Mt Seymour Snowcaves & Snowshoe

This year I joined UBC's Varsity Outdoors Club because two of my friends (Evan and Bob) were really into it, and I wanted to learn a few new things like how to rock climb. The VOC also does a really cool trip every January called Winter Longhike, which involves snowshoeing or skiing a short distance into the backcountry and camping overnight in snowcaves! It sounded like fun so I signed up along with Bob. We had to go to a "dryschool" the Wednesday before to learn the basics of building snowcaves. The destination was Mt. Seymour this year, and it looked like we were going to have perfect sunny weather for our trip.

SATURDAY: We were supposed to meet at the Mt. Seymour parking lot at 8:30am, and since Bob was picking up another VOC member (Ashley), that required getting up at a disgustingly early hour. Of course, even though I've been to Seymour many times, we managed to take the wrong turn and ended up on Highway 1 East instead of the 2nd Narrows Bridge - I guess we were all too tired to navigate. Fortunately other people were late too, so no problems ensued. We had a huge group - probably more than 50, with some on backcountry skis and some on snowshoes. Bob and I were both on snowshoes.

We all headed out from the parking lot around 9:30am - a massive line of UBC students stretching up the trail! I was carrying a fairly heavy bag because for short trips I sometimes get lazy and don't think about packing light. I got warm very quickly (despite the very cold air temperature) and took off most of my insulating layers for the hike up. We had great views of Vancouver and the surrounding peaks. There were some clouds in the morning but they burned off quickly. By about 11am we were at our campsite - I'm not sure exactly where it was, but people told me we were "between the First and Second Pumps, past Brockton Point."

After a quick lunch/snack, we set about building our snowcave (Bob, me, Ashley, and another VOC member, Peter). We found a good area and started to dig. We were all fairly inexperienced so I think we moved a lot more snow that necessary, because it took us an incredibly long time to build the cave, although when we were done it was a very large and roomy cave! I think we were done around 3pm or perhaps a little later.

After the snowcave was done, I immediately changed out of my clothes that had gotten wet (gloves, socks and boots mostly) into dry gear, and also put some more insulating layers on, since I was done exerting myself for the day. As it got darked and colder (it got down to around -10C or -15C I believe) we began to cook dinner in the "cooking pit." Before the trip, Bob and I had been trying to track down a white-gas stove to use because they are much more reliable in the cold, however, all we could come up with was a propane-butane canister stove, which was much more appropriate for summer camping. We did our best to encourage it to stay lit (including warming a fuel canister inside our jackets), but it never burned at a temperature much higher than "feeble," leading us to eat lukewarm Lipton Potato Sidekicks for dinner. They were kinda crunchy and dissapointing, especially compared to some of the incredible meals that more experienced VOC members were whipping up! Fortunately our hot chocolate turned out better, and some VOC Executives brought Glühwein to share. We had a great evening of campsongs, admired the view of Vancouver's lights, and retired to bed around 11:30pm.

SUNDAY: The next morning was cold and clear. We were extremely comfortable in our snowcaves, and slept in almost until noon! I guess we built our air vents just right, so that our cave wasn't too warm (and thus melty) or too cold. Somebody had to come check on us to make sure we were getting up. We packed up our gear and snowshoed back down to the parking lot in the beautiful sun. There were lots of people snowshoeing on the trail - it was a very popular day to be out on Mt. Seymour.