First Brother Mountain!

Et c'est reparti, une autre randonnée en montagne. Nous avons du attendre le mois d'aout pour que la neige fonde et que les fleurs de printemps sortent enfin. Ce sentier est entre Hope et Princeton, à l'est de Vancouver dans les rocheuses.

Translator to the rescue! So I'll do my best. This is from when we first started out on the trail, before Maggie annoyed Remi by pulling. August is the perfect time of year to be in the mountains in this area because the snow is mostly melted and the spring flowers are in full bloom. The part of Manning Park we went to is between Hope and Princeton, east of Vancouver.
Notre premier camp était comfortable. Une plateforme pour la tente et une table pour manger. Malheuresement, a presque 2000m, il fait froid la nuit.

Our camp was comfortable with a platform for the tent and a picnic table!! We've never had a picnic table for back-country camping. What a luxury!! But it was cold at night and pretty buggy.
Notre camp, just avant le coucher de soleil. Nous étions tous seuls, sympa quand on veut éviter les bruits de la ville et de la foule.

This is camp just before sundown. It was quiet and there was only one other party in this particular campsite.
Le lendemain il faisait très beau. Avec un sentier facile, nous avons fait 8km en 3 ou 4 heures.

The trail was nice and pretty easy. Lots of uphill, but nice flat areas too. And GORGEOUS! Flowers everywhere. And mountain views. He also mentioned that we could hike 8 km in 3-4 hours.
Le sentier passait sur le flanc de montagne parmi les fleurs sauvages. Nous nous arrêtions souvent pour prendre des photos (presque 500 avant la fin du weekend).

We stopped often to take photos because it was so beautiful. For a change we took our time hiking!
J'adore les plateaus en montagne. Derrière on voit juste "le premier frère", le sommet de 2272m que nous avons escaladés mercredi.

Behind us you can see the First Brother mountain which we climbed on our hike out on Wednesday.
La vue était incroyable. This means "the view was incredible", which you may have guessed ;)
"Le premier frère" a gauche, et une vallée a droite. First brother to the left and a valley to the right.
La vallée en question. J'ai toujours le vertige au bord des précipices et j'ai du mal a me tenir droit.

I love this picture! You almost get vertigo looking at it. Remi gets all freaked out near huge slopes and drop-offs. He gets sympathy butterflies when I'm close to the edge ;)
Sarah qui fait semblant de grimper.

Remi is so jealous of how cool I look in this badass shot!

Après avoir érigé la tente, nous avond suivi le sentier. Là, nous étions tous seuls et on pouvait explorer tranquilement.

We pitched our tent at the second campsite ("Kicking Horse") and then went and explored the meadows beyond. We were the only ones on the trail! It was great. This is exactly why we avoid the long weekend traffic.

Le lendemain nous étions dans les nuages. Toute la journée on espérait une éclaicie pour pouvoir escalader First Brother Mountain (Le premier frère, en français), mais rien. Vers 19 ou 20 heures nous avons aperçu le soleil pendant quelques secondes, et le ciel bleu pendant une ou deux minutes. Nous avons passé le temps en lisant ou en jouant aux cartes et aux dés. Pas très drole pour les vacances, mais avec le froid (14-16°C), l'humidité et le genou à Sarah qui faisait mal, nous n'avions pas beaucoup de choix.

The second day we woke up and were in the clouds. COLD. It made it impossible for us to climb the First Brother on our planned day (Tuesday). We saw the sun only for a minute or two in the afternoon and only a few patches of blue sky. The whole day pretty much sucked. We spent three hours in the tent in the morning shivering, reading and playing crib and Yahtzee. Thank goodness we brought stuff to do! My knee was also really sore - I must have twisted it during the night - and could barely walk, so I guess it wasn't so bad that the weather sucked.
Nous en avons profité pour prendre des photos de Maggie, pendant les brèves secondes où elle n'était pas occupée a terroriser les marmottes et les écureuils.

It was a fight, but we finally got Maggie to sit still for a minute for this gorgeous glamour shot. She was enthralled with the marmot and squirrel smells that were absolutely everywhere. That's why she was pulling so badly on her leash when we were hiking in!
Le sentier qui mène au sommet de la montagne passe par une dorsale avec des pentes de 70° sur les deux cötés qui descendaient quelques centaines de mètres.

