I’m always trying to keep my eye out for a canoe, regularly checking buy and sell pages and Craigslist to see what is available. The right one is yet to come along, but I know it will eventually. While I would say I’m far from a regular on the water, some of my earliest memories are from boats. From learning to sail my parent’s Laser, to going on canoe trips at Boy Scout camp, to taking my dad’s Adirondack Guideboat for long rows on the Finger Lakes of New York. To now owning paddleboards and using them to explore the many lakes around British Columbia. I love the ability a boat offers to switch up the perspective and look at the shoreline and provide the freedom to glide into every nook and cranny and see what is there.

Josh and I had been trying to get out for a while. We kept throwing ideas around of places we wanted to go but never were able to make any of them happen. Finally, a day lined up, but the weather was looking rainy. We figured big vistas weren’t on the future agenda of our hike so we decided to go to a cabin. After some research, we realized the initial cabin we planned to go to was boarded up due to Covid. Another option we thought of was a cabin neither of us had ever been to before. I’ve heard it mentioned by friends in the past asking if I’d ever been there, but have never had the chance. We did some pre-trip research finding as much info as possible. I’m a pretty frequent user of Google Earth so once I had a general idea of where it was I was able to zoom in and find the exact spot of the cabin and plot a route. I’m not personally a huge fan of sharing locations, (I wrote about my thoughts on that here) so wasn’t surprised that I had to do a bit of leg work to find some info.

Sounds are unnerving, especially when you don’t know what they are. That odd noise from your car when driving down the highway. A weird crack or pop from your body you weren’t expecting when you move in a certain way. Maybe the scariest and most unnerving of them all, an unknown sound in the backcountry. It can really put me on edge and make my hyper-aware of my surroundings.

Not every adventure is some epic multi-day mountain ridge traverse, and I don’t think it always should be. This day was forecasted to be rainy and overcast, but we decided to get out regardless and just deal with the conditions. Not that I am in any way against hiking in the rain, it can sometimes just be harder to motivate.

What gear do I carry on a regular trip into the mountains? This is an ever-adapting list, and I’m always adding or removing things based on what activity I’m doing.

Some items included in the winter, rarely make it in, in the summer, and vice versa. I try to keep the weight of my pack down, and I think many people would be surprised at how simple I keep it.

Should we publicly tell people about locations that we love? Post about them online giving the exact directions and beta on where to park, how to get there, and exactly what to expect?

Weather can be fickle, mosquitoes atrocious, but time in the mountains can still be cherished. As mentioned in a previous post I’ve made a personal goal to push my work outside of the snow world. I feel winter is where my focus and strengths have always been, but as this is only a small portion of the year I’m striving to expand my skills.