Snowshoeing Dog Mountain

December 30, 2020January 5, 2021 / Maria / 3 Comments

After Hollyburn Mountain, I think Dog Mountain at Mount Seymour might be one of the most popular places for snowshoeing. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this trail. I’ve snowshoed it several times and somehow I’ve still never managed to actually get the view of the city from the end of the trail.

Like Cypress and Grouse, you can rent snowshoes directly from Seymour Mountain. If you want to snowshoe the actual groomed snowshoe trails, you’ll also need a trail pass, but since Dog Mountain continues out of the resort and into the provincial park, you don’t need to get a pass for this trail.

The parking lot at the top is dedicated for skiers, but there’s a ton of parking along the left side of the road just before you get to the parking lot which is dedicated for snowshoers. Park here and then start making your way up to the back of the lot. Like all the local mountains, it gets crazy busy up at the top, so either come early or consider taking the Seymour shuttle up from the bottom of the road.

You’ll see a delineated snowshoe trail heading up the left side of the ski run. If you continue up the trail you can head up toward Mount Seymour, which is a much harder trail, but turn left off the trail and into the woods to go to Dog Mountain. The trail continues for a kilometer or two until you reach a branch. It can be kind of confusing in the winter, so pay close attention to the signs, go straight if you want to go to the Dog Mountain viewpoint, or right if you want to do the shorter Dinkey Peak loop (you can also do this on the way back from Dog Mountain, it’s only an additional kilometre, but does involve more of a climb).

I’ve now attempted the Dog Mountain trail 3 times in the winter. The first time I went it was a gorgeous sunny day with fresh powder on the ground. I loved walking out through the woods with the snow sitting on the trees, but because it was fresh powder, it was a little hard to find the trail and me and my friend Kateland ended up totally missing the Dog Mountain branch and circled up and back the Dinkey Peak loop. At the time I was a little sad we missed the branch, but the view from the top of Dinkey Peak of the surrounding backcountry is just so beautiful that it was hard to feel too disappointed about it.

The second time I visited I made it all the way out to the viewpoint, but it was a drizzly day and we got pretty wet without the pay-off of any view. So we trudged our way back to the lodge for a hot chocolate instead. The final time, it was pouring rain the whole way we didn’t even bother trying to go out to the viewpoint. Instead we took the Dinkey Peak loop, somehow missing the actual branch off to the peak, and went immediately back to the car to try and dry off.

So I haven’t had the best luck. Seymour is the lowest elevation of the 3 local mountains, so there’s no guarantee that if it’s raining in the city it’ll be snowing on the mountain. So I’d recommend waiting for a clear day to go up there. That said, one time I went up there on a night snowshoe tour with Metro Vancouver and a bunch of people on the tour bailed because it was raining in Vancouver and we ended up having the most romantic snowy night snowshoeing up there! So you really never know!

Snowshoeing Grouse Mountain

December 23, 2020January 5, 2021 / Maria / 3 Comments

I’ve only been up Grouse Mountain in the winter once, but it’s a great place for snowshoeing! You can rent snowshoes at the top and there’s lots of great trails to explore, plus the myriad of other activities available at the top of the mountain. The downside is that you have to pay to go up in the gondola, so unlike most hikes, it comes at a cost.

I don’t like paying to enjoy the outdoors, so I’ve only been up the one time when Carolyn had the annual pass and therefore was able to get my gondola ticket half off. Neither of us wanted to pay to come back again, so we decided to try and snowshoe as many of the available trails as possible in one visit!

It ended up being quite the adventure! It was several years ago and I believe it was Carolyn’s first time snowshoeing in BC, so she borrowed Seth’s snowshoes, which were a hand-me-down from my parents. Unfortunately, they’re not very quality snowshoes and one of them broke halfway up the trail. The trail was pretty well compacted, so she continued on just in her boots, but I wouldn’t recommend doing this now without microspikes. It was several years ago and we were a lot less savvy back then.

