Training Log Archive: Atropos

We had planned to do the Byrne Creek WET followed by a socially distanced Canada Day picnic today but the weather was a bit rainy so that was postponed.
Mom, dad and I decided to continue our get to know the tri-cities better hiking project by hiking from Ioco to the Coquitlam River in Poco via Port Moody and Lafarge Park.
We had a few more side adventures and less than ideal alternative routes than on our Sunday outing. The hiking book that we have been using is about 10 years old and there have been some changes (which caused a bit of the confusion). The main problem is that the author is much less concerned with giving explicit direction or providing complete maps than waxing poetic about his philosophy on no trespassing signs or salmon hatcheries.
In the future, I think that I will trace the routes out ahead of time on another map to avoid having to parse his prose at every decision point.
Still, I have enjoyed both hikes as they have taken me through some unexpected neighbourhoods and areas that I likely would have never ventured to on my own.

C • No trespassing 2

Today was locker clean out day for the education faculty at UBC. I didn't actually have anything in my locker but I did still have the lock on it (that I wanted to get back because it was my high-school locker lock and the combination will forever be embedded in my brain). It seemed a bit pointless to go all the way out to UBC for a 3 minute errand, so I wandered through campus for a while. Even in the couple of months since I was last there there have been some big changes. They seem to have torn up half of University Blvd between the fountain and West Mall for repaving? and the artificial field between the bus loop and the nest is now finished. Then I headed down to Spanish Banks to see if I could make any progress on my tidal flat map. I knew that I had missed low tide but I was hopeful that the water would still be somewhat out. No dice. Instead, I walked along the beaches as far as Hastings mill and then looped back via 4th to the car. Probably about 10 km of walking in total but not exactly high on the heart rate so I have just counted an hour.

Decided to celebrate my first day with nothing to do with a nice hike somewhere that we had never really gone. We found a route in a book of local hikes that took us from the south end of Mundy Park down into Port Moody and back up into Coquitlam before ending at the eastern end of Burnaby Lake. It was a nice mix of residential neighbourhoods and forested trails. We celebrated our accomplishment with pizza. All in all, a pretty decent afternoon.