The Shoulder Season Shuffle
Before moving from Ireland to Canada I had never heard the term “shoulder season” before. Largely because Ireland only has 1 Season, which is that it’s rainy, a little cold, a little warm, sometimes sunny, all year round. Whereas Canada, more specifically, Southwest British Columbia where we live, definitely has 4 distinct seasons, well, that isn’t entirely true, it’s more like 2 seasons with 2 shoulders abutting them. The two main seasons are Winter and Summer, or, colloquially for outdoor enthusiasts, Snow Season and Bug Season. Spring and Fall feel like blips on the radar, as soon as they start it feels like they’ve already ended. Which is why they’re known as the shoulders, Fall is the trailing edge of Summer leading into Winter, and Spring is the trailing edge of Winter. They’re periods of transition and flux, before the relatively stable conditions of Summer and Winter settle in. This flux creates, predictably, unpredictable weather. You can have daytime highs in temperatures that feel like Summer and nighttime lows that feel like Winter. Trusting forecasts even a day in advance is usually a fools errand. At this time of year, personally, I try to look at the forecast the morning of a trip and even then I take it with a pinch of salt as the weather can vary, dramatically, in the mountains from valley to valley. At this time of year, in the Fall, if you want to continue experiencing the outdoors, you have to be flexible and zen about it. You have to be mentally prepared for the fact that, even though the forecast is for sunshine it may in fact start snowing on you on the top of a mountain. As the song goes “Que Sera, Sera…” Last weekend, the first weekend of October, was a typical Fall weekend. The preceding weekend had seen the mountains in our corner of British Columbia turn, almost overnight, from Summer to Winter. A large storm had rolled in and dumped massive amounts of precipitation on everything. People sometimes say to me “You’re Irish, you must be used to the rain”, I can tell you, we don’t get rain like that in Ireland. It was “biblical” as the expression goes, with curtains of rain coming down. We were signed up to run the Rubble Creek Classic that Sunday, a ~25km trail race through a high mountain pass in Garibaldi Provincial Park. By early on Saturday though the organizers postponed it to the following weekend. In typical fashion, we shuffled things around with word of the postponement and went for a run locally. This weekend the forecast looked good and I...
Hiking: Tips and Tricks
Sometimes, the best tips and tricks are learnt the hard way, so I thought I’d compile a list of some of mine that I’ve picked up over the last few years from hiking and backpacking through all four seasons and from valley floor to mountain top. Tie your shoe laces properly: This is a bit of a life hack as you can utilize it outside of hiking. If you find your boot laces start to loosen every few hours when you’re hiking you probably learned to tie a granny knot instead of a square knot when you first learnt to tie up your shoes. I realized this mistake myself and went searching for a solution. Not only does this method guarantee you tie a square knot, but it’s also a lot quicker. I also find this method of tying up my shoes a lot easier with large winter gloves on than the usual method. Use a Buff: You need to buy a buff if you’re hiking and camping. It has so many uses through all 4 seasons of the year. It can be used as a; Balaclava, Face mask, Neck gaiter, helmet liner, Beanie, Headband, eye mask, wristband. I never leave home without it. Stuff don’t Roll: If you roll up your tent or sleeping bag before putting it in a sack then stop. Stuff it into the sack. I used to roll up everything and I needed to use a 65L pack to go on an overnight trip. When I switched to stuffing everything I was able to get a much lighter 32L pack and still bring the same items. Here’s why, when I’d roll up my sleeping bag I needed a sack that had an opening large enough to fit the entire sleeping bag inside it all at once. These sacks were so large that I couldn’t compress any additional airspace out of them. When I switched to stuffing I only needed a sack with an opening that would fit whatever part of the sleeping bag was bunched up in my hand as I fed it into the sack. I went from using 25L compression sacks to using 8L compression sacks. On most overnight trips, even in the Winter, I can use one 12L compression sack for all my spare clothes, jackets and winter sleeping bag. Here is Spring @ pebbleshoo quickly unstuffing her sleeping bag from her compression sack on one of our recent trips. Start using Compression Sacks: I use a the OR compression sacks, the heavier ones. They’re burly and can take a beating while still being pretty light. They save you weight though by...
