Hollyburn Chalet Winter Camping

February 21, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / 2 Comments

This isn’t a trip that will be replicable for many people, but it was a very cool experience that I had for the first time this winter! Many people don’t know that there is a secret cabin community hiding out on the side of Hollyburn Mountain, near Cypress. There are about 100 small cabins, with some as old as 100 years, that make up the Hollyburn Cabin Community. The cabins were constructed by pioneers and ski enthusiasts and at it’s peak there were ~200 cabins on the mountain. Many have fallen into disrepair, but those that remain represent a unique piece of heritage conservation and the only remaining ski community on the north shore.

Most of these cabins are privately owned, but two of them are owned by Girl Guides and Boy Scouts of Canada (as two separate entities). The Girl Guide Cabin is known as Hollyburn Chalet or Burnabee Chalet. The chalet is very popular among units in the winter, and last year we decided it would be a great trip to take our Trex unit up to the cabin for a weekend. In order to secure a spot, I attended an orientation about the cabin in late 2022, and then returned again in late 2023 for the annual work party. Volunteers assist in the maintenance of the cabin on an annual basis and those who participate are given priority booking.

So that landed us a spot at the cabin in early January! It’s a ~20 minute walk to the cabin in summer conditions and ~45 minutes in snow with gear. The cabin is stocked with firewood every year at the work party, but we still have to bring up some compressed logs to burn overnight to conserve firewood, along with all our equipment and food. All the trex members had their backpacks with their equipment, and we took turns towing up 3 sleds of equipment. We had snowshoes for the hike in, but microspikes would have been sufficient and it was a bit of a struggle climbing up to the cabin.

The biggest challenge we faced is that it was very cold on our visit! It’s an el niño year, so it’s been uncharacteristically warm in the lower mainland and there is limited snow in the mountains. But we did get a very big snowfall in the city in early January, followed by a deep freeze right when we were going to the cabin. It was -17 degrees overnight on our first night in the cabin, so while we were excited that we didn’t have to worry about rain, we were concerned about staying warm.

It was a bit of a chaotic walk up to the cabin because it was dark and very cold standing around, but we couldn’t move very fast with our sleds, which were heavy with firewood. At first I was at the back of the group and it was quite cold because of the pace. But when I took my turn pulling the sled, I warmed up a lot from the effort! It took us ~40 minutes to get to the cabin, and while we were thrilled to arrive, it’s still very cold in the cabin.

Hollyburn Chalet actually turned 100 years old this year, so while it is a historic cabin, it does have propane lightning and 2 wood stoves (one for heat and one for cooking). The cabin has a nice kitchen and eating area on the main floor, so we didn’t have to bring any dishes or pots with us, as well as there are lots of chairs for sitting around the wood stove. It’s totally empty in the loft, which sleeps ~25 people. So it is a pretty big space, which means it takes a while to heat it.

We arrived just before 7pm and immediately got the fire going. Everyone kept their winter clothes on and we learned some choreographed dance moves to keep warm! We had hot chocolate and s’mores for mug-up and a lot of the trex were anxious to go to bed. Our starting point was -17 degrees, so even after a few hours, the cabin was still below zero and our water bottles were. We were afraid to send everyone to bed too early because most of their sleeping bags were only rated for -5 degrees, so we stayed up late playing games around the fire. We made everyone a hot water bottle for their bedrolls and when it finally hit zero degrees in the cabin (around 11:30pm), we figured we’d be warm enough in our sleeping bags to go to bed.

I slept near the fire on the first floor to keep it going all night. I was convinced that some of the trex were going to be cold, but because they were all sleeping above the stove in the loft, it did eventually warm up upstairs, though it was still quite cool in the morning (only around 10 degrees). We all slept in because of the late night and then enjoyed hash browns for breakfast!

Our morning was dedicated to the chores of running the cabin. It was still very cold, but it was a beautiful sunny day outside! Hollyburn Chalet is set up with several large pots for melting snow water on the wood stove and we melted lots of drinking water in the morning and split wood to re-stock all the wood supply. We always leave everything the way we found it or better, which includes leaving all the wood boxes and kindling boxes full, so we overstuffed them so we’d only have to fill them once. There’s a very fancy wood splitter at the cabin, so everyone had a turn splitting wood.

We spent an hour playing in the snow before lunch and tried to break up our outdoor time since it was so cold. We had a delicious tortellini soup for lunch and managed to get the indoor temperature up to 14 degrees. After lunch, we decided to go for a walk to explore the other cabins in the area. Like I said, it was a gorgeous sunny day and we hiked a few kilometres to a lookout, checking out all the unique cabins and looking for big trees.

