2009-07-14 49 -122

Tue 14 Jul 2009 in 49,-122: 49.3504257, -122.8322685 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

In the Siskin Lake/Robin Lake area, east of Buntzen Lake on top of a mountain. There are established hiking trails there. See hiking trails map in photos section.

Participants

• Rhonda
• Xore
• Robyn

Plans

Meet after work and drive to Buntzen Lake picnic area. Hike ~4km on a trail (note: switchbacks - may be longer, will be steep), find hash point, hike down.

Sunset is at 9:13PM. We're bringing headlamps and jackets (and emergency gear) in case we're returning in the dark. Weather forecast calls for clearing skies through the day.

Expedition

Park gates closed at 9PM and we didn't want to have the car locked in the park overnight. We reached our designated turnaround time before we reached the hashpoint.

Full report tomorrow.

Assembling the Party

Robyn rode the usual collection of transit vehicles (bus, train and boat) across the city and across the Burrard Inlet to a bus loop a few blocks from where Rhonda lives. The schedules connected better than planned, leaving Robyn time to read her book while being accosted by someone who claimed to be from Australia. He lacked an Australian accent, but managed to be barely intelligible anyway. He wanted to know how much for T-Rex. When Robyn explained that T-Rex is Not For Sale, he asked about the book she was reading, then asked Robyn why she wouldn't sell him cigarettes. Eventually he realized that "because I don't smoke" meant that Robyn didn't have any cigarettes, and he went away.

Rhonda arrived in the hashmobile and Robyn got in and talked too much while incompetently providing directions to SFU based on Rhonda's Google Maps printout. "Okay, turn left onto East Hastings, then turn right onto Hastings." Huh? Hastings turned right so we assumed we were done that stage and waited for the street we were on to turn into Burnaby Mountain Parkway. Only it didn't. It turned into the Barnett Highway shortly after we went through the large intersection of East Hastings and Hastings, three lanes over from where we needed to be to turn right. We turned around a few kilometres down Barnett Highway, with the assistance of a pedestrian crossing light and the entrance to a velodrome, this time turning left on Hastings, left on Gaglardi Way and finding ourselves on the SFU campus. The next page of the directions said to turn right on East Road and right again on Sunnydale, so after briefly thinking we were entering a parkade, we drove under one of the campus buildings, past New Caprica (parts of Battlestar Galactica were filmed in front of the futuristic architecture of this campus) and reached a T-Intersection. The choices were University Drive East and West, so we took the former, it being closest to "East Road." We found and collected Xore, and continued towards the trailhead.

This time we got on the Barnett Highway on purpose, past the velodrome and past a Mountain Air Bike training facility. We were curious as to the nature of a "Mountain Air Bike" until another sign made it clear that it was the "Mountain Air" bike training facility. Typography is so important. Xore gave directions through Port Moody onto Ioco Road, then mentioned that we were looking for East Road. That's why the directions didn't work out at SFU. Robyn was on the wrong page. It was pure coincidence that a road with "East" in its name existed and was correct.

"I love it when the map, the directions and reality all coincide," said Rhonda, and we were soon driving through the park gates. The gates. Hmm. The gates with a sign announcing that they closed at 9:00 p.m. This could affect the outcome of our expedition. It was now after four. The challenge would be to reach the geohash and return in under five hours.

Photos

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