ECT Series: Long Shore Path

July 13, 2022July 8, 2022 / Maria / Leave a comment

Long Shore Path is an interesting section to write about. There’s currently 3 trails on the northwest side of the Avalon peninsula between Topsail and St. Francis: Long Shore, Piccos Ridge, and White Horse. All 3 trails have been around for a while, but only officially opened in the Spring of 2022. I’ve already done Piccos Ridge, and White Horse has a reputation as a challenging trail, so I decided to tackle Long Shore Path while I was home in June.

It’s an interesting section of trail because it’s technically the start of the East Coast Trail. The trail is always changing and evolving, so it may not stay this way forever, but it currently runs north from Long Shore Trail to Cape St. Francis at the far north peak of the peninsula, where it then turns south all the way to Cappahayden.

The reason I say that Long Shore is interesting is because it’s marked as a 17km long section of trail, but there’s ~4km of road walking in the middle of it. Typically sections of road this long aren’t included in the trail sections (though I believe they are included in the overall length of the ECT, as you would have to walk all the road sections if you did it as a true thru-hike). I find it a bit odd that they decided to include so much road walking in Long Shore Path instead of just breaking it into 2 sections. I didn’t want to do 4km of walking along the road, so I opted to do the trail in 2 sections over 2 days. So I guess I technically haven’t done the entire thing, but I’m going to count it as close enough.

I did the first section in late afternoon with Emily after she got off work one day. We drove out to Topsail Beach and hiked the first 4km of coastline to St. Thomas and back for a total of 8km. The trail starts right at the beach in Topsail Rotary Park and is primarily through the woods the entire way. Generally I don’t love long wooded sections, but I didn’t mind this part because it’s pretty sparse forest and you can still see the coast through the trees. The trail is a little bit technical, with tree roots and rocks, and undulates up and down.

When you get to the end of the trail, you can take a left to walk down Lorry Road to the beach at St. Thomas. It’s a quiet and lovely beach that I’d never been to before and it makes for a nice end destination. It was overcast when we started the hike, but we sat on the beach for a while as the sun started to break up the clouds. It took us about an hour to hike the 4km and we had a few snacks before turning around to hike back. The sun properly came out on our return, which really brightened up the trail.

The following day I returned with Seth and his parents to hike the rest of the trail. After St. Thomas is the 4km of road walking to St. Philips Beach, followed by another 9km of hiking to Portugal Cove. We parked one car in St. Philips and then started from the trailhead in Portugal Cove to hike backwards. The first part of the trail out of Portugal Cove is another odd section because it doesn’t actually follow the coastline at all. Instead, you hike up behind Portugal Cove to a series of lookouts along the bluffs. It doesn’t feel very East-Coast-Trail-like, but it’s beautiful nonetheless.

It’s about 225m of elevation gain to the top – we didn’t find it too challenging, but if you don’t like climbing you may want to take your time. There are some excellent views of Bell Island from the top as you hike along the bare rock before descending to Beachy Cove. The descent isn’t very nice as you go through a huge section of blowdown, with tons of knocked over and destroyed trees. It’s not hard to follow the trail as the debris has been cleared, it’s just not very scenic. Once you reach the bottom, you hike out along an ATV road and then swing left on the road for a few hundred metres before turning right to go down to Beachy Cove.

Beachy Cove is easily accessible from the road, but it’s another beach I’d never been to that is really lovely. There’s a big waterfall flowing down to the ocean and the river can be a bit challenging to cross when the flow is heavy, but if you’re able, there’s a picnic table on the other side where we stopped for lunch. To get to Beachy Cove was ~6km, then there’s another ~3km along the coast to get back to St. Philips. This section is very similar to the 4km between Topsail and St. Thomas in that it’s mostly in the trees and undulates up and down (though I’d say it’s more challenging than the Topsail section).

