North Shore Explore

It's always nice to get out and properly explore your own backyard. All too often we get caught up in what we already know and we forget to explore. As runners I think we can get stuck with our 'two hour run route', our 'favorite mountain route', our 'long run route' etc, etc. We are mostly creatures of habit and when I want to run hard for a few hours I certainly don't want to take time figuring out where the heck I am.

Today was the opposite. A backyard exploration day where I was made to promise that I wouldn't run. Hiking only dammit. The plan was four or five hours on foot simply meandering our way through the mountains with no real plan in place. In the end we were rewarded for our lack of planning by happening across what has to be one of the largest remaining living trees in North Vancouver. The funny thing about this trail is that I could see my general direction of travel through the forest but had no real idea of if it would allow us to do a loop, or if we'd end up back tracking for over an hour. In the end it could not have worked out any better as we had nothing but a short but frigid water crossing to bring us to within three kilometers of where we'd dropped our car. It was the most fun I've had while not running in the mountains in a very long time, and the best part about it...I now have a NEW FAVORITE 20km route that I can't wait to RUN!

We started off by going up BCMC and playing in the snow

Thankfully Mountain Highway had recently been plowed

Which made for some real fun snow cave running

Messing around with a large stump

Finding the grand daddy of the living in North Van

If only this would load properly

Big hug for the big tree

and the look of (joking) disdain for the frigid river crossing to cap it all off:)

GR