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...
Running the Arc’teryx Squamish 50 23k
Photos by Lesley Morgan Loree Photos by Lesley Morgan Loree On Saturday, the 10th of August, I ran in my first ever race, road or trail, the “Squamish 50” 23k. It’s called the Squamish 50 as the main race is 50 miles long, but they also offer variants of the course that are 50km’s and 23km’s in length. Spring, the other half of pebbleshoo, ran in the 50km, a mammoth achievement, and will be posting her thoughts on that also. If you’ve been following this blog you might remember I posted about my reasons to run this race back in January, you can read that original post here: Twenty Three Well, did I hit my goal of losing 23lbs in weight? No. I did not. I’m around 15lbs lighter. I guess something changed between writing that initial post and actually running the race. Weight loss is still happening but I don’t frequently monitor my weight so it isn’t like I’ve set weight loss goals and am keeping track that I’m hitting them. I imagined I might lose around 23lbs by the race simply by being very active. I guess my body is happy with its current weight and doesn’t want it to drop much lower for now. Another aspect is that I don’t like feeling hungry. It’s an unnecessary mental distraction. Since January and when I wrote that first post about signing up for this race I’ve been doing a lot more Skiing, Mountain Biking and Rock Climbing, as well as some Backpacking and Mountaineering. Primarily though, compared to the last 3 years, I’ve cut back on Backpacking and spent a lot more of the Spring and Summer Mountain Biking and Rock Climbing. Generally, when my body is losing weight quickly, I feel hungry. When climbing it made me feel weak and when biking it made me feel shaky. This wasn’t good. I decided that I’d rather feel satiated and enjoy learning to get better at these activities than spend time thinking about food I could be eating. It seems to be working. I’m eating enough and I’m still losing weight, it’s just very, very slow. What has helped is that rather than reducing the quantity of food I was consuming I’ve changed the quality of it. I’m eating a lot more organic fruits and vegetables. I’ve cut out a lot of dairy as well, I consume no milk anymore (replaced it with Almond milk), I eat a little cheese and yogurt and trace amounts of butter. I’ve also cut back on wheat, refined sugars and canned foods. You might have noticed above that I didn’t mention running as...
Athelney Pass: The Park that never was
“Why isn’t this place a park?” I uttered those words as myself and Spring had just found a large rock that would be comfortable to sit on as we unpacked our lunches. We where sitting atop “The Elephant”, an unofficially named volcanic plug of rotten rock. A few kilometers away we could just about hear the whoops! of elation as 4 of our friends were reaching the summit of Ochre Mountain. We shouted out to them, not sure if they could hear us, and settled in to spend a few minutes soaking in the views before heading on to our next peak of the day. “Athelney Pass” I said to myself “… what a place!” The previous day myself, Spring and 5 other friends had spent 8 hours with heavy packs on our backs hauling our camping gear 15km’s up Salal Creek. For the most part you can walk on river rocks to follow the course of the creek, at other times you need to deke into the forest to avoid where the creek abuts the shore. It had been a hard approach hike. On paper it looks relatively easy by our standards with only 800m’s of elevation being gained over those 15km’s. We’d previously camped on Panorama Ridge in Garibaldi Provincial Park which was a 15km hike one way but with double that elevation gain and we had found that to be a breeze. This approach hike was a different kind of hard though. It was mentally fatiguing. On most trails we can just turn our brains to autopilot, but for walking on these polished river rocks we had to always be vigilant in our foot placements. Stepping on the wrong rock could mean a rolled ankle or worse. We could never really let our minds rest, we had to always be paying attention about our next foot placements. We eventually reached our campsite, beside a dilapidated mining cabin, and pitched our tents. The valley had lost the sun by the time we finally arrived and the mosquitoes had come out in their droves to feed. Nevertheless, we couldn’t help but feel like we’d arrived somewhere special. We looked out towards the large Ethelweard Glacier across from us, and turned in for the night. The next morning a few different objectives for the day were discussed. Myself and Springs plans didn’t really match up with anyone elses so just the two of us set out together. Everyone had decided to stay on the West side of Athelney Pass. The peaks on the East side of the Pass look considerably more intense and would likely require glacier travel gear....
Ossa Mountain
For detailed information about this scramble see: Scrambles in SW BC by Matt Gunn On the 26th of October 2010, myself and a hiking buddy, Matt B. attempted Ossa Mountain in a day. We failed. I was ~30lbs heavier back then with well over 100,000 less feet of elevation gained on my legs. I think Matt could have done it, but there were no views. Anyone who has hiked with Matt will know, he loses motivation quick when there are no views. Just getting to the base of Ossa and then back to the car took us over 14hrs. Ossa Mountain is usually attempted over two days due to the long approach and large amount of elevation gain. It has been done in a day before, but generally by people a lot fitter than I was. Well fortuitously, on the 27th of August, 2011, myself and Matt would both finally summit Ossa. Albeit separately and unaware of each others plans. He would head out to bivy overnight on the summit. I headed out earlier with my hiking partner, Spring, to prove to myself that I was now fit enough to tackle a big day like this in the mountains. At around 5:20am myself and Spring headed out for the Trail Head after grabbing breakfast to go at Tim Hortons. After parking and gearing up we were on the trail shortly after 6am. We moved briskly without stopping, although, I think whenever you hike with others your speed naturally slows. At times I felt like jogging, but I ended up getting too far ahead of Spring, at times Spring would move faster than me but end up having to stop so that I could catch up. We made it to the Sigurd Creek crossing in under 3hrs, then the moraine camp in under 4hrs where we had our first snack and got a look up at Ossa towering above us. The Bugs. Were. MENTAL. Mostly black flies, which don’t seem to bite until they’ve been on you for a few seconds, but they have a propensity to fly right into your ears, eyes, mouth and nose. Every time we’d hear each other coughing on a mouthful of black flies the other would say “remember its just protein” From there we angled up towards the trio of lakes. I didn’t angle up fast enough and we ended up close to a waterfall below the lower lake. I just cut straight up which required some scrambling to get up to the lake. At the highest lake we stopped and filtered some water and made a mental note to go for a swim...
