Hike to Larch Valley

Recently we hiked into Larch Valley. We’ve been there a couple of times before but that was probably about 30 years ago. On the last occasion we hiked up Sentinel Pass and down through Paradise Valley. We had no desire to even start the climb toward the pass on this trip. I would have to say that I was one of the more ancient folks doing the hike. The trail was busy but it wasn’t even close to wall-to-wall people. There were many groups of people probably in the 20-30 year-old range. There were a fair number of folks with dogs and one person had a cat on a leash. She was on her way up carrying the cat when we were on our way down. There were several couples with small children and the kids were climbing up the trail with the seriousness of seasoned hikers. There was a couple with an old dog who were going about the same pace as I was and, judging by the hair colour of both of them, they were my age or possibly a bit older.

While I don’t want to go back to being a different age, I do admit to a tiny twinge of jealousy as the younger people passed us chatting without being out of breath and quickly disappearing around bends in the trail. I can remember being able to walk quickly and being a bit impatient with people who were making slow, steady progress up a trail. It’s taking me a while but I’m learning to start out slowly and at a pace I can keep. I’d love to rush off from the trailhead with enthusiasm but that only means that I end up tired, cranky, and gasping at which point the enjoyment is gone. So I go slowly and step aside to let people pass while my hiking companions kindly adapt to my pace.

We noticed one young woman carrying two camera bodies and remarked on her dedication as she passed us. When we got up to the lake, where the trail to the pass takes off, we saw her again. One of her hiking companions stood against the grey blue of the rocks and the yellow of the larches in a sleeveless maroon gown. Turns out she and her fiance were there to have engagement photos taken. I admire their creativity and fortitude since it was a little on the chilly side. Still, the photographer and the couple seemed to be enjoying themselves and I couldn’t help wishing that in 20 or 30 years they will be able to look back on this day with great fondness. 

At home after the hike I was tired and a bit stiff and the larches were past their brilliant best; nevertheless, it was worth getting up at 6:30 a.m. to catch the shuttle at Lake Louise. It was worth the fogged up glasses from wearing a mask on the bus. It was worth carrying the extra layers of clothing even though I didn’t need to wear them and, most of all, it was worth the effort of climbing up into the valley so we could spend the day with friends in the mountains among the larches while whiskey jacks and ravens looked on.

Some of my favourite camping gear

We haven’t been camping as much in the past couple of years so this year I’m delighted to be out for more than a week. It isn’t the same as travelling across Canada to the East Coast or to Vancouver Island or to Yukon and the Northwest Territories. With Covid 19 this summer it’s just nice to be away from the city and in a situation where it’s not difficult to maintain physical distance.

Despite the fact that we have a large water tank in the van we’ve always travelled with a five-gallon blue water jug. We tend to spend as much time outside as we can and that jug allows us to have a source of drinking and cooking water on the picnic table right next to where we are working. When it’s the dead of winter I sometimes escape by reading about various camping hacks. One of the ones I found was to take a jug that detergent comes in and use it as a hand-washing station. I’ve been saving such a jug for a couple of years and this is the first time we’ve brought it and used it. It works well. Pushing the little red button is easier than turning the stopper on the blue jug and it stops immediately when you release the bulb. Using those two portable water sources helps us to extend the time between filling the van’s tank. At night the two jugs sit between the seats in the cab out of the way.

Another much-appreciated piece of kit is the shelter that goes over the picnic table. it saved our bacon in 2014 when we were hiding out from the tail end of a hurricane. It kept the rain off, extended our living area, and allowed us to cook outside. We have a two burner stove in the van and find it is much more convenient to cook and eat outside whenever we can. There is more space and better scenery. There are a few pin holes in the roof of the shelter that I’ve patched with hockey tape and six years on it’s holding up fine. Not really expensive when you amortize the cost over a number of years. It does take up quite a bit of space in the van though.

Last summer when we were out camping we had to return to the city because we forgot Richard’s coffee. At home he has an espresso machine which he loves. Somehow coffee grounds in a melitta filter with hot water poured over them just isn’t the same. I went looking for other solutions and found an aeropress and a manual coffee grinder. It delights me to see Richard happily grinding his favourite beans and enjoying his two cups of coffee in the morning.

Another delight is a pair of solar-powered, blow-up, lights. I think I got them at Lee Valley. You let the air out during the day and set them somewhere that they can charge in the sun. At night you can hang them up and they give a nice warm light and are certainly bright enough to read by. The van has LED lights that are slightly colder in colour temperature so we often use the blow up lights which are homier. They weigh hardly anything and will substitute for a flashlight as well.