The only tricky part of this trail is when you reach Goat Cove. There’s a creek flowing down to a small pocket beach, so you have to descend down a sketchy rope section to the beach. From what I’ve heard, there used to be ropes on both sides of the beach, but there are stairs on one side now, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a second set of stairs is added in the near future, which would make this trail much more accessible. As it is now, it is a particularly long rope section that is manageable, but not easy. I’d recommend bringing gloves for the rope and taking your time.

We didn’t have quite enough water for the entire hike, but fortunately I’d brought my water filter, so we filled up with fresh cold water before continuing on. The rest of the trail isn’t particularly difficult and we enjoyed the glimpses of sun through the trees while still enjoying the shade.

So it’s a bit of a complicated trail with so many sections. I’d definitely recommend doing it in 2 sections to skip the road walk, but if you wanted, you could even do it in 3 sections as return hikes, which is what Emily ended up doing. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did with so many forest sections, but it’s actually quite scenic (especially the views from the hill in Portugal Cove) and I loved hiking to all the little beaches along the way. Whether done as 1 long trail or several sections, it makes for a really nice hike.

Ski Resort Series: Sunshine Village

March 16, 2022March 15, 2022 / Maria / 2 Comments

I’m excited to finally have some more ski resorts to write about! Last week I posted a Banff Winter Guide about my trip in early March; I had a lot of fun exploring different restaurants and shops, but of course the skiing was one of the real highlights of the trip and the main reason I went.

I’ve done a lot of skiing in BC’s interior, but this was my first time skiing in the Rockies. There are lots of different resorts to visit, but the resorts near Banff are definitely some of the most accessible. We flew into Calgary and decided to ski the “Big 3”. It was tempting to explore further and check out Kicking Horse, but the highway from Calgary to Lake Louise is really well maintained and we didn’t have the proper winter tires to go all the way to Golden.

But no problem because the ski resorts accessible from Banff are all top notch! The locals seem to all have their favourite mountain and I’ve heard arguments for why each resort is the best. The main arguments I heard for Sunshine Village is that it’s the highest, so it gets the most powder; it’s closer if you’re doing a day trip from Calgary; and on a sunny day it has some of the most epic views, including a vista all the way to Mount Assiniboine!

Unfortunately it wasn’t sunny on the day we visited, but there was about 10cm of fresh powder from the previous night, so all in all, we couldn’t complain. I had the opportunity to visit Sunshine Village in the summer in 2021 when I hiked from Mount Assiniboine, so I had already been treated to the amazing views. We couldn’t see all the way to Assiniboine on this trip, but what we could see was still phenomenal. The snow completely transforms the landscape and even though I’d been there before, it was unrecognizable to me in the winter.

It’s about a 20 minute drive from Banff and there’s a huge parking lot. If you don’t feel like driving or don’t have access to a car, there is a free shuttle that runs from Banff. Having passed this shuttle on our way to the mountain, I would recommend getting up early for it and trying to board earlier in the route from one of the hotels rather than from the main bus stop. There was a massive line for the shuttle at the main bus stop, even on week days.

How Sunshine Village differs from the other resorts is that you take a gondola up to the base from the parking lot. For this reason, the ski resort is at a higher elevation, which is why some people claim it gets the best snow of the 3 resorts. I’m not sure if it’s actually the biggest resort, but it felt the largest to me. There are a ton of lifts going up to all the surrounding mountain peaks and we tried to explore as many areas as possible. There were some clouds hanging around the tops of the peaks in the morning, so we moved around based on where the best visibility was.

We started on the Angel Express chair, which we had mixed feelings about. The skiing was great, especially in the morning when there was still fresh powder to sail through, but there were also a lot of beginners on this chair and it made us feel a little weary because a lot of them didn’t really seem to know what they’re doing. My general impression of Banff was that it attracts both beginners and experienced skiers. Skiing the Rockies was quite unlike skiing in BC for me because there is a lot more alpine in the Rockies with wide open areas and some pretty advanced skiing in some places. I’m also not exaggerating when I say we saw about 20-25 people hobbling around Banff on crutches throughout the week, so I do think some people get into trouble.

