103 Hikes: All Done
Jocelyn Timmermans joined the Chilliwack Outdoor Club (COC) more than a decade ago, and in her initial years with the COC, she did many of the introductory and moderate hikes listed in Jack Bryceland’s updated 2008 version of 103 Hikes in Southwestern British Columbia.
Dave Walton moved to Chilliwack in 2010 and shortly thereafter joined the Chilliwack Outdoor Club. Dave, like Jocelyn, was keen to do the more demanding and challenging hikes in 103 Hikes but equally important, to do each and all of the treks listed by Jack. They were, at the time, unaware of the varied adventures and unpredictable experiences they were to inevitably have. Needless to say, such a commitment would mean many a trip to the mountains in which trails were overgrown, paths hard to find, backcountry roads not in the best of shape and longer than expected days and delays in the mountains.
It is, of course, one thing to have a vision worth the living into—quite another thing to live into the goal and vision. Jocelyn and Dave (sometimes with a few others) week by week ticked off the boxes of trips listed and described by Jack, summer and autumn being the prime times to venture forth into the alpine (too much snow in the winter season).
There were longer trips taken in which many a precarious and frustrating moment was the order of the day, such as the long drive to Emma Lake (#2, such a beauty of a place though once reached), and the Sunshine Coast road to Tin Hat hut in which the tire went flat (no spare tire but a good Samaritan drove the trekkers to Powell River and brought them back to their vehicles with new tires). Or, the Halymore-Melvin Divide (#3) trail in which their vehicle, the roadway ever narrowing, had a steep cliff on one side and a drop-off ravine on the other and began to slide into the ravine—gratefully so, no lives lost and again, visiting the high fells was a hiker who assisted in the winching out of the truck.
Such experiences are never forgotten. Jocelyn and Dave have many other such nail-biter tales to recount in accomplishing the 103 hikes.
There were, of course, many charmers not to be forgotten and huts worth the staying in such as Tenquille Lake (with its many summits worth the doing), Marriot Meadows/Wendy Thompson Hut, the Tetrahedron huts and Mount Steele (a contested area these days) and the finale and final trip done in the autumn of 2016, Place Glacier (#8).
Needless to say, there were many reasons for celebration when Jocelyn and Dave came down from Place Glacier in the autumn of 2016. 103 hikes, ALL DONE.
Many are those who pick and choose which trails they will do in the various versions of 103 Hikes but rare are those who committed themselves to doing all 103 and did the deed (often returning to certain paths a few times because initial visit goal not accomplished).
The 2008 version of 103 Hikes is now history, replaced by the recently published and, in some ways, quite different 105 Hikes In and Around Southwestern British Columbia (2018). Jocelyn and Dave have already done some of the trips in this newest version of paths worth taking, including Watersprite Lake/cabin/peaks. In the summer of 2019, they led a trip into the Monashees with the Chilliwack Outdoor Club, and Jocelyn (with another friend) climbed Kilimanjaro in September 2019. Will 105 Hikes be the next map offered and goals worth attaining? Certainly all sorts of new and inviting trips are offered up in this new book that opens up a variety of vistas worth the seeing and trips worth the taking.
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