Mt. Seymour

It's been a week now since Ami and I hiked Mt. Seymour, but the stillness of its snowy trails still haunts me. What we thought was going to be a leisurely meander through the forest ended up a slippery slog around the mountain's cross-country ski trails. To say we were "unprepared" would be like saying The Incredible Hulk can be "a little feisty". To our credit, we managed to bring a couple extra layers--including polyprops. This, of course, is Ami's doing. If it were up to me, we would have found ourselves with snow up to our Speedos.

So with snow pack between knee- and waist-height, we tried to step lightly. Careful as we were, Ami and both misjudged the thickness of the ice and plunged a leg into a rushing stream of snow melt. While I was wearing hiking boots, Ami's feet were protected only by light running shoes. I pointed this out many times along the way, to which she retorted with a list of my many personal flaws, sprinkled with the most colorful expletives.

Yet all the cursing and falling-through-ice-into-rushing-streams was soon forgotten when we reached our goal: the semi-frozen Goldie Lake. (mind you, we didn't know it was semi-frozen until we arried). There, we stood between evergreen trunks hugged by deep spring snow, looked up and saw fantails darting through branches. The only sound was their song and the distant stream, which from where we stood sounded like light applause. Although we were only 30 minutes outside of Vancouver, civilization was the farthest thing from our minds.

Check out more photos of Mt. Seymour.