Perhaps the best gear we have is our sleeping bags. We bought them to hike the Chilkoot seven years ago and they are so light and so comfortable that we sometimes forgo the quilts we have at home and sleep instead in our sleeping bags. I know it’s weird but until we can get a comforter that is even close in comfort to these bags, we’ll continue to use them for more than camping in the summer. They are mummy bags and we’ve found it is very comfortable to leave the bags unzipped and throw them over top of us like a duvet. The bags have the extra advantage of a pocket for your feet.

Another acquisition for the Chilkoot hike was a jetboil stove. It isn’t great for cooking four-course meals but it is fantastic for boiling water. We have a dedicated box that holds the jetboil, the coffee and tea, the sparker (the internal sparker on the jetboil no longer works) and the milk which we take out of the fridge just before R makes the morning hot drinks. Then we sit out and watch the squirrels, crows and songbirds go about their business as we start our day. We’ve debated getting rid of the jetboil because we don’t need it but we’ve decided that it is so handy and efficient that we’ll hang onto it. Knowing that we can boil water easily and quickly also gives me a sense of security when the wind blows the rain in.

Although I’m not within cell phone range at the moment I’m writing this on a portable keyboard connected via bluetooth to my phone. It seems to be quite satisfactory. The keyboard is easy to use and we can either charge our phones using the recreational battery in the van or using a power brick which is a new addition to our travel gear. We charged it when we were home and have yet to use up all the juice despite repeated charging of our phones. Of course, if we’re in a campground with power, we're all set.

I’d be truly neglectful if I didn’t mention my hiking boots. Having suffered through years of blisters while breaking in boots, it was an absolute delight to order boots online a week before the trip and have them arrive two days before we left. Even better, they fit from the moment I put them on and I’ve had no blisters. One day we hiked 12km and yesterday we hiked 14 km, hardly world record distances but long enough to make me want to take a rest day today and to appreciate my new boots. I hope they will last as long and take me to as many interesting places as the Keens did.

I’m sure there are other pieces of gear that deserve to be in this post although I can’t think of what they are at the moment. I’ll stop here and quietly appreciate them as they come to mind. What a privilege to be able to be so comfortable in the outdoors.

Bill's last hike

 August 23, 2020, six months since the world changed as a result of Covid 19. At the moment I’m in a campground in the East Kananaskis. We've been here a week. It’s an OHV campground (off highway vehicle I didn't know what that stood for) campground and the trails run right past our campsite. Since nobody is going far this year, there has been a run on campground reservations. This was the only reservation we could get for more than a couple of days so we took it.

One of the main reasons we wanted to come out this summer was to scatter Bill’s ashes in the mountains. We’ve talked many times about making this trip and when we did the hike it was a very hot, but very beautiful day with a blue sky and views of the mountains to the west. We knew the meadow we wanted, lots of wildflowers in the spring and an unbroken view of the mountains. We found some shade under a tree and had our lunch. Down the hill there was a very healthy-looking juniper bush. It was a fitting place, protected from the winds that sweep the hillside, with a view through the trees that grow taller each year. When we first began coming to the meadow, there were hardly any trees. Now there is a scattering and they are taller than I am.

In the grand scheme of things, it may not matter what happens to our ashes, but it gave us peace and a sense of finality to return Bill to the mountains that he loved and that he taught us to also love. It pleased us to know that he would have approved of the place his final hike ended.

Marian vs. PL 400

Ok so let’s talk about Goof Off. Not goofing off because we all know about that. Goof Off is a nasty chemical used to remove goo and I’ve been using it liberally lately. We’ve been noticing for a couple of years that the non-stick treads were coming off the running boards on the camper van. This year I got fed up and pulled them the rest of the way off, thinking it would be a simple matter to replace the worn ones with new ones.

I found, what I thought was, the perfect rubber mat material. I very carefully cleaned off the old adhesive using WD40 and judiciously scraping at it with a putty knife. The process turned out very nicely and I was left with fairly clean and shiny fiberglass running boards. Having just been introduced to the wonders of construction adhesive on the recent baseboard project, I thought that would be the perfect way to stick down the new rubber mats.

I squirted a liberal amount onto the running boards and pressed the mats down. I duct-taped the mats so they would hold until the glue cured. I stood back and admired my work. The new mats looked fabulous and I was sure we were set for our upcoming camping trip.

