An old trip-report on BCMC, about hiking up Seymour, to above the snow-line, on 20 May 2018.

On the day before, the forecast changed to rain. Thankfully, the morning’s forecast showed only 1-2 mm, so I went anyway.

Having done the route numerous times before, including many times on snow, I took only a few items with me–mainly, the snowboard, boots and shovel. I hiked up in sandals, as I do, then switched to the boots when I hit the snow-line. Unlike Grouse Mountain, there is more of a need for crampons/boots on Seymour at this time: more of the trails leading to the resort are snow-covered, at least if you approach via Goldie Lake.

At the junction between Perimeter Trail and Old Cabin Trail, I chose to take the latter, as I often have. But, this time, I could not find the route. Allan Creek forced me back, not having found its bridge. Two over-sized, off-leash dogs–with their owners no longer in sight–caused further delays. Eventually, I reverted back to Perimeter, and hiked towards the Goldie/Flower Lake area. When I reached the bottom of the Unicorn run, I chose to hike up it. While this could have been a suitable spot for building a ramp, I decided to do so further up: Unicorn’s snow melts faster than more shaded spots.

Unsurprisingly, there are large sun-cups everywhere. Not as much pine needles, but there is lots of other such debris over the snow. It is fine, but covered the base of my snowboard when, later, I finished the day by snowboarding down the Northlands and Unicorn runs. The snow felt like glue, and felt like it was rubbing the remnants of wax off my board. It was a struggle to control the board over the snow-cups and the sticky surface. And, in the evening, I had to use a lot of paper towel to clean the brown smears off the base!

I won’t go into the details of building the ramp. The snow-cups were a problem, of course, but the absence of sunshine eased the work.

Upon return, I hiked from the Goldie run towards Perimeter Trail. But, despite having done it many times over the years, I lost my way. I spent close to an hour on reverting an re-reverting. Where I had lost my way was the aptly named Dead End trail. While in summer it is easily skippable, due to the brush, it is very misleading over snow: there is no brush, and so its path looks wide open; many foot-prints lead into it, and the returning ones look as if they belonged to arrivals not departees; the sign-post is hidden in a deep, snow-free tree-well. Though I quickly realized that I was not on the right route, I wasted much time on the hope that the area’s maze of trails would eventually connect that path to Perimeter. Oh well!

On the trails, the snow-line was, if I recall, about 200 meters south of the Old Cabin Trail. The snow-pack’s depth, as observed at various creeks and other points, varied between 1 and 2 meters. Typically, I saw a height of 1.5 meters to this consolidated snow, in areas of no/shallow gradient.