Canada Day '09 - West Side Adventure

I woke up just before 10. It was Wednesday, Canada Day 09, and I was supposed to be rendezvous-ing with Ed and Sheree at the junction of Woods Road and Mt. Gardiner road in twenty minutes. It wasn't going to happen, that spot being a 2 hour hike from my house. So I called them and opted for the fossil fuel resuce plan.

Thanks to encroaching old fart-ism, I was still bent out of shape from the festivities on Monday night, when my army-bound friend Odin and I went and saw Sonny Rollins at the Orpheum. Thinking we were in for a proper schooling in old skool jazz sax, we were sorely disappointed to witness stumbling and bumbling of a past great whose best-before date had clearly lapsed. We stayed for two "songs" and split. Without going into the teenage details, I got home the next day by 1 in the afternoon, and began the recovery process, which mostly involved snoozing in the hammock.

So there's the state of mind that I was in as Ed and Sherree and I, my dog Vera, and their dog Chester, headed into the bush for the one hour trek to Barb and Jaquie's hike-or-boat-access-only cabin on the remote west side of Bowen Island, an 8 km stretch of the island whose foreshore is denied conventional access by steep cliffs hundreds of feet high.

It was hot and steamy inland, but the cool damp forest air kept us from breaking a sweat. After losing track of Chester thanks to itinerant deer a couple of times, we emerged from the bush at
Barb and Jaquie's, a beautifully renovated two level post-and-beam cliff-hugging cabin looking west towards Keats Island and the Langdale ferry terminal on the Sunshine Coast.

Beer and Caesar's were the beverages du jour, and we assumed our positions among the Cape Cod chairs with B&J's neighbours Tom and Carroll (and their dog Tessa, B&J's dogs Maggie and Molly completing the canine crew). After big fat burgers were graciously served by Barb and Jaquie, sticks were procured to entertain the fur-bearing friends and we migrated to Tom and Carrol's warf (photo above) as B&J's is under renovation.

These photos below are of the aquatic dog action.

Snow Capped Mountain Peak Adventure

Wow! What an ordeal hiking over the top of Gardner was today. The closer we got to the top, the more snow there was, until we were practically swimming up-hill through giant drifts to get to the peak. It was snowing at times, and foggy, and with icicles and snow coating all the trees and making them arch under the strain it was like walking through forest that had been blasted by the ice-gun. Which it literally had.

After we waded through the 4 foot deep snow to get to the east helicopter platform, we had to swim our way through to the trail going down the northwest face. There was so much snow, I was able to just leap off the side of the mountain and land in deep snow twenty feet lower in a single jump! Woo-hoo!

I was amazed at how disoriented I got once I was down off the peak and navigating for the connector to Upper Handlogger. With everything grotesquely morphed by the thick blanket of snow, nothing looked familiar at all. Fortunately, Vera was very accurate in sniffing out the trail, as I was able to confirm by the occasional orange trail markers that weren’t covered by snow.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so thankful for whoever it is that does such a fantastic job of keeping these trails clearly marked. With the fog and snow, I’m almost certain I would have had a few major impromptu detours without them. Thanks! Whoever you are….

Once we reached the Handlogger Connector, the snow took on a different quality…still two feet deep, but with multiple crustal phases that made it hard sloggin for both me and the dog. Here’s a video I took of Vera fighting her way along, to give you some idea of how tough it was for poor little Miss Blueheels:

She’s pooped now, boy. Got a fire going as soon as we got back home, and now she’s roasting her belly and soundly snoozing.

Bowen Island: Soon To Be Just Like Everywhere Else

I'm starting this blog cause I'm annoyed at all the pseudo government types around here pretending to have the best interests of Bowen Island at heart while they are just trying to divert attention from their true purpose, Self Enrichment.

I hike all over this island in the woods, on trails and off of trails, and I'm quite sure that nobody really understands the full extent of the devastation under way in so many locations across the island. My mission for the summer is to visit all the sites being developed on a large scale by greedy little developers who are smart enough to apply for one or two permits at a time, so no attention is drawn to their grand ambitions, and then post the photos here for all to see.

Check back here throughout the summer for updated photos and explanations of who is behind these projects.
James West