Today, I took Sean (brother-in-law) “up into the mountains”.  This is his first visit to BC, and wanted to see some of the BC mountains.  The weather’s been pretty miserable for the week he’s been here, but the weather prognosticators indicated that they expected today to be better than the rest of the preceding (and following) days so I swapped my Labour Day holiday with today.

We got up late, had a largish breakfast and made it to Cypress Bowl by about 11:30 am.  It was mostly sunny, with some puffy clouds haunting the mountain peaks.  Gwen dropped us off in the parking lot with a promise to pick us up around 6 pm.

The Mt. Strachan (pronounced “Strawn”) hike is one I’ve done at least a half-dozen times and is one of my favourites.  It starts in the Cypress Bowl parking lot and then you take the Howe Sound Crest Trail for about an hour towards The Lions.  Eventually you come to a meadow on the west side of Mt. Strachan and a short trail to a ravine the goes up to a pass between the North and South peaks of the mountain.  Climbing up the ravine (which is quite steep) is quite an endeavour.

It's steeper than it looks!

Snow still in the ravine

Lions look-off half way up

Once you achieve the pass, you climb up a similarly steep trail to gain the North Peak.  The view from the top is quite amazing, with a 360° view. The clouds broke just as we summited, making for the typical outstanding view.

Sean at the top of Mt Strachan

After rehydrating and chowing down a bit, we climbed down the North Peak and ascended the South Peak.  Along the way, we grabbed a geocache that hadn’t been found this year and had only been found once last year.  The South Peak is the top of chair lifts for Cypress Mountain, and the hike down from the South Peak parallels the ski runs a bit, and about 2/3 of the way down, you are actually forced to walk along the access road/ski run.

We were within view of the parking lot by about 3:30 pm — clearly we made much better time than I expected — and gave Gwen a call.  We made it down to the parking lot soon enough and then beat it over to the nearby Yew Lake to pick up another geocache before meeting Gwen and Aidan in the parking lot. And the rain held off until we were waiting to be picked up!

Yew Lake

All in all, 8.8 km hiking, 730 m total elevation gain, about 4.5 hours total time including breaks.

The GPS track is shown below, along with a Google Earth plot of the hike.

Mt. Strachan hike

Tonight was the opening night of the annual Vancouver fireworks festival.  This year it’s called the HSBC Celebration of Light, but in years past it was called other things as other sponsors mangled it.  I think my favourite was the Celebration of Fire.  But I digress.

Tonight’s competitor is Canada, and they’ve done a completely thematic “War of the Worlds” “Godzilla Attacks Vancouver” (?) sort of thing instead of the usual medley of songs.

It’s been utterly spectacular, even from our dining room.  Gwen and Kayla are down at Vanier Park, and I’m watching from home.

The timing to the music has been extraordinary, there have been some fireworks I’ve never seen before, and there have been some *very* large bursts too.  The trees in Choklit Park obscure the view a little bit, but I was surprised at how much was still visible.  Sadly as each year passes, we see less and less.  Maybe the Park Board can do something about that.

The competition continues on Saturday with the US’ entry followed by China next Wednesday and the finale on the Saturday after that.

Grrr, rant time.

This morning’s ride (commute) consisted of the following:

• Being cut off by the same car twice, 3 blocks from home
• Being cut off by a courier blindly turning right
• Being confronted by a recycling truck coming at me the wrong way through a traffic circle
• Being confronted by a car coming at me in the wrong lane on campus
• Being behind a car that came to a stop at a 4 way stop, and stayed there.  I went around her and three blocks later I could still see she was stopped there.  The passenger didn’t seem concerned.

So, seriously?  A 10 km ride in the gorgeous sunshine and mild temperatures complete and utterly destroyed by idiot drivers.

There are some things I really dislike about Vancouver and the dumbass car (and bike) drivers rate highly.

Record breaking heat this weekend.  Cold and wet start to June (the local weather personalities were calling it “June-uary” — which got real old, real quick) and now blue sky and scorching heat.  Welcome to the dry season.

This weekend was busy doing an assortment of things.  Saturday was chores and errands in the morning, a quick trip (hah!) to Highview Lookout in Cypress Provincial Park for some photos and cache placement scouting, and then over to the COINANZA geocaching event in the Barnet Marine Park in north Burnaby.  Aidan had a good time playing in the sand and watching the trains whiz by as we socialized.  If you go through the photos at the event, you’ll see Aidan made it again. Grocery shopping after that, and then Aidan and I went by bike back to the grocery store because I forgot to get the one thing we were supposed to get — hamburger buns (for supper).  Doh!

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And, oh, we also picked up a travel bug at the event:

Today was a bit more of the same.  Back to Cypress to drop off a geocache that we’re placing (not published yet, link to come) and then to the Wal*mart in North Van to get The Boy some summer jammies.  Back home for a nap that didn’t come and then we beat it down to Spanish Banks for a picnic on the beach.  Whew.

What kind of bug is this?  Anyone?  It was on the beach where we were trying to picnic:

You know, the views in Vancouver never get old.

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