Snow / No Snow

Less than a week before first snowfall on Mount Seymour, we hiked to the top of Mount Seymour Peak. It was a challenging hike, featuring the sort of terrain where less than 1km on the map can take over an hour, but also a short hike, the sort suitable for the shorter daylight hours of November.

While returning from the summit, we encountered a hiker heading toward the peak who appeared stressed, and asked us which way to the parking lot. We quickly got the directions sorted out, and invited the (no longer lost) hiker to join us for the hike out. Even without leaving the marked trail, it's easy to get lost around here, and if you miss a marker, it's easy to leave the trail and get really lost. The week before our hike, SAR had rescued a hiker who had taken a wrong turn, went off trail, and got stuck in a gully. The hiker was rescued safely, but the SAR folks have mentioned on other occasions that Mt. Seymour is one of their frequently visited locations.

The very beginning of the trail to the first peak (First Pump Peak) is clear and easy, but it isn't long before the trail becomes much less obvious and the terrain much steeper. Trail and not-trail started to require more skill to distinguish, and we realized why Mount Seymour is a popular place to get lost and require SAR help.

This is trail.
Photo by Alex

This is trail.
Photo by Rhonda

This is not trail. This is the top of a gully.
Photo by Rhonda

Those little orange markers on the trees and rocks? Sometimes they were the only real sign that we were going in the right direction. Many of the other hikes we've done have had other indications of where the trail is in addition to the markers, and we have navigated trails with few to no markers as well.

The most important safety tip I've learned about wayfinding in a formerly glaciated landscape such as BC is: in the absence of trail markers, don't follow streams downhill, even if at first it looks like easy going and you can see city through the break in the trees, as you can in the above photo. That way lies danger. If you don't have valley bottoms that connect in a useful way, ridge tops are the way to get around. (Although they're often not easy either!)

A hanging valley, with stream gully at the open end.
Photo and clumsy annotations by Rhonda

This is because glacier-carved valleys are U-shaped: flat bottomed and steep sided. Streams cut gullies into those very steep valley walls and can end in waterfalls. Sometimes those waterfalls are just very steep gullies all the way down, and sometimes they are an abrupt end to a smaller flat bottomed valley, such as the one pictured here. These truncated valleys are called hanging valleys, and are the result of a smaller side glacier carving them into the characteristic U shape, but feeding into a much larger glacier that carved the main valley much deeper. The blue U-shape is the original hanging valley, and the purple marks the stream gully that carved out the edge after the glaciers melted. (The red line is the ridge top; all the mountains above that line are actually the next mountains over, behind this one.)

If you look at a topographic trail map for any of the glacier-carved mountains in the area, you'll see that the trails often follow ridge tops. Both the Mount Seymour trail and the Burke Mountain trail do this, which is why both hikes go over or very near multiple peaks. The ridge top marked in the photo above is a section of the Lynn Peaks route that runs from Lynn Peak to the Needles.

On the Mount Seymour trail, the second peak (Tim Jones Peak) and third peak (Mt. Seymour) are less than half a kilometre apart, but that short distance was as deceptive as the distance between Burke's second and third peaks. Fortunately we had allowed plenty of time and could have a picnic at the peak, near the geological survey marker that indicates the official top of Mt. Seymour, before our turnaround time.

Tuff is pretty tough.
Photo by Rhonda

The trail was very steep in places, so we had to be careful of our foot placement. But when dry and clear, the trail is stable and safe enough; a lot of the time was spent on solid granite and some on equally solid tuff — rocks cemented together with volcanic ash — neither of which were likely to move any time soon.

Now imagine this trail
with waist deep snow.
Photo by Rhonda

But even a small amount of snow would make it too slippery to be safe, and could hide many of the trail markers, as a lot of them were bolted directly to the rock. A larger amount of snow would hide the trail entirely and could in places make it wildly unstable. It became obvious to us why the trail is closed past approximately first peak once the snow starts.

