Hard to believe, but we haven’t been out snowshoeing since Garibaldi Lake back in February… Though the weather forecast looked promising a few days prior to the weekend, by the time Sunday morning arrived, all hope of sunshine and/or views had gone. Never mind. We still wanted to get out, though and we met with Andrew and headed up to Cypress Bowl. Our original plan was to head out to Eagle Buffs but the total lack of visibility put paid to that, and in the end we were happy to wend our way up the hill to the summit plateau of Black Mountain. Instead of visiting either summit, though, we decided to take advantage of the frozen Cabin Lake and explore the other side of it. We didn’t get very far as we soon encountered more steep cliffs, and we back-tracked to gentler terrain. We found a few small slopes to slide down, making the most of the few inches of fresh snow, and marvelled at the ice formations on the trees.
Back to Cabin Lake, we were joined by the resident raven looking for a handout. We were surprised at how close the raven ventured, and we tried an experiment to see if it would eat from a hand. Andrew fed it a little piece of beef jerky, but the only way to entice it to take directly from his hand was to lie flat on the snow and put the food on the back of his hand. I had some unsalted pistachios and threw a few in its direction. To our amazement, the raven caught them mid-air. Smart birds. The easterly breeze across the lake was cold and we decided that lunch should be postponed. We retraced our steps in a shower of snow/graupel, which vindicated our decision to leave sooner than we might otherwise have done.
Not much of a day out in the end, but it was still good to get out.
Distance: about 5 km
Elevation gain: 300 m
Photos on Flickr
Being. Outdoors. 