Backpacking Deep into the Mountains with my Dog - Mt. Findlay

Mother Nature is a meat grinder let's just dive right into it once again I'm back in southern BC I decided to give it a second chance and hopefully the forest fires do not come back only good thing that came out of that big Heat Wave is that it baked the heck out of the mountains got rid of all the Avalanches and from what I've seen so far the snowpack has been very good so I'm headed for Mount Findlay I think it'll take about four or five days to do this the tempting as it is to try to be a hero and crush it out and a couple I got to be realistic I know that's not going to happen and uh what's the point of Russian you know it's my favorite place to be gotta enjoy the journey I was here about a month ago with the chainsaw and I cleaned up the first 12 kilometers so it'll be a cruise and the next 12 kilometers might be slower going depending on how many trees they got to climb over and after that from what I understand not gonna be pretty much bushwhacking as I go up uh Granite Creek tomorrow's supposed to be rainy but if I can make it to the base of the mountain and be set up for Saturday that's my ideal window and I managed to contact someone who did a summit about 30 years ago they told me there's one difficult water crossing and if I can make it up to the South Ridge line it's really blocky and uh it's anywhere from class three to five depending on how I tackle it that's all I have to go on for this is the farthest I've ever been out here the trail is still in decent shape I'm holding a good Pace probably hike for another two hours call it a day I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a lot slower going well I just started to get a tinge to that feeling that I'm far out and alone with a dog Rocco counts his company after all she did plan all this out and drive me to the trailhead I'm just along for the ride I started out today with a hiking pool whatever happened to that I actually found that pole on a trail a couple years ago maybe it was just ready to find a new owner so tonight I picked a spot away from the river so I can actually hear if bears are approaching in the night I honestly prefer to Cowboy camp with no tent because if one does come then I'd have full 360 degree aim with the spray whereas like right now I'm trapped a tent is just just a false sense of security all it does is keep the mosquitoes off the in the night but that's it for today I will see you guys tomorrow foreign I like those little Starbucks Vias they pack a slight punch to start your day these uh these really long days we didn't start till like one o'clock in the afternoon yesterday and uh today I have to cover a similar amount of distance if not less so there's no rush it's just like sleep in take it easy we'll get there yesterday at the sign-in register at the trailhead I noticed someone else was here about two weeks ago they also listed Mount Finley as their destination I wonder if they made it but for activities they listed skiing and hunting but I can't I can't fathom it how does someone carry your skiing equipment hunting equipment all your camping gear this far up either they had a horse or they were a horse I was honestly questioning whether or not to bring my Keen sandals for the water crossing coming up today they got some half to them next time I stop in at Walmart I just got to buy some of those cheap Featherlite ones with the foam bottom the benefit to these key Newports though is that you can actually hike in them when you need to and cover distance I've I've climbed up mountains in these sandals you just have to make sure you you spend the extra money on the on the leather version I find the fabric ones always rip apart too quickly this cabin is privately owned and by the sounds of it you have to pay for a guided tour in order to stay in it and I believe this is the point where the trail will become rougher we're gonna find out soon what the heck so far this has been beautiful Trail there's a fort coming up soon that could be the point at which it degrades if not I feel like I've won the lottery on this Mount Findlay finally making an appearance that's the glaciated Northeast face of it I gotta head around to the South Ridge Line This is where a guide would come in handy I'm not seeing any fork in the trail that'll take me up Granite Creek this uh this one seems to want to go up more Joe Creek and that's no good for me go up a little further see if I can find something I already got it I think this is it it's just really hidden and hard to see oh I walked past the entrance of this Trail twice but now that I'm on it once again it's totally decent and if that was the difficult water crossing then I'm laughing I imagine I'll come back at some point and explore the other Fork of his Trail up more Joe Creek but just a lot of exploring all these nooks and crannies and the Purcells and Rockies and the coast ranges some of these places are never visited and they're all spectacular there's Adventures you can plan out that are just way more than enough to crush a person and it's also nice to do stuff it's