Archive:Winter Longhike 2011

Introduction

Everything is different when you go into the backcountry in the winter; that's why there is Winter Longhike, an introductory trip for winter camping. This is usually a big trip with lots of keen people aboard who want to get out, learn some new skills, and sleep in their very own snow shelter while still managing to have fun too. It's an easy, beginner friendly trip, so if you've never even seen snow before you can still have a good time. Other fun activities that often happen at Winter Longhike are people showing off their backcountry cooking skills, sing alongs, and the occasional great ski run on Sunday.

Although beginner friendly and relatively easy, do not under estimate Winter Longhike - it is still a trip to a backcountry location where your survival depends on your actions and equipment. Although there will be many experienced people around to help out fundamentally you are responsible for your own safety. Due to the massive size of the group you will not be micro-managed - you are responsible for your own safety and actions this especially includes asking for help. If you have some common sense and can follow simple instructions this should be not problem. You should form smaller sub groups (easiest is with the rest of the people in your car) and look out for each other.

Christian Veenstra is organizing this trip, but it would be best to post on the message board.

The Plan

The general plan is for everybody who arrives on time to hike in together on Saturday morning. Once we reach the camp area you will gather together with your snow cave group, select a suitable site, and start constructing your snow shelter. Experienced people will be on hand to offer advice and encouragement. If you've never done it before, building a snow shelter will take longer than you thought it would - basically all day. Hopefully before dark, though, it should be complete. The group will dig a massive snow-kitchen, so we can all gather together to cook, eat, drink, sing and generally be merry and have a good time. At some point you'll get tired and go to bed, testing out that snow cave you dug earlier in the day. The route in and the area around camp will be selected such that if you stick to these areas you are exposed to minimal avalanche terrain.

On Sunday what you do is up to you and your group. Many people will go skiing in the backcountry, which involves navigation and terrain evaluation. Some will go hiking or snowshoeing, which also involves terrain evaluation (but you're probably less tempted to venture out onto steep slopes since there's no reason to). Many will sleep in, some will go home early and some will go home late. Sunday is up to you.

Date

January 8^th - 9^th, 2011 Trip leaves the trailhead at 9:15am.

Pre-trip Meeting

Date: Wednesday, January 5^th, 2011
Location: BUCH A202
Time: 6:00pm

You are kidding yourself if you think Veestra has time to arrange personal details for you - there will likely be 100 people on this trip! At the pre-trip we will be covering some winter camping basics and arranging rides. You will also have the opportunity to interact with other VOCers and arrange snowcave groups and food groups at the pre-trip... If you absolutely can't make it, find somebody to represent you and make sure they have enough information to do so!

If you've sorted all this stuff out on your own that's fine. Email Veenstra and let him know you're coming, so we have an idea of the numbers and buy the correct number of poo bags.

• Note: This is all basically up to your driver, but we will be encouraging the pre-pay system for this trip. In order to ensure drivers are fairly and appropriately reimbursed even with flaky passengers, we are asking all passengers to bring the money for their driver to the pre-trip meeting. This will avoid the need to split up costs at the end of the trip and drivers won't have to worry about driving up with an empty car if their passengers bail. Check out this page to get an idea of the costs of taking a car on a VOC trip. The exact amount to be paid will be up to the discretion of each driver. Count on something like $5 per passenger, since we're not going too far.

Agenda

• Overview
• Go over winter camping basics
• Go over how not to make an ass of yourself
• Arrange car groups
• Arrange snow cave groups
• Arrange food-sharing groups

Location

The location will be at Mount Seymour Provincial Park, this is outside the ski resort area so it's free. We will meet at the backcountry access kiosk - this is at the North-West corner of the highest parking lot (the "far left" when looking at the resort). The main group will be departing this location at 9:15am, if you're not there on time navigation is up to you. We suggest drivers arrive at 8:30am, to allow for enough time to drop off your passengers, go back and park, and generally faff around to be moving by 9:15.

Getting there: driving

Google maps directions from UBC. But if you're not coming from UBC I'm sure you can figure it out, in these days of the internet. Not including driving around hell's half-acre to pick up all your passengers it is an 80 km round trip.

We will be meeting at the NW end (ie keep going to the very end) of the highest parking lot, since this is where the backcountry access begins - however you must not park in the upper lot. Overnight parking is in the lower lot, the one with the sign which says "overnight parking" (you can drop off gear and then go park, if you like). If you park in the upper lot you may end up with your vehicle towed, search and rescue called, or both.

Getting there: bus

If you can't get a ride it is possible to take a shuttle bus to the mountain, and translink to where the shuttle bus leaves. Information on the Mt. Seymour shuttle bus is here. To arrive on time you will need to take the 8:30 bus from Parkgate Village (the bottom of the hill). Translink's trip planner is here, but does not support linking directly to search results so you'll have to figure that out yourself.

Getting there: hiking

From the backcountry access kiosk we will be heading along the backcountry access corridor beside the resort - it generally goes up just to climber's left of the outside ski run and is well marked. Once past the edge of the resort we will be following the wanded route maintained by BC parks into the backcountry. Pay attention to the wands - this is a popular spot and there are a lot of people breaking lots of trails to a lot of random locations in this area (and many into possibly dangerous terrain). However, only two of these well-trodden paths will have 2 meter tall orange wands every few meters - we are taking one of the wanded routes (the one marked "Mount Seymour Backcountry Access trail", the other route takes a bit of a detour and visits "first lake"). Don't just follow the boots in front of you - use your own brain and pay attention to where you're going!

