Window to the soul of the earth.

Well we have had a few weeks off but we managed to get out this past weekend and do a hike into the Sooke hills. There was only 2 of us on this hike and it was a short hike only 8k. We did a simple hike up to the campgrounds and just hung out there for a bit and then returned back.

It was a pretty uneventful hike with the weather being pretty warm for the first week of February. With the weather so warm, it did make for some very green countryside with a few snowdrops poking their heads up though the ground. There has been very little rain for the past couple of weeks so as you can see by the pictures the river is running pretty low. With the river this low it get allot noisier than I described in the last post since more of the rock are uncovered. It is an interesting time to go out here every few weeks and see how the environment changes with the weather.

It did make for great refreshment since we both had been pretty busy lately and mostly stuck indoors. It made for some great bitch session to allow us to vent about the world and life in general. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is feeling stressed in their life to come on out a join us for the Hike Club.

We accept requests from others who would like to join us on a great hike and stress reducer. The only stipulation is that you must be male. Yes, this is a club only for men to enjoy, why well because we feel that men need a place to get away where they can act like men you know that simple male behaviour and some good male bonding.

We try to get out about every 2 weeks and go hiking sometimes every week sometimes every 3 week no real set schedule but we do get out regularly. If you are interested, and live in the Victoria BC area or are planning a visit here please email dragon@smartbomb.ca and I will contact you back.

Well until the next hike enjoy life.

Great scenery you can see right from the campground area of the potholes.

It’s kind of like a great trip to a shrink but doesn’t cost as much and you get the great benefit of getting into shape at the same time.  I highly recommend this type of therapy for everyone out there, on top of getting into shape you also get to see great scenery like this. You can check out the map of todays hike from runkeeper here, or you can download the quick link to place it right into your Google Earth program here.   

Wide angle of the river rocks I will be watching and taking a shot of on each hike.

So back to the hike we left the parking lot at the usual spot and headed up to Leechtown. For today’s hike we only did 13.5k mostly because we had a nube with us today and we wanted to go easy on him. I did get a few decent pictures today and I now have a goal for some of the pictures I take. Like for instance this set of rocks on the river, if you look back at the other posts on our hikes you will see the same set of rocks covered in ice and once where the lower center rock is completely covered.   

So maybe for fun we will develop a complete set of rules for “Hike Club” so others can form their own, after all like I have said this can be the greatest therapy going and will cost you a lot less than a shrink.   

This is todays Complete Gallery of shots from the Sooke River Potholes along the Galloping Goose Trail..

This 5 point buck was eyeing us

We had only managed one hike in the month of October but we are determined that we will get in a hike every two weeks from this point forward. It is now the first week of November in the Sooke hills and the weather is turning colder and getting damper as it does on the wet coast or beautiful British Columbia.

We headed out this time with a different goal in mind, now that we have done some wandering along the river’s edge and up the hills along the pipeline it is time to think about building up our legs and backs. This time I started with my pack carrying about 5 kilos mostly just water and snacks. We decided we would start heading up the Goose trail and actually work towards getting to Leechtown.

I had recently gotten an iPhone and downloaded a GPS program called runkeeper which my wife uses to track her runs (you can read here blog at http://www.littleillusions.com/ all about running) and decided to use it to track our hikes. Here is a link to the one we did on this date http://runkeeper.com/pub/act/2WOw0klazv2orbQMR5sn/map as you can see we did about 10k this time and actually have some proof on it, plus a great Google map to look at.

So what did we see on this hike well we saw a great big 5 point buck staring at us from across a ravine, the largest deer i had seen in years. He would not take his eyes off us as long as we were in his territory. It was also pretty wet on this day although we were pretty lucky in that most of the dampness was simply left over from the rain before we started.

The river was up a bit and pushing it pretty heavy, as you can see from the pictures the flow was heavy. Being November you would think the leaves would all be gone but we still saw some pretty stunning scenery. This is one of the benefits of living on the wet cost you get to get some beautiful areas no matter what time of year it is and the weather while damp is not usually too cold.

We did manage to get about halfway towards Leechtown as you can by the map. So our goals from this point forward is to work our packs up to 20 kilos and make it to Leechtown, beyond and back in a day.

We initially decided it would be best to work up to being able to carry a 20 kilo backpack each with all the camping implements we would need for a few days in the bush. So a small plan came together about doing some simple day hikes into the Sooke hill mostly in the area of the Sooke Potholes.

Shown in these pictures below is how the potholes look in the springtime. If you’re planning to start a training regime to prepare for some lightweight camping I would recommend the Sooke hills as an area to do most of your preparations for camping.

Since this was our first hike out all we brought with us was some water and some snacks since we weren’t’ intending on going far. I think we managed about 2-3k on this first hike.