This snow camp post is going to be a bit different than my usual posts. Most notably because it was a snow camp that I did with Girl Guides, but more interestingly because it’s a snow camp experience that doesn’t require backpacking!
I’ve done two snow camps with Girl Guides now. The first was at the Mount Seymour Group Site, and the second at the Lone Duck II Group Site in Manning. Both are located ~100 metres from the car and have warming huts, so it makes for a great experience for beginners because you can try snow camping with the safety of a warming hut and without needing lightweight backpacking gear.
The challenge for the average person is that these are both group sites, so it’s hard to utilize them if you only have a small group. The good news is that, as the name suggests, Manning has a second site called Lone Duck I, which is a first come, first serve campground through the winter. So if you’d like to try snow camping for the first time, this site is a really great option because you can carry in whatever gear you need and there is a warming hut for this site too. It’s basically an open-campground, so you might even meet some cool new people!
The site is located past the Lightning Lakes day use area, but before the summer campground and strawberry flats area. You pull off the main road and there’s a parking lot for both sites. Both are located next to the lake and the cross country ski track, so depending on your interests, you can go for a long ski or take your snowshoes out on the lake, which is generally frozen through the winter.
We lugged our gear in along with a lot of firewood. We had lunch in the hut first and then got to work setting up our tents. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot a snow, even in early January (and none of it was fresh), so we didn’t have to dig down very far, but it was also very crunchy conditions. Trex did really well setting up their tents, especially considering it was the first time snow camping for most of them.
Once settled, we took our snowshoes out on the lake for an adventure. We stuck close to the shoreline as a precaution at first, but the lake was extremely frozen, so we eventually wandered a little bit further out. We snowshoed to the bridge that separates the two lakes (making sure to get back on the actual trail to avoid the river, which doesn’t usually freeze). We crossed the bridge before snowshoeing back across the lake to the campsite again. It was only ~3-4km, but it was good to do a bit of exploring. It had been pretty sunny when we arrived, but the clouds were doing really weird things, so we ended up with some interesting cloud formations on the lake.
After returning, we decided to get the woodstove going for the rest of the night. The conditions were really mild and it was only just below zero, so quite warm for first timers. But we still planned to keep the hut warm all night as a precaution in case anyone was really cold in the tent. I have to say… I love backpacking, but I was definitely a fan of the woodstove! It made the hut so cozy and it’s so large we were also able to use it as a 4 burner stove. It had a hard time actually boiling water, but it was great for melting snow and we even used it to cook our chili for the evening.
Our evening was pretty chill and we sang some campfire songs and played a lot of cards. Eventually we all crawled into our tents and one of the guiders kept the fire going overnight. Overnight reviews were a bit mixed. One tent stayed very warm, but another struggled. No one gave up and crawled into the hut, but there were definitely some improvements to be made.
Overall it was a great first trip and no one was freezing, but I’m not super enthusiastic about trying snow camping backpacking with Girl Guides. Finding warm enough gear that can be carried is a real challenge. I hope Elfin Lakes re-opens the hut again soon because I think that would be a good option for Guides. Though we are lucky that Girl Guides owns their own hut on Hollyburn Mountain as well, so we hope to explore there next year.
In conclusion, Manning Park is a great place for beginners and I’d recommend the Lone Duck I site if it’s your first time. Me and Carolyn actually tried to do Lone Duck for our very first snow camp, but we missed the turn-off to the highway and were 40 minutes down the Coquihalla before we realized, so we ended up doing Falls Lakes instead!
I didn’t get up to very much hiking during the Fall last year, but I was still busy having other kinds of adventures! I’ve never been to Los Angeles and this is probably one of the most spontaneous trips I’ve gone on since I lived in Europe a decade ago. It seemed like everyone on social media was seeing Harry Styles in concert and less than a month before the trip, I impulsively decided that I wanted to go see Harry in concert too. A quick google search revealed he would be in Los Angeles, which is near enough to Vancouver without being too far away for a weekend.
