Adventuring with Herbert Putkey

For our honeymoon, Theresa and I decided to do a week of riding on the Kettle Valley Railway. The KVR was build between 1910 to 1915. It was an amazing piece of engineering, especially famous for it’s trestle bridges in the Myra canyon near Kelowna. The railway was overcome by the highway, and now the railbed is mostly a gravel path that is part of the Trans Canada Trail.

Since it was our honeymoon, we signed up with Great Explorations - they supported our ride by moving the gear between campsites and providing all of the meals and 2 guides, Wendy and Dave.

The planned ride was from Beaverdell to Coalmont.  Because the Beaverdell campsite wasn’t in great shape, we camped about 25km further up the trail. The first day half of us rode the extra km from the campsite, which was a pretty long day. We stayed at the hydraulic lake campsite, and bathed in the resevoir!

The second day of riding was through the Myra canyon. There were great views of and from the Trestles. This was definitely the busiest part of the trail - we hardly saw any other cyclists except for here. We stayed at Chute lake that night, with a bajillion mosquitoes, and had our first experience with Fire Pie.

The next day we rode to Summerland. This route was mostly downhill, which was good because it was pretty loose trail. We stopped at the Hillside Winery on the edge of Penticton for lunch and wine tasting. After that, Theresa and I stuck to the road to get to Summerland, while the rest of the group stayed on the railbed. At the Peach Orchard campsite that night we had a visit from The Kettle Valley Brakemen, who gave us a musical history lesson about the railway.

The fourth day of riding was from Summerland to Chain Lake. We (except for Rick) shuttled up to Faulder to skip about 12km of climbing. Perhaps we should have shuttled a bit further - the first 5km of trail was the toughest of the trip. The path was like riding uphill at the beach. Our planned meet point at Thirsk lake had unfortunately been closed due to a re-damming of the lake, so there was a lot of confusion. The group I was with were all out of water, but managed to meet up with Wendy at Greg’s cabin and bike rental place across from Osprey Lake. The Chain Lake campground was really nice, with the campsites right on the lake, and hardly any other campers. I was also able to demonstrate my skills with an axe.

The final day of riding took us through Princeton to historic Coalmont. The views were great throughout the day - a couple tunnels; rolling hills above Princeton, and riding through a canyon to Coalmont.

Theresa and I struggled a bit on our cyclocross bikes, and would use mountain bikes if we were to do it again. We still had a great time, though, largely thanks to the camaraderie of the group.

I’ve posted the pictures here.
 

We went back to the lightning lakes campground at Manning Park, this time with our friends and neighbours Pam and Steve. We went up on Friday and got there about 9:30 - just in time to get one of the last spots. On Saturday we hiked the 3 Brothers. The trail head is actually quite high up, so there is little overall elevation gain, but you do have to go down a valley first. There were great views throughout the hike, but just as we were going up the ridge to the peak the clouds rolled in and it was a white out.

Click here to see the album.

After a decade of sin, our friends Adam and Daphne finally decided they liked each other and got married (some people take forever to really commit!). They had the wedding in Kelowna, where they both grew up. Theresa and I decided we would need to take a week off to make the arduous 4 hour drive. We camped for one night in Manning park on the way up, and 2 more nights there on the way back. It was pretty cold (going below 0 at night), but that wasn’t enough to discourage two hardy adverturers like us. We had a spectacular hike on Monday - we did the Skyline trail. We hiked for nearly 7 hours without seeing any other people. When we got to the summit with 360 degree views, it felt like we had the entire park to ourselves.

In Kelowna we got to meet Adam and Daphne’s families. We had a fun morning getting taken around by Daphne’s dad, John. He played tour gude and took us to Father Pandosy’s mission, and several wineries.

The wedding was a lot of fun. Joel, Adam’s brother, gave a great speech while channeling a prospector from the 1800’s; Daphne’s dad somehow managed to get a Cuban band to come play for about an hour (they were in town for a music festival); I managed to briefly demonstrate my skills at bocci (2 weeks in a row); I also got a tattoo of Ogopogo (there may be a relationship between open bars and tattoos); and Theresa and Mark lit up the dance floor.

The photo album is here.

On the Labour Day long weekend, Steven, Sharon, Dad and I went backpacking up to Lake Garibaldi, about 20 km north of Whistler. Thinking that there would be a lot of people going up for the last long weekend of the summer, and seeing that the weather forecast showed Saturday as the only day with sun, we all took Friday off work to go up early.

