planned it that way so as to give ourselves a break from needing to be connected all the time. We’d use free wifi at the local Starbucks occasionally but in general we...
Mount Corriveau: We, like, totally did it!
Last Summer I worked for a few months as a Landscape Gardener. Daily we’d go to these palatial mansions in West Vancouver and preen these extravagant, terraced gardens. At one such house I noted that their garden terraces dropped down from their front windows so that the people living their couldn’t even see their own front garden. Across the street from them was another house whose occupants did not care how their garden looked. There was an old car, rusting and broken, a dog tied up running in circles, patches of weeds and dirt and states of general disrepair. But it didn’t matter, their view was of all the terraced gardens across from them. They had the best view on the street and everyone else around them was paying us gardeners to give it to them. In many ways I’ve seen parallels to this while in the mountains. The dramatic, jagged peaks, with impressive prominences beckon the Mountaineer to climb, but once on their summits we lose sight of the mountain below us. While I am drawn to climb to the prominent summits, at least once a year I also try to visit and camp on an obscure summit that doesn’t stand out in its own right, but has the best seat in the house to view another mountain, or range, nearby. I began this tradition near the end of 2012 when we camped on Panorama Ridge. An unimpressive ridge with a minor bump for a summit that has the best view in Garibaldi Park. After that I began scouring reports for other, similarly unimpressive peaks with impressive views. Last year in 2013 we visited Empetrum Peak, a knolly bump with a view across to the dramatic Black Tusk. Camping on Panorama Ridge The Black Tusk from Empetrum On another trip last year, while scrambling to the summit of Welch Peak, I seen an impressive group of mountains near the horizon across from us. I asked others with me what they were and was told they were the Rexford group of mountains. While those jagged spires of rock drew my attention I was also interested in a ridge I could see that ran parallel to them. This ridge appeared to have an amazing vantage point across a valley to those striking peaks. I made a mental note to do some research about it later and possibly put it down as a viewpoint location for 2014. After a bit of research I found out that the high point on this obscure ridge was actually a named summit, Mount Corriveau. After a bit more research I found some information about a...
Girls’ Night Out: Part 2
< Girls’ Night Out: Part 1 The words that follow are by Kelly Fowler: We made camp in an outcropping of two huge granite boulders sitting ninety degrees to each other, nudging the base of a pine tree. One boulder had a curious indent in its shadow, enough for three wanderers to sleep like sardines. Solid to our left and backs, the path ran from above, down to the right and onwards through the rocks and scrub. It felt safe to stop. We ate some trail mix, drank some water. Nobody was all that hungry. Our little area received minimal coverage from the pine tree, and the rain still fell. I collected the food and hung it several metres away, as high as I could string it in the tree. That bottle of wine looked very lonely. We spread out Marwa’s sleeping bag on the bottom of the indent and prepared for the night. Everyone was surprisingly calm. I wanted someone to lose their cool, to cry or shout. Then the other two would have a purpose to console, to rally. Instead, each of us was mature, practical and almost serene. The plan was to rest until daybreak, and we would gain our bearings and make a decision to move on or go home. The darkness thickened and we could barely see past our hastily assembled camp. The two of them settled, and I was the last to get in, pulling the three packs in close to my right. After all, I was the one out in the open with Jill practically gone under the rock and Marwa snug in the middle. That wall of synthetic backpack material and extra wool socks was my pseudo protection from evil leprechauns, prancing ponies or other mythical forest creatures that dispersed from Fairy Meadow when the sun went down. I covered us with my sleeping bag and then a garbage bag. Fully clothed. Boots still laced. Glasses on my face. Wine unopened, hanging far away in a tree. And it rained. Not exactly your dream weekend, but the potential for an amusing story around the water cooler should we survive. There’s nothing quite like the sweet sound of rain on the roof of a tent when you’re snug inside. The tippity-tap-tap of water soothes and comforts. For us, the rhythm was a hazy, sleep-deprived version under a dark green Glad garbage bag. Our makeshift plastic bag duvet cover was, at least, keeping us dry. The sounds of the forest had long stilled. Until I heard it. It was heavy and low to the ground. It moved with purpose and it was coming...
