Snowshoe Trail: Black Mountain Plateau

Last weekend six of us headed to Cypress to try out a new snowshoe trail. We found it on the BC Parks trail update - it wasn't one of the ones that shows up on blogs.


I tried out a new app during this trip too (see below!).

Black Mountain Plateau

EveryTrail - Find trail maps for California and beyond

The hike starts out by going left instead of right at the first fork in the trail (going right will take you to the Bowen Island Lookout trail, St. Mark's Summit, and eventually the Lions.. best for the summer!). The first hour or so is switchbacks, but at the top is a nice plateau with lots of little hills and fun places for sliding. If you haven't snowshoed before and you are .. smart enough to climb up a hill, make sure you bring a crazy carpet, plastic bag or are wearing snowpants that are slippery enough to slide down on. It's so worth it!

At the top of the hill, there's a nice 1.6km loop trail that was really fun. Small hills, both up and down, good places to slide and generally beautiful scenery. After walking the loop, we stopped to have some tea, hot chocolate and to feed the adorable gray jays and somewhat intimidating raven.

The trip down was really fast - we slid on our butts/crazy carpets for as long as could, and walked the rest of the way. I think going down more than made up for having to walk up.

Stats:
Time: 3 hours (including a 15ish minute snack break)
Length: 4.7 km return

Hike: Seymour Canyon

Last weekend we tried to do the Two Canyon Loop through Seymour/Lynn Valleys, but there was a sign and trail name for everything but this one. I hadn't written it down beforehand so we just walked..

Gorgeous trees!

 R overlooking Seymour river with his fancy new backpack

 Gorgeous alders!

 

 And more..

 And one 'glowing' yellow tree, among the conifers

And a deer.

I think we ended up starting on the Homesteader's Trail, walking up the Fisherman's trail and then down the paved road.. for no reason other than we couldn't find the trail again... I'm not sure how!

It was really nice to be out hiking even in late October. I'm looking forward to doing some of the easier/lower elevation hikes this winter.

Hike: Norvan Falls

Today we headed to Norvan Falls, in Lynn Valley.

R and I are planning an overnight hike in mid-September, and in order to prepare for that we decided to pack our big backpacks with our sleeping bags, tent, stove and some other stuff.

 The view at the "Third Debris Chute." Gorgeous day!!

 The bottom of the falls, where M went swimming.

 The falls.

 

Lunch - Hawaiian chicken with rice. Pretty good, actually. It did take quite a while to cook though (says 13 minutes, I'm not sure how long we left it) and they are pricey. We're going to work on making our own for upcoming trip.s

Lunch!

 Random suspension bridge. I believe this was a rebuild of a small wooden bridge. I guess it's a busy enough trail that they need it.. but it seemed a bit overkill to me. The other three really enjoyed bouncing on it though :)

Length: 13.5 km
Time: 5 hours (including ~1 hr lunch and meandering on the way down)
Difficulty: Easy

Hike: Lynn Loop

The hike this weekend was a shorter (2 hour) hike on the North Shore - this time, in Lynn Valley, which is a place that R and I have been to often. There's lots of loops, a suspension bridge (lower than where we were today) and some really gorgeous old forest.

The weather was a bit grey when we started, but about a quarter of the way through, the sun came out and it turned into another lovely day! :)

 View of Vancouver (it looked better in person..)

 Trees! I love parallel lines in forests.

Lynn Creek. Beautiful water.. it's very clear, and presumably quite cold.