2009-04-25 49 -123

Sat 25 Apr 2009 in 49,-123: 49.4809778, -123.3527699 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Glorious, fabulous success. One of the most fun geohashes ever. Write-up tomorrow. Unless Rhonda does it. -Robyn

Location

Today's location was just up a hill behind Camp Artaban, on Gambier Island. By Vancouver standards, this location is highly accessible - and Wade wanted to see Camp Artaban and neither Rhonda nor Robyn wanted to get on their bikes for the Victoria hash point.

Planning

Robyn and Wade identified five possibilities for getting to the hash point, then settled on taking the scheduled water taxi from Horseshoe Bay, which had a stop at the government dock right at Camp Artaban, followed by a tour of the camp (since they had permission from a camp director to do so) and a short hike to the hash point, followed by whatever random hiking there was time for while waiting for the water taxi's afternoon visit.

Expedition

Robyn & Wade

We would have taken public transit to Horseshoe Bay, but we had an appointment at seven, and the bus didn't look as if it could get us home until eight, so we opted to drive Wade's motorcycle to the dock. There was little traffic on a Saturday morning so we zipped down the highway in less time than budgeted. Robyn sat on the back of the bike with T-Rex on her lap, and sang a song to herself about the scenery, temperature and company. It went approximately, "Cold cold cold cold, tree tree tree tree, cold cold, road road, Wade Wade Wade, cold cold cold, DIN-O-SAUR!"

It was warmer once we got off the bike.

Rhonda

I caught the bus to Horseshoe Bay, a thoroughly uneventful trip except for the huge number of cyclists on Marine Drive in West Vancouver - a street which is busy, narrow, twisty, has no shoulder to speak of, and yet is an inexplicably common cycling route. Maybe the other roads are worse.

When I got off the bus at the stop that seemed nearest the government docks, which I assumed were in the water visible from the corner, a lady with a fishing rod strapped to her backpack put it down on the sidewalk to adjust something.

"Going fishing?" I asked, searching for a conversation starter. It made as much sense as people asking Robyn if she knew she had a dinosaur on her bike, so why not?

"Yes, we're going to Gambier Island," the lady replied.

I told her I was also going to Gambier Island, and asked if she was taking the water taxi.

She was. "Do you know where they dock?" she asked.

"At the government dock, over there I think," I said, waving vaguely in the direction of the water I had seen when the bus turned the corner.

"We'll follow you then!" she said with a smile, as she swung her pack up to her shoulders.

Uh-oh.

She and her fishing companion didn't follow me far, once they saw the water, saying something about meeting friends and waving. "See you later!"

I walked on alone, looking for a public dock and scanning the area for Robyn, since I didn't know what Wade looked like other than from Robyn's pictures of him with his motorcycle helmet on, when I heard them call to me from somewhere behind me.

Water Taxi

We walked down the dock to join the other people waiting for the scheduled water taxi, and two of them appeared shortly before 10AM, as scheduled. One called out the names of various bays on the island, and we confirmed that the bays he named included Camp Artaban before boarding.

The boat pulled away from the dock with nobody in the driver's seat inside the cabin, and we looked out to see a second control station behind the entrance, probably with better visibility. T-Rex wanted to pilot the boat for a while, and climbed onto the drivers seat until the captain came down inside the cabin.

It was really fun riding on the water taxi. It was just a boat, but it was the perfect size to take on the waves without bouncing, but still be right down on the water. You could ride inside on padded seats, like on a bus, or you could stand up on the uncovered deck at the stern and ride there. At each stop we pulled in and people very quickly jumped off, usually without the boat even mooring to the dock. It was more fun and chaotic than a regular ferry.

The captain seemed a little confused (or at least bemused) by passengers who looked like grown women, but sounded like giggling high-school girls. But by the end of the trip he was engaged with us, pointing out sights and agreeing that the water taxi was fun, even for the driver.

Camp Artaban

Camp Artaban was the third stop for the taxi, and we were the only ones for the stop, and the last ones off the boat. We confirmed with the captain that the earliest the return boat would be at the dock to pick us up would be 5:30 and that they would expect us there, and then we walked along the dock to look for the camp caretaker's house, with Robyn, who had attended summer camp here as a child, pointing out the features familiar and changed along the way, like the swimming tank which didn't used to have a diving board and the completely rebuilt boathouse in exactly the same spot as the remembered decrepit one.

