Vancouver had a recent cold spell that brought a pretty good dump of snow on the local mountains. The temperatures warmed up on Friday, so that most of the snow in the city melted and the lower trails were just a gross slop of muck and slush. And it was raining. Instead of suffering and freezing my butt off in crappy conditions like that, I headed for the hills to get out onto the snow, breaking out the snowshoes for the first time this year.
The ski area at Mt. Seymour was a total white-out of fog and falling snow, and the drive up was pretty treacherous with a few cars skidding sideways in front of me (hint: so-called "M+S" tires don't do crap in the snow so stay the hell away from the white stuff if that's what you are using, OK?). However, I got parked fine, donned my snowshoes and headed off into the whiteness.
It was a ton of fun to be out on the snow again, and the trail seemed to go by quickly. About half way up, most other tracks had dropped off except for two sets. Not much farther along, the two people who made the tracks were on their way back. Now I was in deep, untracked snow, setting the trail myself - no running here!
I crested the main bluff, and couldn't see much of anything up there except the odd scrub tree - ground and sky melded together into an indistinguishable mass of whiteness. At one point I heard a distinct "whump" in the snow, and decided to stop where I was, instead of risking potential avalanche conditions heading up the final steep slope with Pump Peak overhanging it.
The run back down was just a great playtime, sliding down the steep slopes in great leaps, then getting some better footing on the more tracked area lower down. All in all, a great outing.
I put together a quick video of some of the footage from the trail.
And believe it or not, these photos are taken at the same spot:
I put together a quick video of some of the footage from the trail.
And believe it or not, these photos are taken at the same spot:
5 comments:
Oh Bruce....you're killing me!!! That looks incredible! We have but a light dusting here in Ontario and just dying for some snowshoe running.
....and the Crossovers must have been just the perfect shoe for snowshoe running.
Derrick, I was kind of laughing to myself putting the video together, thinking "I can't believe I'm beating Derrick with a snowshoeing post".
Guess we lotusland West Coasters just think you Eastern folk are either sweltering in humidity, or buried under 6 feet of snow ;-)
And yeah, the Crossovers were great. I think snow running is totally their niche, although paradoxically, I think they would be pretty awesome for desert racing as well.
It would be great to share a trail with you and Sara any time, but it would be especially fun to do it on snowshoes!
Haha. Yup...scooped.
Would love to get out there sometime to check out your trails. Keep hearing about all the beautiful trails from my sister in Surrey.
One of these days.
Beautiful video, Bruce. We're going to have to watch it over and over until we get snow. :)
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