A little trip down Burnaby Mountain (no actual tripping involved)

Today Jeff and I went on our first hike in a good long while, a relatively gentle saunter down various connecting trails on Burnaby Mountain. The weather was sunny and warm but fortunately not Africa hot. We encountered a few cyclists but got out of the way without incident each time. One of them approaching from behind tipped us off to his presence with the world’s screechiest bicycle brakes. Seriously, an entire can of WD-40 may not have been enough to quiet that thing.

I knew there would be tree roots a-plenty on the trails and indeed, I tripped up on several of them, but because I was walking and looking down instead of running and gazing off at some non-specific thing up ahead, it was easy to recover each time and so I emerged at the bottom of the mountain sweaty but otherwise unscathed.

I only took two pictures because as pretty as trees on a mountain are, I didn’t have the time or inclination (or skill) to make fairly generic nature shots look like more than generic nature shots. But trust me, it was pretty.

Here is Jeff posing on the same bridge I froze my butt on when we did a similar hike in the winter. He looks much happier than I did:

Jeff posing on a bridge at Burnaby Mountain

The only other picture I took is of the vehicle cast down on the mountain in the olden days when the area was still a logging operation. Apparently some people tried to make a trail down to it or something, perhaps as a weirdly unprofitable salvage operation, as signs and fencing make it clear you are not meant to go down to touch the car:

Do not go to the dilapidated car

All in all, it was a pleasant little outing.

A walk with ducks, fresh gravel and wooden stickmen

Today Jeff and I went for a walk around Burnaby Lake, the first time I’ve been there in over two months and since The Big Blow of 2015. It was cooler than August but not really wetter, if you don’t count the lush athletic fields being giant sponges of water.

I wore my newish Peregrine 5 runners to give them another testing and they clearly do not get along with my weird left foot, as said foot started hurting almost right away. This makes me sad because I hate shopping for shoes. The pain was more annoying than anything, at least.

As we approached Hume Park, Jeff pulled out his iPhone and began setting about finding a nearby geocache, which are basically little goodies stashed away outdoors and contain sheets you can use to record that you have found the cache. The first one Jeff found was the weirdest, a wooden stickman that looked like a prop from The Blair Witch Project. Here I am holding it with my best goofy face on:

wooden stickman
Demonstrating the proper way to hold a stickman made of wood

Jeff ended up finding five others but none came close to the clever and odd design of the stickman. They were mostly water-logged sheets of paper rolled up inside leaky pill bottles.

We looked for a few caches along the Brunette River but didn’t have much luck there. We did notice the river was replete with salmon returning to the lake to spawn and die, as is their tragic lot on life. Many were quite big. Others were big and dead. And stinky. We didn’t linger.

Less stinky were a bunch of ducks near another geocache at the lake. I have never before observed a group of ducks all lined up on a tree branch before. I have now:

ducks in a row
Ducks in a row

We also watched as a gaggle of geese nearly flew into someone’s model airplane buzzing over the athletic field and enjoyed the newly resurfaced stretch of trail starting near Silver Creek. This has always been my least favorite part of the lake trail for runs, as it is very uneven and has steep sides that all but whisper, “C’mere and twist your ankle!” No more! It is now a smooth pedestrian superhighway. I expect erosion will take care of this in time but for now it’s a nice improvement. It also looks conspicuously unnatural.

delicious fresh gravel
Fresh gravel, perfect for walking on. NO BIKES.

Alas, by the time we reached the halfway point of our journey ’round the lake we both had sore feet and elected to take the SkyTrain back from the Sperling/Burnaby Lake station. We still covered about 11 km, though, so not too shabby for my first real walk in months.

Next time I’ll don better footwear or use some kind of magical orthopedic device that will make my left foot feel happy and non-hurting. I hate that foot.

The trail less traveled (for good reason)

I wanted to get some photos of the detour on my run route so today Jeff and headed out on a partial walk around Burnaby Lake, covering the south shore. The total distance was around 7 km and despite the temperature peaking at 30ºC it didn’t feel too hot thanks to a moderate breeze.

We started by walking from Production Way SkyTrain station to Cariboo Dam then headed to Still Creek, the approximate midway point of the lake trail. Normally we’d head out of the park and up a street to the Burnaby Lake/Sperling SkyTrain station but I had seen an unofficial trail just a little ways up where the Cottonwood Trail starts that looked like it would be a good shortcut — you can see the pedestrian walkway that’s near the station just beyond it. So we took it.

The trail quickly petered away and changed from a discernible path to ‘I knew I should have brought my machete’. The brambles and thick vegetation his stumps and other hazards, though the frequent prickly bushes were hard to miss. When we finally emerged onto the train track (fortunately there was no train parked on that section) we were bleeding, had bug bites and multiple welts from the prickly things. I was itchy as all get-out initially but the itchiness mercifully faded after a little while.

We agreed to not take that ‘route’ again — the same decision everyone else had made based on how quickly the trail came to an end. I’m not sure it was any faster, either.

Here’s one of the photos I took before we lacerated our legs. This is part of the detour I am taking on my runs now and as you can see the name Freeway Trail is apt.

It’s fun for running because there is absolutely no shade.

