UC Outdoors Trip #1

For those who don’t go to UC, Kirsty and I decided to start an outdoors group in our church. We are really just running a database to help people connect with others who have similar interests, so whenever anyone is going sky diving or fishing, for example, they can let us know and we will let others know and arrange for them to enjoy outdoors activities together.

This past weekend we went on the first event. Our pastor Geoff organised a camping trip for his family and invited us all along. This is the e mail Geoff sent out:

We’re planning to initiate our kids on an overnight hike to Elaho Canyon.  We’ll leave after church on Sunday May 18^th and drive up past Squamish to this conservation area.  It’s about 2 hours away.  The total return trip of the hike is 13 km and it’s basically flat.  There is a bush camp about 3 km in on the trail from the parking lot and we’re planning to overnight there.  The next day we’ll walk on to the waterfall and back again.  It’s mainly to test our equipment and our kids, but we’d love for some other people to join us.  All welcome.

Sounds nice huh? Well it had potential…….

Actually it was fun, but nothing really went quite to plan.

To start with, the 2hr trip estimate would have been about right, except that when we were about 70k away from our destination point the road turned to gravel, and not just the nice gravel either but rocky, bumpy, holey, trees fallen on the road type of gravel.

On the ride in we were treated to some really spectacular scenery. Flowing through the middle of a valley there is a river which is close to flowing over because of the dozens of waterfalls flowing in to it from the snow melting all around. There were some amazing rapids with lots of water falls in the river that made me wish I was in a white water raft.

Eventually we came across a tree fallen across the middle of the road, some one had been nice enough to cut a gap just wide enough for a car to get through, unfortunately the gap had about a foot of snow in it. Geoff was in front and driving his minivan, it looked easy enough so he gave it a shot and, yes, he got stuck.

His tires slipped so quick that before he could do anything his tires sunk so low that the chassis was sitting on snow. We tried pushing and pulling, we tried to tow him out but we only had a couple of very cheap very thin ropes so that failed quickly. Eventually we jacked up the car and effectively built a new road underneath him with rocks and logs and he drove out.

We figured we were about 2 k away from the start of the walk, so decided to leave the minivan there. I drove through, once again grateful for a 4wd, and loaded our car with the packs while the others walked. After heading to different places for a while, we met up at the start of the track. This was around 4 ½ hours after our 2 hour journey started.

We took a quick look at the track to see which direction to head in. We couldn’t quite tell because of the waterfalls covering most of the track. The snow that covered any flat area was also a bit off putting.

So we ended up camping in the car park.

We had a pleasant evening around a camp fire and in the morning, it rained. So we came home.

It was an interesting start to the group and if it wasn’t for the fact that we had a group of positive and enjoyable people it might have been a bad time, as it was and with the group that we had, it turned out to be a good time.

Thanks for organizing Geoff.

Here are a couple of pictures; sadly most of them were taken on the day it rained.