The Hills are Alive May 18-19, 2012

The Over the Hill Hikers welcomed two visitors to Island hiking ... Lawrence and Miranda Hill, now how appropriate is that! Larry is the author of many novels, the best known, is the Book of Negroes and Miranda's first book of short stories, Sleeping Funny, is due out this Fall. Miranda is also spearheading www.projectbookmarkcanada.ca  check it out! The idea is to locate text from fiction or poetry within the story in the exact place in the landscape.

The weather was good, so we chose to head out to the west coast's Rennell Sound to hike into Bonanza Beach ... no recognizable tsunami debris, just a few small pillows of snow coming over the "hill". We all had the "thrill" of seeing a loaded logging truck heading right at us ... the drivers were wonderful, holding us in spots and radioing ahead enabling us to survive the trip.

Sandwisches on the beach, chilly breeze, in-coming tide, many deer, one big bear, alas no glass balls [although I'm not sure the Hills really understood the potential thrill of finding one]

Hike Two ... because we had authors, it seemed a logical plan to head out to the Golden Spruce, now well known through John Vaillant's award winning non-fiction, The Golden Spruce. Luckily the weather continued dry, but still a cool breeze ... so after visiting Skidegate's Kaay we headed to Port Clements and out the Justkatla road to the Golden Spruce Trail where we were all enchanted by the amazing trees along the Yakoun.; big trees, big stumps, fantastic tree roots, holding up trees on tip toes! Even some ladies' slippers.

After the Golden Spruce Trail we headed to Tlell and the Andrew's Place hike through those amazing mossy spires, up the steps and out across the dunes to the beach.

Unexpectedly we also did a stump tour ... who knew there was one!

With a possibility of 7 Port/Tlell area hikes we settled for 2 about as varied as you can get ... another full day and the Hills have the northern Graham Island still to enjoy.

O-T-H subset ... Intrepid Geocachers May 13, 2012

Not tired enough from the previous day's hike; and when the weather looked pretty good the call went out to find the geocache "Flossie and Mop" ... which was rumoured to be difficult to get to. We checked that someone had found it relatively recently so off we went, gps in hand.

Heading northward we turned onto Lawn Hill Road and figured out to go on to almost 2 k past the bridge ... then we headed out along the very old North Road corduroy, established in 1910?. Wet and slippery on the logs but some great woodland pathways too ... especially with the filtered sunlight shining through ... a bit over an hour walk in.

We admired the cairns along the trail and the fire damaged snags ... saw some "smelly lilies" but few flowers and virtually no signs of wildlife although the odd bird song did sing through.

We had been warned that the logging had made the pathway difficult to complete but once we got to it we were undaunted and scrambled over the logs across the "new" logging road and over the next log pile and then continued down the trail for another 20 minutes or so, until we found the Flossie and Mop sign. Next we followed the taped trail into the "fields" and then to the geozone where we quickly found the cache. Then we took some time trying to decide which goodies to swap for ...

After we had signed in and congratulated ourselves on our success ... a cellphone rang, and it was a call from England!

By the time we hiked back to the car we decided that we should try to find the logging road ... this involved heading further northward to Lawn Hill North Rd and driving in several kms before finally getting to the crossing [very hard to see but we had taken the gps co-ordinates] ... as we got quite high up there were some interesting views from some unfamiliar angles. 

One thing we did notice was a sign on the way in pointing out the trail to Prettyjohn's and the Pontoons ... I'm told by a pioneer family in the area that it is Pettijohn and Pontoon. So maybe we can get those corrections made.

Shipwreck May 12, 2012

Intrepid Trekkers today ... Saturday seemed to work for the most people so that was it as we nervously watched the weather forecasts. We had a report from Tlell before we left that the weather was overcast and bit windy but ok! So off the 6 of us went ... the tides were great for a mid 10 k day walk. After seeing the wind at the Bridge Parking lot we knew it would be windy but we all decided to try it ... could always turn back.

At several stops we all checked but onward we went ... does it look windy!  Going northward was not bad with the wind behind us ... once we got to the Pseuta we sort of ducked into the hull to get out of the wind for a snack.















Then some of us went up to the winter winds uncovered bottom of the hull ... the most any of us had seen. It is a very long piece that is exposed, so long that there is now lots of drift wood piled within it.

Some treasures were collected: agates, shells, and even a "torso" ... a great day was had by all but admittedly there were some tired bones and muscles.