Moving to a New Blog

We've been working a new website cum blog. It uses the wordpress platform, which we find better suits our needs.

It's allowed us to consolidate our blog of travel tales with our bike touring information pages, formerly hosted at an obscure address.

Please join us at http://candmwanderings.wordpress.com/ and for recipes  http://candmrecipes.wordpress.com/

We've transferred all our old posts, and made them more accessible by systematically using categories and tags.  Many  thanks to Amaya Williams of Worldbiking  for getting us started on the new site.

M&C

Season Finale

2011/10/14 Panorama Ridge in the Snow


With winter coming, Masa leaving to walk across Australia, and Kathrin off to New Zealand for her southern summer, this was likely our last hike for the year. And what a hike! The snow had come in buckets last week, the sun was out, and the world was beautiful!

We hiked up from the Rubble Creek parking lot to Taylor Meadows, where we first had snow under our feet. The snow depth increased with elevation to perhaps 2m at the 2109m peak of Panorama Ridge. Climbing the ridge was difficult as we sunk up to our knees in the soft snow. We returned via Garibaldi Lake. The 31.8 km  trip took us 10hrs. Masa and I took 340 photographs. A selection of our photos are on the Flickr set here. To see our route (including drive back to Squamish) on Google Earth click here. Blog by Masa in Japanese is here.

On the Ridge. Final Destination is the Peak Top Left

Final Hike to the Peak

Masa on the Ridge

View from the windy Top

Masa at the top

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Discretion is the Better Part of Valour

2011/10/06: Mt Hanover    
The Mt Hanover hike is described in Scrambles in Southwest British Columbia. It explains that the final ascent of the mountain is through a gully which is "wet and mossy", and the climbing has "moderate exposure".

Masa's Boots

We (Kathrin, Masa and Chris) started from Lions Bay and climbed up through the clouds, finding ourselves out in a beautiful sunny day at 1000m. At around 1400m, we reached the Howe Sound Crest Trail, turned north, and dropped down almost to Brunswick Lake. At 1320m, we left the trail and hiked across an open shelf with some gullies filled with snow. We then started the ascent of the mountain going up through trees to a large (both in extent and in boulder size) boulder field, and entered a gully. Here we started rock climbing (at ~1650m). Two ropes had been left by previous hikers to aid us, but for us we felt the "Moderate Exposure" on wet mossy rock was too dangerous. We aborted the attempt to reach the peak and returned to Lions Bay, arriving at the car as it was getting dark. While it was disappointing to not reach the top, we all agreed it was a very enjoyable day.

Masa was especially amazed by the water crossings and route finding in open country. He has walked from Shanghai to Vancouver (22,000km) pulling a 50kg cart, and is about to leave to walk across Australia and back to Shanghai.  He had not done anything like this before! The boots he was wearing had done 3,000km, and as you can see were severely worn at the heels. He writes a blog of this travels (it is in Japanese but Google does a poor, but usable, translation).

Below is a photo essay of the day (photos by Masa). More photos are available on Flickr. GPS track is available here.

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Coming out through the clouds

Creek Crossing

At 1320m open shelf

View of Mt Hanover

Cloud over Deeks Lake

Climbing in the Gully

Kathrin in Wet Mossy section with Moderate Exposure

View from the gully of The Lions (far left in mist) and Mt Brunswick (right)

"We knocked the bastard off!"

Early Morning View

This is what Sir Edmund Hillary said when he returned to camp with Tenzing Norgay after they were the first to reach the summit of Everest in 1953.

Since the late 70's when I climbed Blanshard's Needle, I have looked up the valley and thought I must climb the adjacent Golden Ears Mountain. It is one of those peaks along with Mt. Baker and the Lions that most Vancouverites know, and -like the Lions- it has a bridge named after it. When one rain free day was forecast this week Kathrin, Margo and I planned an early start but then found ourselves waiting at the park gate for 45 minutes (Memo to self: check park opening times in future!).  The 24 km and 1500 m climb took us thirteen hours, but as expected the view from the top was fantastic. Our less than spectacular time was because our feet were still hurting from the rogaine, and Margo's back was causing her trouble on the descent, so it took us as long to come down as to go up. The weather was sunny on the way up, but cloud came in as we neared the top, confirming that our decision not to do this as an overnight trip was a good one because rain was expected the next day. The last 45 minutes to the car required headlamps, but was along an old rail bed so trail-finding was not an issue.

More Photos on Flickr.  GPS track is available here.

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(Note added later: A friend has reminded me I did climb Golden Ears in the late 1970´s with him, taking about 11 hours)

Margo Crossing Snowfield

Cloud over Edge Peak

Video of view from top

Margo, Chris and Kathrin at the top.

