So as promissed I'll say a little more about last weekend's snow camping experience. I think the word that sums things up for me was exhausting! Our pre hike the week before was night and day different from what we experienced on Friday the 13th. When we arived at the parking lot well we didn't because there was too much snow to get there and so we went as far as we could on the unplowed road and then began our hike in.



This is the start of our ominus hike into the misty wet snow covered woods.....



All smiles at the start of course



but it soon got wet as the rain met us from the start of the trail until about 2km in and then it turned to snow.....



The snow kept coming and the hiking got harder and harder, it was apparent that snow shoes were a neccessity. By the 4km mark we had slowed down to about 1km/hour and were taking turns blazing through the untracked powder. At first it was kinda fun but snow was getting thicker and higher. A person could plow through for 100ft or so and then the next would have to take over squishing the white stuff down.

Eventually a couple caught up to us at about the 5.5km mark and began to hike with us. We got them to start helping us, taking turns at the front of the pack but they were mere outdoor recreation students from Squamish and could not handle the shear effort required to blaze the trail so they stopped at the 6km mark and set up a tent.



We decided to continue on hoping to get to our destination of Taylor medows, where there awaited a cooking shelter. A place we intended to recoupe some of our energy maybe forfiting the intention of building an igloo on the first night.

The snow was deep we trudged on but darkness and dense trees began to erode our ability to navigate the trail. It was about 4:30 and we weren't positive we were on the trail anymore. A decision was made to stay right where we were and build a shelter there. I propossed a snow cave as I figured it would be quicker than building and igloo. So with my vast Albertain childhood experience of building snow caves out of the driveway piles of winter snow I set out my task.

The first two caves collapsed in the construction. My spirits faded with the attempts. I was begining to second guess my abilities. But after some risk assesment and the support of the rest of the team we decided to give it another go. So we ended up packing down the snow layer by layer until we had a grand huge solid pile of snow of which we began to carve out our sleeping quarters.

This is our second attempt which ended up being our equipment shelter as it was snowing continuously and we didn't want everything to get covered.






Bundled up inside our cave



At midnight as we finally layed in our quincy and began to wonder if this structure was going to collapse on us we pondered what we would do tomorrow. We were feeling tired and somewhat defeated as we didn't make it to our destination.....we all decided we would prefer to be soaking in a hottub tomorrow night and not sleeping in wet sleeping bags.

The next morning we awoke, safe and somewhat rested or should I say some of us rested. I was the first to brave the outdoors...It was incredible. A new half foot of snow had fallen through the night and I had to pack our campsite down, but it had stopped snowing! The morning was crisp and beautiful...the sun was lifting my spirits and I was thankfull that the cave was intact, that we had survived the night.

Slowly the rest awoke and emerged from our little white hobbit hole and began to eat and pack up.

















On the way down we met up with Steve and Jeff. They were coming up to join us but we were wimping out and coming down. They continued on and stayed at our camp, we went home and sat in the lonsdale rec center hot tub and watched movies and slept in.





THE END