Harrison Grind (Adventures in British Columbia)

The Group at Harrison Lake

Harrison Grind - April 19th, 2014         Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia
Kilometers: 6.9k round trip
Elevation Gain: 620m
Dogs Allowed

Allison at the 2010 Olympic Torch in Vancouver

Earlier this year our friends Jesse and Angela won a free condo stay in a small resort town called Harrison Hot Springs in British Columbia. I had never been to Canada despite living only two hours away from there for the better part of a decade, so we were really excited to take them up on their offer to join them. We were able to cram a bunch of activities into our quick weekend including visiting Vancouver, eating at Tim Horton’s and even a hike.

Harrison Hot Springs is a small resort community located on a beautiful lake that is surrounded by mountains on all sides and kind of looks like a fjord. Allison and I were really excited to discover that we could walk from our condo right to the trailhead of an awesome mountain hike. On Saturday morning Allison and I put together our hiking gear and headed out to the mountain as the rest of our group went off to the spa.

Allison: There was actually a bit of disagreement here between us and our group, we were really pushing for our friends to come hiking with us (in hindsight it was good that they didn't, spoiler!). Jesse said “I can hike anywhere, I want to go to a spa.”

Wait. WUT.

You can hike anywhere but you want to go sit inside while some faceless person rubs on you? I mean I can see the appeal, but you can, in fact, literally do that ANYWHERE, whereas you can hike many places, but not a single one will be the same. However, I digress, back to Chris...

The Harrison Grind’s name is a spin off of the name of one of the most popular hikes in Vancouver called the Grouse Grind, and while the Harrison Grind trail is not quite the torture test that the Grouse Grind is, it still offered us with a challenging (especially hung over) and rewarding hike.

We left our condo and took a short half-mile walk to the trailhead. The first half-mile of the hike was very steep and took us up a gravel service road to Harrison’s water tower.

From the water tower the path continued up a trail that followed a power line through a boulder field.

Here we got our first view of the mountains, which was spectacular even though we were only ¼ of the way through the hike. Not long after that the trial entered a very lush and beautiful section of the forest that reminded me of Jurassic Park. In fact, we even saw a cool rock that looked a lot like a T-Rex.

It also began raining, which wasn’t really a big surprise being that we were still in the Pacific Northwest, we donned our rain gear and pushed on.

Allison: I had however forgot to pack my hiking boots, so my feet were suuuuper squishy about 20 minutes into the hike. But, Goonies never say die!

Can you see the T-Rex?

After literally scrambling our way up the side of the mountain for another half an hour we ran into a fellow hiker and had a very Canadian hiking experience.

Now, there are rules of etiquette, whether spoken or not, that govern just about every social situation. This includes hiking. For instance, when you are in a hiking group that is headed back down from a summit with a difficult and/or grueling ascent, it is common courtesy when encountering another group who is struggling on their way up the same summit to lie to them about one or more of the facts surrounding the rest of their journey to the top. In the United States the conversations usually go something like this:

Scenario #1
Other Group: How much further do you think it is to the top?
Your Group: Probably about ¾ or a mile.
Reality: You are so happy to be coming down that you haven’t been paying
attention and have no idea. It could have been 5 miles… actually it probably was.

Scenario #2
Other Group: How much further do you think it is to the top
Your Group: You’re almost there! It’s just around the corner!!
Reality: You are completely sadistic, there are at least two more miles.

Scenario #3
Other Group: How much further do you think it is to the top?
Your Group: Still a few more miles.
Reality: You want them to be pleasantly surprised when the summit is just around
the corner. This is the most unlikely of the three scenarios.

As a ‘Murican, upon your first visit to Canada you will quickly realize that Canadians are, well, very stereotypically Canadian. You will quickly learn that the word sooorry is much more versatile than you once imagined. You will be told sooorry for any reason imaginable: A waitress, for instance might be sooorry for taking your order, or someone passing you on the street might be sooory because they are passing you on the street. They are very friendly and very apologetic for no reason. About is pronounced aboot and Tim Horton’s, a popular doughnut chain, is one of the most important and talked about national treasures.

About halfway up our hike we met an older Canadian gentleman on his way down the mountain and proceeded to stop and have a conversation which included all of the Canadian features mentioned above. He was also a strict observer of hiking etiquette. It went something like this.

Canadian Gentleman: Hello, eh, Soory did ya knooo aboot the Tim Horton’s they got at the top?
Chris & Allison: No, we didn’t
Canadian Gentleman: Ooh yaaa, well you fooolks enjoy your hike, eh.
Reality: There was no Tim Horton’s on the summit of the mountain, curse you Canadian gentleman for filling our thoughts with Honey Crullers!!!