I sent Carolyn a quick text message and we had the following exchange:
Mar: I’m thinking of going to LA to see Harry Styles in November, you interested?
Car: Oooo, I’ve never been there and that sounds fun, but I need to sleep on it.
(9 minutes later)
Car: Forget it, I’m in!
She came to my house a few days later and we booked the flights and concert tickets.
We both used points for the flight, so it was pretty reasonable and we flew direct both ways. The concert was a good deal more expensive than the flights, so we decided to re-visit our younger years and stay in a hostel to save money. I’m definitely past my hostel days and prefer a quiet room to myself, but the accommodations in LA are outrageously expensive and Carolyn got it in her head that we should stay in Santa Monica (pretty much the most expensive). So we scrimped on the hostel so that we could stay in Santa Monica and spend the money on ubers instead. It was mild torture being hungover in a communal space on Sunday morning, but I didn’t regret it too much. YOLO.
Similar to when I went to Vegas, I didn’t expect to like the city, but ended up actually having a really good time! LA is a big city known for its urban sprawl and lack of transit, but it was so much friendlier than I was expecting. It felt a lot less grimy than when I recently re-visited Portland and I actually felt pretty safe as the people were quite nice. California and the PNW in general are known for being a bit more liberal and I definitely found this to be the case in LA. Plus the weather rocks!
It was around 20 degrees celsius when we visited, which appeared cold to a lot of the locals judging by their choice of dress (puffy jackets!), but it was nice and balmy to us and we wore shorts all weekend. We were treated to sun throughout the entire trip and it was lovely to take a break from Vancouver’s monotonous rain and clouds in the middle of Fall.
We left after work on Friday evening and got to LA late on Friday night. Neither of us had a working American cell phone (or even a roaming data plan), but we managed to find enough wifi throughout the trip to call ourselves ubers whenever we needed them. After a confusing departure from the airport, we arrived to the hostel in Santa Monica in time to go to bed. Sadly our companions were up at the crack of dawn, so being early risers ourselves, we made a reasonably early start on the day. We saved even more money at the hostel’s breakfast bar before flushing it all down the drain trying to purchase bus tickets. In our defense, the machine overcharged us and we ended up with a handful of extra passes.
We took the bus into West Hollywood, which ended up being our only bus ride of the trip. You can take two hikers out of the woods, but you can’t make them stop walking. We ended up logging more than 10km walking around the city on Saturday. Carolyn humoured me with a visit to two bookstores right at the start and they were both amazing! The first was Book Soup, which is an independent bookstore with a fantastic collection and actual ladders on the walls. Then we hopped around the corner to Mystery Pier Books, which is a specialty store that just sells first editions of books! It was pretty incredible; it had all these old editions of books, but I’m not sure how much they actually sell because they’re all so special. I thought they should charge $5 to get in the store because you get a lot of busy bodies like us (okay me) who are enthralled with the concept, but unsurprisingly purchase nothing.
So after that obvious highlight of the trip, we spent the rest of the day walking around Hollywood. We started on Sunset Blvd, where we had lunch, before eventually transitioning up to Hollywood Blvd to do the Walk of Fame. I visited 3 Targets trying to find Taylor Swift’s special Midnights album for Emily to no avail. Once we had our fill of cupcakes on the Walk of Fame, we walked around some more looking for wifi to call an uber to the Royal Observatory in Griffiths Park. This involved running back and forth across the street a few times to get the best network, but we made it work!
It was so worth it! It was crazy busy at Griffith Park, but I loved everything about the observatory. From the cool architecture, to the science museum, to the view of the Hollywood Sign. It’s a desert right in the middle of the city. We debated calling an uber back when we were done, but ended up deciding to hike down through the park instead. It got us away from the crowded road, but we didn’t really have enough time to wait for the bus, so we still ended up having to call an uber to take us the lengthy distance back to Santa Monica.