Camp will be set up not far off the wanded route, in the meadows SE of First Pump Peak at ~1220m elevation. We will have some of our own wands along the route where you split off - or just notice the massive group of people building snow caves.

Equipment List

Personal

In winter especially, none of your clothing should be made out of cotton. Anything synthetic is safe. Just remember, Cotton Kills.

• burly overcontainer for your poo bag (pack it in - pack it out!)
• sleeping pad, or two, if you have them.
• sleeping bag (rated for winter, or 3 season if you sleep warm)
• garbage bags (2-3)
• warm jacket (fleece or down)
• warm pants (fleece or thick long underwear)
• long underwear
• layers (fleece or wool sweaters)
• toque, mitts (2 pairs, or a set of waterproof shells)
• warm socks (2 pairs, wool/wool mix)
• waterproof jacket (goretex or coated nylon)
• waterproof pants (goretex or coated nylon)
• gaiters
• cup, bowl, spoon, knife
• good waterproof boots (wax them before the trip) or ski boots
• skis and skins if skiing, or snowshoes, or even just boots if you can't get skis or snowshoes
• ski poles (useful even if you only bring boots)
• toothbrush etc.
• sunscreen and sunglasses (we can hope, right?)
• water bottle (1L)
• lunch, snacks, breakfast, dinner contribution (in winter you will need 2500-3500 calories per day, fat-rich stuff keeps you warm)
• headlamp
• gas money for your driver
• camera if you want

If you want to go skiing on Sunday before heading out to the cars, make sure to bring:

• avalanche transceiver
• shovel
• probe
• you don't need avalanche gear to ski down the road to the car, but you might want to do practice rescues.
• goggles and helmet if that's your thing

If you happen to own them and the forecast looks icy you might also bring:

• crampons
• ice axe

Small Group

3-4 people per group, organized at trip meeting along with car groups

• shovels (1-2)
• probe (to find trees before you dig the cave)
• stove + fuel + lighter (you'd be surprised how often one of these stays home). If using white gas, for each person bring 150 mL.
• pots

Big Group

Everyone

• first aid kits (2)
• song books (4)
• snow saw
• maps, compass, etc

Interested people

Remember that writing your name here does not ensure you get on the trip. Come to the pre-trip meeting. There is no limit on the numbers for this trip.

1. Veenstra
2. Gwyn Thomas
3. Marcin Mirski
4. Derry Lappin
5. Phil Tomlinson
6. Vicky Alfred
7. Conrad Koziol
8. Mariya Skvortsova
9. Caitlin Schneider
10. Michael Duncan
11. Riley Patterson
12. Julia Macdonald
13. Andrew Primavera
14. Sam Mckoy
15. Christopher Yearwood
16. Matt Parisien
17. Laura Morrison
18. Katherine Valentine
19. Shuvi (shuval haramati)
20. Charlie Beard
21. Champagne
22. Michael Uhlmann
23. Christina Schaldecker
24. Yanna Martinek
25. Nisan Haramati
26. Aidan Campbell
27. Laurent Roberge
28. Anthea Song
29. Tessa Terbasket
30. Chantelle Chan
31. Kathrin Lang
32. Lea Schanz
33. Dave Perez
34. Chester Hitz
35. Scott MacPherson
36. Cara McCulloch
37. Annie Maurer
38. Noriko Okamoto
39. Skyler
40. Nastassia Koenig
41. Rebecca Abernethy
42. Daniel Schweizer
43. Shelly Fan
44. Sophia Phillips
45. Emily Payne
46. Geoffrey Martin
47. Mrs. Veenstra
48. Carolyn Prentice
49. Len Goff
50. Anna Szeitz
51. Ran Z
52. Eva K
53. Evgeny Sorkin
54. Chelsea E
55. Liz K
56. Ashley Smith
57. Daniel Joseph
58. Tera Holmes
59. Cameroon Bathgate
60. Sida Zhou
61. Piotr Forysinski
62. Amelia Hardjasa
63. Shane Duan
64. Rebecca B
65. Phoebe Wong
66. Justin Lau
67. Tom Curran
68. Dan Eagen
69. Ryan Mckenzie
70. Murray Down
71. Rick Havlak
72. Jennifer Y
73. Alex Annejohn
74. Sebastian Max
75. Bieke Gils
76. Claire Bouffard
77. Nicole Ong
78. Jeff Taylor
79. Martin Matej
80. Christian Sampaleanu
81. Maddy Doherty
82. Emily Ackroyd
83. Shasta Coombes
84. Anthony Melnick
85. Nick M
86. Steve Mullen
87. Aisling Smyth
88. Roland Burton + tent. Come on, let's try for 100 people!
89. Jenny Tan
90. Aron Zahradka
91. Julia Stafford
92. Ali Mackeller
93. Nikki Urdle
94. Claire Haddock
95. Fisal Elstone
96. Stephen Lerch
97. Doerte Stanek