Bye Bye

Hi everyone!

It's a shame that I haven't updated this blog for such a long time. And this post is probably going to be one of my last. Why? The Canadian Adventures are not any longer..... We have moved back home to the Netherlands. Really!

Summer 2011 was a time that we will never forget, and there are many dreams to remember....
After being on the road for almost 12 weeks straight, good times were coming to an end. We have seen lot of Britisch Columbia including Vancouver Island and the Bella Coola Valley. After that we spent about 5 weeks in the States, visited National Parks, Wilderness areas and climbed some very cool peaks. The last weeks of August we climbed in the Bugaboos and hang around Revelstoke and The Rockies. A place we used to call home...

I'm sure one day we'll be back. For holidays, for the incredible beauty of nature and the high peaks. And to visit some good friends we feel delightful to have met.

I've included some pictures from on our last climb on the East ridge of Mount Temple, august 26. A few days later you see me on the airport, still totally exhausted from a big day in the mountains, packing and saying goodbye....

Climbing Mt Raineer

We climbed Mt Raineer in Washington state, USA. It's a very impressive peak and you can already see it when you're driving downtown Seattle.

Here you see our Basecamp at Schurmann and there were many other climbers. On summit day Bram and I got up an midnight and started climbing at 1.00 We were at the summit at 7.00 with a beatifull surise. But it was COLD! Canadian winters are peanuts compared to this!!!! We summit on the Emmons glacier route wich is the least technical climb to the summit at 4392 mtr. But it was definitely worth our little mini-expedition!! And when we came down the mountain it was summer again and we cheered with a couple of beers in the sun. Well done!

We had again a nice view from the northern Cascades when we did a little alpine route. Raineer is the king! We decided it was time to upgrade our rock trad climbing level so we spend 4 days in City of Rocks in Idaho. It was hot and summer in the dessert. Loved that place!

Now we are close to Gran Teton National Park and we are hoping to get climbing permits for Grand Teton. So you'll find some updates pretty soon.

Cheers now!

North Vancouver Island

North Vancouver Island was empty and a bit rainy too. As you see we found a nice camping spot under a shelter. The tree was dedicated to God as a sign said ' give Jesus your Soul'. But we rather kept our shoes for hiking instead!



















Also a lot of logging on the island and these devastated harvest fields are the results. Glad to see that there are some BIG trees left as we found them in Cape Scott Provincial Park.
























































The gravel roads are used for logging and we hit a tire very bad so we needed to get a new one.






Cape Scott Park is the most North part of the island with beautiful sandy beaches







Some other pictures are taken in Campbell River at the harbor where we stopped for fish and ships. Bram loves it!






Be prepared for the unexpected. How is that best done???

Impressions of the West Coast Trail.

West Coast Trail 2011 Vancouver Island in British Colombia, Canada.
We spend 7 nights of hiking and camping through wet and muddy forest and beautiful beaches. 8 days breakfast lunch and dinner in our backpacks, that was a huge amount of food! We saw lots of wildlife in the see, as well as in the forest and in the sky. A great experience that we have never seen and done before. Lucky we had some good weather! Here are some pictures of our adventure.

travel BC week 1

Hi all,

we're traveling in beautiful British Colombia for about a week now and lots has happened. First we stopped at some pretty awesome natural hot springs in the Pemberton area where we bathed four times! And we rested from our trip to the Netherlands. Thanks to the jet lag we woke up pretty early every day and we where able to experience the big trees in the forest where we slept.

It was time for some alpine climbing after these days of rest, it stopped raining too! We hiked up to a nice hut 1200 mtrs up from the parking lot. Lots and lots of snow left on the approach. We had the alpine all to ourselves..... unfortunately we did not get a solid overnight freeze and the summit attempted of mount wedge failed because of that. But lucky we did get some sun and astonishing views over the coast mountains. We made it up to 2500 mtrs.

Now we are in the Whistler and Squamish area and did some more camping and hiking. Tonight we will meet some friends who live here and we can take a shower...mmm. As you can see from the pictures we meet lots of wildlife. We already have seen 11 bears! Once there was a mouse in the car because a roll of toilet paper was completely eaten. And a squirrel came over to visit us and liked peanut butter and sambal Oelek a lot!! The waterfall is the Brandywine falls.

We hope to do some rock climbing in Squamish and after the weekend we are heading to Vancouver Island to arrange some spots for the West Coast Trail hike. I'm really excited about that!! So far for now, lots of updates and hopefully some pictures of my own are coming soon (card reader will not work in the laptop).

Stephane, as promised this story in English... you're welcome!

Bye,
Linda

Pallet

The pallet is ready for pick up! It was a lot of thinking and some stress was involved.
But all the stuff that we wanted to be shipped is on there. 3 bikes, 2 pair of ski's, 14 banana boxes, bbq and much, much more! June 18 it arrives in Rotterdam. See you later!

Linda running the halfmarathon.

Last Saturday Linda ran the Rocky Mountain Womens Run together with Lisa.