another tom and ryan production... snowshoeing overnight.

it was the weekend, and adventure was mandatory. what kind of adventure? we werent sure at first either. try and find a cabin to rent? stay in a tent? do some kind of snowshoe thing? well... how about an overnight snowshoe with tom to a cabin that was free?! with more farmer sausage? sold.


we headed out from the kelowna nordic parking lot about 1:30 or 2. after the first 400m we came to this cabiny thing. perfect spot for our first break! pretty cool structure. log frame and vapour barrier. ingenious.


after our break, we continued along the snowy vista trail. big white in the distance. the trail was pretty packed, for now.


the next 2 hours we did a lot of stuff, unfortunately, take pictures wasn't one of them. the trail was a little misleading, and we had to break trail for about a k and a half. tough work, especially with a pack. when we finally got to the cabin, darkness was almost upon us. we proceeded to heat ourselves up with a bottle of wine


and heat the cabin up to 39 degrees, or 101 for our fahrenheit listeners. tooo hot. one thing we were not on this trip was cold.


after sweating ourselves to sleep and then finally getting the hang of heating and ventilating the cabin properly, we had a great sleep. this is what we woke up to. how did we fit all that stuff in our packs?


then it was pack it up, cool the place down and head back to the truck.


the hike back was fast. like an hour and a half. there was a little dusting of snow overnight, and we followed our tracks back. things go faster when you know when you are going, the sun is up, and someone did all the hard work for you the evening before by breaking trail. oh wait, that was us doing the hard work the evening before.

once we were back to the truck, we took a little drive to browne lake. a place i've camped before. the lake was still there, but now it was frozen. funny how that happens.


we continued on past the lake on a snowy road i've never been on before. shortly after this picture, the road turned into something that is possibly best explored on a snowmobile or in summer.


we had a great view of meadow lake on the way down. our cabin is just over the ridge on the other side of the lake.


so the weekend was clearly a raging success. we didnt die and tom wants to do it again sometime. next time, less sleeping warmth stuff, more fluids.

heres a map. kinda.

the blue line is where we drove. the dead end is where we turned around after browne lake. where it disappears in the top left is McCollough road, back towards kelowna. the green loop is the trail from last weeks snowshoe adventure, and the red line is our hike from this weekend. the cabin is at the north end. McCollough lake is in the bottom left.