Diez Vistas hike -or- Why I wish I was a mountain goat

Today Jeff and I set out for our first official™ hike in a year and Jeff opted to take us along the Diez Vistas trail, as 15 km trek above and between Buntzen Lake to the east and Indiand Arm to the west. It took us just under five hours to complete. It is described thusly on the BC Hydro website:

This route is recommended for experienced and fit hikers only. Spanish for “ten views”, the Diez Vistas Trail is aptly named. Offering spectacular views of Vancouver’s waterways and mountains, the Diez Vistas Trail commences near the floating bridge. Travelling uphill into the forest, cross the powerline and pipeline and continue along a series of switchbacks until the trail forks. The left trail leads to a viewpoint overlooking Indian Arm and the right leads to a view of South Beach and across to Eagle Ridge. After reaching the high point where the trails reunite, you travel along a forest trail that terminates at a BC Hydro service road. Keep right and follow the service road and transmission line (the Old Buntzen Lake Trail) back to the Buntzen Lake Trail, where a left turn will take you to the suspension bridge leading to North Beach. From here, follow either Powerhouse Road or the Buntzen Lake Trail back to South Beach.

And now the stats:

  • 15 km hiked
  • 3.1 km/hr average pace
  • 740 m of elevation gained
  • one billion calories burned (okay, more in the range of 2400)

Considering that neither of us are in peak condition and I was coming off a week of not running, not to mention having a still slightly sore back, this was probably more than we should have tackled but it was a fun challenge, even if by the end our feet were aching, our stomachs were grumbling and we both felt very tired.

Living up to its name, Diez Vistas (10 vistas) has lots of viewpoints along the way, though we didn’t check out all of them. The ones we did had spectacular views of Burrard Inlet and Salmon Arm, with the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island spread out far below.

Much of the ascent and descent is fairly steep and it’s the kind of hiking where you often have to pick where to place your feet, as the path is covered in rock and twisted roots. We each slipped a few times but neither of us fell, something of a miracle for me given my unerring sense of imbalance. We encountered at least a couple dozen people during the hike, not surprising given that it was a Sunday and conditions were mild (the two previous times we hiked in this area it was freezing and pouring with rain, respectively). A pair of smart alecks even jogged past us at one point while we were exhausted enough to be tripping over on our feet. Dang kids young adults.

Click the first image below to view them all in sequence or visit the gallery here at your leisure.

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Bike at 12 o’ clock! (hiking Burnaby Mountain)

Today Jeff and I hiked up Burnaby Mountain for an hour, completing our trek in about an hour instead of the expected two. It was the first time I’d be on a mixed use trail, in this case one for both cyclists (specifically of the genus mountain bike extremus) and hikers. Within moments of ascending we had our first cyclist wheeling down toward us. Since they have momentum and it’s difficult, if not dangerous, for them to try to stop, we obligingly hopped out of the way each time.  I was a bit uncomfortable with this at first but everyone was so dang polite it didn’t bother me after awhile.

Then we didn’t seem any more riders.

The climb was milder than the one we did last week at Buntzen Lake but we gained a few hundred meters of elevation, at least, and some of the parts we climbed are apparently considered advanced, according to maps (see below).

No pictures since there was only one small lookout along the way, but I may take some if we return.

The route we took is seen below. We began on the road, walked east and headed up Nicoles Trail, over to Gear Jammer, down to Function Junction and finally down the aptly-named Lower Snake Trail (switchbacks ahoy!) before coming back to our starting point on Pipeline Trail. Not a bad little workout and the weather was very cooperative — clear and a few degrees above freezing.

Trail map:

And the relevant part of the legend:

Take a hike! (to Buntzen Lake)

Today Jeff and I went for a hike in the Buntzen Lake area. I am a hiking newbie still but Jeff kindly furnished me with a walking stick for additional stability, balance and to fend off marauding bears.

Rather than hike around the lake itself, which has an elevation gain of a little over 100m, Jeff plotted a course up the Halvor Lunden trail which would take us up to the top of Eagle Ridge and a total elevation climb of about 1020m. We made pretty good time heading up but somewhere past 600m up the trail became snow-covered. Normally this would not be an issue but the cover was fairly thin and had frozen, making it pretty much ice. Just past Polytrichum Lookout at 680m or so, the trail becomes very steep and narrow and the ice was a little unforgiving without having claws of steel attached to your boots. After continuing up a ways we elected to turn around and head back down.

Although it didn’t seem like we had climbed very far up Treacherous Icy Slope, making our way back down took longer than expected, with each step falling into the ‘be very careful so you do not go head-first the rest of the way down’ category.

We arrived safely back in the park and ate lunch in the sun at Buntzen Lake proper. For five minutes. Not that we finished lunch in five minutes, that’s how long the sun shone on our table before it moved on. Pesky winter sun. Everyone in the area seemed to have a camera. I did, too, and took some pics, which can be found in the Buntzen Lake gallery.

Here is one of them, a close-up shot of The Pulpit, the rocky outcropping at the top that we did not quite reach.

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It was an enjoyable outing despite not ultimately reaching our goal. There were no falls, bears and the weather was about perfect for this time of year — sunny and a touch above freezing with no wind.