My Name is Jennifer

Below is the trip report for our wondrous travels up at Tetrahedron Provincial Park on the Sunshine Coast, with Zoe and Jen’s mom of awesomeness. There we spent three days snowshoeing and partying in the snow.

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MONDAY: We caught the 11:20 ferry to the Sunshine Coast and drove to my Grandmother’s home. Packing our bags was an adventure, or at least it was for me. I left half of my gear behind. We also had to divvy up the communal gear, such as the stove, shovel, food etc. The three of us decided to take a scenic walk down to the beach – it is sufficient to say that it ended up being more scenic than we thought. We got lost. We had a super fun party that night, and got to bed kinda late (or early for Jen).

TUESDAY: Nonetheless, we still managed to get a reasonable start. We left the house at 10:00 and drove for about 40 minutes before reaching the forest service road. We managed to get up 8.5 km before we had to undergo a dramatic decent down a steep, snowy hill to reach a viable parking space. Then we strapped on our snowshoes and bucked on our packs, then started the treacherous (it was hardly treacherous) climb up the hill of doom. And death. And DESTRUCTION (otherwise known as the rest of the road up to the parking lot). This took an hour and a half. After a quick snack, we moved from the trailhead up to the heavens. Our original plan had been to reach Edward’s the first night, conquer Mt. Steele on the second, and then chill there on the third. Unfortunately, due to my mother and I becoming suddenly deathly ill (catching a bad cold) we had shortened our snowshoeing trip by a day. Because of the avalanche warning in the area, we had then thought that we wouldn’t travel all the way up to Steele but stay at Edwards for both nights instead.

 Tromping up the hill proved to be more difficult than planned due to the insane amounts of fresh powder. The tails on the back of our snowshoes barely helped us stay on top of the snow and we ended up punching through a good foot. The scenery was rather beautiful though, with huge colonies of ice upon the rock faces that were surrounded by trees covered in blankets of snow. When we reached the turn off to Bachelor’s we decided to go there instead, as night was falling upon us at an increasingly alarming rate. Our arrival at Bachelor’s revealed 4:30 to be the time on the clock. It had been 5 hours since we rejected the warmth of the fossil-fuel emitting vehicle (it was really warm-and the last time I felt my feet for a while).

Once in zee cabin we started a fire (in the stove) to warm Tom (we just decided to name the cabin that because Jennifer Allott wouldn’t type the word it). We then constructed our dinner of pasta and meat product (re-dehydrated turkey-it was slightly chewy) and downed multiple cups of tea product. That night we also had Jello and chocolate, which melted like pure sweetness upon our tongues. Filtered water, courtesy of moi, also caressed our mouths with filtered wondrous joy. Then we went to bed in our loft of awesome.

WEDNESDAY: We (I) got up to start the fire and boil the water for our tea product. That day we decided to remain at Bachelor’s and build…dun, dun, dun….A QUINZY (i.e. a carved-out large pile of snow used in the place of a traditional building for activities such as sleeping). I WON THE SNOWSHOE RACE. She had better quality snowshoes, so didn’t sink in as much and there fore had an unfair advantage. I refute that theory. Now, anyways, we spent the majority of the day chopping wood (Zoe got very excited) and building our quinsy. That night after dinner (complete with snowcones with real snow) we ventured into our quinsy, minus the poo-faced Zoe who likes silly things like warmth and sleep (actually I slept better and was warmer than the previous night, but you get the point).

THURDAY: A greeting from Jen’s mom in the form of song woke us from our wondrous sleep. We ate breakfast, packed up our gear, and hit the road (Jack). The trip was halved on the way down, and I never had to break trail the entire way down our already compacted trail (minus the few inches of snow that fell while we were at the cabin). About halfway down my snowshoe broke and I had to hike down in hiking boots, which meant that I punched through past my knees sometimes. The car was greeted with happiness though it would be hours until my toes were returned from to me from the evil fairy (ask Zoe).

We caught the 2:30 ferry after a trip to the market and a stop by Jen’s Grandma’s house (both which housed much food). Unpacking occurred at my house before we booted them and their stench out (and I mean that in a really loving manner).

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All in all, it was a great trip.  I had never been backpacking before, and it was really amazing to take on a new challenge with people who I felt so fully supported me. The physical demand was great, but not too hard to overcome. What I really enjoyed was the amazing peace and joy of spending time in a place where no one else is, and your only neighbours are the people who have come along with you and the forest animals that I never did see (it was winter though-I was glad the bears were sleeping).