You might recall that i did a walk in the Rockies last summer with friends on the Great Divide Trail. We have decided to do Section E this summer so spent Wednesday morning on the edge of our seats hoping we got some luck with the permit lottery. Wednesday was the day that backcountry permits opened for Jasper National Park and this is a mad scramble. Most of the section just needs a backcountry permit and you can “wild camp” wherever you find a suitable spot. We only needed 2 campsites on the entire stretch but since the Six Passes alternate route is closed (no campsites need to be booked on that route and it is used by lots of GDT hikers to avoid the scramble for booking sites) we HAD to get our two campsites. Each campsite can only have 1 group each night. The system works on a lottery so Maddy, Don, and I all had our computers setup and ready to go. Maddy got a spot around 1100, i had a couple in the 3000 and Don had a 3000 and a 4000. We all waited and thankfully we did because Maddy’s spot glitched and she wasn’t able to get in. Many frantic text messages later and i managed to get 2 campsites in the section we are doing. We got one of our targets but had to settle for one that is going to line us up for a pretty massive day. We hope for some trail karma and maybe we can meet some other GDT hikers who have the site we want so we can stop a bit earlier. All told our route this year is 130 km and i am beyond excited to be going back!
On Saturday i finished up the east portion of the attic with another couple of small sections of wall and putting up more insulation. I still need to sort out how to get more insulation on the door. The only challenge for this bit was that i had to move some decking i had screwed down over a decade ago because it was under where i wanted to put the wall up.
Sunday i cut all the wood i’ll need for the west portion of the attic so i could figure out how much spare wood we have in the basement and clear out some space. I listed a bunch of short trim ends online and was able to give most of it away to save taking it to the dump.
It was the first weekend of the Hot Chocolate Festival so we met up with Jeff and Jenn in the afternoon for a walk to grab some fancy hot chocolate and to record a birthday video for our friend Marcie. The sun was out and it was great to be out with friends going to a cafe for the first time in ages. It almost felt like the before times! Birthdays are still strange and since we couldn’t have a large gathering for Marcie’s milestone, her husband Lee arranged a Tribute video. Sarah, Jeff, and Jenn cooked up a ridiculous idea at D&D and i got roped in. Marcie loves My Little Pony and since Jenn has some, they thought it would be fun to use them in a video. Not a bad idea in a controlled environment but since it was a nice day we decided to take them with us on our outing and film in the park. Parks and fields in the spring in Vancouver are soggy so we had to rethink it and found a spot on the side of the park where there are some bleachers that are usually occupied by hipsters drinking beer from the local breweries. I am not good at being ridiculous in public so was hella self conscious but we managed to pull off a little video making weird My Little Pony voices as people walked by laughing. I love east vancouver. A bunch of grown people with Pony figures making a video. yeah. whatever. Jeff did a great job editing it and dropping in the MLP theme song and it was hilarious. When i went to load it up to Tribute for Lee i read the instructions. We were supposed to talk about our favourite things about Marcie or our favourite memory. We didn’t do any of that but we had fun and I am sure she will appreciate the effort.
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