Vera got up quite early and it seems that I’ve now adapted to the time zone, at least for how many hours I need to sleep, which meant that I woke after approx. seven hours. After breakfast we all started to pack up the gear for the day. I was not really sure on what would happen more than that we would go to Squamish with winter clothes, skies and snow shoes. We packed up in the car and headed out, which meant going through Vancouver down town before exiting the greater Vancouver area. A little more than an hour after that, having traveled along the water and passing Furry Creek and Britannia Beach we arrived at the Sea to Sky Gondola base camp. We arranged all our equipment, for example I got to borrow a pair of skiing trousers from Fredrik which I switched into from my jeans (only pair of long trousers brought on the trip). I also got the information that Vera would not join me and Fredrik, instead she would go skiing while me and Fredrik would go trekking.
A short trip up the mountain in a gondola (or ski-lift), we arrived at the top camp and our paths diverted. Me and Fredrik started walking along the Al’s Habrich trail and he told me where he’d planned for us to go. Since I had no idea how long that would be or how difficult, I could just follow him in his foot steps. The weather was fairly clear at that point with a temperature of a few degrees above zero. It started out good, not difficult at all – but it did not take long until I started huffing and puffing, and we had just started. After a while we put on the snow shoes when it became difficult to climb the snowy path in our boots. We reached the Marker 18 and the Viewpoint and at that time I’ve already had to stop a few times to catch my breath but it was still a nice trek and the nature with the snow was beautiful. The viewpoint showed the community of Squamish along with their international airport (featuring one runway). We continued the path but soon after begun having difficulties since not many visitors had traveled the path further on since the latest snowfall. Fredrik had been there before and was confident where we would go, so he took once more lead and tread a new path in the deep snow. I had thought that the trek was difficult before this started, I had definitely been wrong, this was way worse. But I could not give up now, we were at marker 24 and had only 11 more to go to the next viewpoint. A number of turns later and many height meter up and we arrived to marker 35. Unfortunately the weather had become a little bad and all we could see was clouds and fog. Still we had arrived and we were both hungry, luckily Fredrik had fixed sandwiches and water for us to nibble on. At this time, the idea was to continue even further up the mountain, but seeing the weather and my condition at that point, we decided to go back down. Besides, we needed to be down before the last gondola left (at 5 pm) unless we wanted to walk down the last part of the mountain as well. In the beginning of the descent it was difficult since it was completely different to navigate the snow shoes, as well as we had to walk in our own freshly made path. Later on when we came down below marker 18 where a lot of other visitors had been the going went easier. We arrived to the top camp early and in luck the sun was showing between the clouds. At this time I was soaking wet of sweat and real tired and frozen as well. We grabbed ourselves something warm to drink (chocolate for Fred and coffee for me) to wait for Vera to arrive as well.
Vera arrived a bit later and got a hot chocolate as well before we headed down the mountain in the gondola and went for a short drive to Squamish for dinner and some beer the local brewery – Howe Sound Inn and Brewing. Here we all ordered hamburgers and beer and I finally got to taste an awesome IPA in Canada (sure it was a triple, but still). Ascension triple IPA was really good, then a small taste from the Devil’s Elbow IPA which was not really to my taste buds, but the Double IPA was really nice as well.
Heading home a few hours later I fell into a slumber in the backseat and did not really wake up until we closed in on Vancouver. All of us where tired from the activities this day and after taking care of the equipment and ourselves we were ready for bed.