A cacophonous boom shattered the silence of the moonless night! Was it an avalanche? It sounded too sharp and too big. An eerie red, flickering glow lit up the clouds. Animals could be heard running blind through the night, and sometimes their silhouettes came into view when the clouds flashed a brighter orange. We scrambled for our headlamps, not knowing what we were running from but knowing that we did have to run.
None of that stuff actually happened, but if the VOCene editor continues with past practices of only quoting the first paragraph before linking to the trip report then it should attract some attention.
There’s this dog in my neighbourhood that has this bizarre bark which sounds like 90% goose honk and 10% dog bark. I’ve never seen the thing but my wife has and says that it’s a coonhound that’s always walked by some lady. The lady who owns the goose-dog has recently been walking the thing at 5:00 in the morning and since it’s been getting hot windows are open and it’s been waking people up with its bizarre goose-bark.
Goose-dog This photo was taken a few months after the trip report was first published. The goose-dog appears shockingly dog-like.
Friday night Devlin and I scaled back our plans to install a hut fee collection box at Burton Hut since that would be an overnighter and the weather for Sunday looked dank. We decided to do mountains around Brandywine, so it was going to be an early morning. At 2:30 I started hearing Devlin stirring, kicking his bed and flopping, which is what he does when he can’t sleep. He was keeping me awake too. Eventually the sky started to brighten, I was tired and I knew that he’d be more tired. Finally the kicking stopped. I started to relax and was almost asleep…
A cacophonous honk shattered the silence of the moonless dawn! Was it a goose? It sounded too sharp and too big.
That was more or less it for sleeping. We stayed in bed for a long time after that trying to get at least some rest and it was 8:30 when Devlin finally got up. He didn’t want to go as far as Brandywine anymore, so he decided on Red Heather. We put the skis on around Brandvold Falls, which were really going.
Brandvold Falls
A large tree
We met two BC Parks rangers at the warming hut and they asked if we were staying overnight. I said no, and they totally didn’t believe me.
“That’s a pretty big pack for a day pack”
“He’s just got his avi kit and I’ve got stuff for both of us and I brought a watermelon.*”
“For next time, do you know how the reservation system works?”
“Yes. Prepay for camping, reservations for Elfin are full for the next 18 months…”
“Do you know what the fines are?”
“Do you want me to empty my pack and show you no tent or sleeping bags?”
The rangers told me I didn’t have to empty the pack, but they clearly still thought I was lying, which I don’t like. I wish I had just dumped everything.
*There’s a graph in this glorious trip report that explains the watermelon.
We went up to Round Mountain, ate the watermelon at the top and skied towards Garibaldi until the snow started to get sparser. I started trying to put the skins on and they just wouldn’t stick at all. After a great struggle I eventually got Devlin’s to sort of stay, but mine kept falling off. They weren’t even sliding off sideways because I was being careful not to side-load them, I was just sliding straight backwards off of them. I spent a lot of time scraping them on the edge of my ski and I also spent a fair bit of time trying to clean the bottom of my skis off on my pant leg, but things didn’t really improve. I eventually decided that I was going to tear off the desperation strip off the middle if they came off again but by then we’d more or less fumbled to where we could glide back to Red Heather.
Near the summit of Round Mountain
Watermelon
Snow saw
Coming down from Round Mountain
Scraping, yet again
When I was trying to get the skins to stick, the layer of pollen was pretty thin and not obvious, but by the time we got down to Brandvold Falls the pollen was thick and gross.
Parks was working on removing the trees that had fallen on the trail. In one location the falling tree had managed to drive two of its branches into the ground. They almost looked like stumps, except the foliage was upside down.
Fake stumps
When I got home I sprayed orange ski cleaner on the skis and waited for the pollen to soften up. It was gross. Devlin’s skin glue is somewhat grossified and mine is totally wrecked. I don’t need a heat gun and a scraper to take the old glue off; I just need my thumb.
Look at that pollen grossness
My backpack is getting really stinky. I’m debating between disassembling it and putting it the washing machine versus going to a wand wash car wash and blasting it for a while.
That’s a pretty lame trip report. Hopefully someone learned something useful about the dangers of pollen otherwise it doesn’t have any redeeming qualities at all.
Yeah, pollen. Shuyu claims that dish washing detergent gets it off. I used paint thinner.
Apparently they are replacing all the skin glue world-wide with some environmentally friendly politically correct water soluble! skin glue, which might explain why your skins wouldn’t stick. I still have the old stuff on mine and I’ll have to iron it again before I next use the skis, which is probably not for another six months or so. Yea Summer!
Thanks for the Trip Report. It’s good to see that stuff is still happening.
I got a solid laugh in from the goose-dog so I’ll throw my support behind the value of this trip report. I might even be inspired to make a goose-dog costume for the next Halloween.
This explains why the garage was stinky.
I was already afraid of falling trees. Fake-stumps has increased that more than I thought possible.
Sure enough I was drawn in by the first paragraph quoted in the VOCene. I got a very good chuckle out of this TR, so I’d hardly say it’s without any redeeming qualities!