After securing permission to roam from the caretaker, we wandered up past the outdoor chapel, the dining hall and the campers' cabins. We kept walking along a rough road that continued beyond the cabins. We knew the geohash wasn't far, and that we had hours to find it, so there was no hurry, but for every bit the trail turned away from the geohash, it would turn back towards it more after a short time. By the time Wade asked, "Are we there yet?" we were inside a hundred metres from our goal. Robyn said, "The geohash is fifty-seven metres that way," pointing up a cliff. She looked kind of surprised when the others didn't immediately rush to climb it. Isn't 57 m a very short Stupidity Distance? Robyn was convinced the cliff was climbable, but went along with the others, who believed that following the trail a bit further would lead to where the map contour lines showed that the route to the geohash was not quite so steep. They were right. (Robyn was right too, but we'll get to that later).

The "road" we were following was probably a skidder trail. It went quite steeply uphill itself, but we turned from there to a hands and feet scramble through light brush and over rocks and fallen trees, following a compass bearing. Robyn was in the lead, walking along a fallen tree and then climbing over another to find herself on the top of the cliffs we'd looked at from below. It was a sunny open area on slightly sloped moss-covered rocks. The geohash was 17 metres away.

Robyn counted off the steps, walking along the edge to the corner of the cliff. She set down the GPS and grinned with enthusiasm, hardly able to wait for the others to see the reading on the GPS, but not wanting to spoil the surprise.

Celebrating success

the perfect spot for a picnic -- or a geohash

Robyn had left T-Rex with the GPS on the ground just at the edge of the cliff. Zeroed. The geohash was situated on a perfect picnic ledge at the edge of a cliff. It was just before noon. After our arduous fifteen minute stroll on the skidder path, and five minute scramble through the remarkably open bush, we celebrated with a picnic and an hour or so of admiring the view.

Lunch included apples, crackers with dill cream cheese and salmon (Wade complained about the shortage of capers), a sandwich, almonds, nacho-flavoured Crispers, and carrots. Behind the seated group you can see the trees growing up from below the cliff, a steep hill on another arm of the island, and a little patch of Long Bay through the trees. We could barely make out the trail we had walked on below.

We marked the spot with an xkcd made out of sticks, conjectured on the possibility of devising an alternate version of Twister, where the playing surface is tilted, and players must hang on to handles of the appropriate oolours to avoid falling off. So we just sat around and ate more crackers and hoped that Elbie was having as much fun on her adventure, but doubted that any golf course could be as fun as this. We doubted that anyone else would arrive, beause they would probably have to be on the same water taxi as us, but Vancouver has had an unexpected island meetup before, so you can't discount these things.

We still had two and a half hours before the official meetup time, though, so we climbed back down off the cliff (using a different route that involved less bush, but had us crawling under a fallen tree), and set out to explore other trails on the island.

More hiking

Now that we had achieved the goal of the day, and had spent an hour or so celebrating, we felt we should do a bit more hiking. Robyn pulled out the [hiking maps of Gambier Island she had printed out before leaving, and we chose a destination: Lost Lake, which should be at the end of the path we had already been traveling upon.

We quickly reached the end of the path, and there was no lake. Perhaps this was just a skidder path, and not the actual marked trail we wanted. We doubled back to a fork in the path, hoping that it would lead to better things. It did. Although it didn't reach the lost lake, it did reach the actual marked trails we were looking for (marked, in this case, with blue plastic squares nailed to trees).

We determined from the map that the blue trail should reach Buccaneer Bay. After remarkably little consultation, we decided that it was easier for us to change our destination than to change our direction or location, so we continued down the trail toward Buccaneer Bay. Lost Lake would have to remain lost one more day.

The trail to Buccaneer Bay was wide, flat, and covered in footprints (mostly human, but some that we confidently identified as deer). It had the aura of a trail that had been and is often trod upon by countless campers. The place where it crossed a creek was covered by a well-built bridge at least 2m wide, and the rest of the trail was wide enough for us to comfortably walk three abreast. It was a forest freeway. It gets 4 out of 5 stars, only losing a star because of a few muddy patches.

Near Buccaneer Bay, the trail crossed a well-maintained gravel road, completely destroying the illusion that we were in the wild. On the other side of the road and down another path that could have been a road except for a stump placed to stop traffic was our destination bay, complete with a tourist info sign telling us about the significance and history of the area. [image: to add]

Photos

Feel free to move these inline with the report.

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  T-Rex steering us out of the harbour

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  Rhonda riding in the open part of the water taxi

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  The water taxi backing out after dropping us off

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  Going along a tree to get to the geohash

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  But we got there

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  Good thing it wasn't any further

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  Creating the xkcd marker

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  T-rex and the marker, camouflaged

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  Chalk mark the spot

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  Climbing down from the hashpoint

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  Going under a tree to get back down from the geohash

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  An outdoor living room!

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  Going straight up a cliff back to the geoashe

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  Where's Robyn? Back at the hashpoint for 4PM

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  But another group arrived at the base.

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  Waiting for the water taxi at the end of the day