A Day in Old Town Tallinn

March 29, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

Finland was the primary focus of our trip, but Helsinki is so close to Tallinn that we couldn’t resist popping over to Estonia for a day. There’s a ferry that runs direct from city to city and takes just over 2 hours. We did the evening run and arrived in Tallinn around 11pm and took a taxi to our hotel. We had a small crisis before leaving Helsinki. I thought we were staying in a hotel and was checking my email for the address before leaving and found an email detailing instructions on how to get into the apartment (I had assumed there was reception). The instructions said that the code to get in would be texted to us the day before, which is a major flaw because obviously our phones didn’t work in Europe. I frantically emailed them for the code, but fortunately Katie was able to call them on her phone and get it for us. We’re just relieved we made this discovery in Katie’s apartment and not at the entrance to the hotel, which is not manned and we would have be locked out of without wifi at night!

So crisis averted and fortunately, the apartment was lovely! All our hotel bookings in Finland were very expensive, but Tallinn was cheap and the location was unbelievable! Tallinn is centered around the Old Town, but there’s not much actually in Old Town for accommodations. Our hotel was right on the edge of Old Town and was a large 1 bedroom apartment with a full kitchen and living room. This was amazing the following day because it was really cold and we loved having the apartment to pop back to every couple of hours to warm up.

We had a nice breakfast at a nearby café and did a bit of exploring around Old Town. We started at the Town Square, which we were right next too, and just meandered around the city. The streets are mostly pedestrian only and very confusing, but Old Town is small enough that you can’t ever really get lost. It’s a really beautiful place though – Old Town is split into two parts, the upper and lower city – and it’s completely encircled with old stone walls, so it really lives up to its name of being “Old”.

We decided it was a good place to learn some real history and we found a free walking tour at 11am. It needs 10 people to run and I was convinced it wouldn’t get enough because it was really not busy, but we ended up with 14! There were a few people traveling around like us, but a bunch of the guests were on a cruise. It seemed like an odd time of year for a cruise (especially considering they were Australian and it’s summer in Australia), but hey, who am I to judge!

The tour was excellent! Our tour guide had grown up in Estonia and was the same age as me. She shared lots of personal anecdotes from her family history that really made the tour come alive. Estonia has a long and storied history, like most of Europe, but here it’s mostly about occupation. Her history lesson dated back to the 1200’s, when Estonia first fell to Danish occupation. Denmark occupied the country for a long time and constructed a lot of early Old Town. Old Town is interesting because the Upper part of the town has a great view, which is actually very unique because Estonia is super flat and the highest point in the country is only 318 metres high.

The story changes in the 1500’s when Estonia submitted to Swedish occupation. From there, the history sounded very similar to what we learned of Finland when we visited Suomenlinna. The Swedes ruled the country until early 1700’s, when they were succeeded by the Russians, same as in Finland. There was a brief period of independence in 1918 following the Russian Revolution that lasted for 22 years, until the Soviet Union invaded again in 1939. This reign lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall and Estonia re-gained their independence in 1991.

Despite the long Russian rule, there’s limited Russian influence around Old Town. During first independence, the Estonians tried to remove as much of the visible Russian monuments around town, save for the beautiful St. Aleksander Cathedral, which apparently they didn’t have the money to tear down. But our guide felt that throughout time, it’s generally become a beloved part of the Old Town.

Russian influence is still very evident in Estonia today though, with some 40% of the population speaking Russian. It was 1 day to a year from when Russia first invaded Ukraine when we were there, which was a somber reminder of how recent Estonia’s history really is. Our guide explained that though there is a large population of Russian-speaking Estonians, Estonian is the only national language and there is still a lot of animosity between the Russian and Estonian speaking Estonians. Her grandmother actually spent several years in a Siberian labour camp and she indicted that her father’s generation are still very opposed to the Russian speaking Estonians and don’t mix with them, even though most Estonian-speaking Estonians of that generation are also fluent in Russian. In contrast, she felt her generation wasn’t so caught up in segregation, but still didn’t mix with one another because these days, neither can speak the other’s language, so it’s too hard to communicate.

We spent most of the tour in the Upper city, which has less tourist amenities and more history. We visited two lookouts, which provide a great view down on to the Lower part of the city and the more modern parts of Tallinn. We didn’t explore much of Tallinn beyond Old Town because we only had 1 day, but we did walk outside of Old Town to the “hipster district” (so named by our guide, we don’t know how legitimate this label is).

But before leaving Old Town, we treated ourselves to my favourite meal of the entire trip! Our guide recommended a small restaurant called Rataskaevu 16 and it was so delicious! We started with mulled wine and homemade rye bread for an appy and then I had an elk steak and Seth had a wild mushroom risotto. Then we finished off with an Estonian cheese platter for dessert. I’m not a big foodie, but it was heavenly! Although I was sad to learn after the fact that what the Scandinavians call “elk” is what we call “moose”, which was a little less exciting have grown up in Newfoundland. Seth also informed me that caribou and reindeer are also basically the same, the name just depends on what part of the world you’re in.