On another trip, about a month after first snow, we did not even attempt that trail, but went to Dog Mountain instead, an area with terrain suitable for snow-covered conditions and which had an established and marked snowshoeing route. This was a deliberately easy hike, because Alex was testing out his new snowshoes, including going very short distances off trail to test the limits of their abilities in a safe situation — such as going down a steep slope that was only a few steps high so there was limited risk of injury if their traction failed and he fell. We never went far from the trail, of course; we didn't want to lose our way.

That trail sign is usually at eye height.
Photo by Rhonda

One of the trail signs even separated the winter trail from the summer trail, although most of the trails seemed to follow the same routes summer and winter... if we could find the signs in the snow at all. Fortunately our wrong turns at the trail junctions were ones that led us back to the main trail instead of deeper into backcountry than we had planned — as SAR has noted, something that happens all too often in that and other parks.

Even if we had made a wrong turn that led to us being lost, we always leave a trip plan with a route and an expected return time with a responsible person, so if we don't get back when expected, at least SAR knows which mountain to search for us on and which trail to start with. Not doing that, well... while I was writing this post, a pair of hikers who hadn't left a trip plan went missing; the search started with police trying to contact the owner of a car found by Cypress Resort staff in the parking lot while closing up that night. Given that Cypress closes their lifts at 10PM and it takes time for all resort visitors to pack up and leave, this was most likely well over 6 hours after the hikers' intended return time. (Sunset was at 4:20PM that day, and it is dark under the trees quite a while before that.) Might they have been found if they had a responsible person to call for help at 4:30PM with a trail or peak name? Maybe, maybe not, but SAR wouldn't have had the multiple peaks of Cypress Provincial Park to spread their efforts over and would have been able to focus in more detail on the probable areas where the hikers might have been lost. The odds would have been better.

We have not ourselves needed SAR help and don't ever want to, and we don't want other people to need it either. One way we approach this is that we tell all the people we see heading away from the trailhead near the end of the day about sunset and how long it is before dark, and try to turn them around or at least set a safer goal given the time left. Sometimes they appreciate the information, sometimes they refuse to listen, but we still tell them.

For reasons that should be obvious at this point, we love AdventureSmart, and especially their slogan of "search and rescue prevention." We will happily put in the effort to prevent our local SAR teams from having work whenever we can.

The Wrong Mountain

Just over two years ago I went for a hike with my sister; it would have been late July. For reasons I can’t recall, she had rented car for that weekend: a sporty BMW. It made fast fun work of the drive up to Squamish. We had planned on visiting all three summits of The Stawamus Chief. Two weeks prior, I had gone up to the first summit with some friends. I was confident I could get us there; I believed it straightforward. 

Chatting on the drive up, it became clear that we both assumed the other had done the homework. The hike was my sister’s idea and I took that to mean she had a more detailed plan than I. Me, I had my memory of the previous trip, and used this to try to guide us. Things would have gone much differently if either of us had done some more research before we left. Instead I assumed it was a clear, well marked trail, and there was little that could go wrong.

The Chief is often started from the Shannon Falls Provincial Park parking lot. This allows a quick stop at Shannon Falls, the third highest waterfall in the province, a ribbon of water falling down 335 meters of granite. There’s an easy connector trail that leads from the Falls to the Chief trail, now partly closed off for rehabilitation. Once you hit the first segment of the Chief trail, the climbing starts. We slogged our way up the stairs, enjoying the coolness of the thick forest and the creek nearby. As the valley opened up just a little, I started watching for a rightward trail. I knew from the other trip that the first summit was to the left, and the trail to the third continued up a valley. We reached a junction: one trail went to the left, the other sharply right. It looked the part. After a short debate in which I may have said we should take "the other left", by which I meant right, we decided to take this trail, and turned right.

The trail snaked its way south, and south some more. I walked this expecting it to turn sharply east to carry us into the valley where we would gain access to the target mountain. As it climbed and meandered eastward, I still held on to to the notion we were headed the right way. I had my doubts but resisted questioning that belief — I did not want to be wrong. Reality was driven home when we came across other hikers on a steep granite knob. When asked about the Chief, they told us we were on the wrong trail, and the wrong mountain. The good news was that there was a gondola farther up that could take us down. Quite a lot farther up. Of this news we were grateful, as it was turning into a long hike and we had just climbed up some rope assists which we had no interest in going down. 

