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:
