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.

The First Foray

After setting GPSes, leaving a notice of where we were going on the dashboard, securing the car, and having one member of the party change into shorts in the bushes we were ready to set off. It was twenty after four. The map showed one trail, departing from right by this parking lot and heading almost straight up the mountain. We had already seen the trailhead as we drove in, so started along it. We were a little confused by the sign at the trail entrance "Dog walking trail 0.6 km" but managed to persuade ourselves that the first 600m of the trail was for dog walking and the remainder would take us towards the geohash. That persuasion lasted less than 600 metres, as we rapidly concluded that while this trail was beautiful, it turned far more times than were necessary given the terrain, and was not going up the mountain. We reversed course and found the correct trailhead, next to a boardmap showing slightly different trails and lakes from the official trail map we already held. Neither version included the dog walking trail.

We ran through the checklist on the sign: we had told the entire Internet where we were going. We had food, water, emergency supplies and a good map. We were fit. We were ready to go. Xore sketched the differences between our two maps on his printout of the Google Maps satellite view. It showed ... trees. Not much else. And up the trail we went.

The Trail Up

The trail up was quite distinctly up. There were switchbacks, and exposed tree root stairs, alternating with pleasant needle-covered packed dirt sections. We were all puffing and sweating and feeling the climb, when Rhonda announced that she had not eaten since lunchtime and had skipped her usual afternoon snack, so finding a place to eat would be a good idea. Before long we found a slightly wider spot on the trail that was suitable for sitting on, and had a brief meal break. Robyn had brought sandwich fixings, while Rhonda had packed chicken wraps. Two hikers came down the trail while we were eating, one of them using a pair of walking poles. We hoped the trail wasn't actually that difficult.

Much refreshed by the meal break and the fuel in our stomachs, we set off again, noting the elevation markers nailed to trees every 100m vertically.

The trail continued in a consistently upward direction until about 900m elevation. We were fairly sure that we had started at close to 100m elevation in the parking lot, and were suitably impressed by our mountain-climbing abilities.

Now that we'd completed most of the elevation gain, we started watching out for a trail junction called "El Paso", which we expected to have a sign because the trail was quite clearly marked with orange things nailed to trees and elevation markers.

At a trail junction which had a sign that said "white rock" instead of "el paso", we discussed which fork to take and completely failed to notice that the hiking map showed two junctions before el paso and that the sign we were looking at said, at the bottom, "this trail is not part of the Buntzen Lake trail system". We merrily set off on the right-hand trail toward white rock.

The Junction

We reached a junction in the trail. We were now 750 metres from the geohash. The existence of a junction had been noted in the early planning and at the mapboard at the trailhead. We had carefully written down the name of the junction and discussion had already started on which way to go. One route followed the contour lines around the left of the peak, was longer in kilometres on the trail, but probably required less bushwhacking to get to the lake. Rhonda supported that option. The other route initially went away from the geohash, was possibly more hilly, but consisted of fewer trail kilometres. Xore supported that option. Robyn supported whichever option required less bushwhacking, but it was not entirely clear which route that was, because between the shifting names of the lakes and the lack of gridlines on the map, it was hard to see exactly where the geohash was. It was thought to be within 20 metres of the trail, but we suspected that distance might be in a swamp. Xore was even willing to bet a loonie (which he explained consists of a hundred pennies, and that's a lot) that the point would be in a swamp. After a bit more discussion, as the time crept towards seven 'o clock, Robyn voted for whichever option kept us moving, so picked the right fork and we continued. We also agreed on a turnaround time of seven-thirty.

As predicted, this trail led away from the geohash, at times almost 180 degrees away, and it continued to be very steep. At one point there was a rope secured to a tree further up the slope to enable hikers to get up the grade. Robyn called out our negative progress on her still receiving GPS, and at 1.1 km from the geohash Rhonda speculated that perhaps this was not the trail, but just a path to a lookout. Wow, but what a lookout!

We'd come out at a rocky area where the view was not obscured by trees. It afforded a view of most of Greater Vancouver, from Pitt Meadows to Boundary Bay and west to the city of Vancouver. We were looking down at Simon Fraser University, which is itself on top of a hill so imposing that the transit buses can't get up it in the winter. We admired the view briefly, then retraced our steps to the junction.

Now that we looked, there was a placard on a tree that specifically did not match the name of the junction we had so carefully recorded, and which said in fine print at the bottom "not part of the Buntzen Lake trail system." We had now only thirteen minutes before our mandated turnback time, but decided to use those minutes going forward to see how close we could get. Maybe we'd be lucky and make the geohash after all.

The Race for the Car

It was 7:30, the gates closed at 9:00, and we had an hour and a half to get from our closest approach to the hash point down to the car before we were either locked in for the night or triggered a search and rescue response.

We walked as fast as it was safe to do so. The terrain was muddy and slippery near the lakes, so this was only a brisk walk. Xore tried to go a bit faster and ended up falling down, after which he only tried to go faster where it was drier. As we moved away from the lakes, the trail turned from mud to steep, and we were forced to maintain only a fast walk. Robyn fell down when she stepped near the edge of the trail half under a bush and found out the hard way that there was no trail there, but caught herself before sliding down the slope. Rhonda stepped on a slick root on a downslope and fell down with one leg folded underneath and her foot caught in a loop of root. There were no actual injuries, fortunately, only falls.

Photos

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