Once back at the hostel, we quickly got ready for Harry Styles while picking a restaurant to eat before the show. We were literally getting ready to leave when I got a text from Emily telling me that Harry had cancelled the show! We knew it was a possibility because he had cancelled the previous night’s show, but he had given more than just an hour’s notice when he cancelled the previous show, so we’d been optimistic our concert would happen. But alas, it was not meant to be. It was pretty disappointing because neither of us was interested in coming back for a concert that would be re-scheduled mid-week in January, so we decided to make the best of it and went out in our concert apparel instead! We were able to get our money back for the show, so our logic was that we now had a pretty hefty entertainment budget for the evening.
We started at Onyx Rooftop Bar in Santa Monica where we ordered fancy cocktails to enjoy outside on the roof. It sounded like a swanky idea, except for the little issue where we were the only people who actually found it warm enough to be on the roof. But instead of crying over our $35 drinks, we befriended the only other people on the roof and got some club recommendations for later.
We left the rooftop in search of cheaper drinks and decided on a Mexican restaurant, only to accidentally go into the wrong building and end up eating at a much less exciting grill. Unsurprisingly, neither of us noticed until we were halfway through our entrees and started commenting on the lack of tacos on the menu. It was too late to remedy the situation, so we decided to go next door to the Cantina for a drink afterwards instead. Our Harry Styles shirts were a big hit among the street crowds and our bartender took pity on us a treated us to a round. After that, it was time to finally find some dancing.
If you ever travel with me, the first thing you’ll learn is that while I extensively research all the natural attractions I want to visit, I don’t care a toss about restaurants and clubs. I like to eat good food and have fun, but I’m just as happy to wonder into some hole in the wall restaurant as a fancy one. Our young and hip friends from the Onyx had advised us about a hot club called The Bungalow, but we opted for a Google find first called Harvelle’s. It was only $10 (and no line) to get in and we ended up loving it! It’s a small little jazz bar with live music. It doesn’t attract the young and hip crowd, but we had a great time dancing to the live music and having enough space to actually walk around.
That was a real contrast to The Bungalow. We had to wait in line to get in and once we did, it was wall-to-wall people. It was definitely a party with a massive dance floor and DJ, but it was very chaotic and we ended up chatting up some new friends rather than get trampled on the dance floor. If you’re 23 and in LA for the first time, it’s definitely the place to be, but we’re 30 now (lol), so we’d give the edge to the jazz bar!
We slept in as much as possible the next day, but eventually packed up to explore Santa Monica. We’d only brought a small carry-on backpack with us, so we carried our stuff around with us on Sunday. We got coffee and pastries from a cute coffee shop nearby and started the day with a visit to the pier. It’s pretty cool, but neither of us was in the mood for rides, so we ended up walking the beach instead. We walked more than 7km on Sunday and stopped about halfway between Santa Monica and Venice (Oceanview Park) to search out a restaurant for lunch.
We stumbled upon a farmers market and Carolyn humoured me with visiting a few more bookstores. Venice Beach had a different vibe than Santa Monica for sure, but it was still a pretty neat place. We checked out the canals and then spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on the beach eating fruit before heading back to the airport for our return flight. So overall it was a very whirlwind trip – less than 48 hours in total – but I still feel like we got to see a bunch of things. We stuck to the most basic of attractions, but still caught a little bit of the flavour of the place. We made lots of friends while out partying, which really cemented LA as a much friendlier city than anticipated. I would visit again, but I’m not really in a rush. Maybe the next time Harry Styles plays the Kia Forum we’ll make a second attempt with better results. Fortunately neither of us are superfans, so the trip was far from ruined!
Am I really going to write yet another post about Elfin Lakes? My blog, my rules, so yes I am.
I always say that the Skyline II Trail in Manning Park is my favourite hike, but I might have to eventually cede the number one spot to Elfin Lakes because I never get tired of visiting. I’ve been in Autumn, I’ve been in Winter, I’ve backpacked to Opal Cone, I’ve backpacked to Mamquam Lake. It’s not even my first time going with Guide Girls. The first time I went with girl guides, I accompanied a group from the North Shore as a back-up guider. This time, I took my own troop for a one night trip in late September. But it’s always interesting no matter when you go because the weather makes it a different experience every time!
