Tofino Surfing Trip

July 17, 2024July 16, 2024 / Maria / 2 Comments

I’ve had the opportunity to do some pretty cool things with my girl guides over the years, and this was definitely one of the more unique experiences!

Last year we did a water series that involved kayaking, whitewater rafting, and canoeing. The only activity on our brainstorm that we didn’t do was surfing, mostly because it was too expensive to make a trip to the island on top of all the other activities. This year, we decided to prioritize the surfing trip and dedicated 4 days over the May Long weekend to travel to Tofino.

I’d never heard of Tofino before moving to BC, but I remember after moving here that Tofino seemed to hold this mythical status for people who grew up in BC. It’s a small town located on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It’s most well known for its premier surfing beaches; but it’s also home to Pacific Rim National Park and fun activities such as hiking, whale watching, kayaking, and hot springs.

I’ve been to Tofino several times, but I’ve never surfed, so this was a new experience for me. To be honest, I’ve always found surfing to be a bit intimidating. I don’t like getting salt water in my eyes and mouth (inevitable when surfing), so I always avoided it. I was happy to do it for the unit, but it’s not something I would have opted to do on my own. Which is one of the reasons why I’m so lucky to get to spend time with 15 adventurous teenagers every year, because I had a fantastic time surfing!

We left New Westminster bright and early on Saturday morning of the May Long weekend to catch our ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo. It’s a 3-hour drive from Nanaimo to Tofino, so we made our first stop at Little Qualicum Falls to eat a packed lunch. It was raining on and off all morning, but Qualicum Falls has a nice picnic shelter and the rain held off long enough for us to do some exploring around the park to see the waterfalls.

After that, we drove across the rest of the island to reach the coast. The weather was incredibly variable and there were several downpours along the way, but as soon as we reached the coast, all the clouds disappeared and it was a gorgeous, blue sky, sunny day. We were extremely lucky to be able to book the group campsite at Green Point campground in Pacific Rim, which was just large enough for our group of 18.

After getting set up, we took a walk down to Long Beach before dinner, which is aptly named for its 16 kilometres of uninterrupted coastline. I’ve visited Long Beach several times, but I’d never been to this part of the beach. It’s a golden sand beach, with big waves, and on this occasion, a lot of wind. So it was definitely on the cold side, but we all loved running across the beach and exploring the area.

On Sunday, we had our first surf lesson. We did 2 lessons with Surf Sister School and I would highly recommend. As a female led organization, we loved having female surf guides to show us the ropes. On our first day, we met at Cox Bay Beach. We spent the first part of the day on land, learning how to safely get on our boards and pick our waves. Once everyone was comfortable with the instruction, we got in the water.

Surfing isn’t easy, but it was more fun than I anticipated. There was a steady stream of beginner waves rolling into the shore and we all practiced getting on our board. Standing up was almost impossible for me, but it was fun riding the waves on my belly and knees. Of course, once you get going, you become pretty determined to stand! I didn’t have any luck standing on Day 1, but several of the trex members were able to surf and it was fun to watch.

We returned to the campground for lunch and then planned for an afternoon exploring in the National Park. We visited the Kwisitis Visitor Centre on Wickaninnish Beach, which I’d highly recommend. They have tons of great info about the region and natural environment. From there, we did a short hike to South Beach, which is a small cobble beach. We had some excitement on the way when we spotted a bear! It was a great sighting because he was far enough away that us and the bear felt comfortable, and we were able to just watch it for a while.

South Beach turned out to be one of the group’s favourite parts of the entire trip. We didn’t do much there besides relax in the sun and do some beachcombing, but everyone really enjoyed taking it easy after a vigorous morning of surfing! We had dinner back at the campsite and then drove to Chesterman Beach for a sunset campfire. Tofino has really cracked down on beach campfires in the past few years, so you’re not allowed to have open beach fires anymore. Fires are only allowed at Mackenzie Beach and Chesterman Beach and must be in a contained fire pit. We brought a fire pit with us so that we followed all the rules.

On Monday, we had our second surf lesson, this time at Chesterman Beach. Our second lesson was mostly in the water and focused more on improving our skills. The general consensus from Trex was that they didn’t like Chesterman Beach quite as much as Cox Bay. The waves were bigger and less consistent, so I think it’s more popular for better surfers. But personally, I had a more successful day! I wouldn’t say that I actually managed to surf, but I did manage to stand twice, so it was nice to feel like I made a bit of progress! Considering that I didn’t want to surf, I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I would definitely surf again, and recommend it to those visiting the area. If you have time for 2 lessons, I think it’s more satisfying because you get to surf more on the second day.

One of the girls was celebrating her 13th birthday on the trip, so we had the most delicious birthday pie for lunch and then went into town for the afternoon. The girl guides had the opportunity to explore Tofino town on their own and I spent most of my time at the bookstore, Mermaid Tales, which is one of my favourites!

We finished the trip with a visit to Tacofino for dinner. We showed up only 15 minutes before closing (oops!!), but the staff were so wonderful in taking our 18 person order. We had some pretty good camp food on the trip, but the tacos were probably my favourite! We had a campfire to end the evening and everyone reflected on their favourite parts of the camp.

We still had a big final day ahead. It started to rain overnight and we had to pack up everything wet, which is never fun. But we’re really thankful that it didn’t rain during the rest of the trip, so it was a small price to pay! We had a pee break at the Taylor River rest stop on the way back, which has the most gorgeous green river running through. I’ll have to return in the future for a swim!

Our final stop on the trip was to the Old Country Market (better known as Goats on the Roof) in Coombs. The goats briefly came out on the roof for a photo op and we did some exploring around the market for lunch. We picked up some doughnuts from Billy G’s Doughnut Shop to enjoy on the ferry ride home.

I had such a fantastic time on this trip and I hope the girl guides did too! We received funding from West Coast Area’s Muriel Murray Fund and from Disney’s VoluntEars Program (through a parent employee) to do this trip. We’re so lucky to have access to funds to subsidize trips like these for teenagers. Several of the trex members are aging out this year after completing the entire Girl Guide Program from Sparks to Rangers. It is really transformative for girls to be able to go on trips like this, interact with female role models, and build up their skills. So thanks to everyone who’s ever bought girl guide cookies from me or a girl guide!

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!