I awoke first yet again. It’s important to note that it is around 5 am. I do not usually get up at 5am. I’m more of a 10’ish type of morning person. The stink in the tent had obviously reproduced over the night. I think stink reproduces much like an amoeba does, separating and the what not.

I carefully slipped out of my sleeping bag only to discover that some stink had been hiding in there. I grabbed my heavy fleece, slapped on the hiking boots and crawled out of the tent. Still dark. I wandered far enough away from the campsite to relieve myself without others hearing (i think).

As others began to wake up and crawl out of their respective stinky tents we exchanged more heartfelt good mornings.

Matt is not a morning person. He is like me. We like late afternoons and evenings. He sleeps in past his alarm and thus breakfast is late. But that is ok as I get to try yogurt on my cereal yet again. I finish breakfast early and head for the outhouse. It’s our last chance to unload while sitting.

While in the outhouse I obsess about my up-and-coming beard. Touch it, rub it, try to pull at it, and scrunch up my lip to see it. This continues for a good 15 minutes, the beard touching that is.

After breakfast we sorted and packed up food for the ten days. We have to come out of the bush after 10 days to re-supply our food, gear and clothing. Holy cow, feeding 12 people for 10 days requires an enormous amount of food. Food also comes in just below gold on the heavy as heck scale.

It’s our day to pack up and head out. Matt and Jasmin teach us to pack our packs properly. Packing a pack properly is a lot like packing a van. You put things in as best you can only to find out that half of the stuff doesn’t fit. You then remove everything and try multiple configurations until things just fit perfectly. This takes an unbelievable amount of tedious time. When I was finished my pack looked more like a bag of potatoes that a pro-hikers pack. Pack weighs in at approximately 60-65lbs.

We assemble near the van and try to slide our packs up to the rack on the top where Matt, the renewable energy source, is lifting them up with one hand and roping them in with the other. We grab a group photo and slam into the van. It’s late morning by the time the van is moving. Christina the course director (i.e. A mountain woman) is driving us to our trail head.

We drive into Strathcona Park once again. We drive for about a half hour longer than yesterday. We stop at a stunningly beautiful lake after an hour and half and stretch our legs. At least that’s what I thought we were doing. I later learned that someone was puking or was somehow car sick.

I showed a bunch of people how to “cut the devil’s throat” with a rock in the water. Virginie, a French girl, thought I must play baseball I could throw so high. I assure her that I haven’t played baseball since t-ball. We all try and skip rocks but most rocks are round so one skip becomes the record to beat.

With legs stretched and stealth puking finished we climb back into the van. Another hour goes by. We almost hit a stupid deer standing in the middle of the road. We drove on an ever narrowing road towards our trail head.

At the trail head Christina throws the packs down to us one at a time. She’s wearing those shorts joggers wear. I feel embarrassed looking up to get the packs so I take a few off the side of the face. As we placed the last of the gear beside the road Christina hopped back into the van, wished us luck, and drove off.

So here we are…..in the woods…..Well not really. The trail head is right beside a huge mining operation. But we’re much closer to the real woods than before.

We decide to have lunch at the trail head. I am in charge of lunch. I am the first ever Lunch Bad-Ass. Being a lunch bad-ass is one of the many chores we rotate through each day. I’ll give you the list of chores as I have to do them. This is the point in the day when I remember that I packed the lunch at the bottom of my pack… After a quick lunch of honey, cheese, pita breads, and peanut butter we are ready to go.

Matt and Jasmin personally show each person how to adjust their back-pack. When everyone’s pack passes their inspections Matt instructs us to sit on the end of the packs in a circle. He then proceeds to give us the “bear talk”. It went something like this:

“If a black bear or cougar attacks you fight back. If it is a grizzly bear play dead”

He then proceeded to demonstrate his bear spray for us. The fact that only he and Jasmin have bear spray worries me. I don’t ask about it though.

We begin the hike. Our packs are heavy. Our first scenery is an explosive’s hut nestled amongst monster redwoods. Ominous warnings are posted all over the shack. Smoking must be at least 10 feet from the building, etc..

As we get deeper into the woods nature starts to become more and more prevalent. The trees are hundreds of feet tall and as wide as I am tall. We make a few stops to launch pre-emptive attacks on terrorist blisters. I will never have a blister again with the knowledge I gained on this trip. Let’s just say it involves a little potion called friar’s balsam.

We’re hiking to Tennet Lake. The trail goes up, a lot. It follows a water pipeline built for the mine. It takes us over 5 hours to make it the 4km distance and 2100 feet in elevation to the top. Some people are close to passing out. I’m feeling ok. Matt and Jasmin are hiking machines.

Tennet Lake is a natural lake that has a manmade damn to funnel water to the pipeline. While this takes away from the ambiance a little it still makes for a peaceful camp spot. We set up tents, a tarp, and the kitchen. Luckily we rotate tentmates so the three stinky men get split up.

Supper was mac and cheese I believe. After supper the taller of the Veroniques leaned over and whispered to me in poor English this line……this is a word for word quote….. “Hey, do you want to go commando?”

Let’s pause here for a moment to reflect. I have known this female for 48 hours. She has just asked me if I want to remove my underwear. I am confused, very very confused.

Without looking too shocked I managed to ask her what she meant by “go commando”. She then proceeds to tell me that it is the French term for playing pranks on people. I laugh and tell her what it means in English. She gets embarrassed, but laughs hysterically. Matt almost exhales a lung laughing when he hears this.

I crawl into my sleeping bag, on my little thin sheet of plastic, on the ground. We’re not on soft mulch anymore. It’s rocks. Oh yay. The day’s hike catches up and my body shuts down for the end of day three.