Both of my trips with girl guides took place on the last weekend in September, but the first trip dumped about 15cm of snow on us, while this trip was sunny and warm enough for shorts! Trex is a special ops unit in Guiding that only does outdoor adventure (as opposed to the full program). I’ve wanted a trex unit for years, so I finally started my own in New West last year and we focused on a backpacking series for our first year. We hiked to Viewpoint Beach in Golden Ears in June, 3 Brothers Mountain in Manning Park in August, and Elfin Lakes in Garibaldi Park in September to finish the series.
It was the longest distance they had done carrying their backpacks, but they did very well. It was pretty cloudy and chilly when we started, but we made good time going up towards the Red Heather Hut. We’d been warned of bears by the park rangers, so we made sure to be loud on the way up and didn’t see any, but some of the trex were really nervous about it.
We stopped for a nice hot lunch at the hut before continuing on to the lake. From there things got interesting. The trail branches when you leave the hut, with the mountain bike trail on top and the hiking trail below it. We immediately ran into a mama bear with cubs, but you’re probably not surprised to hear that bears are even more afraid of a noisy group of 10 girls than we were of it, so they quickly scampered. They were the only bears we saw on the way up, but we saw a lot more coming back down and I think our final bear count at the end of the weekend was 10 bears! Definitely a record for me. They weren’t interested in people at all though and were only interested in bulking up on the late season berries.
I love the hike from Red Heather Hut to Elfin Lakes. It’s so scenic as you traverse up and over the ridge. Trex enjoyed it too and they made really good time to the hut. The sleeping hut is still closed due to COVID, but there are 50 tent pads you can avail of instead. We set up our tents and had lots of time to relax and soak in the views. We had an earlier supper so that we could watch the sunset over the lake.
I don’t really plan any activities once we’ve arrived because it usually takes most of the day to get there, set up camp, and eat. But I decided to run a little workshop on star photography for anyone who was interested, which was everyone! I love the long days in the summer, but one of my favourite parts of the diminishing light is not having to stay up late to watch the stars. I lugged my tripod up and we went up on the hill overlooking the lake to try our luck. Fortunately it was a clear night and the moon was no where to be seen, so it was a great opportunity.
Very shortly after we started (I hadn’t even set up the tripod yet), trex started freaking out when a series of lights started flashing across the sky! They were even more concerned when I didn’t know what it was. It was super creepy and felt very end-of-days when you’re not expecting it. It was a series of lights that were moving in a perfectly straight line across the sky – they were all spaced equidistant and moving at the same pace. They did this for about 5 minutes before the last one finally disappeared. I made a guess that it was a satellite launch and another camper confirmed for us later that it was indeed Starlink! So our timing was excellent. We didn’t get any photos on the camera, but the girls were able to capture a few cell phone pictures of the phenomenon and it was quite a treat to see.
After that we settled into actual star photography and everyone got really into it for the better part of an hour. We did portraits of everyone with the starscape before turning in for the night. It was a completely clear morning and ended up being a very hot day, so we were driven out of our tents by the sun when it peaked over the mountains and illuminated the campsite. Staying at Elfin is a real treat because it’s definitely one of the most scenic campsites with the 360 degree view of the mountains.
We had a quick breakfast and packed up our campsites to head back the way we came. We made a slower pace as we came up to the hut because the whole area was crawling with bears and there were a lot of people. One cub had been scared up a tree, which made us nervous because we didn’t know where Mama was, but we passed through without any incident and had a hot lunch in Red Heather Hut before hiking back to the parking lot.
Everyone did really well on the trip, so we treated ourselves to ice cream at Alice & Brohm before heading back to town to conclude the trip. I think this trail lends itself well to a girl guide group because it’s a challenge, but not too hard, and it has lots of tent pads and an amazing view. I just have to work on convincing the girls to go back and stay again in the winter!
The Road Goes Ever On 