Welcome to 2024! How was your first month of this new year? Good, yeah? That’s great to hear. Ours? Oh, yeah, it was fine thanks. Well, apart from the bone-chilling cold snap where condensation froze on the inside of our window frames and the curtains of rain that wiped clean our memories of sunshine for a good couple of weeks. But, still – mustn’t grumble. In every place we’ve lived, people find reason to complain about the weather and Vancouver is no exception.
If we were being outdoors today, I’d follow up by saying that it wasn’t all bad and we did get out on a few enjoyable hikes, each of which had moments of real magic, the kind that only being outside in nature can deliver. We started the year with a kinda-snowy hike to the first peak of Mount Seymour (aka Pump Peak) where we savoured some wonderfully peaceful time on the trail and witnessed some beautiful distant mountain light where the sun found gaps in the clouds. The following week we found some of the loveliest soft – and untouched – snow that we gleefully yomped across, following snowshoe hare tracks and open meadows below the summit of Hollyburn. After the snow and before the next atmospheric river, we enjoyed some misty forest time on a section of the Baden-Powell trail and marvelled at the ability to walk into Honey Doughnuts in Deep Cove without having to wait in line for some indeterminate time. (Their doughnuts are just so good!)
If we were being outdoors today, I’d say how much I enjoyed getting outside in distinctly very wintery conditions. And that’s wintery in both the Great White North sense and of those rainy conditions that Vancouver is infamous for. I visited Boundary Bay during the Arctic Outflow event where I explored the frozen salt marshes, the water captured in a variety of amazing icy contortions. But the main reason to visit Boundary Bay is to see the bird life, and I was delighted to get a glimpse of a short-eared owl and had a couple of up-close views of northern harriers. But let’s not overlook the little birds and I spent some time watching fluffed-up, almost perfectly spherical song and golden-crowned sparrows, spotted towhees, and house finches feasting on some seeds that someone had left on a tree stump. Oh, and numerous bald eagles. Check out my write-up for more photos.
On another occasion I spent a couple of very rainy hours at Burnaby Lake in the company of many, many ducks: mallards, wood ducks, northern pintails, lesser scaup, green-winged teal, coots, plus a few interlopers such as cormorants, crows, herons, and gulls. Oh and loads of red-winged blackbirds. The rain was cold and persistent, the noise from traffic on Highway 1 was impossible to ignore, and the views ofāthe surrounding high-rises came and went with the mist, but I enjoyed the time among the birds and on the trail. Plus I had a hot drink and a tasty treat waiting for me in the car! On the same day I ventured to Mundy Park in Coquitlam for the first time and barely made it around a still-icy Mundy Lake with dry feet – all the rain had flooded the trail in several spots that needed careful negotiation. Though it was nearing sunset, I enjoyed the forest and would like to go back to explore more of the trail network.
If we were being outdoors today, I’d tell you about the year that was. I wrote up my annual summary of our hiking year which is always a fun exercise. I don’t keep a gratitude journal but looking back at a year’s worth of outdoor adventures always makes me appreciate how fortunate I am to live in Vancouver and to be able to visit such an array of wonderful places. It’s usually easy to pick out our top trips of the year but this year it was harder to push some onto the honourable mentions list. Thanks to our Jasper trip, it was a great year for wildlife! We’re looking forward to what this year brings.
I published two more new posts, the first on our low-key hike around Buntzen Lake back in December and the second on my visit to Boundary Bay during the Arctic outflow event in the middle of January. The latter was one of those posts I wrote very soon after the event to get my thoughts down before time caused them to fade: it was such a unique experience to see the sea frozen into waves and ripples at the edge of the salt marsh. Check out the photos above or the full post for plenty more.
Elsewhere on Being Outdoors, I spent a couple of evenings updating my write-up of three-day hike along the Skyline trail in Jasper National Park. I found it interesting to revisit my writing of a decade ago to see how much my style has changed (or not). It’s a wonderful trail and I’ve added a ton of new photos so it’s a much more visually-pleasing post now. Why not check it out?
And speaking of trails called Skyline, I added some new photos to our 3-day trip on the Skyline I and II trails in Manning Park back in 2007. It was fun to revisit that trip after we hiked the trail again last September.
If we were being outdoors today, I’d admit that I had to forego my usual bike commute on a few days, owing to either the cold, the snow, the rain, or some combination thereof. That’s pretty much the first time in over two years that I hadn’t biked in to work. Getting on a busy bus again was a bit of a psychological hurdle but I survived. I still prefer to bike, though, even if it does mean struggling up that hill! Most days I took the shortest approach due to time or weather constraints but I did fit in a couple of morning beach rides to admire sunshine on fresh snow and to check out the high water levels after a particularly wet weekend. The pond had expanded to include some of the grass and part of the trail and, naturally, I couldn’t resist checking out how deep it was, scattering unimpressed ducks and wigeon as I biked slowly through the giant puddles. Turns out it was about 8 or 9 inches deep: just deep enough to wet my pedals but not quite enough to wet my feet. Phew!
If we were being outdoors today I’d mention that I’ve been wondering about tracking my fitness for some time now, especially my heart rate, and so treated myself to a Fitbit Charge 6. I’ve had my eye on some kind of smart watch or similar for a couple of years, but the multi-hundred dollar price tags have put me off. Hence the Fitbit, at about half the price of the cheapest Garmin watch I’d consider. I work with health data in my day job but I was not prepared for how much attention I would suddenly pay to my steps, heart rate, and sleep stats. I quite like the hourly reminder to get up and move, and I try not to view 10,000 steps as some magic number, aiming for as many as possible given the constraints of a desk job. Monitoring my heart rate on my cycle commutes and hikes has given me a good idea of how hard I need to work to get my heart rate up, and what my heart rate is when I feel at my limit (such as biking up the hill to UBC…).
The worst thing about it is just having to wear something on my wrist the entire time – it’s been almost a decade since I gave up wearing a wristwatch and I haven’t missed it for a moment. But for now I’m keeping it on, to keep on tracking those stats, accumulating data…. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given my digital hoarding tendencies! We’ll see how soon the novelty wears off, but right now I’m happy with my purchase.
That’s it for this month. Let’s see what February brings with its extra day this year!
I am grateful to acknowledge that I spent this month on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.
Being. Outdoors. 