A cartoonish relief drawing.
I will have more to say later.
(Photo credit: Nienke Van Houten)

After some more climbing, we entered a flatter highland of second growth forest and alders. Here the trail widened, and we could find signs from the resort. The map board had a cartoonish relief of the mountains the gondola served, a handy "you are here" dot, and trail traces to keep us on track. Lacking a better option, this was photographed as a navigation aid. The Upper Shannon Falls trail was chosen to bring us up and around to the gondola. At this point the trail was 4X4 tracks, reassuring after miles of narrow footpaths far from anywhere. The 4X4 tracks faded out as we walked eastward, while the trail hugged the side of the narrow valley, crossing many small streams. Shannon Creek was to our left, mostly hidden in a deep gully with dangerously steep banks. The gondola complex could from time to time be seen through the trees, a mass of planes and angles in a world of curves and bushes. Well above the opposite bank, trailing from behind the gondola complex, was a linear gap in the trees which I rather hoped was the service road we had seen on the map. Large, bright, sandy coloured bare patches hinted at road cuts and recent excavations. These signs of civilization were tempered by the fact that we were far from the planned day, and farther into the woods than we had wanted. At the far end of the valley several large peaks loomed, reminding us that the wilderness could swallow us. This was stressful.

Happy to be crossing
Shannon Creek
(Photo credit: Nienke Van Houten)

Despite fears of getting swallowed by a mountain, our way out became more obvious as we trekked on. The steep high bank on the far side of the creek diminished, the road cut was growing level with us, and most importantly, Shannon Creek was no longer in as deep a gully: a bridge would be possible soon. Far up the valley a foot bridge appeared. It was a narrow little plank bridge, one I was all too happy to see. Rather disproportionately happy to see. Almost as soon as we crossed it, the trail changed. Gone was the footpath, replaced with a gravel service road. The bright scar seen from miles back was proven to be a road cut into a gravel deposit likely used to make the road. From there it was a comparatively short walk to the gondola resort complex. 

Once there it was only natural to take in the view. They had bolted a steel and wood platform to the granite. It jutted out over a lot of open air. From there we looked down on the 900m of vertical we climbed. It was a little dizzying. We also found ourselves looking at the mountain we had planned to climb, the people there smaller than ants. The Chief was below us by 300m. One hell of a wrong turn. We took the ride down and walked the short trail between parking lots to get back to the car, rather relieved. 

See that bare knob in middle? That's the Chief,
and behind it is Squamish.
(Photo credit: Nienke Van Houten)

This is a story of a bad hike with a lucky ending. Yes it was a good day: it was mostly fun, it ended safely, but the execution was unsafe. We had a lot of luck. It was a more forgiving time of year with longer days and warmer temperatures, it was a busier mountain, other hikers were around and we bumped into to them enough to help fix our location. There were signs with maps, there was a gondola down. The simple fact is that there are very few mountains where a wrong turn gets you a powered ride down to a parking lot. On most mountains, a wrong turn just gets you more mountain. What we did wrong was not plan the trip carefully; this included learning the trail description, having an appropriate map, and staying on the planned hike. 

While the hike suffered from some dangerous errors we did do a few things right. We had plenty of food and water; I recall a good cheese spread with pickles on our lunch. Our clothing and footwear was solid, and there was plenty of water. We did fall short on many of the rest of the ten essentials, though I doubt we knew that list at the time. The big lesson from that hike was that we were very lucky to have bad planning end so well. We found out that the Sea To Sky Gondola had only been running for a few months prior to our trip. Had we made that error last year and committed to the same route we would have been forced to double the length of our hike and pick our way down a steep mountain.

This hike was a watershed moment: we knew we wanted to avoid relying on luck. From then on we started building knowledge and tools to make our hikes safer and fun. In the long term this has opened up more mountains to us.

The view from the top.
(Photo credit: Nienke Van Houten)

The trail we hiked: the Sea to Summit trail, formerly known as the Upper Shannon Falls trail.
The hike we planned: Stawamus Chief.