Move on to Day 4 >>
<< Go back to Day 2

I awoke to find that either:
a) Bugs had not crawled in my nostrils while I slept
b) Bugs may have crawled in my nostrils while I slept but left before I woke up
c) Bugs crawled so far up my nostrils while I slept that they are past the place where you can feel them

I was actually surprised at how little I noticed sleeping on the ground (ok…ok…. We did get tiny personal ground sheet you put down between you and the ground). I was under the false impression that I would wake up to a Fear Factorish scene of worms, spiders, bugs, millipedes, earwigs, and wombats crawling all over my body. Obviously I’m a moron. The only interesting thing that happened while I slept (that I know about at least) is that my dreams were frighteningly lucid. I was not the only one either. Most course mates reported high levels of lucidness.

I was the first one up. After I noticed there were no bugs in my nose I noticed the unbelievable stench. Three men, no deodorant, one small tent = the grossest BO smell I’ve ever smelled. I staggered out of the tent into the freezing cold. It was nipply out so I went back into the sweat shop to grab a heavier MEC fleece. That’s right; I have multiple weights of fleece! I followed my headlamp off into the morning darkness in search of the outhouse. Then I realized that I was in the woods and that I was a male…..

As people awoke we exchanged awkward “good mornings”. I pretended to be genuinely interested in other people but to be completely honest I was completely occupied by the first day of my beard.

Within a few minutes of everyone waking up we made our way to the eating area for breakfast. Two of the other three groups were actually hiking out as we ate. I guess when you’re only there for seven days you have to get your ass in gear and actually get out of camp. Us twenty-one dayers could afford to take a little time for some oatmeal.

This brings us to our first life changing event of the trip:
Putting yogurt on your cereal/harvest crunch/oatmeal is WAY better than milk. For so many years I have been lied to. Honestly, you think it weird, it’s not. TRY IT!

After breakfast we piled into a 15 passenger van and headed into Strathcona Provincial Park. The tensions began to rise over music selection. The instructors (Matt and Jazz) passed the CD book back to us and told us to pick. Needless to say the eight mid twenty year olds didn’t like the same music as the forty year olds. A lot of bitten lips.

After the two hour van ride through unbelievable scenery we arrived at sunshine crag. We made the short hike up to the top of a crag and enjoyed the view of the high tension power lines. After a quick lunch we began rock climbing training. I learned how to apply the crotch defining & blood flow restricting harness. We learned the basic knots, belay techniques, and rock climbing technique. Then we proceeded to do another one of the “things I won’t do”. The classic trust emphasizing fall back into someone’s arms. Lame. Luckily it didn’t last long.

We each got one good long climb in before we had to pack up the ropes and head back to camp. The van ride back was much better musically but had elevated stench quantities.

We arrived back at camp and ate our last meal prepared by someone else (they had a cook at the base camp). We were the only group left by this point….the camp is completely empty aside from our group.

After supper we sat around a picnic table in the dark and expressed our biggest fears and achievement. We also discussed what traits we’d like our twenty one day community to have. While it began quite cheesily it was actually quite interesting to see people open up in such a blatantly organized emotional moment.

From there we followed our headlamps back to the campsite and I crawled onto the ground in my stinky tent with two men whom I did not know their last names. Day 2 was over.

<< Go back to Day 1
Move on to Day 3 >>

After a month back in civilization I’ve finally had the chance to sit down and write up for you my trip to the woods. Some aspects are left out on purpose as I plan to make longer, more detailed, posts about them later on. I’ll also included some quotes from my trip journal where applicable.

I'll be posting the days in chronological order. Hopefully at least one per day. Enjoy!

It’s been an interesting few days here at the Zap conference. As one of the lesser involved organizers I am amazed that it is been received so well. A loose idea we had just a number of weeks ago is now a concrete event that seems to get better by the second.

A few highlights from my point of view:

Well, the ZAP conference is going extraordinarily well. Surprisingly and suspiciously well. No doubt we’re going to suffer from a horrible catastrophe today or tomorrow.

It’s turning out to be a Dellesque conference. Everything is just-in-time. The satellite high speed was installed minutes before the official start of the conference, the food arrived minutes before the meal started, I thought about my presentation minutes before it began, etc..etc..etc..

I’ll keep you up to date as the happenings go on.

Sorry for the delay - All photos (223) I took on my Outward Bound trip have now been uploaded to my gallery. Enjoy.

Due to my lack of posting in the last while I thought I would give you a sneak peek at the posts I’m working on. Please keep in mind that: this is a rough draft, some ideas may end up merging, and some may end up never being written. If you’d like me to complete a particular idea sooner rather than later please let me know.

• In shape and feeling good
• Buying a Building 101
• The Oval Inbox (President of the Internet follow up post)
• What will I pay for? (Why would I pay for Trillian but not MSN?)
• Mountain Cairns (a simple but powerful system)
• Pooping in the woods (the sole reason for human invention)
• Outward Bound Trip (a general summary)
• French (a language and a culture)
• Taking Digital Camera on Long Trips
• Zap your PRAM Conference
• Being Alone
• Knowing more about your food is good (knowing how it is made, where it came from, how it is cooked, etc)
• Irrational Fear of the Wilderness (When bears attack!!)
• Living is very basic at its core (food, warmth, dryness)
• Currency (how come one hundred dollars in the mountains isn’t as valuable as a single chocolate bar?)

I'm back from the deep dark wilderness. I shaved the beard (too itchy), am in incredible physical shape, hated doing #2 in the woods, and have tons of things to write about in the very near future.