like close to home it's gotten messy through here it's a labyrinth just keep searching for signs the trees have been chainsawed Rocco got all growly so I figured there's something up ahead so I pulled out my bear spray release the safety the first thing I did was trip on a branch next thing I know the trigger is jammed open on it and I exhausted like 80 percent of it so now that I'm deep in Bear territory I pretty much disarmed myself there might be like one quick burst left in it swear sometimes I'd say all the time my worst enemy is myself so stupid it looks like I've reached the end of the trail I'll hike another kilometer up this Valley or until it looks like I reach a spot where I should start the real climbing up the mountain and I'll set up camp there I feel like I keep winning the lottery with this Trek it's gonna be a beautiful pristine day here for climbing up a mountain I thought I picked a good spot to sleep last night except for it wasn't that tiles pile was all full of rodents and every time one made a noise Rocco get all torqued up it was almost 2 A.M by the time she settled down and I'm exhausted it's gonna take me a minute to get the engine all fired up try to gain the Alpine from this forest and we'll see what kind of battle we're up against I'm starting to get excited for the main event here I'll follow the snow up as high as I can and hop onto that rock and hopefully I can find a way up that thing it looks steep enough I'll do a little climbing so long as one mistake doesn't mean I fall a couple thousand feet to a terrible demise we expect the first 35 years of my life in Ontario my hands and legs used to get so shaky in some situations but I have slowly developed bit of a comfort zone I'm leaning more towards the South face than the South Ridge line which started to get really spicy and exposed I gotta consider Rocco's safety as well not too concerned about her when we're on a nice broad slope like this I'm headed for the East Ridge line now I'm running out of options let this be the one it's kind of a low end class four over here like this is the answer I was looking for yes more people have been up here than I expected but still not a lot and the last descent was in 2019 and I'm pretty sure this is a first a first dog ascent there was just one really exposed step coming up there where if I slipped I would have been sliding way down onto that Northeast face and that Glacier and likely I would have done a hole in one as I funneled down into a big crevasse but my watch says 53 kilometers back to the van and very surprisingly I have cell service here so I texted my mom still alive at this point and I have a really long hike back to the van but I'm so glad that worked so happy to be here in this uh in this present moment it's not really the same when I can't do a drone flyover so I'll just take some pictures and try to get safely back down here to my tent and hopefully have enough time to pack it up and make a little bit of distance back towards the van I've decided on my way back down once I reach my Camp spot I'm going to call it a day but I'll likely try to move my tent away from that Fraggle Rock there so we can actually get some rest tonight and when I was up in the summit I just had enough cell service to check the weather forecast in the next few days are clear and sunny so I can divide that distance up on the return trying my best to be a little bit careful with Rocco and like limit her daily distance to around about 20 kilometers that's one of the hardest climbs I've done in a while and I'm glad it was it was just spicy enough to be fun and interesting with all the route finding that I had to do but I'm glad there were options I wasn't committed to that class five South Ridgeline but if it was the only choice I might have tried to do it because I came a long way to get that Summit so I've been doing an ongoing review of this Garmin Fenix 7x watch I bought it last year because the battery life on it is just huge and I knew that I was going to get into more of these multi-day trips I keep it in the extended power mode which makes the GPS slightly less accurate but it's hardly even noticed and over the last three days it's dropped down to 70 percent so 10 a day it goes down quicker if I keep it on the map navigation screen but I haven't had to use that too much because uh this has mostly been Trail but yeah I'm really happy with this purchase and it makes all the difference when I'm bushwhacking just to be able to look down at my wrist and know that I'm perfectly on course it's highly likely it's my first and last time being here so I'm just gonna soak it in enjoy my time and uh tomorrow starts slowly Meandering on back to the van but I've hit my goal post uh thanks everyone for coming along this far hope everyone's doing good and I will see you in the next episode this is really tasty but it needs some hot sauce it's missing that [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Foresty Forest

Views: 204,595

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Id: CgIjNJcIhDY

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023