Dinner was macaroni and chili, followed by some more games. Our unit is really into games (which I love), our favourite is Godfather, which involves everyone picking a character and trying to win others to your team by guessing their character. But on this trip we also tried 4 on a couch, which is a game I used to play in high school where you swap identities with each other and try and get your whole team sitting on the designated couch. We also played a game I know as Monikers, which is a mix of catchphrase and charades. We didn’t play the board game and just made up our own words and put them in a big bowl, but I’m not sure what name the game actually goes by. It was a big hit!

The highlight of day 2 was our mug-up, for which we decided to lug up chocolate and fruit for fondue! We had a big pot of chocolate and cream, and then strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, rice crispies, and apple slices for dipping. It was definitely a hit! We managed to get the indoor temperature up to 20 degrees by the second night and we were finally able to take off our jackets. So it was much warmer going to bed, but cooled off in the night because I slept so well and forgot to stoke the fire as much. I woke up at 4am and had to pretty much re-make it in the middle of the night, but overall it was a lot warmer inside and we were able to keep the cabin comfortable.

Our last morning was dedicated to clean up. We got some photos outside the cabin and had a quick 15 minute walk to return to the parking lot. We opted to take the snowshoes down in the sled rather than wear them (they are quite bulky), and since it’s all downhill, we made pretty quick time back to the campsite.

So while we definitely had some adversity to overcome with the temperatures, it was a fantastic trip! I was really concerned on the first night, but our hot water bottles worked super well and no one complained about being cold overnight. It was the first time backpacking for several of the trex, and even though it’s a short distance, it’s in pretty challenging conditions (dark, cold, snowy), so I thought they all did really well! The chalet is a really lovely piece of history and I feel lucky that I had the opportunity to experience it through Girl Guides. Some units go up there every year; we’re not planning for it to be a regular thing for us, but I would definitely go back in the future and think it would be fun to go up there in the summer as well (when it’s much easier to get a booking).

Even if you’re just going for a walk, it’s pretty cool to check out the Hollyburn Cabin Community, because there’s some really interesting cabins up there and it makes for a fun day hike!

Whitewater Rafting the Elaho River with Girl Guides

August 9, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / 2 Comments

I think this may be one of my favourite things I’ve ever done with my Girl Guide unit (although our Elfin Lakes trip was a close second). I love whitewater rafting, but obviously I don’t do it very much because it’s very expensive. To date, I’ve done it in Peru, Costa Rica, New Zealand, and several different locations in Canada. Me and Seth even rafted the same river a few years ago, but I had much nicer weather on this occasion and it was at the perfect time for peak flows, so this experience was much more memorable.

Even though we were just doing a day trip, we decided to turn it into a full 2 night camp. We booked two campsites at Alice Lake and drove out to Squamish on Friday after school. Vancouver had the nicest weather in May and it didn’t rain for about 3 and a half weeks, but of course, the rain returned just in time for our camp. It rained our whole drive out, but fortunately it stopped when we arrived at the campsite and we were able to get our pop-ups and tents set up while it was relatively dry. We had a propane campfire and were in bed before the rain fully started overnight.

We’d been planning to hike the Chief on Saturday, which is on a bunch of our member’s bucket lists, but it was still raining when we got up, so we decided to go with our back-up plan instead. The Chief can get very slippery when it’s wet and we could see that the summit was still in the clouds, so we opted to visit Brohm Lake instead.

Fortunately the rained stopped when we got to the lake, and though it remained cloudy for the rest of the day, the rain stayed away. We started with a hike around the lake, which was a lot more hilly than I was expecting, before hiking up to the Tantalus Viewpoint. I think this was a good alternative trail to the Chief, because it was still challenging, without being too dangerous. I did the hike once 8 or 9 years ago and I’d pretty much entirely forgotten what the terrain was like. It’s a bit more technical than I remembered, so it was good for us to build up our skills.

There’s about 200m of elevation gain up to the viewpoint and it is pretty steep. Everyone did really well and we eventually made it up to the summit. I thought the views were still really nice and it looked kind of cool with the clouds moving around the trees. Unfortunately we couldn’t see the Tantalus Range, but we had a nice lunch break along the ridge before heading back down to the lake.

We returned to our campsite in the afternoon before a very fun pizza night at Joe Pesto’s in Squamish. We spent the evening playing some games and enjoying the views around Alice Lake before heading to bed.

