First Time Snow Camping

February 19, 2019March 31, 2021 / Maria / 7 Comments

The weather in Vancouver is pretty mild most of the year, but the weather in the mountains is a completely different story. Spring hits Vancouver in March and April, but it’s often late June or even early July by the time the snow finally melts in the mountains, only to come back again in October. So the backpacking season isn’t that long. There are lots of trails you can do at lower elevations, but some of the more scenic mountain trails have a short window in which to hike them.

For this reason, me and my friend Carolyn got it into our heads that we wanted to try snow camping to get in some more backpacking trips in the off season. I only started backcountry camping in the summer of 2016, so it was definitely a bit of stretch for me to take up snow camping so quickly, but we did a bit of research and built up some of our gear and decided to give it a try last winter.

Camping gear is expensive, so we tried to be as thrifty as possible in acquiring winter gear. We both bought Teton synthetic sleeping bags on Amazon that are rated to -15 degrees celsius. I wouldn’t normally recommend Amazon for camping gear, but good winter sleeping bags cost hundreds of dollars and as newbies, we weren’t ready to sink that kind of cash into a sleeping bag. But the Teton bags are actually really compact and come at a great price, so neither of us have regrets about this purchase. We’re both cold sleepers, so for a bit of extra warmth, we also purchased the Sea to Summit Reactor Extreme bag liner, which claims to add another 14 degrees celsius to your bag rating. I don’t believe it actually adds that much, but it certainly warmed up our bags. Finally, we each bought cheap “closed cell” foamy sleeping pads to put under the 3-season pads we already owned. A sleeping pad with a R-value higher than 5 is recommended for winter camping, but these pads run in the neighborhood of $200-300, so doubling up our sleeping pads with a $20 foamy worked better for us.

These were the main items we bought to prepare for the trip. Fortunately I had an old 4-season tent that had been handed down to me from my parents, so we decided to use that, despite the fact that it’s old and weighs 10 pounds. I doubt many people have that option available to them, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The tent is from the 80’s and it didn’t really work for snow camping, but hey, live and learn, we still survived. The only other items that really differed from our normal gear is that we brought a small shovel with us, a thermos, and some extra layers of clothing.

For our first adventure, we decided to try Manning Park. Manning is one of my favourite parks near Vancouver and they have a snow camping site located just off the main road. We thought this was the safest plan because then we wouldn’t be too far from our car if we got really cold in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, nothing about our trip went according to plan and we ended up having to do a fair bit of improvising, but we still ended up having a really good time.

One thing you should know (or probably already know) about me is that I’m a big talker. Throw me and Carolyn together in a car and we’ll have a great time, chatting and laughing the whole trip. I’m usually a pretty decent navigator (and I maintain that I do have a good sense of direction, mostly because I love maps), but put me in a car with Carolyn and I will forget everything I know about navigating because I always get caught up talking and telling stories. We’re pretty good at getting lost because I tend to think as the driver Carolyn know’s what she’s doing and she tends to think as the passenger (and more often then not, trip planner), I’ll tell her what to do. So we tend to get lost a lot.

On this particular trip we got re-routed because an accident closed one of the highways, so we were a bit out of sorts (read, hungry) and when we left Hope, I thought it was just a straight shot to Manning and settled in for the 45 minute drive. 40 minutes later, just when I think we should be hitting the Manning Park lodge, I see this tunnel ahead that I know is actually on the Coquihalla highway (not the Manning highway) and realize the depth of my mistake. Hearing one “uh-oh” from me was all Carolyn needed to hear to know we’d made a mistake along the way (I will take full credit for it in this instance). We were pretty hangry from being re-routed once already and not into the idea of driving another hour and half in the opposite direction, so Carolyn quickly pulled us over and started making lunch, telling me I had until we finished eating to come up with a plan B.

Fortunately, we had landed ourselves in the Coquihalla Summit Rec Area, an area I hadn’t previously explored, and I had just enough cell coverage to check the avalanche risks for the area and work out a quick back-up plan. Instead of going back to Manning, we decided to commit to snowshoeing about 1.5km to camp at the trailhead to Falls Lake. The 1.5km is actually a forestry road that’s just not plowed in the winter and the “trailhead” is really just a parking lot, but hey, we’re adaptable. Plus, at the end of the trip, we both agreed that missing Manning was one of the best mistakes we could have made, because we ended up having a great time at Falls Lake and it forced us to camp further away from the car and to really commit to snow camping.

