gettin' palefaced........
Ok, so that "overview" ended up with the four cats waking up sunday morning in cultus lake. From here the 'plan' was that hammer would ride with me towards chilliwack lake (a very large, very cold and sparsely populated lake about 60km east of Cultus) from where we would turn north and have to cross paleface mountain to arrive in Hope (by our route appox. 100km from cultus) where Haemish's truck would be. From there, he could head back to Vancouver in time for work on monday morning. An apparently flawless plan............
As we were enjoying our breakfast on the patio of a nearby restaurant, haemish's number of visits to the 'little boys room' was growing at an alarming rate. He was apparently feeling a little too 'loose' this morning. As hammer's adventuring partner i have grown accustom to him overcoming great physical ailments once we 'hit the trail'.
me, addressing haemish just prior to leaving on one of our many adventures in taiwan
"you gonna be ok, man?"
hammer, as he is coughing up some of the infamous green flem which, as he has often informed me, signifies infection
"yeah, i'll be fine once we get out there"
This morning's reply was something about the 'salt remedy', a trick he had learned while hiking in Nepal.
With Ty and Timmy seeing us off we headed on towards the chill of the mighty chilliwack lake. After getting lost twice(the second time adding an additional 10km of off-road climbing) we finally arrived at the base of paleface at around 5:30 to the sprinkling of rain. After some, actually no, deliberation we decided that an evening crossing of paleface was the best course of action. As we understood it, it was about 10km straight up from there, then down and about 25km on a forest road out to Hope. Being as haemish was not carrying any gear, i went through mine and found enough for the two of us to be comfortable assuming the current weather situation would persist. Also at this point i must note that after determining that this mission would require a significant amount of time in the rain i proceeded , with great excitement, to squeeze on my newly purchased cycling booties over my shoes, giving them, to my great pleasure, that seemless 'moon boot' look of the latest generation of basketball shoes, yet still having the space in the bottom to 'clip in' to the pedal. Earlier, my booties purchase had promted a somewhat disaproving sigh from my soon to be cycling partner, Alison, which i was already able to translate as a "don't get those things they are useless and are only really for cheeseball yuppies who what to look the part", but apparently the "cheeseball yuppy" in me couldn't resist. Needless to say after about an hour of trudging up the mountain in the mud, as the intensity of the rain had increased, the booties were torn to shreds. I kept the remaining shreds of them in my bag with the idea that they were still usable, "nothing a little electrician's tape couldn't fix up", until somewhere in manitoba when they were finally 'retired' after their one valient tour of duty.
So we continued to trudge up paleface, unable to actually ride the bikes because the narrow trail had reached saturation point. Undeterred we ventured until around midnight when we simultaneously realized we weren't at the top yet, due to some earlier crossroads we weren't even sure we were still on the right trail, it was too dark and wet to go back down, we'd have to spend the night up there, we were totally soaked and freezing and we only had one sleeping bag! After this sobering realization set in, we checked in my waterproof trailer bag for the minimal remaining dry clothes, took out the tent and together tried to determine which was the best puddle to set it up in. Then squeezed our way into my sleeping bag and slept. At the crack of dawn, after a less than refreshing sleep, we loaded up the bikes and rode back down to chilliwack lake immediately turning into one of the few nearby cabins in search of hot water. Little did we know, we had just entered the domain of 'the bird man'............................
As we were enjoying our breakfast on the patio of a nearby restaurant, haemish's number of visits to the 'little boys room' was growing at an alarming rate. He was apparently feeling a little too 'loose' this morning. As hammer's adventuring partner i have grown accustom to him overcoming great physical ailments once we 'hit the trail'.
me, addressing haemish just prior to leaving on one of our many adventures in taiwan
"you gonna be ok, man?"
hammer, as he is coughing up some of the infamous green flem which, as he has often informed me, signifies infection
"yeah, i'll be fine once we get out there"
This morning's reply was something about the 'salt remedy', a trick he had learned while hiking in Nepal.
With Ty and Timmy seeing us off we headed on towards the chill of the mighty chilliwack lake. After getting lost twice(the second time adding an additional 10km of off-road climbing) we finally arrived at the base of paleface at around 5:30 to the sprinkling of rain. After some, actually no, deliberation we decided that an evening crossing of paleface was the best course of action. As we understood it, it was about 10km straight up from there, then down and about 25km on a forest road out to Hope. Being as haemish was not carrying any gear, i went through mine and found enough for the two of us to be comfortable assuming the current weather situation would persist. Also at this point i must note that after determining that this mission would require a significant amount of time in the rain i proceeded , with great excitement, to squeeze on my newly purchased cycling booties over my shoes, giving them, to my great pleasure, that seemless 'moon boot' look of the latest generation of basketball shoes, yet still having the space in the bottom to 'clip in' to the pedal. Earlier, my booties purchase had promted a somewhat disaproving sigh from my soon to be cycling partner, Alison, which i was already able to translate as a "don't get those things they are useless and are only really for cheeseball yuppies who what to look the part", but apparently the "cheeseball yuppy" in me couldn't resist. Needless to say after about an hour of trudging up the mountain in the mud, as the intensity of the rain had increased, the booties were torn to shreds. I kept the remaining shreds of them in my bag with the idea that they were still usable, "nothing a little electrician's tape couldn't fix up", until somewhere in manitoba when they were finally 'retired' after their one valient tour of duty.
So we continued to trudge up paleface, unable to actually ride the bikes because the narrow trail had reached saturation point. Undeterred we ventured until around midnight when we simultaneously realized we weren't at the top yet, due to some earlier crossroads we weren't even sure we were still on the right trail, it was too dark and wet to go back down, we'd have to spend the night up there, we were totally soaked and freezing and we only had one sleeping bag! After this sobering realization set in, we checked in my waterproof trailer bag for the minimal remaining dry clothes, took out the tent and together tried to determine which was the best puddle to set it up in. Then squeezed our way into my sleeping bag and slept. At the crack of dawn, after a less than refreshing sleep, we loaded up the bikes and rode back down to chilliwack lake immediately turning into one of the few nearby cabins in search of hot water. Little did we know, we had just entered the domain of 'the bird man'............................
posted by Rob the biker | 11:30 a.m.
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