Sunday was all about whitewater rafting. We went with Canadian Outback and we had such a blast! It was their first time rafting for all of the girl guides, so they were a little nervous, especially when the event started with a 20 minute discussion about safety. I could see them all looking a little bit apprehensive, but I was so psyched to get in the raft and tried to pump them all up. I needn’t have worried though because as soon as we started going down the rapids, they all had a blast! We were able to do a little bit of swimming in some of the gentle rapids, and I got the chance to try “driving” the raft while some of the girls balanced at the front.

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The Elaho is a very special river. We started pretty far back in the backcountry and after about an hour it merges with the Squamish River. One of my favourite sections of the river is right at the start, you go down a set of rapids called Devil’s Elbow because of the sharp 110 degree bend in the river. It’s characterized by steep canyon walls which are incredibly scenic.

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After that, you get amazing views of Mount Cayley, which I learned is the sister mountain to Mount Garibaldi because they are both dormant volcanoes with distinctive peaks. Once you merge into the Squamish River, you can see Mount Cayley behind you and the Weeping Wall ahead. The Weeping Wall is named because it’s a shear rockface and in the height of the snow melt (which was mid-June, the exact time we were visiting), you get dozens of cascading waterfalls coming down the rockface. It’s a beautiful site and considered sacred to the local first nations.

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The snow melt also contributed to a very eventful day on the river. Our guides told us that the Saturday and Sunday trips we’re the best ones they’d run all season because the river was running at peak flow and we got some truly epic rapids. The rapids build up until you reach Steamroller, which is one of the most intense rapids on the river and our absolute favourite. We got smoked by wave after wave, but Trex had so much fun!

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After the last rapid, there’s a bit of a leisurely paddle through what’s known as “the braids” before you get to the take-out spot. It’s not as thrilling as the rapids, but it was a gorgeous sunny day and we had beautiful views of the surrounding mountains.

We were much later getting back to the rafting camp then we anticipated and then we got stuck in traffic on the way back to Vancouver, but it was such an epic day, I’m sure the girls will all remember it for a long time. If you have the time and capital to try whitewater rafting, definitely do it, we had an incredible time!

Twin Islands Kayaking Trip with Girl Guides

August 2, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

Last year my Girl Guide group did a backpacking series and we hiked to Viewpoint Beach, 3 Brothers Mountain, and Elfin Lakes. This year we decided to focus on a water series and selected 3 different activities to try: kayaking, rafting, and canoeing. The first activity in our water series was a 1 day paddling trip with Deep Cove Kayaks to Twin Islands in Indian Arm.

Even though I’ve been to Twin Islands once before as a day trip, I always think of it as being pretty far away, when in reality, even a group of 10 girl guides can do the entire trip in just 5 hours. We arrived to Deep Cove Kayaks at 8:30am to prepare for our trip, which started with some on-land instruction about paddling. Most people are probably aware of Deep Cove Kayaks already as they’re incredibly popular, but I have to do a shout-out for their group activities as well, because their school program is absolutely fantastic. They were thrilled to take our group out on the water and they gave us an unbelievable discount as an educational group.

We all got situated in our double kayaks and practiced some turns in the water before heading over to Jug Island. I frequent Jug Island a lot in my personal kayak, but I usually visit it from Belcarra. We played paddle roulette on the beach before departing again for Twin Islands. My favourite kayak trip is to paddle from Belcarra to Jug Island then over to the 8 corners tea room, but it’s not much further to paddle to Twin Islands via Racoon Island, so I think I may have to start doing it more.

The last time I visited Twin Islands it was absolutely packed with other kayakers – it was still busy on this visit, but no where near as bad. We landed on the south island to stop for our lunch. It was one of the girl’s birthdays, so we celebrated with none other than the infamous Honey’s Donuts from Deep Cove! I know Honey’s Donuts are pretty legendary, but I’d actually never had one before and I couldn’t get over how large they were! They’re very cakey (which is my favourite) and I had the maple dip donut (my other favourite), so it was the perfect kayaking snack!

There was a race happening the same day we visited the island and people were racing from Deep Cove, around Twin Islands, and back, so we made sure to stay out of their way. We paddled back the same way we’d come, but at a bit of a reduced pace since it was getting windier. We got back to Deep Cove around 2pm – we stopped for about a half hour at Jug Island and 45 minutes at Twin Islands, so it was under 4 hours of paddling in total. The girls all did great and I could barely keep up with them!

So it’s a pretty short trip report, but I really think this makes for a great day trip if you have the time to commit to it. I’d recommend getting to Deep Cove early because parking is very intense, or alternatively, you could also paddle from Belcarra and rent from Takaya. Parking is challenging in Belcarra as well, but you don’t have to be quite as early as Deep Cove, which is the more popular of the two. But overall, a great trip to do with either friends or family! I highly recommend!