Things just seem to happen when I go on paddling trips with my mom. Williwaws, bugling moose, thunder and lightning, wildfires, mysterious wildlife screaming around the campsite at night, and bears. My mom? Unfazed. I’ll be crying; she’ll be laughing, and we’ll both be complaining, but we’ll have fun all the same. She’s where I…
In the days before hiking, prospectors and trappers were the original adventurers and explorers. Venturing deep into the wilderness, these were the men who learned the lay of the land, whose backcountry knowledge was second to none. One such man was Robert Allan “Volcanic” Brown, a prospector whose disappearance in the rugged Pitt Lake wilderness…
With so much variation in terrain, the most dangerous place to hike in BC is up for debate. There’s no question that Vancouver’s North Shore Mountains are a hotbed for search and rescue activity. Anywhere there are more people venturing into the backcountry, there will, in turn, be more misadventure. This is also why you…
Read the Mary Warburton Story here: Part I | Part II | Part III What happened to nurse Mary Warburton? It’s a question Edward Carre took it upon himself to answer after she disappeared on the Indian River Trail in 1931. His obsession with solving the case led him down the same trail and nearly…
Part I | Part II Undaunted by being lost in the BC wilderness for five weeks, Mary Warburton kept going back to the mountains. In 1931, while hiking from Squamish to Indian Arm, she went missing for a second time. Despite an extensive search, she was never seen again, and her legendary survival story has…
Part I In 1926, 57-year-old Mary Warburton was rescued after five weeks lost in the wilderness between Hope and Princeton. Her story was sensational, prompting interviews in which she told her tale. Undaunted by her ordeal, Mary headed straight back to the mountains she loved so well, year after year, until once again she ran…
“Lines, from Tennyson, I think, kept recurring to me while I was lost. A land where no man is or has been since the making of the world.” – Mary Warburton In 1926, when 56-year-old Mary Warburton was rescued after five weeks in the wilderness between Hope and Princeton, the story made the news as…
Even decades ago, the story of a missing hiker starts the same: someone goes out and doesn’t return. A search begins. In most cases, the person is found. But some missing hikers are never found. They vanish as if into thin air, their fate hidden amongst jagged rocks, deep gullies, and raging creeks. The disappearance…
There was not a drop of snow on the ground on the trail that January, but an arctic outflow had reared its icy head over the past week. As I descended from the mountain, I carefully picked my way across several patches of runoff that had frozen solid across the trail. It was a climbing…
If you walk along the West Canyon Trail in Golden Ears Provincial Park, one of the first views you’ll see is a rounded mountain to the northwest, heavily forested below and sparse enough on top to afford stunning views of the surrounding peaks and the Coast Mountains. At 9 km round trip, the hike to…
