An End to Finger Tapping ...

I've wanted to start drumming for a long, long time.  I finally managed to snag a set of Roland V-Drums in great condition through Craigslist:

 

Tucked into a corner of the suite kitchen / laundry room for now!

Finally up Mount Price

Mount Price is a modest summit that sits up above Garibaldi Lake.  Though quite an easy peak (mostly a "hike with altitude"), I'd been thwarted on two prior attempts.  The first was back in winter ~1999 - we'd turned back on a ski attempt when a storm hit the area.  My friend Mike & I tried it again in January, 2004 on another ski attempt, but ran out of time. 

January, 2004 - about to run out of time on Mount Price

The biggest challenge with the peak is just the distance - it's about a 28km round trip, with about 1700m of elevation gain.

So, fast forward to last weekend - my colleague Rod was looking for a good final hike before moving back down to Colorado with his family - so I thought that Mt. Price would be a good objective - plus, great scenery above Garibaldi Lake.

We left the car at around 9am from the standard Garibaldi Lake parking lot - we quickly dispensed with the switchbacks and covered the 9km and 900m up to the lake in 2 1/2 hours.

 

Rod at Garibaldi Lake - 2 1/2 hours in

The trail from the lake to Mount Price is well marked, though a little tricky to find the start of it from the lake.  Thanks to the guidebook, the description was easy to follow.

Mount Price (2nd peak from the right)

The trail to Mount Price was generally gentle and a pretty good trail by coastal standards.  However, there were several areas of Talus (from old lava flows - Mount Price is apparently an ancient volcano) to slow things down.

Mount Price above the old lava flows

The final scramble goes up and over the summit of Clinker Peak.  Again, straightforward hiking for the most part.

Rod climbing a snow slope, the Black Tusk on the horizon

The weather had started to turn a bit, though - with clouds getting lower and darker skies to the west.

Final slopes - Clinker Peak in the background

We made the summit at around 2:45pm - about 5 3/4 hours after starting. 

We started getting a few drops of rain at the summit.  Not quite the views I was hoping for ... clouds were coming in and out, and we only got fleeting views of Mount Garibaldi, the Neve, and points beyond.  We hung around the summit for around 45 minutes hoping for views to improve.  But, they never did - no bother, it was still a great place to be.

Rod at the summit

 

A final view of Garibaldi Lake

The descent went reasonably quickly, although the final trail down from Garibaldi Lake to the parking lot was it's usual tedious self.  Finally got back down to the car at around 8pm - total time up and down of around 11 hours. 

It was good to finally knock off Mount Price, and it was great to give Rod one final "send off" hike.

Finished the Haute Route story

Finally finished writing up the story of the Haute Route - here's a link to the post:

http://guyzblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/haute-route.html

Helm Creek / Gentian Ridge

I've been getting a little antsy to get out into the mountains for a bit more than a day - and preferably camp somewhere - ideally up in the alpine or something like that!

So, this weekend I laid my plans to get away, but then learned that Killaine's friends Tara & Neil from Ottawa would be visiting. So ... I adjusted slightly, changing to a quick getaway from work on friday and a hike in, then something a bit longer on saturday followed by a hike out - getting back to Vancouver early saturday evening.

I had originally planned on going up to Brandywine Mountain, but discovered that the access was closed (I didn't know that there was a different way in). So, a quick change of plans, and I headed up Helm Creek into Garibaldi Park.

It took about 2 hours to hike up to the campground where I spread out my bivy sack.

... and made a small supper on my small stove. There was just one other tent in the campground, and I never saw those folk. It was nice and quiet - even the mosquitoes eventually went to bed (when it got too cold).

The next day dawned clear - with clouds just down in the valley. I made breakfast (mmm ... instant coffee), and left the campground at around 8am. So, up I went to check out the Gentian Ridge approach to Gentian Pass.

This is Helm Peak, up on the ridge. Scramble-able, but difficult. I gave it a miss for today.

Great view of the Black Tusk. Still snow up there, but getting patchy and melting quickly.

North face of Garibaldi peak.

Some of the terrain along the ridge. It was pleasant hiking with a bit of scrambling, and non-stop views.

The north face of Castle Towers. The south (right) peak is an easy scramble - the main summit is a bit tricky. I'll have to come up on a weekend and give it a shot.

From Gentian Pass, I pondered heading across the Helm Glacier and circling back via Panorama Ridge. But, decided to decline crossing the glacier - perhaps not completely wise to cross it on my own with softening snow.

Pretty flowers back down in the meadows. Back at the campground at around 1pm. A quick lunch, then back to my truck, getting there at a little past 3:30pm.

Great hike to a spectacular area!

Hike up to Paton Lookout

I did another famous (?) carbon-neutral bike & hikes from home again today - this time to Paton Lookout.

Paton Lookout is up the Seymour Valley - approximately above the fish hatchery / dam area. It's appeared on my radar recently - my friend Todd has been up it a couple of times, the last time to use it to do a traverse of the Needle Peaks. Similarly, Doug from NSR has used it to access Colliseum/Burwell - the same route can extend to Cathedral Peak (as a two day trip).

Looking across north the lookout area.

Cathedral mountain from the lookout - if you look closely, you can see the repeaters on top (including one of NSR's).

Looking down the valley from the lookout, across the South Needle and Lynn Peak.

It was a relatively quick trip - from home to the trailhead was about 45 minutes. 1 !/2 hours up the trail, then back home - altogether about 4 hours and a bit.

Blog Updates Starting ...

Hey,

I'm starting to do a few more blog updates ... I've done a short one on my first day in Switzerland - the ascent of the Kleine Matterhorn!

I've installed Microsoft LiveWriter, which makes it much easier to make longer posts with photos, so hopefully and finally do a bit of a story over the weekend ... let's watch on ....

NSR Presentation at West Vancouver Library

I did a presentation on North Shore Rescue at the West Vancouver Memorial Library yesterday .. part of their summer reading club. The audience was mostly kids from 8 to 12 years old and a few parents - about 26 in all.

Education on mountain safety is something that NSR does quite frequently - Curtis, Wally, Connie & Russ really spearhead this program - this was my first presentation - and possibly my first presentation to children at any time!

Beforehand, I trimmed up the standard NSR mountain safety presentation to focus more on stories, and to try to engage the children as to what they think they should do when they go into the mountains, and the types of things they should take.

It went quite well! They had a truckload of questions on all facets of rescue & mountain stuff. Certainly, the interactive engagement worked well, but (for next time), need to remove virtually all text from the presentation - children generally go blank on powerpoint text. :-)

Also ... need to trim the message to it's base elements to get the message across. For younger kids, there's the Hug-A-Tree program that other folks inside NSR have presented - too young for this particular audience.