We quickly switched over to the Continental Divide chair, which was great later in the day when the clouds moved off, but it’s also one of the highest points on the mountain, so the visibility wasn’t great in the morning and it was pretty icy at the very top. Eventually we landed on the Teepee Town chair, which is Canada’s only heated chair lift – we skied a few nice runs in that area before heading off to explore another part of the mountain.

We finished off the morning on the Wawa Chair, which is a shorter chair in pretty easy terrain, but we ended up really liking this area. Emily was still getting her ski legs and preferred the shorter runs to have breaks in between. In general, I had a great time in all areas. I like skiing around the trees and I liked that Sunshine had a lot of trees without having to go down dense glade runs. I spent a lot of the morning messing around in the powder and trying to find small jumps in and around the trees.

The lodge at Sunshine Village is a bit annoying though. They don’t let you bring your backpacks inside the lodge, which I think is ridiculous, and you instead have to leave them outside on shelves. We had brought a lunch with us, so we had so stumble upstairs with our hands full of snacks. Sunshine also had the most crowded lodge, although we ate right at 12:30pm, so it might have been our timing (we are earlier or later at the other resorts).

In the afternoon we adventured over to the Mount Standish chair, which is similar to Wawa in that it’s a bit shorter. The difference is that Standish kicks you out into more alpine-like terrain, with wide open skiing and some pretty awesome views! We did a few runs there before heading back over to the Divide chair for a few more runs. We’d been playing it pretty safe in the morning, doing mostly blue runs and a few blacks, but we got a bit more adventurous in the afternoon and tried out some more blacks. In general, I found most of the black runs to be within my skill level, we would just be cautious about whether they had big moguls on them or not. The mogul-free runs were no problem, but some of them have pretty well defined moguls, so we generally tried to avoid those on longer runs, but did do a few short mogul runs.

At this point Emily was getting pretty tired and we still wanted to check out Goat’s Eye Mountain, so we decided to make our way in that direction. Like I said, Sunshine is really big and Goat’s Eye is a bit separated from most of the other lifts. However there are a lot of green runs nestled at the base of Goat, so if you’re a beginner, I recommend checking out the Jack Rabbit, Wolverine, and Strawberry Chairs, which sadly we didn’t have enough time to explore.

Goat’s Eye Mountain is definitely an experience on it’s own and felt quite different than the rest of the resort. It definitely has some more advanced skiing, but I found it did have more runs than I thought that I was pretty comfortable doing. We were only planning to do one run to say we did it, but since there was more intermediate terrain than expected, I ended up going back for a couple extra runs by myself (Emily was tired and just did one). My take-away would be to play it safe at the top of the mountain, which is alpine and very exposed (but excellent views) and get a little more adventurous further down where most of the runs are a bit easier.

We thought we were going to have to take the gondola back down to the parking lot, but discovered there is one run that goes all the way to the bottom called Banff Avenue. I got some serious deja vu on this run though because I had hiked the whole 7kms with Brandon last summer. Usually in the summer you can still take the gondola up to the top and Banff Avenue functions as a service road, but last summer the gondola was closed and we had to hike the entire thing. I can confirm, it’s a lot more fun to ski down!

So overall we had a great time at Sunshine Village! We skied on a Monday, so it wasn’t too busy and we never had to wait longer than a minute or two to get on the lift. Overall, I think Sunshine Village was my favourite of the three resorts we visited, but it could be related to the conditions (namely the powder). That said, I think it would be even more fun on a sunny day, so I think it might be the terrain that I liked. Plus it’s very large and there’s a lot to explore – I would have loved to go back for a second day. The only thing I will caution is that I can’t see Sunshine being a favourite for snowboarders. There are several flatter sections through the resort and I could see it being a bit frustrating as a boarder. But as a skier I had a lot of fun!

