Twenty Three
Twenty Three seems to be of some significance to me of late. When I turned 23 years old a few very important things happened to me. I’d just got married and have never looked back, I got my Bachelors Degree and graduated. It was also when I first started to think about moving to Canada from Ireland at some point in the future. During my time at College I had access to a free Gym daily and would spend time working out and running on treadmills during my time between labwork and lectures. I weighed ~170lbs but a lot of that was muscle weight. When I left College, got a job and settled into married life I started to gain more weight. The problem was that I had increased my caloric intake over time because I had been building muscle mass. I suddenly stopped working out when I graduated as it was no longer free or convenient to go to a gym but my body was now used to the larger diet. I wouldn’t say I ballooned over night but over the course of 3 years I believe I gained over 110lbs. The last time I weighed myself I was ~270lbs and then I just stopped weighing myself for months but I know I got a fair bit heavier. I’m going to conservatively estimate I reached 280lbs but it was probably more. I want to be clear at this point that my weight didn’t bother me much, and I don’t look back now and think how awful it was that I let myself get that heavy. I believe that the body is a machine used to achieve the aspirations of the mind. If your aspirations don’t require you to have the body of a gorilla or a cheetah then you shouldn’t waste time trying to make it look and respond like that. It’s like buying a Ferrari just to drive to the Supermarket. My interests back then resided in mostly sedentary endeavors. I loved to consume visual media; Games, Movies, TV. My job was sedentary but I enjoyed it. I worked on and with computers, in my spare time I would build, “tweak” and “overclock” computers and then play PC games on them. We like to laud the thin, fast and strong and chastise the fat, slow and weak and this is unfair. A person should be viewed based on how happy they are, regardless of form or means, and back then I was happy. Then the Financial crisis in 2008 happened. It didn’t drastically affect me, but it soured the milk enough that living in Ireland lost its...
Hurley Silver Mine
Sometimes it’s nice to tag along on a trip and not really do anything to plan it. It’s too easy nowadays to completely destroy any discovery when exploring a new area by doing research online. Most places will have pictures of everything on the route, 360’ video panoramas, HD Satellite imagery available in Google Earth, with detailed reports describing every step of the way. (I’m aware of the irony of writing this and posting it online). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it’s nice to discover an area fresh without any previous knowledge of what to expect. So mid last week I received word that a friend wanted to explore the “Hurley Silver Mine” area and potentially summit “Hurley Silver Peak”. I’d remembered reading something about it, and vaguely knew it was off the Duffy Lake Road so I agreed. I’ve never been on a bad hike that started from the Duffy Lake Road. Saturday morning seen four of us heading North, past Whistler, then Pemberton and along the Duffy. We passed the pullouts for all the popular weekend spots for sledders and skiers and they were packed. Why wouldn’t they be, conditions were awesome and the weather was forecast for bluebird skies. I worried that our chosen area would also be overrun by skiers and sledders also. Nearing our parking spot I seen it was empty with only an old pickup parked up the road. My friend, Adrien, mentioned that we had to be dropped off at the parking area and that Ben, the driver, would need to park about a kilometer away as there was rumours that a First Nations man might vandalize our vehicle if we parked nearby. Turns out there used to be a proper, drivable bridge that crosses Cayoosh Creek which runs parallel to the Duffy Lake Road for a while, but it washed out some years back. Since then a new footbridge has been installed, purportedly by this First Nations man who lives on the opposite side of Cayoosh Creek, the side we’d need to cross over to before heading along the Hurley Silver Mine road towards our objective. He has been reported as blocking peoples attempts to cross this bridge. Whether or not these rumours are lore, past tense or true didn’t matter. It was better to err on the side of caution rather than risk a possible confrontation. We unloaded, moved the car a safe distance away, geared up, then quickly scurried across the footbridge and along the road. The footbridge instantly meant we wouldn’t be listening to the obnoxious sound and smell of sleds for the weekend. We...
Tantalized by the Tantalus
King Tantalus, for various atrocities, was banished to the underworld where he spent his days up to his neck in water with delicious fruits hanging over his head which were wafted away whenever he tried to grasp them, or that whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any, hence the word “tantalize”. Apart from a few trips into the northern reaches of the Tantalus Range, I’ve had a run of bad luck just trying to get into the central and southern area of this range. Things have just never lined up properly. Poor weather putting the kibosh on a heli ride the morning of departure about a year ago, last Fall at late notice our landlords needed our apartment for family, causing us to have to move out the weekend of a planned trip. A few weeks back another trip was cancelled due to worsening weather. There have been countless other trips in the pipeline that have just gotten postponed or cancelled for one reason or another. I was beginning to wonder if I was being subject to the same punishment as King Tantalus. Which brings me to a trip I planned in the middle of July in 2012. I live in the small coastal/mountain town of Squamish and pretty much since the day I set foot here I’ve been looking over at a cirque that towers over downtown Squamish with impressive looking waterfalls cascading down through bluffs and ending in the Squamish river. It wasn’t until a trip up another local peak, Mt. Mulligan, last year that I realized there was a lake up there, Echo Lake to be exact. My ice ax was also crackling as well as my helmet. Realizing that this possibly signifies an imminent lightning strike I dropped low to the ground Over the past year it’s been an interest of mine to collect information about this area and its surrounding peaks. I emailed a few people who have all been in this area of the Tantalus and got some responses. To say that information is sparse though is an understatement. For an area close enough to Squamish that you can still hear the horns of trains passing through downtown it’s crazy that there is so little information about it. This adds to its allure though so forgive me if this report describes the trip more than the route. I’d hate to deprive others of the same experience. My rough plan was probably ambitious: Friday: Hike to Echo Lake Saturday: Hike to either Niobe/Pelops or Lydia/Niobe col Sunday: Exit via Lake Lovely Water Anyway, ominously on Friday the 13th, 6 of us met in...