Sore Feet

I've heard these 24 hour navigation events described as 8 hours of fun followed by 16 hours of character building. They're tough, but I enjoy the challenge in a perverse way, and the odd assortment of eccentric and analytical masochists which they seem to collect. This was the North American Rogaine Championships, held on September 10th to 11th at Lundblom Lake, just east of Merritt, BC.

I went with Kathrin, as one of three teams in the Superveterans Women's (over 55) category. Kathrin can move across the landscape faster than I can, but I felt I earned my keep on navigation. Several times I found controls while Kathrin was still poking around the not-quite-right place. At control 75, we were right near  Marion and Althea - who were still searching - when I found it. Rather than yell "I've found it!" to Kathrin while within earshot of M&A, I called something like "Kathrin ...come quick ...I've stepped on a bees' nest!" (M and A were our only serious friendly-competitors, a pair of formidable athletes  who eventually beat us by only a smallish margin.)  Soon "Bees' nest!" became our code for having found the control, if we were slightly separated when one of us found it.

Night was falling as we reached where control 103 should have been, but we'd heard it was misplaced so did not spend much time searching. It's the night portion of the event that is most difficult by far. We were pleased  with ourselves to find 73 and 92 relatively easily in the dark and in dense forest, where others were having more trouble; perhaps we got a bit cocky as a result, and met our comeuppance later on.

The first rest we got was at midnight, when we sat down for about twenty minutes at 101, overlooking the lights of the Hash House below. Things fell apart soon afterwards when we failed to find 56 or 84, neither of which should have been that difficult. In hindsight, we should have relocated from the nearby fence for 56, but at 3 or 4 a.m., after moving for 15 hours, things aren't ever simple - we were just hanging on. After a long bushwhack, we failed to find 45 from the obvious fence junction attack point in the pre-dawn hours, so we took about 40 minutes much-needed rest -curled in space blankets with packs as pillows- till it got light and things became relatively easy again.

Moving on from 58, to 95, 67 and 104 in the morning was tough. This portion of the map was steep terrain which we may have been best to avoid. The descent from 67 to the two small lakes involved down-climbing a cliff band, so I can see why the event organizer warned all of us firmly to avoid this area at night.

By the end, I was in death march mode, popping Advils to dull the pain of blisters forming on the bottoms of my feet, as well as to ease general aches. Kathrin was kindly carrying my jacket and extra water bottle. We arrived at the Hash House with a comfortable 45 minutes to spare, having been on the hoof for more than 22 hours during which we covered between 50 and 60 rough kilometres and collected a respectable 2040 points, considerably more than I'd ever managed to get in previous rogaines. 

Margo and Kathrin's Route
(Map is 1:40,000 with 30m contours)

Chris had paired up with John, a very experienced rogainer from Idaho. They were well matched for speed, with one only slightly faster uphill and the other slightly faster down. Their beards matched, too! Chris - a relative newbie to rogaining -  learned a lot from John, who works by moving nearly entirely on compass bearings while precisely estimating distance either by pace-counting or by timing. 

They returned to the Hash House for a feed and an hour's rest just before dawn, and left again having been able to leave their lights behind. When they returned, they'd collected a highly respectable 2390 points to earn themselves a satisfying second place in the rather competitive Superveteran Men's category. 

Chris and John's route

Louise went with Christoph, and they handily won the Open Mixed category with 2980 points, but there were a few sighs afterwards from our highly competitive daughter for not having given the top Open (Men's) team a better run for their money.

Louise and Christoph's route

We survived the weary drive back to Vancouver, and for two of us the subsequent dash to the airport to catch a red eye flight to Montreal. In the following days and weeks there's been much discussion and analysis and tentative planning for  the next one. But there's also been nursing of sore feet and aching old bodies, and wondering how long it takes till the pain and the memories of that pain fade enough to consider doing another rogaine. 


My feet seem to be telling me "not just yet." 


More photos on Flickr.


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Official Results:

Getting into Shape for the Rogaine

We have entered ourselves for the 2011 North American Rogaine Championships. Margo and Kathrin hope to defend their 2010 Women's Super-Veteran title, and I am looking for a respectable finish in my first event with John from the USA.  For those of you who do not know what a rogaine is, here is the short explanation:

A ROGAINE IS A MAP AND COMPASS EVENT THAT RUNS OVER A 24 HOUR PERIOD. Teams of 2 to 5 people choose how long and how far they will venture to find as many of the controls marked on the map as they can.  The controls may be found in any order and teams may return to the central Hash House at any time to eat and/or sleep.

So those cycling muscles are not much use; it's time to work on those walking and scrambling muscles! 

We have done three hikes: Mt. Unnecessary from Lions Bay, Black Mountain, and Lynn Peak, in beautiful Vancouver late summer weather. 


