adventure camping

so aparently i can't update this from my ipod, which is a huge pain but whatever i'll just have to make a better effort to block time for it.

i'm on a computer at the greyhound station - $5 for 30 minutes. expensive, but the same price as locking up my baggage, and it's raining damn hard outside so i'll suck it up.

right, adventure camping.

i went went camping this past weekend with friends jamie, karli and jay. we went to mount seymore provincial park, which is accessible from vancouver's public transit, plus a short hitchhike from the park gate to the ski area at the top of the mountain. we were told that a couple hours hike from the ski area we would find lake elsay, and we would be able to find a place to set up camp.

snafu #1: i wasn't sure how adventurous the hiking would be... i brought my guitar to the departure point in vancouver, thinking i could leave it there if my camping buddies thought it was a bad idea. jay seemed enthused about bringing it and helped my strap it to my pack so it would be easier to carry. he only later admitted that he thought it was a bad idea, but knew that he wouldn't have to carry it and that he would get to play it when we got to camp! anyways my pack was way too heavy and way too big. my tent is not really meant for hiking trips and i brought extra clothes because i knew my sleeping bag wouldn't stand up to the cold. jamie carried my pack the whole way - he wouldn't let me help and was probably right that it was too heavy for me to manage anyways.

snafu #2: we took our sweet time getting out in the morning. my friends all had been to the ben harper / pearl jam concert the night before so it was slow going. by the time we got ourselves and all our stuff over and up the mountain it was maybe 4. we quickly realized that the hike was going to be no walk in the park. we were climbing up boulder mountains and zigzagging down rocky cliffs. to make matters worse we had strapped the guitar upside down so that the neck would be braced by the straps, so jamie couldn't step down big rocks without the guitar getting in the way. he was not having fun and i felt awful for having him carry all my stuff. when we got to the top of a mountain we could see what we thought to be the lake down below, and it did not look close. we didn't have a choice but to keep following the trail down and hope to get there before we lost the light.

snafu #3: after hiking for quite some time down a rocky path into a valley where we hoped to find the lake, it became evident that we had lost the trail. we thought that if we kept going we would for sure find the lake, but when we got to the bottom of the valley there was no sign of the lake and no obvious path onwards. we were losing light and had no choice but to set up camp for the night.

turns out we kind of lucked out on where we ended up - it was a beautiful site with a delicious freash water stream and tons of firewood. the valley was shaded from the sun for all but a couple hours of the day, but we built lots of fires and stayed warm.

day two we woke up and could hear - then see - hikers on the trail which turned out to be high on a ridge above us. we debated packing up and moving on to the lake, but given that we didn't have an easy path out of the valley, and weren't exactly sure where we would find the lake, we packed water and snacks and decided to make it a day trip.

we scrambled up the boulders to where we could see the path above us, only to encouter bushes thick with prickles blocking our path. our progress slowed dramatically. we pushed on through and eventually got up by climbing on trees growing horizontally out of the mountain and monkeying over the bushes.

the hikers we found on the path informed us that we had another TWO HOURS to the lake. we were apparently severly misinformed. we cancelled the day trip to the lake, hiked the path for a few minutes to see what we could see (not much) and found a much better, prickle-free path back down to camp.

again, the campsite itself was really great. we had lots of food, good guitar and song sessions, and lots of laughter. we were happy to stay there for a second night.

the way home was a lot easier - we rearranged the packs so that weight was distributed more evenly, strapped the guitar the other way around and had a relatively easy hike back to base camp. on the way back we noticed a sign warning us of the difficulty of the elsay lake trail. oops. hahah.

i'm out of time. i might add to this story later. all around great trip with great friends.

peace out yo

j