There wasn’t too many people around because we were about 2.5 hours away from Vancouver, but Falls Lake seems to be a popular hangout for snowshoers who want to check out the lake and backcountry skiers who want to hike up towards Zoa Peak and ski down. We did neither of these things, but we did have a nice flat area (parking lot) to try out our snow camping skills! Plus, we were the only people who stayed overnight.

We ended up having a blast! It was about -10 degrees celsius overnight, so it was pretty cold, but we worked up a nice sweat hiking in and then spent a fair bit of time digging down in the snow to set up our shelter, so the cold never really kicked in until later in the evening when we didn’t have anything to do anymore. We dug down about a metre and then stamped the snow as flat as we could with our snowshoes. We set up the tent and our bags just like any other trip and then started building ourselves a little snow kitchen. This mostly consisted of a kind of counter area where we could sit and put our stove.

After we finished setting up, we threw on some more layers to stay warm. I think one of the biggest things about snow camping is to avoid sweating in multiple layers of clothes, but to layer up as soon as you start moving to trap your body heat from exercising and to prevent yourself from ever getting cold. We didn’t find cooking in the winter to be any different than summer, we just made sure to use Carolyn’s white gas stove instead of my propane one because propane is prone to freezing in cold temperatures.

One of the biggest challenges actually proved to be melting snow for drinking water and cooking. As you can imagine, it takes a while to melt snow and a full pot of snow doesn’t translate into very much water. We kept filling up the pot and boiling a tiny amount of water, just to have to add more snow to do the whole thing again. One tip that we learned is that it’s best if you add a bit of your drinking water as a base and then add snow slowly as it starts to heat up. Don’t bother boiling the water until the end, just keep it hot enough so that any snow you add melts and then wait for it to heat up again before adding more.

Our second lesson learned was that you need to give yourself lots of time to set up camp, ideally about 3 hours. Fortunately we did have enough time, but digging a hole (with a single small shovel) takes a long time and so does melting snow, so give yourself enough time to set up camp because doing all those things in the dark wouldn’t be fun. The hardest part about snow camping was that it gets dark so early in the winter and there’s really nothing to do once it gets dark and you’ve finished eating supper. We’d been planning to maybe play cards in the tent, but it’s too cold once you stop moving that all you really want to do is climb into your sleeping bags. So prepare for an early night. I read to Carolyn on my kindle for a bit, but I think an audiobook might work well in the future.

Keeping warm at night is really the most important and challenging part about snow camping. We survived the night, but we definitely learned some trips to keep in mind for our next trip. I thought my sleeping bag and liner together would be enough to keep me warm, but you definitely need to wear the right clothes to bed. We initially didn’t wear enough layers and we were quite cold when we got into our bags. After about an hour, we got up again to put some additional layers on and that definitely helped. You want to have enough clothes on to keep you warm, but not too tight or too many layers that don’t allow you to trap some heat in your bag. It’s also important to stay away from the edges of your tent because your body heat will cause condensation on the inside of the tent that will then freeze and be really cold if it’s touching you. We’re both side sleepers, so our butts were getting cold from touching the side of the tent. It’s also better to sleep on your back because you get more warmth reflected back at you from your sleeping pad (easier said then done though if you never sleep on your back).

But we made it through the night! We had some lessons learned, but the tough bits weren’t enough to deter us from trying it again. We witnessed a beautiful purple sunset over the mountains and did a little hike in the morning up a nearby hill to get the cutest photos of our little tent down below. It’s not the easiest experience, but I had a lot fun trying something new with Carolyn and it makes you feel like a real bad-ass to sleep outside in the winter! We never did make it to Manning for snow camping and this was the only snow camping trip we tried in 2018, but stay tuned because we recently went on our second snow camping trip, which I’m working on a follow-up post for!

Ski Resort Series: Big White

February 12, 2019March 31, 2021 / Maria / 4 Comments

I’ve been saying this for ages now, but I want to start writing more about the outdoor adventure experiences I’ve been having in BC over the last 5 years. I haven’t done a lot with this blog over the past few years, except for writing about my occasional vacations, but I’ve been writing a lot on my second blog, which is a book blog (check it out here). I’ve developed some better writing habits, so I’d like to try and focus on writing more on this blog and perhaps reorganizing some of my content to make it a bit more of an adventure blog. I’m sure I’ll still post about travel when I get the opportunity, but those trips just aren’t as frequent as they were when I was in University and hopping off somewhere new every 4 months.