Amazeballs
I wanted to share one of my absolute favourite recipes. You have probably seen quite a few versions of “snack or energy balls” around, but as a lover of everything that is almond I love this one. No cooking, no fussing and no prep time required. These are a cinch to make. Just throw the ingredients into a food processor, wiz it up and then roll into balls.Within minutes you will be enjoying a delicious healthy treat. Here is the recipe: Amaze Balls (Raw Cacao Almond Balls) Ingredients: 11 dates 1/2 cup almond butter 1/4 almond flour (optional) 1 cup raw almonds 1/4 raw cacao powder or nibs 1 tbsp raw honey 1 tsp pure vanilla extract 2 tbsp hemp seeds 2 tsp cinnamon 1/4 goji berries (soak for 1-2 minutes in water to soften) 2 tsp chia seeds sesame seeds Directions: Place all the ingredients except for the sesame seeds in a mixer and wiz until smooth. With your hands roll the mixture into small balls. Then pour the sesame onto a plate or in a bowl and roll the balls in until covered. Place the balls on a plate and refrigerate until hard. Tip: If you love the taste of sesame,try toasting the seeds before hand. It really adds an extra layer of flavour! Enjoy! (This recipe has been shared and adapted from one of my lovely friends who was kind enough to make and share more than a few versions of this recipe with me until it became what it is...
Animal House II: The Tenquille Invasion
“Are you guys all from Whistler?” I asked. He finished chugging another Pilsner and shouted out: “Yeah buddy, how’d you know?” I smiled as a reply and kept walking, past the Canadian Tire Queen sized inflatable mattress floating in the lake with somebody passed out on top of it, the shotgun and shells, the brewery worth of beer cans, the frenzied pack of dogs, the bleary eyed girlfriends wearing swimsuits that might have originally fit them some time back around ‘95, the Brahs tomahawking hatchets at the nearest tree trunk as if training for Z-Day, wearing board shorts, 5 dollar shades and baseball caps with comedy sized flat brims (still nonplussed by the sticker) Yes, yes, we had arrived, along with approximately 60 other people, 3 babies, 10 dogs and 8 mountain bikes at the Tenquille Lake Recreation Site to bask in the glorious death throes of Summer, long may she rest in peace. Getting here had been no mean feat for our 2WD jalopy. It had developed a mean cough in its muffler somewhere along the 4WD section of the Birkenhead River-Tenquille Creek Branch FSR. As we crawled through the water bars, giving the belly of our steed a good scratch I thought the lady doth protest too much. Eventually though we realized that she was hobbling along slower than we could actually walk this road, so we parked about 3km’s back from the Trailhead. Indeed, we walked at the same speed or faster than other 4WD vehicles on the road, overtaking them at the waterbars. Do yourself a favour, bike the road. Unless your truck is seriously jacked, you will be crawling it. A bike would be faster on the way in, and way faster and more fun on the way out. We made short order of the trail itself. It looks like somebody is trying to reroute the old trail away from all the muddy sections that have become hilariously braided. This rerouting is creating a bit of chaos as there are now branches off the main trail everywhere. We talked to some guys who had tried to hike in the previous night, took a wrong branch, and ended up back at their trucks via a different trail a few hours later, wherein they decided to camp instead for the night. Another aside, cross to the other side of the lake outflow on the way in for the shorter and easier trail to the cabin. Over the weekend we summited Tenquille, Finch Ridge, Copper Mound and McLeod. All nice, hands in pockets, rambles in the Class 2 range. Views were pleasant. Some MTB’rs got heli-dropped onto...
Tszil Mountain & Mount Taylor: Photo Essay
“Halo, Halo! At a place called Vertigo!” It seemed apropos that being a U2 fan (comment if you got the reference), being high in the mountains and being completely awestruck by the Sun Halo above me that that variation on those lyrics would come into my head as we ascended an airy, narrow moraine to gain a col. between Tszil Mountain and Mount Taylor. Myself, Spring and Ben had plans to explore some peaks in Joffre Lakes Provincial Park and did just that. If conditions were in we planned to also visit Slalok Mountain as well. Ultimately we ascended only the peaks mentioned in the title of this post but will be back to visit Slalok Mountain under drier conditions. This Park is justifiable so. It’s simply amazing and photos and words cannot do it enough justice. However, if I had to choose, photos do a better job than words in my opinion so I’ll let them do the talking. Have you been to Joffre Lakes? Which picture below is your...