GPS tracks for Mt Unnecessary, Black Mountain, and Lynn Peak.

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Margo & Kathrin on Lynn Peak, Mt Baker on the Skyline

The Lions from Mt Unnecessary

Hiking up Black Mountain

Kathrin at Whyte Lake

Cycling Atlantic Canada

Here is a map of our  final route.

We rode 1900km in a month, and still managed to put on weight from eating far too much fish and chips.

See details of this trip on our Cycling Pages.
See a photos of this trip on Flickr.

Signal Hill

Yesterday evening we walked up Signal Hill, and this provided me time to take some photos which I share with you here.

Newfoundland dog (his name is Schooner) posing at
Signal Hill with Cape Spear on horizon at left 

While St John´s offers excellent food, in most of the rest of Newfoundland it is difficult to find food that is not deep fried. Tim Horton´s is very popular and is one of the few places you can get food that is a bit less greasy. These two pictures give you a flavour of the delicacies available in rural Newfoundland.

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Ending with a Flourish

2011/08/17: 85 km to Witless Bay
As we left the dry haven of our efficiency unit, Daniel quipped that the hoped the next tenants weren't Muslims or Jews. We'd cooked and eaten an entire pound of bacon, not to mention three fried eggs each. With no fume hood, so the place smelled strongly of our hearty breakfast.

We went a short way to the tiny, archaic Museum of Sealing and Whaling, which consisted of a random assortment of bones, presumably from various marine mammals. With no labels, who knows which bone was which? There were some old photos and yellowed newspaper clippings too, and several harpoon cannons that we weren't allowed to fire. We stayed longer than we naturally would have to avoid setting out in the heavy rain that had started.  There is a processing plant in South Dildo which was built to render whale blubber, but has now been converted to process fish. In a certain way, the museum was a nostalgic look at a community for which the whaling and sealing had been the original catalyst.

The rain tapered off as we set out, and it was warm enough to peel off layers as we pedalled through an eerie fog. Much of the time we are a strung out threesome: Daniel, followed by Chris at some distance, followed by Margo at yet more distance. I was quite taken by surprise when a female voice said "Hi" just behind me in the mist. A young woman on a lightly loaded bike passed  first me, then Chris, then Daniel. Some time later, a man in his fifties caught up to us. They were a father and daughter from Toronto, riding from Victoria to St. John's. They´d taken the summer ferry to Argentia, so would ride for only one day in Newfoundland.

We'd decided on a final route that would include a puffin-watching outing and a visit to Cape Spear, so we turned off the TCH onto No. 13, and raced directly east toward the coast with a gale at our backs. The straight road rose and fell across a moorland laced with tarns. As we dropped towards the coast, we saw trees that had been snapped and uprooted by recent gales.

We arrived at another efficiency unit we'd booked in Witless Bay, and our hostess spoiled us by bringing much appreciated raisin buns and banana bread to go with our tea. When she spoke, I could have sworn she's just stepped off the boat from Ireland. The accent has changed as we've moved across the island. The roots of Newfoundland dialect are the West Country of England and the south eastern counties of Ireland. We were in an area proud of it's Irish heritage.

2011/08/18: 61km to St. John's
We rode the short distance to Bay Bulls where Daniel had reserved our boat trip to see North America'a largest colony of Atlantic puffins and other seabirds at Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, and set off aboard a catamaran. The patter about the puffins was interspersed with Newfie humour and traditional music. Many of the songs were Irish ballads I hadn't heard since I used to listen to folk music my father would play on the gramophone. 



Puffins are tiny creatures, only 20 centimetres long. They spend eight months of the year living solitary lives on the open ocean eating capelin, and only come to land during the breeding season. They mate underwater, lay a single egg in a burrow, and take turns catching fish for their chicks. They have to run a gauntlet of  marauding herring gulls that try to snatch their fish each time they return to their burrows. When they take off from the water, they look like oversized bumble bees flying just above the surface, wings whirring like propellers, and little orange feet dangling comically behind.

Back on land, we rode the steep coastal rode towards Cape Spear, the easternmost tip of North America. The road had no paved shoulder, and as I gathered speed on the final descent, a car waited just behind me while I "took the lane."  Gleefully, I dropped forward into my speed demon aerodynamic position and let gravity do its work. Yeeee haw!!! Wheeeeee!!!!

Down by the historic lighthouse, the driver of the car that had followed me came up and asked "Do you know how fast you were going?" He announced that according to his speedometer I was "over seventy." This agreed with the maximum speed recorded of 72.1 kmh recorded by my odometer, a high for this trip and probably my recent bike touring career. Daniel had recorded 70.8 and conservative Chris (who had to brake so as not to overtake cars) 66.7. Yes, I am by far the slowest uphill, but I like to optimize my descents in an attempt at compensation.

