Getting there is half the fun: VOC Winter Longhike!!!

Sunday, January 29, 2006

VOC Winter Longhike!!!

Had an awesome time with the VOC this weekend on the annual "Winter Longhike" trip to Read Heather Meadows near Squamish! In all, 20 something people went but I didn't see them all much. We sort of broke off into groups but had a sort of pow-wow Saturday night in the "snow kitchen!".

Seven of us: me, Andrew, Kim, Greta, Simon, Juli and Max all left from UBC early Saturday morning and drove up the Ring Creek logging road until the van could go no further. From there it was a 1.5km hike up to the parking lot proper, and the start of the actual trail. 5km and a lot of sweat later we made it to Red Heather Hut and continued on a little more up into the Meadows. The rest of the afternoon was spent building our mansion of a snow cave. It took us over 4 hours to build 2 caves, but one ended up having a boulder right in the middle so all 7 of us CRAMMED into the big cave for a very cozy night! Night time was spent cooking dinner in our snow kitchen with the rest of the VOC, socializing and trading war stories of the grind up. There was not to be much merry making as we were all dead tired and starting to freeze so the 7 of us squeezed back into the cave for a warm night's sleep! It was nice to be able to sleep in for once without an alarm blaring! We woke up to a beautifully clear day with a good view of Mount Garibaldi right out of the cave entrance! A very lazy breakfast was made even more fun telling the others of our warm night in the mansion as they woke up wet and cold in their tiny 3 man caves (mean, i know). After, we all did a little practice using a transceiver by burying one and then others would try to find it - a lot harder than it sound when your only feedback is little faint beeps. Around noon we finally packed up our things, jumped on our snowcaves, and slowly left. The snowshoers were the first to ditch camp, followed by me and Greta on skis, and then the more experienced skiers behind us. The trip down was definitely the highlight of the trip. It's amazing how a 4 hour uphill turns into a quick hour long downhill! Back at the parking lot we were greeted with a semi-plowed road, which meant a very long hike carrying our skis back down to the van. Greta and I walked about a km before some very nice snowshoers put us in the back of their truck the rest of the way!!

(The only downsides of the trip are the 4 blisters per foot my new AT boots gave me as a welcome gift, and a pulled hip flexor that is both incredibly painful and impossible to walk up stairs without picking up my leg!)

Some pictures of the weekend are posted here. There will be alot more as my camera wasn't working the first day so the other's have a ton more pics!

Most of the gang: Max, Greta, Me, Simon, Julia, & Andrew.