In addition to the East Coast Trail, I’ve done a fair bit of hiking on Twillingate Island. My mom grew up in Twillingate and my Nan has a beautiful property in Bayview, so I spent a lot of time there growing up. I’ve done several of the trails over the years, but in recent years, the trails have been re-branded as the “Rockcut Trail” and I’ve been impressed to see a lot of work being put into expanding and maintaining the trails. Twillingate is a bit of a tourist metropolis in the summer time, so it’s nice to see some care being put into the trails. You can learn more about the full trail system on their website – in total there are 13 trails identified on the Island, 5 of which have been branded as a part of the continuous “Rockcut Trail”.
I’ve done both the French Beach and Spiller’s Cove Trails in the past, but not recently enough to write about them. So this past summer (2023), I hiked a new section of the trail, which is known as the Lower Little Harbour Trail. It can be done as a round trip hike out of Little Harbour, or as a longer hike through to Purcell’s Harbour. I was visiting for a few days with Emily, Karen, and Grant, and it was super hot out, so we opted to just do the Little Harbour loop, which totals 5km.
We thought it was going to be an easy hike (which it might have been in cooler conditions), but it was actually a fair bit more challenging than we anticipated. You start by walking down an old access road to Little Harbour, and then you spend most of the hike navigating around the headland to Jones Cove, before returning back to where you started. The majority of the hike is exposed on barren rock, so it’s incredibly scenic, but could be very windy in the right conditions. It was not windy when we visited (rare) and we had the sun beating down on us (also rare).
There’s a few viewpoints you can hike up to and during our visit, the bay was filled with icebergs! The trail gets a little technical and goes into the trees before Jones Cove, but the beach at the cove is gorgeous and they’ve recently constructed some brand new tent pads at the back of the beach! We stopped for a break and me and Emily went for a quick swim in the ocean. It was absolutely freezing, but refreshing on such a hot day.
After Jones Cove, the trail crosses back over the headland and you return the way you came, but I’d definitely be keen to return on a future visit and continue on to Purcell’s Harbour. I have a strong connection to Twillingate Island, so I look forward to completing all the trails in the future and this is hopefully the first entry in a new series!
To date, I’ve only been touring at Brockton Point, so I was excited to try out somewhere new. I’ve been to the Zoa Peak/Falls Lake area a few times in the winter and was feeling comfortable with the idea of touring up the Pipeline Road, which delineates the first half of the trail to Zoa. The trail continues up through the trees to Zoa, which is also popular for touring, but I’m still very nervous about coming down and I don’t like densely gladed runs even in the resort. The pipeline road is a good grade and nice and wide, so I liked the idea of just skiing up the road.
Originally, we had planned to go snow camping overnight. But the weather has been so terrible and it was calling for rain all weekend. I don’t mind going out for the day in the rain, but the idea of also camping in the snow and rain was not at all appealing. So we decided to go for a day trip instead. It was just me, Carolyn, and Brandon, so we drove out to the Coquihalla nice and early, hoping the rain would let up.
Unfortunately, it was still raining when we arrived and we were shocked to discover that there’s so little snow this year that they’ve actually been plowing the road to the Zoa Peak trailhead! The road is ~1.5km long, but it’s not normally plowed in the winter, so generally it adds an extra half hour of flat terrain to your hike to get to the official trail start (where the summer parking lot is). So we drove all the way out to the base and strapped on our skis and skins in the rain.
Brandon hasn’t picked up touring yet (but we’re wearing him down), so he just had snowshoes and a crazy carpet. He’s such a good sport and to be honest, it didn’t make much difference with him on snowshoes. It’s a nice hike up the road, fairly easy and the rain didn’t bother us. I actually find touring a lot more enjoyable than snowshoeing and it only took us about an hour to get to the top of the road. From there, we removed our skins and prepared for the ski back.
We probably could have skied out in like 10 minutes, but we took our time to try and enjoy it. Plus we had a good laugh watching Brandon on the crazy carpet, so it ended up taking around a half hour. The snow was very sticky because it was wet, but there was enough base down that it wasn’t too challenging to ski. Like I said, it’s a nice wide road, so I felt comfortable skiing it and we had a good time. It’s a shorter trip than going up to Brockton, but I definitely enjoyed it more.
If you’re a beginner, then I think the pipeline road is definitely a really good option and I’m already looking forward to coming back in better conditions! We only did one lap because of the rain, so it was a short day, but we hit up the owl cafe in Hope on the way back and had the most delicious meal of Newfoundland mussels and elk burger! I was super surprised to see NL mussels on the menu and didn’t expect them to be very good, but they were really tasty!
