Tuesday, October 19, 2010

That Was NOT A Walk!

This weekend I went on a little bit of a trip to see my friends from uni last year. They are about 3 hours south of me in Victoria. After work on Friday, I headed out right away. I got on the road at about 5:00. After a quick stop for gas and a bite to eat in Nanoose, I got into Victoria just after eight.

My first stop was my friend Angie's house, but she wasn't there. I headed to campus to meet up with her and some other friends at their on campus apartment. We had a little bit of a get together that lasted till about midnight. Friday night I slept at Angie's, and in the morning headed back to campus to pick up Gwen.

We were going to go for a walk in Goldstream Park, a beautiful park at the start of the Malahat. We stopped for a bite to eat at Subway on the way there, and arrived at around 11:30. Looking at the map, it turned out that the trail we were going to take was the most difficult in the park, and was listed as a "3 hour hike".

We started out on the trail through the beautiful forest. The trail seemed as if it went up at a 45 degree angle. It was soo steep, but really beautiful.


It is kinda funny how even though I live about 5 minutes from scenery such as this, it is so rare that I actually go and enjoy it. The trail is so beautiful.


On the other side of the creek the trail was so steep you could touch the trail in front of you if you stuck out your arm!!



Pretty quick we got out of the trees. The trail turned into a series of ledges with little arrows pointing the way along the ledges. Some of the arrows were kinda funny. Eventually the trail turned into a scramble up rock faces.


Mt Finlayson is one of those mountains where the higher you get, the higher the mountain goes. But eventually, we actually got to the top. It is kinda anti-climatic, but we got a picture taken to prove we did it.


Going down was a lot faster, but way harder on the knees as it is very steep. We came down a different way once we got back into the trees, taking a route with hundreds of stairs instead of steep paths. I found a neat burned out tree to stand in (I have no idea what kind of face I am making in the tree). 

Once down I wanted to try out my cameras underwater feature. It was weird sticking my camera into the water, but it is a really cool thing to be able to do. The first is just underwater, and the next is with half the lens in the water and half out. Interesting effect.


On the way back to the car we went to see a really nice waterfall that is hidden away through a gigantic culvert.


That water was so cold it was unbelievable.

When we got back to UVic, Gwen had tons of work to do so I headed back to Angie's. On the way I stopped at the grocery store to get some food to make supper. The butter chicken currie turned out very well, and for dessert we made cookies.Even though we for got almost half the ingredients, they came out just fine. 

Sunday brought me back home in the late afternoon after a day of lazing about in Victoria. My family and I went out to the Elks Hall for a jazz show. The place was packed, and I ran into some friends from high school.

It was a great weekend, and sadly, probably my last one in Vic before I leave. Thanks to Angie for letting me stay at your place!

2 comments:

  1. Awww I remember going to Goldstream with you :D It was really really fun, remember the culvert? Those guys came in with the weirdest outfits!

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  2. Oh yeah! I remember that. This time there was no water in the culvert. And the waterfall just disappeared into the ground after a few tens of meters.

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