Canadian Wilderness Adventures: Canoe Tour
< Part 1: ATV Tour with Canadian Wilderness Adventures After getting back to Whistler and cleaning the dust off ourselves from ATV’ing we met up with our guide Gavin to go Canoe the River of Golden Dreams. We joined a group of others that were stoked to have this experience also. Truth be told we’ve been meaning to do this river for quite a while after first hearing about it years ago. We’ve just never had the equipment or knowledge to go for it. In late Summer, when the water level is pretty low, it’s common for a lot of people to just float this river in inflatable dingys and inner tubes. Even though we’d be tackling it earlier in the year I expected a similar experience. Will Lightning strike the lake? We started this adventure by getting geared up on the shores of Alta Lake. After a quick tutorial we hopped into the canoes and paddled out. Once out on the water Gavin got us to run through some drills practicing some paddling techniques to turn and control our canoe. The weather also looked to be changing for the worst so Gavin made us aware that if thunder and lightning did start we’d be ending our tour early. The prospect of being caught out in a thunderstorm definitely added to the adventurous feel of this trip. We paddled in a tight knit group, chatting amongst ourselves and getting to know each other. At the far end of the lake we began our journey down into and along the River of Golden Dreams. The Best Thing To Do in Whistler! It’s exceptionally picturesque. I now understand why this outing is considered the #1 thing to do in Whistler by locals and tourists alike. We floated by lilies, under bridges, through narrow sections were we could see grass growing along the bottom of the river through the crystal clear water. After a section of paddling along a narrow stream we entered 21-Mile Creek, a wider, faster flowing river. The flow rate was surprising at first as I wasn’t expecting it. During the Spring and early Summer snow melt the river level is higher and flowing quicker. We began to move quicker and the paddling drills we had practiced earlier at Alta Lake came into use. Not only did we need to avoid low hanging trees, sand bars and sharp bends in the river but there was also loads of people floating in the river in small, cheap, inflatable dingys. It was exciting and our guides did an excellent job of instructing us as to how to handle the upcoming challenges and...
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...
“Spring Rush” Trail Race Recap
Every time I have ever driven through the Kelowna area, gazing at the dry, sagebrush covered hillsides, I have dreamt of running there. So I was pretty stoked to get the chance to run “Spring Rush” on April 25 in Kelowna. Not only is the race named after me (you may have to fact check that with the race director), but the race would wind through the very hills I have long dreamt of running. The event is located a ten minute drive from Bear Creek Provincial Park, which came in very handy for camping the night before. With such a short drive from the start line it meant I didn’t need to get up too early on race day. When I arrived at the start line the morning of, the tents were just being set up. Despite the flurry of activity I wanted to take a minute to meet Rene Unser, the race director, as I have seen so much of her through social media and have heard so many wonderful things about her. She said hello with a big warm hug and was bubbling with excitement! All I could notice was the huge smile on her face and how eager she was to share her local trails with everyone that day. This race was tough, tougher than I thought it was going to be. I am not sure what I was expecting, in fact I didn’t actually research much about the actual course before running it. There was a quick glance of the elevation profile, but apart from that I was just so stoked to run the race that I didn’t pay much attention to anything else. I had no knowledge of when the big hill was coming or of the endless switchback descents. Everything was a surprise and in the end I kind of liked it that way. If you are reading this though you probably want to know a little bit about the course, so I’ll share some of it with you. The course is flowy, runnable, dreamy singletrack. But don’t let that fool you, there is some serious climbing to be done on these trails and it is the runnable nature of the trail that makes this race tough. When you are used to technical uphill running, like I am on the west coast, you get used to slowing down a lot. This terrain, however kept you running, even when it was steep. You are convinced that since the path under your feet is not technical there is no reason to slow down, so you push harder. Then there was “the monster climb”. This is the part of...
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...