When I went out the next morning the mats weren’t nice and flat the way I had left them the night before. They were kind of buckled where they wrapped over the edge. On closer inspection they weren’t really stuck down at all. The adhesive had stuck to the fiberglass but not to the rubber. Notice, in the photo, that the duct tape is the only thing holding the mat on.

You know how English teachers were always telling you to read the directions? Well I should have read all of the directions. In the fine print near the bottom was a little sentence explaining that the adhesive didn’t stick to some types of rubber.  Ok, I’ve now confirmed the truth of that statement. No problem, I thought. Although I was a little bit annoyed at my lack of foresight I figured I would just go at the adhesive with more WD40 and elbow grease and the running boards would be back in condition in no time. Then I could experiment with other means of sticking down the mats. I went at the dry, crusty adhesive with the WD40 and a putty knife. Let’s just say it wasn’t as co-operative as the last adhesive had been even though the mess looked similar. Right, so we went camping with crusty running boards and I took the putty knife and the WD40 with me.

One afternoon when we were sitting around camp, I tried again to get rid of the dried goop. I worked away at it until supper time and didn’t make much headway. I decided to leave it until we got back into internet land where I could do further research.

Who knew that I would be down a rabbit hole where fiberglass boats and corvettes lurked? The short answer to what I learned about the best way to remove construction adhesive is not to put it on something from which you’ll eventually want to remove it. I was reminded of canoeing days when some wiseguy said the best way to dry out a sleeping bag was not to get it wet. However, some of the suggestions were truly entertaining as I moved from construction adhesive specifically to how to remove decals. I never thought I could watch so many hours of people scrubbing, blotting and scraping. Some folks swore by petroleum jelly. Nope. Someone else said Crisco shortening. Didn’t try that one. Coconut oil was another one. Already tried mineral oil and I didn’t want to waste good peanut butter. One oil probably behaved much like another in this application. Magic Eraser was another suggestion. Nada. 

Another method that ranked highly for sticker removal was a wheel eraser. It’s some kind of synthetic disk that you chuck into a power drill and, like an eraser, it erodes and takes the gum and guck with it. I ordered one. Another very popular method was to use a heat gun. I have a heat gun. The only issue, for me, was that some of the sources I read said that fiberglass can soften at 212 degrees F and in order to strip paint, and I assume soften adhesive, you need a temperature of 300F. I’m a chicken when it comes to the possibility of igniting anything and I couldn’t bring myself to crank up the temperature on the heat gun to any more than 200F even though I told myself that I would keep the gun moving and that if the air coming out of the tip was 200F the fiberglass wouldn’t likely reach that temperature very readily. The heat may have softened the goop a little bit but there was still a lot of scraping and some gouging of the gel coat on the running boards that happened. 

Then there were the stronger chemical solutions. De-Solv-It seemed popular. I couldn’t find it locally and I didn’t want to wait for it. Goo Gone got mixed reviews. Goof Off got good reviews in all the YouTube videos I watched. When I came in cursing under my breath, Richard went on a mission to get Goof Off, heavy vinyl gloves, and scrub pads. I started in as instructed by soaking a rag in Goof Off and then rubbing at the adhesive. That did almost nothing. I remembered seeing one video where the guy just poured the stuff onto the surface and then scraped up the goop. I poured and discovered that the adhesive did soften and it was easier to scrape off as long as the adhesive was wet. There was still a problem with the really thick bits of goop.

Today I got fed up and took the palm sander to it. I’d already gouged the gel coat in several places and, although the Goof Off worked, my patience for sitting and scraping for hours on end had just about run out. I started with 150 grit sandpaper which took some of it off. Then I thought I’d try 80 grit paper. That worked more quickly but also chewed through the gel coat more easily.

Once I knocked down the highest peaks of goo I switched back to the 150, then to 220. I was able to get the running board pretty much levelled with the 220 so I went back to the Goof Off. I’m officially calling the removal part of the process done. The running boards aren’t pretty anymore and I’m probably going to have to do a little creative painting to cover up the gouges. In the meantime, Richard found and bought some anti-slip tape which is supposed to be permanent and which he thinks is what was on the running boards when we bought the van. We know from experience it’s not permanent but if it sticks I’m really hoping that by the time it starts to peel it will be a problem for the van’s next owner! Perhaps by the end of the week we’ll have the tape on the running boards and the scratches and gouges covered in a new coat of paint. One can always hope.