Mount Seymour
As usual, unshaven and disheveled. Photo taken by Dave Olson
Karen and I went up to Hollyburn Mountain in Cypress Bowl to snowshoe on the free trail with the hiking club this past Sunday. This time, instead of taking with me the old Olympus, and instead of limited visibility, we took along the DSLR, wrapped it up in the protective tarp that came with the carrying case, and set out to clear views of British Columbia's Lower Mainland. At the top of the cross-country ski run, just before the steep parts of the mountain, while fumbling with the camera to get a good close-up of the cute little birdies, one of said cute little birdies snatched the remains of my turkey and cheese sandwich. Other adventures on Sunday included falling and slipping down the mountain face not once but twice, then on the time I intended to slide on my butt, hurtling down at 12 km/hour (if my GPS logger is to be believed), an orange marker pole came out of nowhere and bit me on the face. I subdued it, but there was some bleeding.
Somehow I managed to take the above masterpiece, which Sameer generously described in the comments of the photo on Flickr as “like something out of a fairy tale.” This one gets the large and above-the-text treatment, unlike my usual adorned-inline-with-the-text job. There's no advice I can give about how to duplicate it, other take three shots, fiddle with the settings between each shot, and keep the best one. As with last time, I took along the GPS logger and got the locations of the January 20th photos mapped [January 5th trip map]. Earlier today I also added all my geotagged photos into one set, itself having a map.
After this and the previous trip, we've decided that we have had our fill of Hollyburn, and are turning our sights to Mount Seymour. Count me out if it rains, but the trip I took there before exposed me to some pretty intense snowboarder dudes (the ones who carry shovels with them as they go down what look to this untrained eye as 90 degree inclines) and lots of slope variation. This weekend I'm going with some work friends, so this will be a different—which is to say familiar—crowd, since the hiking group is almost always comprised of strangers. I'm bringing the good camera, weather permitting.
Over the weekend, I went on my first solo snowshoeing expedition. That makes it sound more significant that it really was: all I did was take the bus to Phibbs Station, take a "shuttle" bus—formerly a school bus—to Seymour Mountain for a couple hours of actual snowshoeing. The conditions were not great at all: it was raining on the mountain, which made for slushy and slippery trails. I fell a few times on the steepest slopes, at least once losing a snowshoe. Almost Sisyphean, I finally made it up, then, decided to give up on another slope, changed my mind and climbed it, then encountered another one, decided to give up, changed my mind, fell again, and decided once and for all to slide pretty much all the way down to the lodge. I proceeded to eat a delicious if sloppy chili dog while I waited two hours for the next "shuttle" down the mountain.
I learned a bunch, like: where "shuttle" picks up passengers (at the end of Oxford St. closest to Phibbs Exchange, not the end farthest from it); how to tighten my newly purchased Yukon snowshoes and untighten them (would have been better off learning that before going up the mountain); and that snowshoeing alone isn't very much fun (though everybody I pass by says Hi, just like back in my hometown). I brought my old Canon Powershot but didn't take any photos with it, instead taking only a couple of shots with my phone (see left). Tempted though I was to bring my Rebel XTi, that's not an investment I'm prepared to lose because I wanted to bum slide down just one more hill.
Other things that happened that day: a lady asked me why I took a photo of the bus stop sign at Phibbs Exchange, and I didn't have a really good answer for her other than that I'm a transit enthusiast. Also, I read a couple of chapters from Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, which so far I haven't learned much from but am enjoying as a popularization of Web 2.0. And I hear there was a football game on that day, but I decided to spend most of the day outdoors.
A week after snowshoeing on Hollyburn Mountain, yesterday I went snowshoeing on Mt. Seymour, again as part of the Hiking Club. I posted photos, which this time feature less cameraphone photos (I left my phone at home by accident), and more 'regular' camera photos. Also, as a warning, there are many more photos of me.
Hiking might be the thing that I do this year for physical exercise, absolutely nothing being last year's thing, the gym the year before that, and dragon boating the year before that. A friend of mine posted in her private journal the phrase "fuck work, make art", and I told her I wanted a t-shirt that said that. (At this writing, a MetaFilter post was the only result for that phrase.) Upon reflection, it occurred to me that I wasn't an artist, and that something like "fuck the gym, go hiking" might be a little more appropriate, as I'm on record as hating the gym (since writing that, though, I haven't made any progress towards losing 28 pounds). That might not be possible, but going hiking with interesting new people has been fun so far, though I'm afraid of anything more than a day trip.
