Lake Trail at Mount Washington Ski Resort is a "fav" of many cross country skiers

by Keith and Heather Nicol

Keith "1 skating" one of the flat sections

     “Lake Trail” and “Far East” rank among the skier’s choice when it comes to favourite cross country ski trails at Mount Washington Ski Resort located near Courtenay, B.C. We wrote about Far East in a previous post (http://keithnicol.blogspot.ca/2018/03/cross-country-skiers-love-mount.html) and we recently skied Lake Trail with Bruce Moffat and had a perfect day for it. The plan was to meet at 1:00pm so we got in some turns on the mountain in the morning. It was another sunny spring day and several people said as we arrived that they were quitting for the day since they thought the cross country trails had gotten too soft. But we knew that Lake Trail is well shaded and much of it faces north and out of the sun so we hoped that our late start wouldn’t penalize us. 

Bruce skiing along Lake Helen Mackenzie

    Turns out we were right and the conditions were very good. We took skating skis and they glided very well over the hard packed trail. If you have not done Lake Trail – be warned it is like a roller coaster -  with lots of climbing and fast descents. This trail will challenge all your skating prowess.  It is rated as a black diamond and the trail map indicates that it is 9 km long. But when you add in the trails that you need to get to it and return the actual distance is about 13 km. As the name suggests the trail passes by some large lakes including Battleship Lake and Lake Helen Mackenzie. These portions of the trail are magical and very photogenic so be sure to bring along a camera. 

The wide trail makes for a fine ski experience

  Another favourite portion of the trail for many people is the last portion which traverses some cutovers and so the views are expansive. You can see out to Georgia Strait and across to the mountains of the B.C. mainland. Unlike many trails at Mount Washington which can skied both ways this trail is marked to ski in a counterclockwise direction only.  Depending on how many pictures you take and breaks to take in the view you should allow 1.5 – 2 hours. You only have a couple more weeks to ski this trail so if it has been on your  “to do” list you need act quickly. For more information on Mount Washington see: https://www.mountwashington.ca/

Come with a solid snowplow for the many descents

SideStix allows amputees to go snowshoeing

by Keith and Heather Nicol

Starting out the Snow Paws trail

      Recently my brother Bruce and his wife Mary Ellen visited from Victoria and they brought their dog Keita and some new crutch attachments that my brother was interested in trying out.  We had suggested they try snowhoeing at Raven Lodge at Mount Washington but since Bruce uses crutches he would have to come up with an attachment to keep his crutches from sinking into the snow. It turn out that SideStix, a BC company, produces just that sort of attachment for snow. As you can see in the pictures it simply is added to the crutch and provides a wide surface area with all important serrated metal ring that digs into the snow preventing the crutches from slipping out on icy or hard packed snow.

     

Along the Snow Paws snowshoe trail

 On Sunday, March 18 he tried them on the multi purpose trail that links Raven Lodge to the Hawk Chair lift and found that they worked very well. So after lunch he and Mary Ellen did the 2.5 km Old Cabin Loop trail (classed as green or easy) and found that they worked equally well on that trail as well. The bonus of that trail is that it winds through the trees yet provides views of the surrounding mountains. The next day we decided to take the dog Keita along and so we tried the Snow Paws trail which is classes as a blue trail and Bruce found that it had more challenging terrain so did about half of that trail. After lunch we did the multi use trail again since it is also dog friendly.  For a video of Bruce testing them click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1AnrqOpB8Y

We ran into a couple of people snowshoeing with their dogs

 For anyone that would like to go snowshoeing and uses crutches then these SideStix attachments are well worth looking into. Bruce had many people ask him where he got them so for anyone wanting to check them out see: https://www.sidestix.com/    If you check out their web site you will see they are all about getting people of all abilities out into the outdoors.  One of the founders of SideStix, Sarah Doherty is an elite US Alpine Skiing Paralympian and  the first amputee to ever summit Mt. McKinley.  Impressive! 

Along the multi use trail

 For more details on snowshoeing at Mount Washington  see: https://www.mountwashington.ca/    Mount Washington Alpine Resort actively supports people with disabilities and has a large Adaptive Snowsports programme run by the Vancouver Island Society for Adaptive Snowsports (VISAS).  