Girls’ Night Out: Part 1
Prologue: Recently, when we published our post “3 Types of Fun” we asked our readers to shoot us a message if they had any Type 3 fun stories they wanted to share. We heard from a few people, most who’d already posted their stories online, but we heard from one who had yet to tell the story of her adventure gone awry to the world. We enjoyed her story so much that we offered to post it as our first guest post on our blog. The words that follow are by Kelly Fowler: Jill, Marwa and I hiked five hours only to find ourselves huddled under one sleeping bag, three in a row, in the dark, in the drizzle. I didn’t know exactly where we were. I did know we weren’t at Fairy Meadow – no fire burning in the hearth, no chilled Chardonnay, no pasta. Beneath the towering pine, the granite boulder, the Glad garbage bag and my purple MEC sleeping bag, the whistling of a lone wind travelling up and through Marwa’s nostrils echoed in my left ear. My right ear, however, contended with the conflicting hammer of my desperately beating heart and the solid methodical gait of a massive beast approaching from behind. Jill was practically wedged beneath the boulder, Marwa in the middle, and me on the outside, flanked only by our packs. Hiking pole tightly gripped in my right hand. Oh yes. We got lost. And now we were about to be eaten by some ravenous beast of the Selkirks whose presence had been made quite clear to Jill and me as we had hiked into the backcountry earlier that day. After many stories and beer to match, our planned 0600 hrs start morphed quickly into a groggy shuffle towards the car by 1100 hrs. Armed with pasta and bottles of red wine, our weekend getaway was nothing short of a chick flick. While Jill and I had both hiked extensively throughout Banff National Park, Marwa was still a virgin to the backcountry. My beautiful Egyptian friend prefers city lights and international men to eating berries in the wilderness, but she has a stubborn streak and a defiant stare that challenges anyone to tell her she can’t do something. This would be her debut with Mother Nature close at hand, experiencing true camaraderie, peeing in the woods. Wanting more than a little hike up to the tea houses around Lake Louise, which were far too touristy for our liking, I proposed that we venture out from our favourite trails into uncharted territory. Destination? The Alpine hut at Fairy Meadow in British Columbia’s Adamant...
4 Years, 4 Summits
Four years ago today, April 14th, 2014, myself and Spring finished our journey from Ireland to Canada and set foot in our new home in Squamish. Spring was returning to her home country after living away in Ireland for 6 years and I was moving somewhere completely new and foreign. The trip to Canada was not enjoyable. We ended up on a 9 hour flight in the middle seats of the middle isle of coach on the plane, wedged between an individual on our left who drank himself into a stupor within the first 45 minutes of the flight and an older, spindly lady on our right who packed the area around her seat with bags and clothes and then fell asleep in a ball on top of them. To add to this, in the seats in front of us were two mothers with newborns. They fully reclined their seats into our laps in the first minutes of the flight and they stayed that way for the duration. The crying and teething stopped us from being able to sleep through any of this. When we finally, wearily arrived at Vancouver airport, made our way through immigration services and went to pick up our rental car they told us that we could not have it. Spring had a driving license and I did not. But the credit cards we had were all in my name. The rental car company insisted that they’d only allow us to take the car if we provided a credit card in the drivers name. Without options, we got a taxi to the nearest Hotel and decided to figure this all out in the morning after sleeping off the day. The next morning, my first morning at my new home, I opened the curtains and the day was glorious. Blue skies and sunshine. We turned on the TV and switched to the news. Our jaws instantly dropped. Breaking news was coming in of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, an Icelandic volcano, and European airspace was shut down. Had our flight been a day later we’d likely have been stuck in Ireland now. This delay may have also impacted my chances of getting my permanent residency in Canada. The permanent residency application insists that I be in Canada within 12 months of taking the medical exam that it requires. That 12 month deadline was on April 15th, my first day in Canada. The qualms we’d had with the previous days flight and being refused our rental car washed away. We were at least here, our 3 meager suitcases of clothes had arrived with us and we were fine....