Climbing First Brother on Wednesday. This was the ridge to the summit. Il fallait escalader quelques mètres par endroits.
Scaling to the top!
Le sommet. Il faisait très froid, il y avait un vent fou, mais la vue n'était pas mal, et à 2272m, c'est la plus grande montagne que nous avons escaladée en Colombie Britannique.

It was damn cold and windy! But this is the highest summit we've climbed in BC - 2272 m.
Le sentier. Içi on voit bien la dorsale. The ridge.
Et le précipice. The drop-off.

Le panneau dit, à peu près, "pelouse interdite".

I think this fantastic photo speaks for itself.
Une dernière photo en montagne...

A fantastic photo! This was on the way back to the parking lot. I love faking poses for the camera. "Ok, turn a bit to the left... Perfect! Now look natural."

Et le weekend est fini... Aren't we cute?? This picture was supposed to represent the end, but...
Avec l'exception du fait que nous avons un plat.

We got a flat!! This is what we found when we returned to the parking lot!
Et l'aventure est finie...

But we (as in Remi) put the donut on and off we went. All in all, a fabulous trip. The tire is fixed now, so we're back to normal.

Adventure fin ;)

Rémi & Sarah

Capilano Rip-Off Bridge

So, as you may or may not know, Remi and I are cheap. We prefer the term "frugal" (prudently saving or sparing; not wasteful - Dictionary.com), but cheap will do. So it may surprise some of you that we would actually PAY to do a "hike". Well, stroll really. So here goes...

Capilano Suspension Bridge (AKA Capilano Rip-Off Bridge) is just what the name sounds like - a suspension bridge. BUT, it's HUGE. It's 450 feet (137m) across and 230 feet (70m) above Capilano River. The park claims that you can fly two Boeing 747 side-by-side under the bridge, but I'm skeptical... Maybe after some of that clear-cutting BC is famous for. It's also Vancouver's oldest park, opening in 1889. So what makes this great attraction worth $26.95 + tax per tourist? (BC residents get a whopping $2 discount!!) We're not quite sure. Let's analyse it a little.

They had some nice totem poles.

These guys with an extra stump for you to pose on. (Racist? We're not sure. Stereotypical? Definitely.) And they had a few Native Americans who came out and sang a traditional song with drums! This was neat to hear. And though the park touted having a "Native Art Gallery", all they had was a little lean-to with five or six carvings under it. The carvings were very cool though.

+

OH! And they had the bridge, of course! It was actually pretty cool. Worth $26 when there's a not quite as cool suspension bridge only a short drive away? Probably not. And yes, those are our shadows on the left in the first picture :)

The park also had a "Tree Tops Adventure". In theory, this is a walkway built up off the ground in the tree canopy. In REALITY, it was a walkway built about 30 feet off the ground far below the actual canopy. It was "mediocre-ly" cool, as I put it. AND apparently this is a rainforest!! I couldn't tell what with all the ground cover having been cleared out!! I saw one fern per 100 sq. feet! RIDICULOUS! In REAL rainforests, such as those you can visit for free in and around Vancouver, and all over the coast and on the island for that matter, you can't step two feet off a path without being enveloped in understory (which is, for those of you who don't know: the shrubs and plants growing beneath the main canopy of a forest - Dictionary.com). This "forest" had absolutely NO understory!!

The park also had two extremely skanky looking "trout" ponds. I quotation-marked the trout because while there were trout in there, I doubt anything could live there naturally (in Remi's lingo, the ponds are "stocked with fish"). But you can feed the trouts if you go on their tours!! I might pay $3.50 to do that and only if there was nothing else to do in town.

Oh! And we were there. But how many of you would pay to see us?? (I'd love to know so I can hit you up the next time I see you.)

So after careful thought, Remi and I have decided that the reason it costs $26.95 + tax for non-BC residents is because of the extreme over-staffing with people dressed in 19th century garb. I saw about 5 women wandering around randomly "looking busy", not to mention the HORRIBLE barber-shop quintet playing in front of the outrageously over-priced Gift Shop.

Oh, I almost forgot! They had ring toss!! Probably worth about 50 cents a round :)

Have I made my point? We will only be going back because the $24.95 + tax that we paid includes a season's pass and we figure we'd better get the most out of it! Bottomline, we don't recommend it and if any of you deadbeats ever get around to visiting us (Remi's parents aside - they have actually been out here on two separate occasions!), we'll be taking you elsewhere to enjoy BC's beauty for free and away from the throngs of those who would rather part with their money.

Hope you enjoyed my review :)