Archive:4july2009 alcoholic

Veenstra's Semi-Alcoholic Traverse

Synopsis

Message Board

Motivation

The past couple summers I've been leading "beginner-friendly, but not easy" traverses. The idea is to do something interesting and hard enough that you feel you've accomplished something, but not so interesting or hard that you actually perish.

If you've been on a few trips, perhaps nothing too serious, but are reasonably fit (or at least very tough), own (or can borrow - maybe from the club) the gear you need and are looking for a challenge this is the trip for you. If you're wondering whether or not this is the trip for you, go ahead and email Veenstra or post on the message board. The idea is for the trip to be pretty cool without requiring any special skills (maybe you'll even get a chance to learn, or at least find out about, some of these special skills).

It's beginner friendly, but as stated above that doesn't mean easy. It means you might suffer a bit, but I'll try very hard to make sure you survive and guarantee that you'll enjoy it (although maybe only in retrospect). Packing light will help.

Ok, real synopsis

The plan is to do the "Alcoholic Traverse", almost. What's nominally called the alcoholic traverse is going from Mt. Brew (where the VOC build their Brew Hut) to Brandywine (where, legend has it, some railroad workers bet a bottle of Brandy against a bottle of Wine over the height of the nearby Brandywine Falls). This is normally considered a 3 day traverse. We're going to cut out Mt. Brew and instead traverse from Brandywine to Cypress (which is across the valley from Brew) which should bring it within weekend range. Besides - the views from Cypress will be better anyway, and this follows what most would consider the main divide if it wasn't for the names.

The views will be great - there'll be views of Cayley, the Ashlu-Elaho divide as well as Garibaldi Park. There'll be the opportunity for two summits - Brandywine and Cypress, both of which are rated at three star scrambles in Matt Gunn's book (and that's the most you can get!).

Both days should be around 1500m elevation gain and 10-15km of hiking.

Dates

Trip: July 4-5 Early Saturday morning to late Sunday night, weather dependant.

Pre-trip meeting: July 1 Canada Day, at the BBQ, starting at 7:30. Not mandatory if you know what you're doing - but if I haven't communicated with you (in person, over the phone, email) before the trip meeting I'll assume you're not actually coming.

Signup

Post here if you're interested! We'll sort this into "actually coming, for sure" and "other" later. Please indicate if you've got a car. We need at least 1 more car than normal, since it's a traverse and we come out somewhere different than we went in... unless we can figure out a way to trick some friends into doing a complementary trip and shuttling cars somehow. Both trailheads are 2wd, although a bit rough, even fully loaded you should have no problem if you're careful.

1. Veenstra (Veenstramobile, seats 5)
2. Line
3. Scott Webster (car for 4)
4. Anne Webster