I’ve hiked over 100 trails in the past 5 years and would love to write about some of those trails. Since it’s winter, I’ve decided to write a few posts on some of my snowshoeing adventures and do a little ski series to motivate myself to write more. I’ve skied most of the local mountains in Vancouver and have made a ton of trips to Whistler, but I also go on an annual ski trip to the Interior every year. This tradition was born in 2016 because the Easter holidays that year were in March and I wanted to make use of the extra vacation days. My original plan was to spend the weekend at Big White Ski Resort with Seth and my best friend and her boyfriend, but I ended up getting an awesome deal on a condo that could sleep 10 people and we decided to fill it with some of our other friends.

Since then, we’ve gone to a different ski resort every year, but Big White still sticks out as being one of my favourites. It’s located just past Kelowna and is about a 5 hour drive out of Vancouver. Because of Easter holidays, we left on Good Friday morning and arrived mid-afternoon, but every year since we’ve left after lunch or after work. Our condo was located right on the mountain with ski out access and we had this huge window seat in the living room looking out onto the ski slopes and surrounding mountains. The resort also had a huge group hot tub and we spent a lot of time chilling in the evenings.

On top of the awesome accommodation, we also had excellent conditions. It was sunny the first day and we had some amazing views. It clouded over in the afternoon and snowed all night and into the next day, so even though we didn’t get the views on the second day, we got some really awesome powder. Big White’s tagline is “It’s the Snow”, and I would have to agree because it had some of the best snow conditions and is the latest in the season that we’ve ever gone skiing.

One of the things I liked most about Big White, which I don’t think has been replicated at any of the other resorts I’ve been to, is that the slopes go right through the ski village. Until I started exploring some of the resorts outside Vancouver, I didn’t realize just how many ski hills there actually are in BC and was surprised to learn that not all of them have villages. This has made it a bit of a struggle when planning our trip in later years because we really want to go somewhere with group accommodations and a fun atmosphere, but sadly some of the resorts just don’t seem to offer much on-mountain accommodation.

But we were located right in the village at Big White and there were several fun places to explore around. We had dinner in the village one evening and made our own meals other nights. It’s always so surreal driving out to the Interior (and really to any of the mountains in the lower mainland) because the conditions change so much on the way out. It was late March, so we didn’t really see any snow on the drive out to Kelowna (except on the Coquihalla) and it was pretty bare most of the drive up to Big White. But it was a huge contrast because the mountain ended up getting so much snow on our second day skiing and overnight, that the drive was totally transformed on the way out. We ended up having to shovel our vehicles out after a pretty heavy dump overnight and the plows were busy running the mountain road down to Kelowna all morning on our way out.

Big White is a huge mountain and has a ton of trails. I took a look at the ski map to jog my memory and I don’t remember it being quite as large as it actually is. I’ve definitely become a better skier since 2016 and I’m wishing I could go back and try out some of their glade runs. Overall the mountain has a nice mix because there are several big chairs running the whole length of the mountain, as well as several smaller chairs just running to the peaks. The Gem Lake Express Chair is quite separate from the rest of the mountain and this is where we spent almost our entire second day doing powder run after powder run.

Overall, we had such a great time at Big White that it inspired us to check out a different mountain every year, and we have our 4th annual trip coming up in a few weeks! Our group has grown and we’ve worked out a lot of the details of the trip down to a pretty precise science and have developed a lot of traditions that we keep going every year. It’s always one of the highlights of my winter season.

Favourite Hikes in Southwestern BC

October 10, 2016December 17, 2024 / Maria / 8 Comments

I feel like I haven’t been in BC long enough to be advising anyone on hiking, but it’s become a favourite pastime of mine and since I moved here I’ve done 42 hikes (I counted!), so I’m going to share some of my favourites. (all photos taken my me!)

