Bird Ballet

Watch this incredible feat of avian choreography featuring a huge flock of Sandpipers set to music by Peter Tennant. These birds nest in Northern North American and Siberia before migrating to central and South America. This bay is one of their important feeding and resting areas as they eat insects , mollusks and small crustaceans along the ocean shore.Yum Yum.

After the rain, before the snow

Mountain meadow time again.

 

Morning, day two and it was pouring rain. After a soggy day climbing over 1,000 meters I was huddled under my small tarp beneath a giant hemlock tree. This was when I noticed, for the first time on a hike, I had a cold. It wasn't bad enough to go down so I decided to use my rest day there.

I had a week alone and It had to dry by day three or I wouldn't have time for the high lake and peak. Waterfalls were raging with water,  pouring through the forest and creeks. The trail is much slower going when it is so slippery. With sloping wet roots, huge moss-covered rocks and giant muddy pools of water hemmed in by prickly wet bushes, you have to carefully watch every step. So great to have my little stove and hot drinks. I don't like having camp fires for several reasons and just move around to warm up my feet. 

On day three the rain let up for a short while so I   headed up beyond the end of the trail, climbing over the big rocks, pushing and wiggling through the vine maples up to the mid-elevation valley.
 Grizzly country.

Drying time!

The meadows were flowing with green heather, low-growing bright red blueberries and stunted black spruce.  On day four, late in the afternoon, the glorious sun finally peaked over Mt. Ossa for a couple of hours. Camping is so much more easier when things are dry but I have learned to be comfortable with the rain. 

The headwall up to Sigurd lake was too wet and slippery so I reluctantly had to stay in the mid-elevation valley with the bears.

The decision to turn around when conditions are bad is the one that saves your life in the back country. This valley drops below freezing at night so I really had to pile on the layers to keep warm.  It helped reading about what some scientists had to wear working on mt. Erebus in Antarctica before I left. I can handle a bit of frost up here. The hot, dry trips earlier in the summer are a vague memory as I crunch open the tent late at night to gaze up at a beautiful full moon over the glacier.

 While packing to leave on day six I noticed that during the night or previous afternoon- when I was hiking- a bear came through my camp, leaving  a pile of pooh. I'll take that as a 'welcome to the neighbourhood'.  Time to head back down where sea level feels like summer again. What a difference.

Happy trails!

RWP

Sniffy the Bear had a cub

 This year my furry friend 'Sniffy the Bear' had a cub and I was very careful over my four day visit  to keep well away. Had she showed the slightest sign of agitation I would fled down to the valley. On all the wilderness hiking trips I am always very careful not to have food anywhere near my tent. On my first day of this nine-day solo hike I ran into a couple of men who have had years of Sasquatch encounters in the coast mountains. We spent a very enjoyable time sitting in the rain discussing this interesting topic. Having spent forty-five years doing solo hikes I have never seen anything to support the existence of this huge animal but that doesn't mean there isn't something happening.  There may be a spirit or something out there but from the viewpoint of cryptozoology it seems very unlikely. I will write more on this. Thanks to my new friends. For more about my pal 'Sniffy' click on 2016 entries over to the lower right. For more about Sasquatch watch my CBC interview on the upper right.