2009-04-06 49 -123
Contents
Planning
The Bellingham coordinates were right on a road by a fish hatchery, so undoubtedly achievable, but I went to that graticule not far from there yesterday, plus I feel a small sense of loyalty to my own graticule, inaccessible as it might be. I decided that if the algorithm is going to keep tossing up coordinates at the northern edge of the graticule, I'll have to go there. I can see how bad the snow is, and see if the terrain is as inhospitable as I think. I'm also interested in seeing the improvements they are making to that very treacherous highway in anticipation of the Winter Olympics next year.
The point looked to be about 1.5 km from the Squamish Highway across terrain that looked from the blurry satellite images and the terrain contours to be not completely unnavigable. It isn't sheer cliff, in other words. You can't just park your car on the side of the Squamish Highway because it's too narrow, but there was a road shown about 500 m past abeam the geohash, marked on the map as Swift. I figured I could park there and walk back. I printed off the contour map from Google, made sure I had lots of gas, and started driving.
Participants
Robyn and T-Rex
Expedition
Driving the Squamish Highway
I haven't been past the ferry terminal on that road for years. They are working hard on widening it, but right now it's a very confusing road because it's full of construction zones and traffic keeps getting channelled back and forth across the road with orange cones. I kept passing signs advising me to carry chains from October 1st to April 30th, and I didn't have any chains, but the road was completely bare and dry. Maybe there's still snow further up at Whistler. About 5 km from the geohash I passed a chain up area near a creek, and as I glanced over at it to see if anyone was actually putting on chains, I saw three black bears on the rocks at the side of the creek. I think it was a mother and cubs but I can't swear to sizes just caught in the glance. I would have stopped to photograph them for you, but I had passed the point where I could safely pull off.
I was watching now for Swift, and my access point. A highway sign warned of a road entering from the right, without giving its name, so I took that right. Google and my maps had indicated nothing else. The road immediately brought me to where two men were working on some sort of decorative gate. The gate didn't go anywhere, but had a No Trespassing sign on it, as did the road that actually led somewhere, maybe. I think it's some sort of Olympic visitor centre. It was still slightly south of the geohash, so I wasn't too disappointed that I couldn't go further that way. My planned road was ahead.
The next right didn't say Swift either, but the GPS showed that I was now just barely north of the geohash, so here was better than anything further north. It was a forest service road, but it was covered in deep snow, so I just parked at the edge of the cleared pavement, next to a truck. It had taken two hours to travel the ninety-odd kilometres from home to the access point, partly because of city traffic before I got onto the highway, and partly from all the uphill twists and turns through the mountains.
I left a sign in my windshield saying where I was going and when I expected to be back. I forgot to write xkcd on it, but another geohasher would immediately recognize someone who had "gone to N49 54'02.4" W123 08'36.9"."
Trekking up the Mountain
There were actually two roads leading up the hill from that point, one pointing too far north and one pointing too far south. It was impossible to tell which might twist or turn in the right direction further on. I went a little way up the left fork but it looked as if it was turning further north, so I went back down and up the south one. It was pretty hard going because I kept sinking into the snow up to ankle depth and the slope was fairly steep. It did start curving towards the geohash, but the trail ended just past a hut underneath an electrical transmission line. The geohash was 1.25 km away straight up a steep rock face. Time for option two.
I retraced my steps and went up the other path. This one was the actual Forest Service road, so I was pretty sure it would go further, if not closer to the geohash. It reached 1.38 km from the geohash, and then started getting further away, with the GPS needle pointing straight up another cliff. And then the road I was on widened out into some kind of plateau, with two branches, one of which went straight towards the coordinates. There were quite a few human tracks in the snow, one set of dog tracks, and no bear tracks. Good. The words on Juventas' bear tracks photo kept ringing in my head, "Just out of hibernation and hungry." This weekend has been the first stirring of spring here. As I walked I tried to make lots of noise, and occasionally stopped and barked. Bears hate dogs, and avoid them.
The snow was soft, because it was so warm, maybe fifteen degrees or more in the sun, but it was very deep. I sank up to my thighs now and again.