#10 Garibaldi Lake – I’m starting with Garibaldi Lake because it is easily one of the most popular day hikes and it was my first major hike (15+ km). I was totally blown away by the view at Garibaldi Lake, which both deepened my love of the outdoors and inspired me to take up backcountry camping this summer. The downside to this hike is that the trail to the lake is a bit of a slog. It starts with 6km of switchbacks, but the view at the end is phenomenal! (18km, 800m gain, 7 hours)

#9 Joffre Lakes – Another super popular hike – the best part about Joffre Lakes for me is that, unlike Garibaldi Lake, the entire hike is incredibly gorgeous! The scenery is so amazing throughout the entire hike, it’s almost overwhelming. What’s definitely overwhelming though is the crowds. Everyone knows this a relatively easy hike for the payoff and it’s been heavily marketed to tourists. I think it’s great to see so many people out enjoying the beautiful landscapes, but it does take away from the backcountry feel. I’d recommend doing on a weekday if possible. (11km, 350m gain, 5 hours)

#8 Hollyburn Mountain – I’ve only gone snowshoeing on Hollyburn Mountain, but it was so much fun! It’s a pretty steep walk up to the top, but it’s not a long distance. The steep ascent is worth it though because then you can participate in the fun tradition of sliding back down the whole thing on your bum, So make sure to bring a garbage bag with you! The view from the top looking out into the watershed is beautiful! (10km, 400m gain, 4 hours)

#7 Wedgemount Lake – Located just past Whistler, this is tough, steep hike. I did this as an overnighter and was totally pooped by the time we made it to the lake. There’s a breathtaking view of the valley as you make your way up to Wedgemount and a beautiful view of the lake from the top. It’s a scramble up to the top though, so expect to spend the better part of an hour climbing up loose rock. The highlight of Wedgemount for me though is the glacier, which is another 20-30 minute walk from the lake. (14km, 1200m gain, 7 hours)

#6 Elfin Lakes – The second most popular hike after Garibaldi Lake, which I just completed this past weekend. It’s a long trail at 22km, but it’s one of the easier hikes on the list. The trail is extremely well maintained and fairly easy along the entire length. It was pretty foggy on the day I visited, so I didn’t get the best view of the surrounding mountains, but there’s a beautiful walk along the ridge on the way there and a hut you can stay in overnight, which is super popular during the winter. (22km, 600m gain, 6 hours)

#5 Tenquille Lake – This is a tough one to get to without 4WD, which significantly shortens the hike along the service road, but has a beautiful view during the last few kilometers of the hike. This was my first foray into backcountry hiking and we camped overnight at the lake, which I would highly recommend! The views around the lake are incredible and I’d love to go back and explore more around the area. I was too early for most of the alpine flowers, but still got to see a few in the meadow! (14km, 6 hours)

#4 Semaphore Lakes – A short drive from Tenquille Lake, but the trailhead is much more easily accessible. It’s a short hike (which is nice if you’re trying backcountry for the first time), but it’s pretty steep, so don’t be deceived by the 3km length. The view at the top is amazing though and this is one place where it’s easy to escape the crowds (maybe I shouldn’t be boasting about it?). There’s several lakes to explore and you’ll be surrounded by beautiful snow-capped peaks and glaciers! (5km, 300m gain, 3 hours)

#3 Three Brothers Mountain– This hike is located in Manning Park and is part of the Heather Trail. We hiked the first 10 kilometres of the trail to climb up Three Brothers Mountain. What I loved about this hike is that it’s scenic the entire way, made even more amazing during late July/early August, when the meadows are covered in thousands of wildflowers. You do most of the elevation gain on the way up to the trailhead, so it’s not a difficult hike, just long. My favourite part was hiking along the ridge of Three Brothers Mountain with a 360 degree view all around! (21km, 500m gain, 6 hours)

#2 Brandywine Meadows/Mountain – Another hike that is made much easier with a 4WD, this was one of my favourites due to the incredibly low volume of people. I think we saw about 5 people the entire day, which is in stark contrast to most of the trails. The hike to the meadows is very short if you take 4WD the whole way up, so we decided to extend our hike up Brandywine Mountain where I stood on my first glacier! The view of the valley from the top is breathtaking. (12km, 1200m gain, 5 hours)

#1 Panorama Ridge – Definitely tops my list as one of the all-around best hikes. If you’re super intense, you can do Panorama as a 30km round-trip day hike, but we opted instead to camp at Garibaldi Lake overnight. Like I said, the hike to Garibaldi Lake is kind of boring until you reach the lake, but Panorama Ridge is scenic the whole way. You spend the first half of the hike looking out at the ridge, then you have an excellent view of Black Tusk until you reach the top where you are rewarded with the most amazing view of Garibaldi Lake and the surrounding mountains. (15km, 600m gain, 6 hours)

Continue to Part II.