Our parents don't believe us when we say that we don't fight when they're not around, but we actually get along fairly well. They also seem to think we don't do anything together, ever, which is mostly true.
I'll suggest some sort of activity, concert or event and then she'll make a face at me and then it won't happen. I tend not to ask her to do anything because I know she'll say no. So imagine my surprise when I suggested that since the parental unit is away we should go hiking or something and she said yes.
What I have since learned is that all of a sudden we have separate yet compatible interests. I want to go outside and do something and she wants to take pictures of stuffed animals.
We set off to take lots of pictures of us being non-beligerent and non-lard-assed. Our intended destination: Lynn Headwaters Regional Park. It just so happens that it has its own bus route and is actually not all that hard to get to from where I live. I don't know why I didn't know that before.
We ended up getting there a bit later than I had planned, and once we arrived we found out that the bus stop is actually a 20-30 minute walk from the park. At the trailheads we decided that it was too late in the day to hike to Norvan Falls, which is supposed to take six hours plus lunch time.
Abby looked at the map and decided we should do the Lynn Peak trail instead, which ended up looking like this:
The average grade of the trail is somewhere around 16%, which isn't as steep as the Grouse Grind, but it's a longer trail, and unlike the Grouse Grind, there's no gondola back down so it's challenging. Considerably less crowded too. You can go quite a ways without seeing anyone else.
It takes you up into some old-growth forest and past a few nice, though not super spectacular viewpoints, all of which I somehow did not photograph. I'll have to bug Abby for pictures. The only thing I really didn't like was all of the loose rocks, which are sprained ankles waiting to happen.
The length and not-so-steepness of the trail meant that there was a lot more time to spend looking around at things. Things like this haystack boulder:
It's one of many random boulders that got left all over the place by glaciers in the Ice Age.
Or this:
See how the branch is kind of shaped like a club with tons of branches fanning out from it? It's disease called witches' broom. A guy named Ficus told me that when I visited the Seymour Demonstration Forest.
It also gives you time for snacks like rhubarb dipped in sugar.
We didn't quite make it to the top, though we were really close. It was a little too snowy for our liking, and neither of us were particularly prepared for that. It's like they say with activities in wilderness areas: know your limit and play within it. Oh wait, that's what they say about gambling. It's the same thing.
Just because all of this is a couple minutes from the city doesn't mean that people don't get lost and die up there. Search and Rescue gets called out all the time and I'm determined to have them not look for me. The view from the peak will have to wait.
And in case anyone is interested, here is info on the trail via ClubTread and trailpeak.
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