    

Cross country skiers love Mount Washington’s “Far East” trail for good reason

by Keith and Heather Nicol

       When we ask Mount Washington skiers what cross country ski trail they prefer they often say “Lake Trail” or “Far East”.  Both trails have much to recommend them but Far East is abit more forgiving in terms of required skills so might appeal to abit larger audience.  Lake Trail is classed as a black diamond or difficult while Far East is classed as a blue square or of moderate difficulty. Depending on your route around the “Ponds” , Far East is roughly 11 km long so makes for a nice workout. To access Far East you need to follow the Ponds to Paradise Meadows to Jackrabbit Link to reach the 4.5 km Far East loop. We usually go around it in a counter clockwise fashion since some the steep twisting hills as easier skied going down and and the long gentle uphill return slope can often be rhythmically skated or strided.

Be sure to have a good snowplow for this trail

       On Tuesday, March 13 the forecast was not looking good- showers turning to rain. But when we got up to Raven Lodge there was no rain and the sun was even popping in and out of the clouds. It looked like weather was coming but if we got going quickly we could take advantage of the fast snow for skating and perhaps not get rained on. We also ran into our friend Doug Rose in the lodge and he was thinking like us—lets get in a quick ski before we the weather system arrives. We were some of the first people to lay down skate tracks on the firm corduroy skating lane and we one skated and two skated our way to Far East. 

  

You will use all your skating techniques on this trail-- Doug offsets up a a hill

Once on Far East the hills get abit more serious and we had to employ a solid snow plow and had lots of places to do quick step turns around corners. One of the nice aspects of Far East is that you get a chance to use a variety of techniques to get you around the trail. We also like to open aspect of Far East and it is one of the only cross country ski trails at Mount Washington to give you views of the ocean and mountains on the BC mainland.  Turns out we timed it well since the showers started only as we headed back to the lodge over the final 2 km of trail. Overall we were gone for 1 hour. So this time of year-watch the weather forecast but we aware that it is often wrong so check the web cams and current weather at Mt Washington to see what is really doing. You might get in an unexpectedly good ski.  For more information see: https://www.mountwashington.ca/

We love the distance views of the ocean and mountains

Sea Kayaking with dozens of sea lions at Pt Holmes near Courtenay, B.C.

by Keith and Heather Nicol

    On Thursday, March 8 we attended a dinner party and one of the hosts Guy Wassick mentioned that he had seen many rafts of sea lions off Pt Holmes that day while driving along Lazo Road. We had been out to that area earlier in the week looking for evidence of herring spawning and the buzz of wildlife activity that occurs with that but had seen nothing at Pt Holmes, Air Force Beach or Kye Bay.  So with this new information we headed out to checking things out on Friday morning and sure enough we could see many congregations of sea lions with their fins in the air and some groups were noisily barking. Curiously we saw no other activity that we knew was associated with herring spawning like gulls squawking and eagles swooping but it is always fun to see large groupings of sea lions so we headed back to the house to get our sea kayaks.  

Heather paddling slowly toward a group of sea lions

The water was flat calm and the boat launch at Pt Holmes made it easy to launch. We could see several rafts of sea lions just off shore so paddled off toward the closest grouping.  Sea lions use their flippers for thermoregulation and in this grouping we could see a mass of flippers, tails and heads. Biologists think they use the flippers to gather the sun’s energy and then this is heat is transferred to the rest of the animal below the water surface.  Sea lions are also known for their distinctive barking, a sound which carries a long distance across the water. It seems like once one sea lion starts barking it sends others into the barking mode as well.  Most of the sea lions we saw appeared to be California Sea Lions and the males have a distinctive “dome” on the forehead. 

 

Bring a camera with a telephoto lens - lets you see the mass of fins and heads up close

   We usually give these animals a wide berth since they do have a mouthful of sharp teeth but as far we can determine they never seem to attack kayakers. We would typically paddle within a 100 meters of so and then just sit and watch and often they would come closer. Sometimes they would surface close to us have a quick scan around and then noisy dive under the water. This isn’t too unnerving when they are in front of you but when you hear loud slapping and splashes behind you wonder what is going on. One sea lion seemed intent on sunning his head and swam quite close to us keeping its head above the water the whole time. Then another sea lion came up next to it and fortunately I had my camera out and got a picture of the 2 of them “kissing”. They stayed like that for a few moments before one sea lion let out a snarl and the other one quickly disappeared under the water.  We also saw some sea lions with herring in their mouth as they came to the surface. 

Two sea lions came face to face right in front of us

A paddle boarder also came out to investigate and he got very close to the sea lions. In fact at one point a large group seemed to swim right toward him but since it was 200-300 meters away we couldn’t see exactly how close they were.  Herring season is short lived but is well worth having a look at either from on shore, from a paddle board or from a small boat.  Click on the link to see a video of our outing-  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKZV-q2poPk

A paddleboarder cruises past some sea lions with Lasqueti Island behind