After having to get a new stove because we couldn’t get the right gas for our old one, we managed to start our hike around 2:30. We got to the lake roughly 3 hours later, which we thought was quite good time. It was drizzling throughout, but it wasn’t too bad in the trees. We found a couple of campsites close together and set up our tents. Steven and Sharon were sleeping under a tarp that they got as a wedding present, which looked a little too hard core for dad and I.

Anyway, we woke up on Saturday and got to watch the mist burn off over the lake. After breakfast we decided to hike up to Panorama ridge rather than black tusk, and we had spectacular views all around. We were also lucky that the wild flowers were all in full bloom, which is actually quite a bit later than usual. That evening we also got to hear the park rangers talk about the park - how the lake/mountains were formed, as well as descriptions of the different plants and animals around.

On Sunday we packed up our tents just as it started to rain, and headed back down to the car. It rained steadily on us the whole way down. About 2km from the end, Sharon rolled her ankle, but she was able to make it the rest of the way with the help of her hiking poles. At the car, we discovered that a couple of mice had managed to sneak in somehow, and at least one of them made it back with us to horeshoe bay, and perhaps further. We couldn’t find them, or figure out how they got in! Maybe they just wanted a ride back in to town.

I’ve put all the pictures on our Picasa web album.

We met Amy and John at the Easton State Park campground this past weekend. It was a bit southeast of Seattle, so roughly half way between Vancouver and Portland. The weather didn’t look that good, but ended up being okay. It rained on us yesterday, but not while we were setting up or taking down our tents. We also managed to pass some of the time in the local saloon!

We walked around Easton Lake for a couple of hours, which was really nice. There was some sort of children’s camp that was on the trail at the same time as us. There were about 20 kids, plus the supervisors, so we didn’t see a whole lot of wildlife.

Our big project for the weekend was cutting through a log with our dull hatchet and 5 inch folding saw. It took us a couple of days, but we triumphed in the end. Unfortunately, we were informed by the park ranger that the log was “state property,” and that it was a $150 fine to damage it. He let us off with a warning, though.

See pictures of us fighting the log, and all the other adventures of the weekend here.

This weekend we went back to Strawberry Point, on lillooet lake, just past Pemberton. We’ve been a few times before, and it is actually the site of our first camping trip together.

The activities consited mostly of eating, reading, and chopping/sawing wood to make fire.

The full picture gallery is here.

Theses are the pictures from adventures that we had before the website was in its current blog form.

Dad’s Birthday (June 2006) - Birthday dinner at our place
Cheakamus Lake (June 2006) - Backpacking trip with Theresa, Dad and MOM!
Philadelphia (May 2006) - Weekend trip from my a work trip to NY
Italy (April 2006) - 2 Week adventure for Chris and Theresa!
New York (March 2006) - Day trip to Manhattan during my first work trip.

These are the pictures from 2005:

Christmas - We went to California for Christmas with the Putkeys. We visited Megan in San Francisco and then went to Meadow Vista. We had a second Christmas back in Vancouver afterward.

4H (October 2005) - The traditional Happy birthday, Hat, Halloween, Happy birthday (2 birthdays!) party.

Bowron Lakes (July/August 2005) - a week long canoe/camping trip in the middle of BC.

Van Dusen Gardens (July 2005) - Beautiful gardens in the middle of Vancouver.

Toronto (April 2005) - UBC reunion. Karyn, Mike, Sam and I visit Dave in T.

Thailand, Penang, and Vietnam (2004/2005) - The annual Christmas trip to see Mom and Dad. Sharon and Theresa came too.

A couple pages made from 2003 pictures:
Christmas in California (December) - Spending Christmas with the Putkeys!

Manchester United Vs Celtic (July) - Day trip to Seattle to see Manchester United play Celtic in an exhibition.

Mount St. Helens and Josh Graduation (June) - Trip down to Portland for Josh’s graduation. We camped near Mount St. Helens on the way.

Thailand, Penang, and Cambodia (2002/2003) - Asian adventures with the Herberts from Bath.

Pictures taken during 2002:

• Thailand, Penang, and Cambodia (2002/2003) - Asian adventures with the Herberts from Bath.
• Saskatoon (November) - Mike and Sam’s housewarming in Saskatoon.
• Seattle (September) - Trip to see Dave Mathews at the Gorge at George, and a weekend in Seattle.
• Diamond Head (July) - Backpacking with Amy and Josh.
• Thailand and Penang (2001/2002) - Our first trip to Thailand with my parents living there.