Cape Spear lay bathed in sunshine, and I waved across at Cape Finisterre, the westernmost point in Europe, that Chris and I cycled to in 2007. "Hola" I called, as I waved. It's a whole lot closer than Vancouver is.

Easternmost point of the Americas

Welcome to St. John´s

The ride back up the hill was a grunt, if ever there was, but we made it to St. John's and our hostel. Now for some cod tongues, scrunchions, toutons. And bring on the figgy duff!


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Foul Weather

2011/08/15: 106km to Arnold's Cove
We started early, and as we rolled along the shoulder of the Trans-Canada, all I could think of was the song by The Arrogant Worms that goes "We've got rocks and trees and trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks....." (Click here and press arrow for song) The island of Newfoundland is bigger than Ireland, smaller than England, and has a population of fewer than half a million souls. There was virtually no access to the interior until the 1960s. The emptiness goes on and on. We put our miles in.

We stopped to pose with Morris the Moose outside the visitors' centre in Goobies. Morris was the only moose we saw, despite the island being literally overrun by them. Moose were deliberately introduced from Nova Scotia in the 1930s as a food source, and since a bounty system meant they'd finished killing all the wolves a decade earlier, the moose did very well. Too well.

We passed the big oil refinery at Come by Chance, and dove into The Tanker Inn, frequented by drilling crews at Arnold's Cove just as it began to rain. It rained hard all night.

2011/08/16: 69km to South Dildo
It was raining as we left, and the rain steadily increased as we rode. Water trickled inside our wet weather gear from above, splashed up from below, and drenched us in heavy sheets from the side as trucks passed us. Some hours later, we pulled into a "K" restaurant for lunch, and the waitress brought new place-mats because we'd drenched the table as we undid our clothes. She also got a mop to dry the floor near our chairs, in case someone slipped.

We discussed our options, and decided to get a room at the motel beside the restaurant. To our great disappointment, however, it had no room left. The visitor's centre helped us find the next nearest haven against the horrid weather: an "efficiency unit" in South Dildo, 12 km to the north. Daniel wanted to go there anyway so we could see a small whaling and sealing museum  the next morning, so off we went, crossing  slurries of brown water that washed across the road where creeks had overflowed.

Stopping to buy food to make darned sure we wouldn't have to go out again, we rode up a gravel track to our unit and began to spread out our gear. We had two bedrooms and a living room, there were loads of hooks on the wall, and there was even a washer and dryer. What a relief!

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Terra Nova National Park

2011/08/13: 93km to Eastport

Joey´s Lookout

Leaving town, Daniel noticed his fraying front tire was getting worse, so he turned back to buy a Canadian Tire replacement, install it, and managed to catch up to us within about twenty kilometres. We stopped to eat our excellent lobster sandwiches (prepared by Alice) at Joey's Lookout above Gambo.

Joey Smallwood is considered the last father
 of confederation for his role in bringing
 Newfoundland into Canada

We paused at Malady Head campground in Terra Nova NP, trying to reach Alice and Mark who might have come to join us. We were unable to reach them, so continued to Eastport and the cottage of a relative of Daniel's who, although extremely busy with the local writers' festival, Winterset in Summer, had generously said we could camp on his lawn.
My feeling was that we were an unnecessary imposition when other places to park our scruffy selves were readily available, but we ended up cooking ourselves fresh cod in our hosts' kitchen in the company of an amiable labrador. Chris and I crawled into our tent on the porch, while Daniel wiggled into his borrowed emergency bivouac sack. It provided no insect protection, so Daniel ended up moving into the boot room during the night.

2011/08/14: Kayaking and and 47km to Charlottetown
We scoffed bananas and rode to the park's visitors' centre to meet Mark, Alice and Anna. Mark swam in Newman Sound with a snorkel and mask. These Jersey Islanders  are made of stern stuff! Daniel rented a single kayak and Chris and I got a double. This allowed us  to go out for two hours, along with Alice in one of their single kayaks they'd brought, while Mark stayed ashore with Anna.

After some time ashore visiting (and using the dryer) we three rode off southward to Charlottetown where we found a motel. Seemingly from nowhere, a cyclist appeared with an unrideable bike in need of major attention. Joseph was an enterprising lad from Toronto, who's taken the bus to North Sydney, crossed to Port aux Basques, and was heading to St. John's to visit his girlfriend. He had come from Port aux Basques in an astounding four days, averaging 180km per day! But his back wheel had several broken spokes and what was left of his rear derailleur dangled uselessly from the chain, the derailleur hanger having snapped. After some consultation, Chris bashed the bent hanger with two rocks to straighten it, and did his best to reattach it. We're not sure how far he got with this tenuous repair, but we suspect that if he didn't find a bike shop soon, he'd be hitchiking to St. John's.

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