Crown Mountain: Powder Pushers
Mid last week we got wind of a planned trip to investigate and possibly climb Crater Couloir on Crown Mountain. It’s been on our radar for a while so we immediately put our names down to go along. Some details changed and due to a few of us needing to be back in the city earlier 4 of us, Spring, Leigh, Dean and Adrien ended up planning to start hiking at 4:30am it meant a 3am wakeup alarm on a Saturday but c’est la vie. We approached via the Grouse Grind trail, a leg burner that stops for most at the Chalet at the top where they check their watches, record their times and never venture further into the backcountry beyond. For us, the Chalet would be our first pitstop. Starting in the dark, and trudging up this trail that turned from soil, to ice, to snow it was a novelty to burst out into the open and be surrounded by the fully lit up Grouse Mountain Resort. We refilled our water bottles in the Chalets restrooms, changed some gear around then headed out on the corduroy groomed trails towards Crown Mountain, where we left the groomed and broken trails behind. We made good time from here and passed Dam Mountain, Little Goat Mountain and then continued down to Crown Pass. As our plan was to do the Crater Couloir we started descending towards the Hanes Creek Valley at this point. About half way down we noticed a rather large and wide runnel that had been formed recently by a slide released from the bluffs above to our left. It was enough of a pause to question whether we should attempt the Couloir at all. Conditions weren’t good and we all knew it would be a heinous snow treadmill up the couloir so we decided to leave it for another day. We decided to attempt the summer scramble route instead. Once we regained Crown Pass we began following the Tree Markers that lead the way along the summer trail. Simple sections that I’m sure are easily bypassed when there isn’t any snow ended up taking considerable amounts of time. An ice layer about a foot or two beneath the snow caused numerous problems in steep sections as the snow on top of it would slide and would also not compress to allow us to make footholds. To add to this, due to the snow, the runouts in quite a few sections of sidehilling were pretty bad. Nevertheless, we pushed on, swimming and plowing through the powder. We gained the final ridge to the summit and decided to don our...
MSR Reactor Stove Review
I bought my first backpacking stove around June 2010. That may seem fairly recent but if you backpack frequently through all 4 seasons you learn what works and what doesn’t fast. Every trip is like an extensive field test with peer reviews from the other members in the group. Not only is your equipment being analysed but you are also analysing and reviewing everyone elses equipment. It was in this manner that I came to know about the MSR Reactor Stove. My first stove was the ubiquitous MSR Whisperlite I was recommended to purchase it by an MEC employee here in Vancouver, and I feel it was the best option for someone just starting out with camping and backpacking. It’s not light by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s rugged, durable and it gets the job done through all 4 seasons in any weather conditions. It impressed me enough that I ended up getting my first tent and snowshoes from MSR also. Anyway, getting back to the MSR Reactor Stove. I’d been using my Whisperlite for about a year and a half and was satisfied with it. When hiking with others I’d ask them primarily about the “boil time” on their stoves. It tends to hover between 3 and 5 minutes for the most part for all current stoves. The Whisperlite boils 1 Litre of water in 3.9 minutes so certainly not the best, but what difference does waiting an extra minute make right? That’s when I noticed a friend I backpacked with using the MSR Reactor. We’d get to camp, set up our tents, then start making dinner. I’d sit down and start setting up my white gas fueled Whisperlite. I’d just have it starting to boil the water and look over at my friend and not only was he finished boiling his water, he would also almost be finished eating the meal he’d just rehydrated with the boiled water. I never watched him, as I was too involved with my own setup, so how he managed to finish so fast was confusing. The Reactor only boils around 55 seconds faster than the Whisperlite and in independent test videos I’ve seen this to be true also. So how was he finishing at least 10 minutes or more faster than me? On our next outing, I made the point to watch him as I was also setting up my own stove and pot. Within seconds I understood the difference. He had his stove assembled, lit and boiling water before I’d even taken my stove components out. The Whisperlite requires a fair bit of setting up to get it going....