Snowshoeing Joffre Lakes

February 16, 2022February 16, 2022 / Maria / Leave a comment

This post is a bit dated and has been a long time coming, but it was a fun trip and with Family Day coming up, it seemed like an appropriate time to write about it, so here we go! I’ve day hiked Joffre Lakes twice in the summer and I snowshoed it once in the winter of 2017 with Emily and Brandon during the Family Day Long weekend.

I’m not sure if Joffre Lakes is considered avalanche terrain or not as it’s not mapped on Avalanche Canada, but at the time I had read that it was pretty safe up to the second lake, so that’s where we decided to go. I’d read there was more risk going up to the third lake, so we decided against going that far and I would advise avalanche equipment and training if you go beyond second lake. Now that I’m a little wiser, I’d probably prefer to have avalanche safety equipment for the whole trail, but as I can’t remember the details of the terrain, make sure to do some additional research before visiting.

Fortunately we didn’t run into any problems in 2017 and were smart enough to check the avalanche bulletin before we visited. Emily wasn’t living in Vancouver at the time, but she came to visit me to go skiing and after a few days at Whistler, Brandon joined us for a little long weekend adventure around the Pemberton/Lillooet area. Our first stop was Joffre Lakes.

I don’t remember getting a particularly early start in the morning, but we had no trouble finding parking at the trailhead and the trail was relatively empty – some of the perks of visiting in the low season. We had a few false starts on the trail because Emily was trying to figure out what to wear and we ended up making a some adjustments. If you’re new to snowshoeing, which we were at the time, it can be a bit tricky because you want to stay warm without overheating. I like to pack my snow pants for when I stop to eat lunch, but I don’t like hiking in them. This means that you need to have a good pair of water resistant pants instead and wear high boots or gaiters to keep your legs from getting wet from the kickback of the snow on your snowshoes. These days I hike with long underwear, water resistant pants, and high boots.

One of the things I love about Joffre Lakes is that the first lake is only minutes from the parking lot, so you’re immediately rewarded with a gorgeous view! There’s less to see on the trail after that in the winter and I mostly remember being in the trees – although on the way down you get a beautiful view looking out over the surrounding mountains when you pass through the boulder field. There were quite a few people ski touring, so you just have to watch out for them as a snowshoer since they move so much faster (downhill anyways). While Joffre isn’t a particularly long or challenging hike in the summer, it is a bit steep in the winter, so I remember being pretty tired by the time we hit the second lake.

We had good weather when we visited, it was a bit overcast, but not so much that you couldn’t see the view. So we set up on the lake when we arrived to have our lunch. Unfortunately, it was a bitterly cold day, which was not improved by being out on the open lake. We got really cold, really fast. Even with snow pants, we had to bundle up immediately and Emily recalls it as being the coldest she’s ever been. I’m not sure if we were doing something wrong because I can’t ever recall being as cold in the snow as we were eating lunch at Joffre. It was particularly bad for Emily – I think she may not have had a sit-upon and been sitting right in the snow in her snow pants, so she did not want to stick around.

So unfortunately, we didn’t have long to enjoy the view before we were packing up again to keep moving. It was a good lesson in preparedness though. I don’t think we were overly underprepared, but it was a good reminder how inhospitable the wilderness can be. There’s no way we would have survived a night out there if something had gone wrong. So always bring lots of extra layers in the winter, as well as I’ve started hiking with a small stove and pot so that I’m able to make hot drinks to help stay warm. Items like a bivvy sack or an inreach can also save your life if you get stuck somewhere.

We warmed up again once we started moving and it was a quick hike back down to the bottom. We ended up spending the night in Lillooet (which has the most beautiful view of Seton Lake) and returned to Pemberton the following day. We’d been hoping to visit Keyhole hot springs, but a semi truck jack knifed on the road on the way to the springs, cutting off traffic in both directions, so we opted to cut our losses and did a bit of snowshoeing in the Pemberton area and Nairn Falls instead. Fortunately we weren’t stuck on the other side of the semi truck, in which case, make sure you have survival gear in your car as well because you never know how long you could be there!