The snowshoeing trails at Grouse are pretty straightforward and our goal was to snowshoe up to the top of Dam Mountain, which had great views looking down over the backcountry. While the trail itself was compacted from so many users, there was still a lot of fresh snow on the ground and we got some great photos of the trees all covered in snow.

We had a short lunch at the top of Dam Mountain and then decided to continue on along the Discovery Route, which I believe in the summer is known as Thunderbird Ridge. Things got a little sketchier here – there was less traffic and a lot of fresh powder, so I went first to try and blaze a trail for Carolyn, who was coming behind me without snowshoes. She was a good sport about it, but she was definitely postholing a lot, despite my best efforts to compact it down for her.

I think she’d agree though that it was worth it! There’s amazing views looking back out over the backcountry from Thunderbird Ridge and we had a lot of fun playing around in the powder. Grouse is definitely on the busy side, so the Discovery loop is definitely a great idea if you’re looking to escape the crowds.

We bypassed Dam Mountain on the way back and headed back down to the lodge. I have to give props to the Grouse Mountain staff – they were doing some work on the trail when Carolyn’s snowshoe broke and told us to leave them there and if they went back to the lodge before we got back, they would bring them back down for us to customer service. They had done so, which was super kind, so we were spared having to carry them out. On top of that, when we brought them into the snowshoe shop, they happily fixed them for me for free! They were cheap snowshoes and it was just the matter of a broken rivet, so they replaced it with a sturdier bolt. This had happened on the other snowshoe the previous year and I’d had to pay to get it fixed at a repair place, so I was really impressed with the service at Grouse!

So overall, despite some setbacks, we had a great day exploring around the mountain and had some snacks in the lodge before loading the gondola back down. It’s definitely a bummer to have to pay for the gondola up, but worth it for the access to some really great trails!

Hiking High Falls Creek

November 25, 2020November 26, 2020 / Maria / 3 Comments

The Fall hiking season seems to be almost certainly behind us at this point, but Brandon and I were lucky enough to end off the season with a beautiful hike up to High Falls Creek outside Squamish.

High Falls Creek is one of several trails located along the Squamish River going up the valley. I’ve heard about the river being popular for fishing and camping along the banks, and I once went white water rafting down it with Seth, but otherwise I haven’t explored this area at all. There were a few people still out enjoying the last few nice days of the season, but you do have to be careful camping along the river as it does frequently flood.

High Falls Creek was basically empty when we arrived though. It’s an extremely steep trail that climbs up the cliffside, providing several glimpses of the waterfall cascading down through the trees. The waterfall is only about 1km in the trail, but it’s so steep that it feels like a lot longer. I’d debating bringing Sadie, but ended up leaving her home because I’d read it isn’t a dog friendly trail. I didn’t regret it because there’s a lot of climbing and rope sections.

We passed two couples who had gone up to the waterfall, but decided to hike back down rather than do the rest of the trail. I understand why they did this, it’s a 9km loop to do the whole trail, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s a loop trail for a reason and I don’t envy them climbing back down all those rope sections. Otherwise, we didn’t see a single other person on the trail!

As far as waterfalls go, it’s a bit hard to see this one. There’s no real good viewpoints from the trail, though there is a branch that goes down to the top of the falls, which is pretty neat. But I still loved the trail because it has gorgeous views all along looking out at the surrounding mountains and down into the valley. The trail continues up and up after the falls with a total of 500m of elevation gain in under 3km. It took us about 2.5 hours to do the 3km, but after that you pop out on the forestry road and it’s just a leisurely 6km walk back around to the car.

We were hoping to catch the end of the leaves changing colour, but sadly we were too late. However, there were a lot of bare trees, so I could see this being a great Fall hike earlier in the season and I’d definitely like to return next year. Even though it’s not as rugged, I liked the forestry road because it still had some awesome views down into the valley.

The last part of the road goes along the river, so we kept our eyes open for good river camping sites for another year. It was a gorgeous sunny day, but we could tell the area had recently flooded. We continued our tour of the valley when we got back to the car and drove around to check out a few of the rec sites, enjoying the last bit of sun before the rain moved in to stay.