After another hour or two of hiking we reached the summit hoping to get an amazing view of the valley. While the view was still really beautiful, we couldn’t see many of the surrounding mountains because they were all covered in mist. Being that it was windy, wet and cold we snapped some pictures and did an about face and headed down the mountain. Overall the hike was quite steep and we ended up having to do some precarious scrambling over wet and slippery rocks and trees which were much more treacherous on the way down. Luckily we both came out of it unscathed. With good stories to tell our spa friends about the natural beauty of the
place we were visiting.

Welcome to the biggest little city in the world!

Seattle to Reno - August 2nd, 2014
Washington > Oregon > California > Nevada
Mileage: 707 Miles One-way
Elevation Gain: ~4250 feet
Dogs Allowed

As you may have noticed, things have been rather quiet on the hiking blog front for quite some time. As most of you know, Allison and I moved to Reno, NV for Allison to attend graduate school at the University of Nevada, Reno.  The months leading up to as well as the months after any move are always quite hectic.  Things really had to be prioritized to get everything wrapped up in Seattle and then get established in Reno in an efficient manner. Less crucial parts of our lives, like the blog, ended up at the bottom of that list.  This however didn't mean that we stopped hiking.  We currently have a backlog of almost ten blog posts ranging from the middle of April to just two weeks ago.  We already have three posts written, and now that everything has settled down the plan is to release one blog post, in chronological order, every week until we get caught up.  To all of our Seattle hiking buddies, we miss all of you.  Thanks for sharing so many great adventures over the last season through Allison Pushes People Up Mountains!  We are both also really happy to see the hiking group continuing to be active in its current incarnation, Katie Pushes People Down Mountains.  Kudos to Katie, Nick, and the other organizers.  We think about you guys every time we go out and can't wait to get together anytime we are in Seattle or you are in Reno.  There is some amazing hiking in the Sierra Nevada right at our back door anytime you want to visit.

Dog Mountain (North Fork Snoqualmie), An Abandoned Trail

Dog Mountain - May 15th, 2014

Mileage: 9.0 miles

Elevation Gain: 3850 feet

Snoqualmie Pass - North Bend Area

Dog Friendly

Difficulty: Intermediate

Katie and I set off the morning of this hike with the intention of torturing ourselves by hiking the most difficult hike close to Seattle, Mailbox Peak, which gains over 3800 ft. in just over 3 miles.  Katie, myself and many of the other members of our hiking group, APPUM have been hiking quite difficult hikes at least once and sometimes more per week for the last few months and have gotten in much better shape to the point where Katie and I were interested in challenging ourselves with Mailbox.

Unfortunately when I Katie and I arrived at the road that goes to the trail-head for Mailbox, we ran into road construction and were told that the road will be closed to vehicles during the week for the foreseeable future.  Our hearts momentarily sank at the prospect of not doing Mailbox, which we had been greatly anticipating.  Our mood immediately improved when we pulled the car over and pulled up the Washington Trails Association's website and found another hike about 20 miles from our current location that sounded really interesting, Dog Mountain.

Dog Mountain is an abandoned trail in the Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest.  As the trail ascends Dog Mountain, it follows an old logging road which was abandoned, I would guess, between 50-70 years ago based on the size of the trees and the deterioration of the road and other man-made structures such as bridges.  It is really a cool experience to get to walk along a piece of history like this old road and be witness to how powerfully and relatively quickly nature can heal the massive scars inflicted on it by our industry.  

After a few miles the road ends and turns into a trail with steep and relentless switchbacks as it quickly ascends almost 4000 ft. to the summit of dog mountain.  The forest service has not maintained this trail for many years which causes this already difficult trial to be much more technical and dangerous than other hikes with similar mileage and elevation statistics.  Despite needing to take more time to stay on the trail and find proper footing, Katie and I got about eight tenths of the way up the mountain in a pretty decent amount of time.  After this, the trail disappeared and we began to ascend a steep boulder field that was still covered in snow.  After almost an hour of carefully ascending this part, we had only made it another tenth of the way to the summit and were getting quite exhausted.  We decided that we needed to turn around because it would be foolhardy to attempt the somewhat treacherous descent if we tired ourselves out further by making the summit.

Once we were back on the trail, the journey down went fairly fast.  Overall, this was a very enjoyable hike with breathtaking views of several other snow capped peaks visible during almost 3/4 of the hike.  If I wasn't moving in the near future, this would definitely be on my list of places to return to later in the season when the snow is all melted making the ascent to the summit more manageable.