The “Hipster District” isn’t too far from Old Town, so we walked over to the Balti Jaama Turg, which is a giant indoor market with tons of food options and clothing stalls. We found some snacks and spent an hour browsing through the stalls. One thing I noticed in Helsinki, and subsequently in Tallinn, is that there is a lot of quality thrift options. I was sorely tempted by a floor length puffy jacket while thrifting, but figured it would have limited use in wet Vancouver, so I let it lie.

If you continue a little further, you get into more of an industrial area filled with lots of beautiful murals. There’s a collective of artists working in most of the spaces and we did some exploring before taking a break for a beer at one of the breweries. The dark caught up with us after that and we decided to return to Old Town for dinner – it was a nice meal, but compared to our amazing lunch it was a bit forgettable.

Ottomite Peak Snow Camp

March 8, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / 5 Comments

I didn’t do much hiking in the Fall last year, but as soon as winter hit I’ve been out exploring in full force! I only did one snow camp last year and was really keen to try and fit 2 in this year. It’s always a challenge because I like to ski a lot too and the snow season is so short.

Fortunately, the weather aligned for us to make a trip out to the Coquihalla in early February. After a very snowy December, it’s been a pretty warm start to the year and all the local mountains were above zero degrees. The Coquihalla can get cold, but it reliably has snow, so it’s one of my favourite places to go in the winter. To date, we’ve been to Falls Lake and Zoa Peak.

It rained most of our drive up the Coquihalla, but it switched to snow just before we got to the Summit Rec Area, which was very lucky. I’d never even heard of Ottomite Peak, but Carolyn came across it somewhere and it’s a pretty low risk trail, so we decided to check it out. You park in the lot at the base of Yak Peak (across the road from the Needle Peak parking lot) where there is a really nice rest stop bathroom. The trail starts around the edge of the bathroom and runs slightly parallel the highway as you ascend up towards the peak.

I tracked just over 4km from the parking lot to Ottomite Peak. The trail is mostly in the trees and is all simple avalanche terrain until Ottomite. It’s also popular for ski touring and most of the skiers were continuing past Ottomite to Iago Peak. We considered it, but the trails goes into challenging terrain near Iago Peak and the avalanche risk was considerable in the alpine at the time, so we opted not to. There was a beaten track until the branch to Ottomite Peak, which has a really beautiful view and would also be great for camping.

The trail continued on towards Iago, but we had to break the trail to Ottomite Peak. It’s pretty rare to have to break trail in Southwest BC, the only other time I’ve done it was when we snow camped at Poland Lake last winter. It’s a lot more work, but fortunately it’s not too far to the peak of Ottomite Peak. Overall it took us about 2 hours from bottom to top. There’s a great view of the north mountains from Ottomite Peak, so we decided to camp at the top.

As usual, there were 4 of us on the trip, but Steve couldn’t make it, so our friend Marie accompanied Carolyn instead! Brandon and I shared his big 4 season orange tent as usual, and Carolyn experimented with her summer tent. She typically uses her 3 season MSR Elixir, but she has a non-freestanding 2p Durston tent that she wanted to try out. It took her a while to get it set up properly as it’s a bit tricky since it relies on using your hiking poles and tension to stand. But she managed to get a good pitch and said it worked fine for the night.

The weather was surprisingly nice on Saturday. We were expecting it to be overcast and snowy, but it cleared up a lot while we were hiking in and we actually got some blue sky and sun while we were setting up. Eventually the clouds moved back it, but we got some really lovely views from the peak, which we easily could have missed.

We built a nice big snow kitchen where we hung out for the better part of 4 hours while melting snow and preparing supper. Marie made hot lemon whisky and I made Kahlua hot chocolate bombs for happy hour and Brandon made our favourite thai chicken curry for supper. Then we had Marie’s apple crumble for dessert, so it was quite a spread! If you think me and Carolyn got off easy, I made lunch sandwiches and she made us homemade egg mcmuffins for breakfast!

The temperature was really hovering around zero, so it was one of our warmer snow camps and we were lucky it didn’t rain to be honest. We stayed up until around 8:30pm, which is pretty late for snow camping, before hitting the sack for a long night’s sleep. I slept pretty good early in the night, but then I was treated to the symphony of Brandon’s snores later in the night. The moon came up overnight and I enjoyed a beautiful view when I got up to pee, with the moonlight reflecting off the snow, it was super bright and I didn’t even need my headlamp.

Otherwise it was a low key morning and we packed up our gear and headed back to the parking lot. It was a lot faster hiking out and we stopped in Hope on the way back for the Blue Moose Café. Considering how little known this trail is – I really liked it! It is in avalanche terrain, but it’s pretty low risk terrain, so I think it’s good for beginners. I’d definitely like to go back some day and go all the way to Iago Peak, or maybe revisit in the summer, when you can hike several peaks back into the wilderness! Overall, another successful trip!

Lone Duck II Snow Camp

February 22, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / 2 Comments

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!