Baden Powell Trail - Knee Knacker - 29.3.2007

The Baden Powell trail which traverses Vancouver's North Shore Mountains from Horseshoe Bay to Deep Cove. Both ends of the trail are close to or at Sea Level and the high point on the course is 4,000 feet at the peak of Black Mountain. The race as a whole has some 16,000 feet of vertical climb and descent. The Baden Powell trail is a scenic and very technical trail through a Pacific Northwest rain forest. Most of the trail is within the forest, although there are some absolutely spectacular vistas at a number of points along the trail. The trail is about 50km long.

6:35am I started at the east end of the Baden Powell Trail in Deep Cove at sea level.

6:56 am I stand about one hundred meter higher and enjoy the sunrise and the view over a part of Indian Arm, still not sure how fare I will make it today and how hard it will be...50km are a long way...and 16.000 feet (about 5.3km) up and down...

lots of cool things to see along the trail, little creeks, waterfalls, wildlife, views of the city and the

Pacific, rain forest, mountains, ....

Capilano Lake with the Lions in the background (close to Grouse Mountain)

I arrived here around 1pm...about half of the trail still lays in front of me, esspecially the part in higher terrain with lots of snow. I was quite tired but I felt like I can finish the trail today, so I kept hiking towards Cypress mountain...

...at around 700m elevation the snow started...I didn´t bring the snowshoes because I didn´t want to carry them all the way, so it was not easy to walk on the snow....it was slippery wet snow and I sunk in several times.

Just to give you a little bit of an idea where the trail goes through and how long it is...I did the blue part and gave up around 4pm at the ski are on Cypress Mountain. After almost 10 hours straight hiking with almost no breaks I was too exhausted from all the hiking in the snow for about 5km up the hill. So the last 11km and about 1km of vertical climb down to Horsheshoe Bay I missed. Fortunately I could catch one of the last cars that headed down to West Vancouver from where I caught a bus to Vancouver. Who knows maybe I will finish the rest of trail sometimes in the future...or do the whole trail again in the summer once the snow is gone.