Recently there’s been lots of buzz online about how women’s hiking clothing and gear is inadequate. It’s something I’ve written about before. This great article from Hannah Weinberger explains that historically there hasn’t been much gear designed to fit women’s bodies. In recent years the outdoor industry has tried to fix that, with varying degrees …
Hiking
You don’t have to go far in BC to really get out into the wilds and off the grid. One of my favourites is a road trip on the Pacific Marine Circle Route on Southern Vancouver Island. This road trip starts and ends in Victoria, one of BC’s biggest cities, but most of the route …
The southern end of Vancouver Island in British Columbia has the perfect climate for growing trees: It gets plenty of rain and the climate is fairly mild (for Canada!). The area around the little town of Port Renfrew sits right in the middle of this perfect climate, so it’s no surprise that some of the …
At the end of September I went on an OMG-summer-is-ending-must-go-camping-before-it’s-too-late trip to Wells Gray Provincial Park near Kamloops, BC. Somehow, I had never been there before. It has a reputation as being a huuuuuge provincial park with tons of ginormous lakes for canoeing but I didn’t know much else about it. It’s not nearly as …
If you think of fall hiking, you are probably picturing strolling through a beautiful maple forest with red and gold leaves everywhere. That kind of scene is quintessentially autumn, but it’s kind of an East Coast cliche. We don’t have much of that near Vancouver. What we do have, however, is a pretty unique fall …
I do a LOT of hiking around Vancouver. I’ve hiked pretty much every trail that exists within an hour of the city. (And some that don’t exist… or used to exist… or I maybe was taking a short cut? But that’s a whole other story.) My readers often ask me to recommend a hike when …
There’s something special about hiking and camping on an isolated west coast with nothing between you and Japan but the wild Pacific Ocean. Shi Shi Beach in Washington’s Olympic National Park gives you that experience, and it’s a short and easy hike to get there. I’ve made several trips to Shi Shi Beach since the …
If you’ve been shopping for hiking or backpacking gear recently, you may have noticed some women’s specific gear. I’m not talking about clothing or shoes (obviously we need those)… I’m talking about backpacks, sleeping bags and more. Often this stuff seems to follow the same tired formula: “Shrink it and pink it”. Brands make the …
Recently I wrote a post called “You Killed A Bear” that ended up getting way more online attention than I had anticipated. My message in that post was that less experienced hikers should read up about bear safety before they head out for a hike or go backcountry camping. Lots of people asked questions about …
When you think of waterfalls in Squamish, you think of Shannon Falls or maybe Brandywine Falls. Those are both amazingly tall waterfalls with easy tourist-in-flipflops-friendly walks to a viewing platform, overflowing parking lots and tons of people with selfie sticks.. But what if I told you there were other awesome waterfalls in Squamish that you …