I’ve been downhill skiing since I was 10 years old. Since moving to BC, it felt inevitable that I would eventually want to get into ski touring. It’s intrigued me for the past few years, but it’s such a high buy-in for new gear that I was reluctant to commit. My downhill skis are 16 years old and very narrow for west coast skis (68mm underfoot). Me and Carolyn both decided to get new downhill skis at the same time, and as soon as she said she was getting skis for touring, I was obligated to get them too!
For those of you unfamiliar with ski touring, to oversimplify it, it’s downhill skiing without a chair lift. Meaning you stick skins to the bottom of your skis that allow you to walk uphill. The bindings are also different and use a pin in the front that allows your heel to lift out of the binding while walking. They look a bit like what most people know as telemark skis. This allows you to explore a lot of different terrain that wouldn’t be accessible to ski otherwise. Once you get to the top of the hill, you take off the skins, switch your bindings from ‘walk’ to ‘ski’ mode, and clip in your heels for a more traditional downhill ski experience.
Choosing skis, bindings, and boots was a learning experience and took me most of last winter. A great tip when deciding is to take advantage of Whistler’s ski demo program. When you have your own equipment, you can demo skis for $20 a day, you just can’t keep any one pair of skis for more than 2 hours, but you can try different skis all day. I did this once at the demo shop on Blackcomb (at Rendez-Vous) and once on Whistler (at Roundhouse). You use your own boots and poles and it’s a good way to see what you like. My favourites were the Head Kore 97 skis, which I was able to get for a really good price online. It’s been an experience getting used to my new skis though since they are 30mm wider and 10cm longer than my previous pair.
Bindings were the most expensive part of my new gear, but the most straightforward. I wanted hybrid bindings that could be used both in the resort and in the backcountry (instead of the lightweight backcountry bindings). There’s really only one hybrid set on the market (called the lab shift) and they’re made by both Salomon and Atomic. For boots, I went to a professional boot fitter and tried on boots until I was happy. This was the most challenging part as I found a lot of them really uncomfortable. I opted for Salomon boots, but I’m not 100% sold on them yet.
Anyways, back to the point. After getting all my gear last year, the season as almost over, so I only got to ski tour once last year and opted to start with Brockton Point on Mount Seymour. It’s a popular trail for touring because there’s a dedicated trail up the mountain and you can ski down the resort runs. I was hoping to do lots of touring in 2023, but it’s been a terrible year for snow, so I kicked off my season with a second run up and down Brockton Peak as well. I’ve done it twice on skis now, both with my friend, Eddie.
Eddie has been ski touring for several years, so he’s been very tolerant and supportive while I get comfortable. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but overall I think it’s been easier than I anticipated. The downhill part is definitely scarier than the uphill part, but the uphill part has been surprisingly comfortable. It’s very easy to walk uphill with the skins on and to be honest, it’s a lot more comfortable than snowshoeing. Your weight is distributed more and because you’re sliding your feet versus lifting them, it’s a lot easier. There are some tricky parts when the trail is steep, but overall the uphill part has been pretty enjoyable. I think a lot of people imagine that it would be exhausting, but mentally you’re prepared to go uphill for an extended period of time, so it’s really more like hiking with a fun ski out. At this point, it’s not really about the downhill ski part for me. More experienced skiers are out there chasing fresh mountain powder, but since I’m learning, it’s less about that for me right now.
Anyways, Brockton Point is a great place to learn, because like I said, the downhill part is scarier than the uphill, but since you’re just skiing in the resort, it’s no different than a normal ski run, it’s just free. You just have to plan to get a day pass and park in the snowshoe lot since you’re not purchasing a resort pass. We followed the snowshoe trail up the side of the road and then up the side of the slope to Brockton. From Brockton, you can drop back onto the resort runs. It took us about 90 minutes each time to get to the top, but I think Eddie could have down it faster without me. Eventually I’d like to try going further to Pump Peak, but I’m not quite there yet.
Touring seemed intimidating to me for a long time, but I’m thrilled to have finally taken the step to try it out. You just need to be cognizant that touring is generally a lot more dangerous than snowshoeing because skiers tend to prefer to be in steep terrain. Taking an Avalanche Safety Course is an absolute must if you’re getting into ski touring and I never go out without my beacon, shovel, probe, and helmet. Check out my winter safety post for more tips. I’m disappointed I didn’t get to go very much touring this year with the snow conditions, but looking forward to expanding this hobby in the years to come!
